Frontispiece from volume 1 (of 6) of Sylvain Marechal’s ‘ Voyages de Pythagore’

Paris, 1798, Engraving by Dambrun, from our Via-HYGEIA library.

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With this other sharing for the day from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA, we inaugurate a little cycle devoted to Pythagoras and the Pythagorean School ! Here we present you, in honor of the many luminaries of the golden chain of love, wisdom and beauty that originated from Egypt, Greece and Alexandria and who embodied what we know as the HERMETIC SCHOOL and that have sparkled divine light on earth, the ANCIENT HERMETIC CREED taken from the Belgian Neo-Pythagoreans of the roaring twenties, re-actualized in modern terms (shown below); a document, part of the Leon Lelarge Archive.

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‘I believe in you, Father of all the worlds and beings, unfathomable and unknowable God, Principle and end of all things, Master of Life and Death, permanent creator of all forms. Your realm has given life to matter and all that come to life from her.

I believe you are the Sovereign Master of my Double (spirit, soul), and that you have inserted it in matter’s prison so to give to it capacity to suffer and progress towards you. I believe that you are surrounded by legions of Mediators who assists us in the difficult time and chase afar the lower powers and their maleficent mirage. I believe that YOU ARE WARMTH and LIGTH and the benevolent sun is the image of your rays. I believe that by prayer, my double elevates itself towards you and by deep meditation, I listen to you speaking within me. I believe my double to journey back to the Island of the Blessed after you will have it weighted by the sacred psychostasy and you will have found it PURE. I believe that my thought has wings and I am as much responsible of it than of my material deeds; I believe it to be stretched afar, and that it can because of that do good as well as evil, so I believe I must orientate it towards you so that it can elevates itself, pure, towards the sky. I believe my deeds to follow me and that I will harvest the fruits that I would have sown. I believe that you have let me free to follow your path or to escape from it, but I am not free of being accountable towards you of my chosen path.

I believe that by your Rites and the blessed power of the Fire, I can reach you without detour and that by the incense I can honor and sanctify you. I believe that your Word was inscribed in our doubles and that the respect of natural laws allows us to hear it. I believe your spoken word illuminates my mind when it is upright and without all dirt from earth. I believe that by your sacred Name I can repel the tempting snake and dissipate the most obscure shadows. I believe that by bearing on my heart your written name on incorruptible metal I hold on my heart my shield. I believe that by prayer and by the rite I can rejoin your psycho-pomp mediator and assist the lost doubles in the night of the primal trial, that casted out of the dross of the body, have not suffered the second death that bring them to your threshold of light.

I believe that by the dreams you often point us the direction by the mysterious language of the symbol. I believe that your protection keeps us from danger if our faith in your strength may have reached your Right. I believe that you are Light, Warmth and Life and that your Presence within us devours us with a mystical fire and dip us in ravishment and ecstasy.

O Strength, strengthened by all strengths, Supreme Intelligence, shining of all its lights, I give into thy hands my double and that your Will be done !

Be blessed for your goods, blessed for the salutary trials that you have sent us, blessed in the centuries of centuries !

By the Rite, the Prayer and deep Meditation, i unite with you, in the egregore of the Just, forever !’

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Picture of the original typescript in French

from Via-HYGEIA’s archives

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