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SPIRITUAL NOBILITY
by
Richard, Duc de Palatine
"There is within man faculties of the Soul which, if developed, will enable man to perceive this inner world (of the Soul), so that it will become possible for him to explore and to study it precisely as man has explored and studied that part of the world which is within reach of all. These faculties are the heritage of the whole human race; they will unfold within every one of us as our evolution progresses; but men who are willing to devote themselves to the effort may gain them in advance of the rest, just as the blacksmith's apprentice, specializing in the use of certain muscles, may attain a development much greater than that of other youths of his age."
C W Leadbetter: "The Science of the Sacraments"
In the pages of this specialized magazine you were given the theory of the path of Holiness which leads to a man or woman becoming a member of the Army of the Elect within the Invisible Empire of Light. The origins of this Invisible Empire of Light are lost in the mists of antiquity as are the names of those Princes of this Empire who have left their mark upon the history of the world, in the arts, music, religion, science, medicine and so on from every age and clime. These Great Souls have appeared amongst mankind, taught and led them into a higher form of culture at the beginning of every new cycle, only to disappear leaving behind them legends and traditions of their great accomplishments and powers.
All have proclaimed the Empire of Light and the wonderful powers of those Princes who served the Empire, but the identity of the Army of Great Souls has ever remained a shrouded mystery to the great masses of the people, but their names and deeds have passed into profane history as the gods of every age and civilization.
One of the powers possessed by these Princes was that which is now known as clairvoyance but not in its loose and flippant term, embracing under its term a meaning for a happy guess due to natural shrewdness or intuition. Real clairvoyance is the faculty of seeing with the Eye of the Soul which means that one possessing this faculty can see through the densest matter which disappears at will before the Inner Eye and see the past, present and future of man and the planet. True Seer ship involves a superhuman effort and discipline to attain it, hence there are few in every age. Such sight involves the awakening of the chakras in the vital body through discipline and training.
Apollonius of Tyana states: "I can see the present and the future as in a clear mirror. The sage need not wait for the vapors of the earth and corruption of the air to foresee events...the Theoi, or gods (here he is referring to the Divine Souls of Men), see the future; common man the present; sages that which is about to take place". This is pure Theo-Sophia or Gnosticism demonstrated, the Divine Faculty of the Soul exteriorized.
This self-same faculty of clear-seeing can be obtained by the union of the Human with the Divine Soul manifesting as pure Illumination, that is to say, a man so blessed is able to see the past, present and future of man by virtue of the inherent Wisdom of the Self, therefore when we deal with the implications of The Spiritual Nobility we write this article and its contents through this faculty, which means that which is written is given without prejudice or subconscious restrictions of any form.
When a great race or civilization makes its appearance upon the stage of human endeavor, it begins under the tutelage of one or more of the Princes in a small way and then waxes strong and attains a high stage of culture and civilization, but when the Princes withdraw, it will follow the cyclic law and enter into a stage of decline and fade from the ken of man, but the Princes had made sure that the wisdom and knowledge gained by one culture will be passed and blended into a new race. When the Princes incarnate again, this process of the descent of the Adepts to earth, and the rise and fall of civilizations is recapitulated from cycle to cycle until the race has reached a high state of culture and civilization and again fades to make a place for the next impulse.
The Wisdom of the Gnosis was transferred to the West by the Princes of doomed Atlantis, when the Princes of the Dark Empire caused this fair land to sink beneath the ocean, the Adepts of the Army of Light carried the rudiments of this Gnosis to the West and molded it to become known as the Wisdom Religion of the West. The Princes and the Hierophant of the Mysteries of the Sun in Atlantis were fully determined that the misuse by mankind of the Divine Wisdom and its terrible powers would never again be allowed for fear that man might destroy himself. They therefore decreed that only those of the highest moral and spiritual development would be permitted to learn of the Mysteries of God. At the same time, this Wisdom was always available to all people providing they were able to fulfill the qualifications for the reception of the Mysteries.
Up to the date of the founding of Imperial Rome under Augustine Caesar, the two offices of King and High Priest were embodied in one person who was generally a prince of the Empire of Light, but from that time the Mysteries or the Gnosis was confined to the Sacred Schools and Colleges and the two offices became separated. The King ceased to be a spiritual officer but became the secular ruler. When the Christ appeared the Gnosis became known as the "Mysteries of Jesus." These mysteries were a new and skillfully blended system of the older individualized forms related in terms which could be understood by the coming development of the Social Mind for Europe and the Americas. It was to the religious Mysteries of Osiris and Isis, the Magi, the Buddhic, the Eleusian, the Adonis, Mithraism and the Cult of the Great Mother that the Prince of Princes went for His inspiration and the basis of His own Mysteries.
The Christ, the Prince of Princes, consummated the efforts of a long series of Prince-Hierophants and Rulers of Egypt, Chaldea, India and Asia Minor and the Sages and Philosophers of Greece and Rome. The vast accumulated knowledge of man, and the planet, of nature, of all the arts and sciences was to be merged and presented as the Gnosis, just as Clemens Alexandrinus (Clement of Alexandria), the great Gnostic Father of the Church, stated: "...that the doctrines taught therein in them was the end of all human knowledge." But the Christ passed over this deposit to the Army of the Elect to be the custodians of this Gnosis. From that time on, the various rulers of the nations ceased to be Princes of the Empire, but became human princes within the nations.
Within this new presentation of the old - the Gnosis, the knowledge of the higher sciences and the Army of the Elect were known and reserved for those who received them. The facts of this Empire of Light and the Army of the Elect were carried into the Christian Gospels and in the writings of Paul, and later Gnostics, such as Valentinius, Basilides, Marcion
The Gnostics and their Wisdom were the heirs to the old Mysteries and it was because of this fact that the Church, that is to say the "Christian Church", sought to destroy the Gnostics in order to establish their humanized wisdom. The core of Gnosticism is the fact that Man is a Divine Being with the ability and capacity to become one of the Army of the Elect, in other words, a god whilst still in the mortal body, and that once attaining this stage of evolution they became the Princes of the Church or Empire of Light.
It was only when the last of the Gnostics were put away that the Christian Church began to make headway among the ignorant masses, but the Hierophants of the Gnosis still carried on in the secret recesses in Asia Minor and in Italy, and from that time they formed Brotherhoods for the perpetuation of the Gnosis, of the Elect, of the Empire and the Divine Nature of Man. The identity and knowledge of these Brotherhoods or Secret Assemblies of the Ekklesia Spiritualis was always shrouded in mystery for the fear of persecution by the Church of Rome and then later by the Protestant sects; and it was not until the end of the 18th century that the mysteries of the great and civilized nations were derided and called "Works of the Devil."
Until the coming of the Baroness Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and the publication of her devastating volumes of Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, the existence of the Rosicrucians, Alchemists and Hermeticists were hardly known and those who did not know termed them as knaves and lunatics, but immediately after these works appeared on the market the intellectuals and genuine Occultists of Europe witnessed so many tyros writing profound works upon the Rosae Crucis, etc., whilst the True Princes and Hierophants smiled at their puny attempts, realizing that whilst the public were being fooled by the so-called "experts" on these abstruse subjects, they were safe from the attentions of their bitterest enemies, the Catholic and Protestant Churches. This fact has been verified by the two authors of "The Dawn of Magic."
There is yet another stream coming from the Mysteries and Gnostics and that is Freemasonry, up to 1717 this system remained a secret and pure body, but when the "Constitutions" of the Masonic imposter Anderson were foisted upon the Craft, it degenerated into a meaningless jingle of words and play-acting, the Wisdom had been crushed out and it remains a corpse of the Sons of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the infamous "Society of Jesus."
You may well ask, if as history proves, that the present orders, societies, etc., as known to the public are degenerated shells of the Gnosis, where may one find the "Door" which will lead into the Invisible Empire of Light. The answer is quite simple, the door leads through your human Soul into the Divine and from there into the Empire, providing you are prepared to accept the stern and unbending qualifications demanded of you.
We state, with absolute authority capable of being proven, that the original "Order of the Illuminati" now known as the Order of the Pleroma is the last semi-public Assembly to embody the Gnosis through the avenues from the Mysteries, and it is today that the successor of this original order can and will offer to its people the knowledge of the Pathway to the Door of the Empire of Light.
We declare, and we repeat, we declare that we in the Order of the Pleroma and the Ekklesia Spiritualis do not profess to show you the Door, this we cannot do, nor can any other Assembly which owes its obedience to the Invisible Empire do this, we can only present to you the knowledge of the Way to the Door. It is you and you alone who must open the Door, with a pure body, pure emotions, a controlled mind and an Illuminated Soul, without these qualifications you will never pass through the mortal trials, the waters of the emotions, the fire of the mind and the airy conditions of the Soul.
You may well ask, what has this to do with the Spiritual Nobility? The above will be shown to be the key to the understanding of the esoteric implications of Titles and Nobility. When the period of the Crusades began and many Knights came into contact with the various Gnostic streams of the Levant and were initiated into the Hidden Schools, they formed what is known as the "Chivalric Orders" to be used as a vehicle for the perpetuation of their Wisdom gained in those Schools.
Many occult and metaphysical writers have ignored these orders and have considered them of no importance to the Wisdom tradition but these Chivalric orders were dual in their functions, they were formed to help the sick and needy and conformed to the Catholic Faith and secondly, they embodied yet another aspect which was unsuspected by the Church authorities, they had a secret system of initiations or stages of progress in their mysteries, the names of their degrees were: Sovereign Prince or Grand Master; Knight Grand Cross or Prince; Knight Commander or Duke; Knight or Count; Knight Banneret or Baron and then Squire.
These titles were designations given to the candidates according to the stage he had reached in the Chivalric Mysteries, but when the rulers of the nations of Europe desired to honor those who had fought for the ruler in time of war, they usurped the ancient rights of the Orders and began to confer these titles upon secular men, thus degenerating the once holy titles into purely secular titles of rank and social standing, we all know the results of the secularization of the spiritual titles. Hence you have what is known as Personal or Spiritual Titles and Regional or Secular Titles, this is to mean a title of a place, holding lands, etc. The title of Duc de Palatine is personal and a spiritual title.
The Chivalric Orders are yet another link in the chain of the Wisdom Religion, from these Orders spring the Orders of the Quest: Albigenses, the Guilds, Knights Templar, Troubadours, Holy Grail. Then we had the Orders of the Great Work: the Alchemists; the Orders of Universal Reformation: such as the Rosae Crucis, the Unknown Philosophers, the Royal Society and the Pansophic College and then came the Masonic Orders of Fraternity including Freemasonry, the Illuminati, Martinism, the French Transcendentalists, Fratres Lucis and Luxor, all stemmed from the Chivalric link between the Gnostic Schools and the beginning of the Orders of the Quest.
