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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rapa" data-source="post: 432730" data-attributes="member: 212">The Alexandrian libraryThe reasons for keeping certain documents hidden or even destroying them are sometimes purely negative. Conquerors or usurpers wishing to destroy a people’s heritage have often burned its books, as did Shih Huang-ti in China in 213 BCE, the Spaniards in Mexico in 1520, and the Nazis in the 1930s. The destruction of the records of rival pagan religious and philosophical schools by the early Christian Church was another act of deliberate vandalism. The fate of the Alexandrian library in Egypt tells a similar story.The Alexandrian library was the most famous library of the ancient world. It formed part of a research institute known as the Alexandrian Museum (or temple of the Muses). The library and museum were founded and maintained by the long succession of Ptolemies from the beginning of the 3rd century BCE. An auxiliary library was established about 235 BCE in the Serapeum, a temple dedicated to the god Serapis. The Alexandrian library systematically collected together the knowledge of the ancient world, and at its peak it is estimated to have held 400,000 to 700,000 scrolls and papyri.Reconstruction of the main hall of the Alexandrian Museum.Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city of Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, and Jews, and a prosperous trade centre between East and West. Its library promoted and nourished the intermingling of different cultures and spiritual traditions, and for a time Alexandria became the greatest centre of learning in the ancient world. It was the centre of pagan mysticism in late antiquity, and the birthplace of the most celebrated schools of gnosticism (a syncretistic movement that included all the systems of belief prevalent in the first two centuries of the Christian era).Ammonius Saccas, the founder of Neoplatonism, began teaching his synthetic theosophic philosophy in Alexandria in the 3rd century CE. His pupils included Origen and Plotinus; the latter was succeeded by a series of other well-known neoplatonic philosophers, including Iamblichus, Porphyry, Hypatia, and Proclus. Other famous names associated with Alexandria are Philo Judaeus, who synthesized the Old Testament with Greek and Pythagorean philosophy, and Clement, who imported many gnostic ideas into Christianity.The repeated destruction of the Alexandrian library dealt a great blow to the preservation of the ancient wisdom. Julius Caesar is sometimes said to have burned the library during his invasion of Alexandria in 47-48 BCE. However, the prevailing view today is that after he had set the enemy fleet on fire, the flames spread, and some 40,000 to 70,000 scrolls stored in a warehouse adjacent to the harbour were accidentally destroyed.In 272 CE the Alexandrian museum and main library were ravaged in the civil war under the Roman emperor Aurelian. Most of the alchemical and hermetic works of the Egyptians were burned by order of Emperor Diocletian after suppressing a revolt in Alexandria in 296 CE (SD 2:763fn; BCW 11:549). In 380 CE, Emperor Theodosius II banished paganism from the Roman Empire, which at that time included Thrace, Macedonia, Crete, Syria, and Egypt. Theophilus, the Christian Patriarch of Alexandria, set about obliterating all vestiges of pagan shrines. In 391 CE a Christian mob razed the Serapeum to the ground, along with its irreplaceable collection of classical literature. The stone from the temples was used to construct new Christian churches, and Theophilus was later honoured as a saint.Neoplatonism flourished in Alexandria until 415 CE, when a Christian mob, inflamed by Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, brutally murdered Hypatia, an esteemed philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. Like his uncle (Theophilus), Cyril was made a saint. The murder of Hypatia has been called the death of the pagan world and the beginning of the dark age. By this time, the Mysteries in the West had long been in decline, due to both persecution from without and degeneration from within. Grace Knoche writes: ‘Aside from the suppression of everything non-Christian, much of what had once been held beautiful and holy in the Mysteries – the sacred ritual of the union of the aspiring soul with the higher self – had become orgies of the most degraded sort’ (MS 66). In 529 CE Emperor Justinian closed the last philosophical school of Athens, the Academy founded by Plato.The final deliberate destruction of the Alexandrian library is often said to have taken place in 642 CE when the Arabs conquered Egypt. However, many regard these allegations as a Christian attack on Muslims, and the claim that it took six months to burn all the contents of the library to heat Alexandria’s public baths is dismissed as an outright fabrication.H.P. Blavatsky says that the destruction of the Alexandrian library was a temporary setback rather than a permanent defeat for those who valued the wisdom of the ancients.There are strange traditions current in various parts of the East – on Mount Athos and in the Desert of Nitria, for instance – among certain monks, and with learned Rabbis in Palestine ... that not all the rolls and manuscripts, reported in history to have been burned by Caesar, by the Christian mob, in 389, and by the Arab General Amru, perished as it is commonly believed ...No more do sundry very learned Copts scattered all over the East in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Palestine believe in the total destruction of the subsequent libraries. (Isis 2:27-8)She elaborates:It has been claimed in all ages that ever since the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, every work of a character that might have led the profane to the ultimate discovery and comprehension of some of the mysteries of the Secret Science, was, owing to the combined efforts of the members of the Brotherhoods, diligently searched for. It is added, moreover, by those who know, that once found, save three copies left and stored safely away, such works were all destroyed. In India, the last of the precious manuscripts were secured and hidden during the reign of Emperor Akbar [second half of the 16th century].It is maintained, furthermore, that every sacred book of that kind, whose text was not sufficiently veiled in symbolism, or which had any direct references to the ancient mysteries, after having been carefully copied in cryptographic characters, such as to defy the art of the best and cleverest palaeographer, was also destroyed to the last copy. (SD 1:xxiii-iv)The destruction of the Alexandrian Library marked the beginning of an era when the ‘mysteries of the secret science’ were deliberately hidden. Yet slowly but surely lost works are becoming available again because more and more people are proving capable of appreciating them. Indeed, the modern theosophical movement was founded to partially unveil long-hidden truths.Secret recordsThat the Brotherhood of Adepts has extensive records concerning the history of the human race is repeated on many occasions in theosophical literature.The Secret Doctrine was the universally diffused religion of the ancient and prehistoric world. Proofs of its diffusion, authentic records of its history, a complete chain of documents, showing its character and presence in every land, together with the teaching of all its great adepts, exist to this day in the secret crypts of libraries belonging to the Occult Fraternity.This statement is rendered more credible by a consideration of the following facts: the tradition of the thousands of ancient parchments saved when the Alexandrian library was destroyed; the thousands of Sanskrit works which disappeared in India in the reign of Akbar; the universal tradition in China and Japan that the true old texts with the commentaries, which alone make them comprehensible – amounting to many thousands of volumes – have long passed out of the reach of profane hands; the disappearance of the vast sacred and occult literature of Babylon; the loss of those keys which alone could solve the thousand riddles of the Egyptian hieroglyphic records; the tradition in India that the real secret commentaries which alone make the Veda intelligible, though no longer visible to profane eyes, still remain for the initiate, hidden in secret</blockquote>

Verification: Haya warak paha keeyada? (haya wadi kireema paha)

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