There were many secret societies that pretended to be the custodians of knowledge.
But by the 19th century. they either degenerated into political Masonic organizations, or were engaged in practical magic, that is, they lost their original purity.
Even earlier, digital and literal Kabbalism was widely spread, through which it is allegedly possible to control the elements and even subdue heavenly and hellish spirits.
All sorts of tutorials have appeared on the development of "supernatural" abilities or on how to see the invisible "third eye".
All this, of course, has nothing to do with the knowledge of the real possibilities of Psychic Energy and the subtlest occult forces of Nature. Magic is not at all a stage of Enlightenment: it is only an ugly deviation from the natural Path.
Some well-known religious and philosophical teachings with their moral ideal of a detached from the world, deep in oneself, impassive and indifferent sage, were already a distortion of the original life-affirming worldview. It is impossible to imagine our Paleolithic ancestor, sitting in a yoga pose and busy with introspection: in this case, he would simply be doomed to extinction, because life demanded something completely different.
The so-called meditation is not a natural, inborn function of our psyche, but rather a complex product of its development. Modern "gurus" recommend meditative psycho-training, like daily brushing your teeth, but the real benefits of such exercises are possible only if a person has a GOOD HEART. What it is? - A KIND HEART presupposes, first of all, a merciful attitude towards all living things.
Why look for the miraculous in the East without fail? In pre-Christian Europe from ancient times there were their own traditional Pagan teachings and schools. It is noteworthy that, for example, the followers of Sufism themselves understand it not as purely Islamic mysticism, but as something originally inherent in all the most ancient mystical-pantheistic teachings.
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Why wander in the darkness of kabbalistic intricacies, decipher cryptograms, speak in parables, riddles and omissions? Why veil the magnificent truths of Nature and Her Providence, if, by the very essence of things, this Providence should be characterized by clear and perfect Truthfulness?
The true Sages and Witches, who stood on the verge of the world of people and the world of Spirits, possessed magical powers. But they did not keep any magical secrets, they only protected their innermost Rites and places of their performance from random, uninvited outsiders. Paganism is not a closed sect that rejects the "unenlightened". It belongs to all who are worthy to accept these Rites and learn the Main. But to admit vicious people here would mean to some extent to desecrate the very place of holding the sacred rites.
If the Universe has a meaning (which goes without saying), then there can be no two conflicting truths - ETHICAL AND AESTHETIC - as well as two mutually exclusive sacred principles of Being. There can be only one mysterious science. At the heart of the genius insights of this Vedic science is the understanding of the deepest sympathetic kinship and unity of all Living; a thought, the realization of which modern humanity is only approaching, for monotheistic confessions block the path of direct perception of this wonderful world of Living Nature.
Mother Nature can reveal her secrets only to those who passionately strive for knowledge in order to alleviate the suffering of other living beings, and not in order to achieve material benefits or satisfy their own vanity with scientific recognition.
Mystery is a means of communication of the human soul with the Earthly and Universal Spirits-Forces-Essences. BUT THIS SECRET CAN BE DISCOVERED ONLY IN YOUR HEART. Every virtuous person, through godly thought and action, can attain an intuitive understanding of sublime truths without being "ordained."
This can be achieved by developing religiosity as disinterested love and compassion, suppressing in oneself everything that is beneficial only to the lower personal "I". Before such Love, overflowing the heart, all the monastic ideals of a recluse who mortifies the flesh, seeking the egoistic "salvation" of his own worthless person, fade away.
The original Buddhism as a teaching did not have either an occult or an esoteric system of knowledge hidden from mere mortals. What are these "divine secrets" that must be hidden? Why spells? Why summon benevolent light shadows? - They themselves can make their presence felt when it is very necessary, without any ritual ceremony.
"Supernatural miracles" - mental and physical phenomena are created by means of forces acquired by the great purity of life and ecstasy. For a strong desire to do something good is only a strong will, which results in unconscious sorcery. An inspirational self-taught healer, driven only by mercy, acts on a lunatic instinct, explains nothing and - in an incomprehensible, miraculous way heals the suffering one.
In the un-Islamized East, there are no miracles in the European sense of the word. For the Pagan Asian, miracles are a mundane affair, like the spell of a snake among the dense bazaar crowd in India, where the feet of indifferent passers-by almost touch the heads of dancing cobras. Moreover, in some villages a snake festival is celebrated annually.
On this day, people bring cobras from the jungle: children and adults play with them, caress them, wrap them around their necks, give them milk and in every possible way please. In the evening they are carried back. And there is not a single case that on this day a cobra has bitten a person … There is no answer either. The Hindus do not even look for it: for them it is an everyday inexplicable phenomenon that occurs regularly, once a year.
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Likewise, our distant Ancestors perceived the World as an exciting unsolved Mystery. They knew not less, but much more than ours, only their knowledge was of a different order, for they were acquired in the name of Truth, and not in the name of benefit.
In many, very different places of the Earth, from time immemorial, mysterious monumental structures have been preserved, which are so large that they can be viewed entirely only from above, from the air. What unknown antediluvian races and peoples created these masterpieces? Even native legends have no idea about this.
Stonehenge is often called the "eighth wonder of the world." Not all of its secrets have been solved. Dr. Gerhard Wiebe of Boston University writes: “If you look at Stonehenge from the ground, you will not notice any order. It is impressive only when you see it in plan, from above. However, Neolithic man did not have airplanes to look at his creation from. Therefore, he, perhaps, communicated his skill to the Forces of Heaven, to his Deities."
Impeccably correct lines stretching for several kilometers, completely ideal, like a compass drawn by giant circles, ellipses and spirals, drawings and huge bizarre zoomorphic figures of the uninhabited Nazca plateau (Peru) - the creations of some unknown culture that flourished here for many centuries before the Incas …
It is impossible to examine them in full from the ground; only small fragments of figures and lines are visible, along which it is impossible to recreate the contours of the grandiose images. These, it is not clear how, inscribed images on the Earth's surface (geoglyphs, in contrast to petroglyphs - images on a stone), are perceived only from a great height and were first noticed during aerial photography in the 30s. XX century.
This riddle gave rise to exotic assumptions about the presence of aircraft among the builders and even to ascribe the creation of images of some kind of extraterrestrial high-tech civilization.
Especially a lot of sensational hypotheses about the Nazca desert were developed by the Swiss archaeologist and writer Erich Daniken, who considered it to be something like a prehistoric cosmodrome, and mysterious figures - evidence of paleocontact, visits to Earth by alien astronauts - creatures from other worlds.
It is not clear, however, why the "sons of Heaven" needed to amuse themselves, like children, with such arts? Couldn't they have come up with anything better? After all, one cannot really consider the drawings on the plateau as some kind of landing marks for interstellar ships.
The easiest way to write off everything striking that defies rational explanation, be it Nazca, Baalbek or Nan Madol, on space aliens. In general, Daniken's fashionable bestseller Back to the Stars resembles a modernized sectarian version of the Bible: the author believes that the ark of the covenant was a negotiating device; Moses used it to communicate with a spacecraft captained by an astronaut named Jehovah, etc. etc.
But let's not get off the ground. The man-made monument of Nazca was left by some disappeared people. There is no mention of him in the chronicles of the Spanish conquerors and missionary monks. The indigenous inhabitants of the neighboring valleys may have kept some ancient legends. But they, being sun worshipers, were completely exterminated by the Christ-loving conquistadors.
There is no doubt that for the builders, these phenomenal images and the colossal efforts spent on them had some higher cult meaning that we did not understand. Which one? One thing is clear: they all have an intimate sacred meaning. And if so, they are not meant for prying eyes. But how, where, where to hide such a grandiose terrestrial Luminary and protect it? Into the fourth dimension?
The solution was as simple as it was ingenious. It is best, most reliable, to leave the Luminary under the open sky, but translate it into two-dimensional, make the ritual images flat, and then no one will be able to fully survey them and understand their meaning and purpose. Separate lines going beyond the horizon will not say anything to the unlit; in this case, the secret will be kept and the temple complex protected from desecration.
To distinguish huge pictograms, to see how whole shapes are formed from lines, to capture with a single glance all this fantastically complex conglomerate of numerous images, you need to look at them from an airplane.
And then, according to the unanimous words of eyewitnesses, professional researchers and amateurs, a stunning picture opens up. The whole area seems to be some kind of cyclopean drawing, as if traced on the plain by someone's gigantic hand. One of the outlandish birds is depicted on such a huge scale that its beak stretches for two kilometers.
What information, what knowledge about the Universe is captured in geometric compositions? What is the intent here? How was he embodied in reality? How are these figures made? Titanic labor was spent on their creation, difficult even for powerful modern technology, but how did the ancient engineers and craftsmen cope with this with the help of stone axes?
How, without having any flying machines or precise geodetic instruments, were they nevertheless able to communicate ideal proportions to the images? And finally, the most exciting riddle: to whom, to what celestials, looking at the desert from above, were these human messages intended?
In this regard, I recall the story of an ethnographer about a meeting in the wilds of the Trans-Urals with a lonely old man-khant. It was in the 60s of the last century. The young scientist decided to surprise a backward taiga inhabitant with the message that satellites with people are already flying around the Earth. The old man listened calmly, and then answered (through an interpreter): “When you go further north, you will see a large round lake, from which a deep river flows. Our shamans used to climb so high into the sky themselves that the lake seemed to them the size of a patch …"
The Tibetans told Roerich about the unsuccessful attempts to “conquer” Chomolungma (Everest): “We don’t understand why the strangers take on such difficulties in climbing? Many of our lamas made a pilgrimage to the Sacred Summit, only they were there in a subtle body."
And the sachems (elders) on the Iroquois reservation were by no means amazed when the young men came running to inform them that the astronaut had landed on the moon. The elders said that their shamans flew to the moon for a long time …
The phenomenon of shamanic trance has been known since the Paleolithic era. This is one of the first human images in the famous Lascaux cave painting. Here, a man with a bird's head is sprawled on the ground with unnaturally outstretched legs. Apparently, this is a fainting shaman. After a breathtaking spinning dance, he fell dead on his back and, like a bird (or in the guise of a bird), hovered in space. The bird is a very common and stable symbol of shamanic flight among many small indigenous peoples of the North and Siberia.
Paleolithic art is so perfect that it has long been considered a modern forgery. Authorities in the field of art claim that these drawings never later had any equal in the world. The ritual purpose of primitive painting and sculpture is evidenced by the mystery and disguise of their location in the deep depths and darkness of caves, and the entrance to the cave was meant as the entrance to the womb of Mother Earth.
Here is what a world-renowned expert, French archaeologist Henri Lot writes: “If you remember the famous clay buffalo in the Ariege cave, which are 800 meters above the entrance and which can only be reached after climbing narrow vertical shafts, you will squeeze into even narrower passages and you will walk for a long time through dark galleries, it will become obvious: in order to diligently hide the sculptures in such an inaccessible place, serious reasons were needed.
The same picture can be observed in the neighboring cave of the Three Brothers, where the sorcerer who dominates the entire room with drawings can be reached only by touch - in such a hard-to-reach corner he is placed. One more example: the Bedeilak cave, where … two hundred meters from the entrance the passage narrows …, climbing the slope of a stone embankment, you find yourself in an uncomfortable chamber, at the very floor of which there is an entrance to a narrow hole; if you are brave enough to poke into it and climb 7-8 meters on viscous clay, then it will lead you to two bison, molded from this clay and depicted in the same way female genitals …
In the crevice of the same cave, an even smaller hole leads into a corridor where a person can barely pass. On the left wall is a magnificent bison. We should also mention the Ruffignac Cave, in which the murals are located almost a kilometer from the entrance, hidden in the most inaccessible nooks, and in ancient times they were even worse visible, because the means of lighting of those times - fat lamps and resin torches - gave a rather dim light.
Therefore, it can be assumed that some places - those where the images are clearly visible - were available to mere mortals, while others, secret, were known only to the initiates. Traces of children's feet …, for example, suggest that there were special sanctuaries for the initiation of young people, where rituals were performed that will remain forever unknown to us."
Among the ruins of the palace temples of the ancient Mayans, there are buildings in the form of stepped pyramids with truncated tops, but with such small entrances and rooms, as if they were built for the pygmies. The most famous is the so-called House of Dwarfs in Uxmal (Yucatan Peninsula). Describing this peculiar structure, archaeologists expressed a variety of assumptions.
Some believed that these places were once inhabited by tribes of dwarfs, others believed that the Maya erected these Luminaires for Spirits or some mythical creatures that they wanted to give shelter to.
In the temple of Uxmal, a narrow staircase leads directly to the ceiling and ends with a small platform: the necessary test of the student in some archaic Mysteries was that on such a platform he had to plunge into a somnambulistic trance by force of will, leave the body and go astral through the ceiling.
After that, he deserves to become a Serpent, that is, initiated into some esoteric knowledge. By the way, the Adyghe people call the Caucasian dolmens with a small round hole "sirp-un", i.e. Are dwarf houses, and refer to these prehistoric structures with a mixed sense of fear and reverence.
The Kuban Cossacks called these megaliths "heroic huts": after all, who, except giants, could drag such huge thousand-pound slabs into the mountains, and even hoist them on top of each other.
Dobroslav "Mysteries of Ancient History"