THE GOLDEN AGE

In the time of the Golden Age, the regenerated man knows no religion. He only gives thanks to the Creator, whose sun, his most sublime creation, seems to reflect the ardent, luminous, and benevolent image. He respects, hors and venerates God in this radiating globe which is the heart and brain of Nature and the dispenser of earthly goods. Visible representative of the Lord, the Sun is also the tangible evidence of his power, of his greatness, and of his goodness. In the midst of the radiating celestial body, under the pure sky of a rejuvenated earth, man admires the divine works, without outer manifestations, without rites, without veils. Contemplative, and ignorant of need, desire and suffering, he holds toward the master of the Universe this touching and deep gratitude that simple souls possess, and this boundless affection that binds the son to the Father. The Golden Age, a solar age par excellence, has for cyclic symbol the very image of the celestial body, the hieroglyph that has always been used by the old alchemists, in order to express the metallic gold or mineral sun. On the spiritual level, the Golden Age is personified by the evangelist St Luke. The Greek [*520-2] (Luchas), from [*520-3] (Luchnos), light, lamp, torch, lucis in Latin), brings us to consider the Gospel according to Luke, as the Gospel according to the Light. It is the Solar Gospel esoterically conveying the journey of the celestial body and that of its rays, back to their primary state of splendor. It marks the dawn of a new era, the exaltation of the radiating power over the regenerated earth and the return of the yearly and cyclical orb ([*521-1] --- Lucabas --- in Greek inscriptions, meaning year). St Luke has for the attribute the bull or winged ox, a spiritualized solar figure, the emblem of the vibratory and luminous movement, brought back to viable living conditions of animated beings.

This happy and blessed time of the golden age, during which Adam and Eve lived in a state of simplicity and ignorance, is designated under the name of Earthly Paradise. The Greek word [*520-2] (Paradeisos), paradise, seems to derive from the Persian or Chaldean root of Pardes, which means delicious garden. At least, it is in the sense that it is used by the Greek authors, in particular by Xenophoros and Diodorus of Sicily, to qualify the magnificent gardens that the Kings of Persia used to possess. The same meaning is applied by the Seventy in their translation of Genesis (Ch. II, v. 8), to the marvelous stay of our first parents. Men have wanted to find on which geographical part of the globe, God had placed this Eden with an enchanting setting. The hypotheses do not agree much with one another on this point; thus, some writers such as Philo the Jew and Origenus cut the discussion short by claiming that the earthly Paradise, as Moses describes it, never had any physical existence. According to them it is appropriate to understand in an allegorical sense everything ascribed to it in the Scriptures.

All the same, we consider accurate all the descriptions that have been made of the earthly Paradise, or, if you prefer, of the golden age; but we are not going to dwell on the various theses aimed at proving that the refuge, inhabited by our ancestors, was located in one well defined country. Of we deliberately don’t specify where it was located, it is only because, during each cyclic revolution, there is only one thin belt left, that is respected and which remains fit for habitation on its earthly soil.  However we emphasize it, the zone of salvation and mercifulness is located sometimes in the Northern Hemisphere, in the beginning of the cycle, sometimes in the Southern Hemisphere, at the beginning of the next cycle.

Let’s recapitulate. The earth, as everything that lives from it, in it an through it, has its foreseen and determined time, its evolutionary times rigorously fixed, established, separated by as may inactive periods. It is therefore condemned to die, in order to be born again and these temporary lives occurring between its regeneration, or birth, and mutation, or death, are called Cycles by most of the ancient philosophers. The cycle then is the time separating two convulsions of the earth of the same order, which are accomplished after a complete revolution of the Great Circular Period, divided into four epochs of equal duration, which are the four Ages of the World. These four divisions of the life of the earth succeed one another according to the rhythm which forms the solar year: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. Thus the cyclical ages correspond to the seasons of the annual seasonal movement, and they, as a whole, the names of Great Period, Great Year, and even more frequently, Solar Cycle.

END

(1) In Greek, Arara, or Arera, perfect tense of ararisko means to be attached, fixed, stopped, firm, immutable.

(2) Translator's note: Rainbow in French is arc-en-ciel, literally the Ark in the Heaven.

(3) Rene Basset: Apocryphes Ethioiens (Apocryphal Writings from Ethiopia), Paris, Bibliotheque de la Haute Science, 1899, Ch. 14, v. 1-6.

(4) Ezekiel, chap. 327-9, 15, The Lamentation for Pharoah.

(5) II Peter 3:3-7, 10, 13.

(6) Histoire Generale des Departmentes, Seine-et-Marne (Illustrated History of the French Departments, Seine-et-Marne), Auguste Gout et Cie., Orleans, 1911, p. 249.

(7) Translator's note: in French veille oie (old goose) and vielle loi (old law) have almost the same pronunciation.

(8) Translator's note: In French "Les contes de ma mere l'oie". My mother the goose and my mother the law, sound exactly the same.