Vol 5 Page 279

FOOTNOTE TO “OF THE SERPENT PYTHON AND THE PYTHONESSES THROUGHOUT THE AGES”

By DR. FORTIN, Pres: S.S.O.F.

[The Theosophist, Vol. IV, No. 12(48), September, 1883, p. 311.]

[The following footnote is appended by H.P.B. to the name and title of the author:]

President of the Theosophical Society of Paris, called “Société Scientifique des Occultistes de France.”
Dr. Fortin is a follower of Hermes, the custodian of the revealed science in Egypt. But Hermetic Philosophy, or rather so much as can be found now of it in traditions, differs in no wise from the Arhat-Tibetan or Aryan secret

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doctrines, except in its externals, names and later religio-theological additions and interpolations necessitated by the incessant persecution of the clergy. Thus Neith-Isis has gradually merged into the “Sophia” of the early gnostics, and “Sophia” was metamorphosed into the celestial virgin (the Virgin Mary of the Roman Catholics) of the persecuted Alchemists. If the reader turns to Esoteric Buddhism, Mr. Sinnett’s new book, he will find therein what is meant by “revealed” science at the beginning of every new Round on the Planet. The trinity of the Protestants and the trinity of the Roman Catholics, is as closely related to the Pythagorean “triad” and Tetraktis as the latter is to the Aryan-Arhat-Esoteric septenary system of evolution.