Edouard Schure (1841-1929) was a French philosopher, poet, playwright, novelist, music critic, and publicist of esoteric literature. He is perhaps best known for his book The Great Initiates, A Sketch of the Secret History of Religions, which I will be quoting from. In this work he traces the hidden connecting threads tying the major religions and their prophets/founders together, from Rama to Krishna, to Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato and finally to Jesus who would unify them all in the last and everlasting religion, Christianity.

If the reader is triggered or has hangups by that last sentiment, it is because they are still associating Christianity with its degraded, popularized form, mainstream Churchianity, which watered down and misunderstood many of the great mysteries around the Christ and his teachings that are restored when one goes to its esoteric roots from authors like Schure and especially Rudolf Steiner, who I’ve written on and spoken about fairly extensively on this blog and on my Youtube channel.

So putting caveats aside, let us go to Schure’s section on Moses, the founder of Judaism, and father of monotheism in general, and take a closer look at the cosmic impulses that Moses was following which would, through Judaism, affect the evolution of humanity as a whole, and pave the way for Christ.

The Male Principle

Schure gives us this picture of Moses’ death in a cave at Mt. Nebo, with his closest disciple Joshua, at the end of a long difficult life trying to build a people centered around monotheism, at a time when polytheistic, nature-based cults were the norm. (Not that there was anything wrong with these cults, its just that they were from an impulse of the past and no longer suited for modern man if he was to develop further.)

Schure writes, “Yes, all great men well know the solitude created by their very greatness; but Moses was more isolated than the rest, because his principle was more absolute, more transcendental. His God was the male principle par excellence, pure Spirit. To inculcate this principle in mankind he was obliged to declare war on the feminine principle, on the goddess Nature, Heve, the eternal Woman, who enters the soul of Earth and the heart of Man. He was to combat it without truce or mercy, not to destroy, but to subject and tame it. What wonder that Nature and Woman, between whom reigns a mysterious pact, trembled before him! What wonder they rejoiced at his departure ; waiting, before they could raise their head once more, till the shadow of Moses had ceased to cast over them the presentiment of death!

Such were doubtless the thoughts of the Seer as he ascended Nebo’s barren sides. Men could not love him, for he had loved none but God. But would his work, at any rate, live ? Would his people remain faithful to their mission ? Alas! Fatal is the clairvoyance of the dying, tragic the prophetic gift, tearing away every veil when the final hour has come! In proportion as the spirit of Moses detached itself from earth, he saw the terrible reality of the future—the treasons of Israel, anarchy raising erect its head, royalty succeeding the Judges, the crimes of the Kings defiling the Temple of the Lord, his book mutilated and misunderstood, his thoughts travestied and disparaged by ignorant or hypocritical priests, _ the apostasies of kings, the adultery of Judah with idolatrous nations, the pure tradition and sacred doctrine defiled, and the prophets, guardians of the living word, persecuted and driven into the depths of the wilderness.

Seated in a cave cut into Mount Nebo, Moses saw all this within himself. The cold hand of Death was already laid at his heart, his dread wing was hovering above the Seer’s brow. Then once again the lion-hearted prophet roared out in anger against his people, summoning the vengeance of Elohim on the race of Judah. He raised his heavy arm. Joshua and the Levites present were struck with dismay as they heard these words leave the lips of the dying man: “The children of Israel have betrayed their God ; let them be scattered to the four winds of heaven !”

Joshua and the Levites looked in terror at their master, who no longer gave any sign of life. His last sentence had been a curse. Had he given up his last breath with it? No. Moses opened his eyes once again and said:

“And the Lord said unto me . . . I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.

“And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall not hearken unto my words, which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him” (Deuteronomy xviii. 17, 18, 19).

After these prophetic words Moses gave up the ghost. The solar Angel, with the flaming sword, who had first appeared to him on Sinai, was awaiting him. He carried him off into the all embracing arms of celestial Isis, into the waves of that light which is the Spouse of God. Far away from the regions of earth, they passed through circles of souls, of ever-increasing splendour and glory. Finally the Angel of the Lord showed him a spirit of wonderful beauty and celestial gentleness, but arrayed in so dazzling a light that his own radiance was nothing more than a shadow in comparison with it. He carried in his hand not the sword of punishment, but the palm of sacrifice and victory. Moses now saw that this glorious spirit would fulfill his work, and bring men back to the Father, by the might of the Eternal-Feminine, by Grace divine and perfect Love.

Then the Law-giver bowed down before the Redeemer, and Moses worshipped Jesus Christ.”

There is alot to unpack here, but most important to note is the how, in his dying throes, Moses had a vision of the Christ Spirit, who would take up and complete the work he started, only this time not through the male principle of severity but through the female principles of grace, mercy, forgiveness and love.

This answers the question that even a dabbler in religions will raise when comparing the Old and New Testaments – why such a different flavor between the two? The Old Testament God is so harsh and unforgiving, while the New Testament Father God, through his Son, brings the olive branch of peace. And how interesting then, that even though Christ is depicted as a male deity, and incarnates into a male body, nevertheless embodies the Eternal Feminine impulse, now resurrected from its pagan roots and updated with the sword of monotheism that was the mission of Moses through his god Yahweh Jehovah.

From Steiner we learn that Jehovah was one of the seven Elohim, divine Spirits of Form in the upper hierarchies. At a special point in time, in the ancient Hyperborean past, the Moon separated from the Earth, taking with it all those beings and forces that were too slow to develop with the pace of Earth. The Sun had already separated, taking with it the more highly developed angelic beings that needed a faster pace than Earth could provide. Of the seven Elohim, six went with the sun, while one, Jehovah, chose to stay with the moon, to become regent of the Moon, so that He could carry out His specific mission with the eventual people of Israel. The other six solar Elohim would essentially form the body of Christ on that particular level of being. From my understanding Christ is a being even higher than the Elohim in the hierarchies. He comes straight from the Ineffable Trinity at the very top, beyond human understanding, but manifests Himself in the hierarchies as the six solar Elohim, and through his messenger archangel Michael, his “day spirit,” and on the human level, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth for those three years from 30 to 33 years old. When Jesus bled out and died on the cross, the Christ went from being a solar Being to become wedded to the Earth, becoming the soul of the Earth until the end of this great cosmic Cycle or Kalpa.

Why was mention of the Eternal Feminine so absent from the Old Testament? Schure writes,

“I intend to offer in (my chapter on) Pythagoras a living picture of esoteric theogony and cosmogony in a form less abstract than that of Moses and more in harmony with modern mentality. Notwithstanding the polytheistic form and the extreme diversity of the symbols, the meaning of this Pythagorean cosmogony, according to Orphic initiation and the sanctuaries of Apollo, is, at bottom, identical with that of the prophet of Israel. In Pythagoras it is illumined, so to speak, by its natural complement: the doctrine of the soul and of its evolution. In the Greek sanctuaries it was taught under the symbols of the myth of Persephone, It was called the terrestrial and celestial story of Psyche. This story, corresponding to what Christianity calls the Redemption, is altogether absent from the Old Testament. Not that Moses and the prophets were ignorant of it, but they regarded it as being too lofty a doctrine to be taught to the masses, so it was reserved for the oral tradition of the initiates. The divine Psyche is to remain so long concealed beneath the Hermetic symbols of Israel, only to be personified in the ethereal and luminous coming of the Christ.

The cosmogony of Moses possesses the stern conciseness of the Semitic and the mathematical precision of the Egyptian genius. The style of the narrative calls to mind the figures found inside the tombs of the kings; in their dry, severe stiffness and rigid bareness they contain an impenetrable mystery.”

Now, important to note that Moses was not the first Hebrew, a diverse people stemming back to Abraham, who preceded Moses. Schure provides the context for when Moses, an Egyptian initiate, would take up his mission to organize and round up the diverse Semites and Hebrew people’s under one religion, which he would rule with an iron fist.

Schure writes, “Moses, an Egyptian initiate and priest of Osiris, was beyond all doubt the organiser of monotheism. Through him this principle, hitherto concealed beneath the triple veil of the mysteries, issued from the recesses of the temple and entered into the domain of history. Moses was bold enough to turn the loftiest principle of initiation into the sole dogma of a national religion, and yet so prudent that he revealed its consequences to none but a small number of initiates, imposing it on the masses by fear. In this the prophet of Sinai had evidently far-sighted views which looked beyond the destinies of his own people. The universal religion of mankind was the true mission of Israel, a mission few Jews, except their greatest Prophets, have understood. The accomplishment of this mission took for granted the absorption of the nation representing it. The Jewish people is scattered and destroyed, but the idea of Moses and of the Prophets has survived and grown. Developed and transfigured by Christianity, adopted by Islam, though on a lower mode, it had to impose itself on the barbarous West and react on Asia itself. Henceforth, however humanity may revolt and be harassed by internal strife, it will revolve round this central idea, like the nebula round the sun which organises it. Such was the formidable task assumed by Moses.

For this undertaking, the most colossal one there had ever been since the prehistoric exodus of the Aryans, Moses found an instrument ready at hand in the tribes of the Hebrews, especially in those which were settled in Egypt in the valley of Goshen, living there in slavery under the name of Beni-Jacob. For the establishment of a monotheistic religion he had also had forerunners in those peaceful nomadic kings mentioned in the Bible: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Let us glance for a moment at these Hebrews and patriarchs. Afterwards we will give an outline of their great Prophet, with the desert mirages and the gloomy nights of Sinai as a background; the thunder of the legendary Jehovah making itself heard on every side.

These Ibrim, indefatigable nomads and eternal exiles, had been known for centuries, for thousands of years.‘ Brothers of the Arabs, the Hebrews, like all Semites, were the offspring of an ancient mixture of the white and black races. They had been seen passing to and fro in the north of Africa under the name of Bodones (Bedouins); without either shelter or bed, they would pitch their movable tents in the mighty deserts between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Euphrates and Palestine. These travellers, whether Ammonites, Elamites, or Edomites, all resembled one another. The ass or camel served them as vehicles, their tent as a house, whilst their sole property consisted of cattle wandering to and fro like themselves, ever browsing on the land of others, Like their ancestors, the Ghiborim, like the early Celts, these untamed tribes hated carved stones, fortified towns, stone temples, and drudgery. All the same, the monster cities of Babylon and Nineveh, with their gigantic palaces, their debauchery and mystery, exercised an invincible fascination over the semi-savages. Beguiled into these stone prisons, captured by the soldiers of the kings of Assyria and enlisted into their armies, they would at times plunge into all the orgies of Babylon. Then again the Israelites allowed themselves to be led astray by the women of Moab, who boldly seduced them with their ebony skins and flashing eyes. They led them away to worship idols of stone and wood, and even to offer sacrifice to cruel Moloch. Then suddenly they would make their escape, the desire for the wilderness again upon them.

On returning to the bleak lowlands, where nothing is to be heard but the roaring of wild beasts, to the wide-stretching desert sands, where the stars were their only guides, cowering before the cold light of those heavenly bodies which their ancestors had worshipped, feelings of shame came upon them. If a patriarch, an inspired Prophet, then spoke to them of the One God, of Elohim, of Sabaoth, the God of Hosts who sees everything and punishes the guilty, these grown-up children, wild and bloodthirsty, bowed their heads, knelt down in prayer, and allowed themselves to be led away like sheep.

By degrees this idea of the great Elohim, the one, all-powerful god, filled their soul…”

So we see how by the time Moses appeared on the scene, the time was ripe for a new religion, the old polytheistic or pagan cults, while initially stemming from divine sources, had become degraded into orgiastic, sensual idol-worship. This is the unbalanced feminine. Demon gods like Moloch and Astaroth had replaced many of the benefic gods, as could be seen in Babylon.

One of the commandments Moses brought was to never make graven images of God. The stark, cold and colorless male principle (pure Spirit) brings all the symbols and images inward, abstracted (see the numbers of letters of Kabbalah), while the nature-based feminine cults concretize or birth Spirit into matter through form: a colorful panorama of gods, statues, myths and images.

These early nature Goddess customs were taught to humanity by our angelic teachers in times when we were still clairvoyant, could still see higher beings walking amongst us. But this represents the child-like stage of humanity. To become adults we had to lose the clairvoyance, the angels had to withdraw from our sight, and we had to take all the customs and rituals inward, and merge them under the One God. The allegory had to give way to pure concept. Instinctive feeling had to give way to thinking. The nomadic Hebrews were the first to do this. They couldn’t take statues and religious paraphernalia with them across the desert, so they were ripe for this new impulse. Moses was just the first to unite the various tribes under one banner and organize them.

Once organized, the Israelites were to develop a bloodline devoid of the old clairvoyance for forty two generations, trained in the rigid rules of the male Jehovah cult, as charted in the Book of Matthew, in order to perfect a body or vehicle for the Christ to enter the human stream in the body of Jesus, descendant of Abraham. Jesus had to be of this line that was free of any of the old clairvoyance. Only then could the male and female principles be balanced and united under a single banner and given as the final religious impulse to all of humanity as the message and way of redemption.

Further Reading:

https://archive.org/details/greatinitiatessk0001schu/page/222/mode/2up

Last thoughts:

From my understanding of Schure, Moses knew well that the Jehovah God being he was in direct communion with was not the One God Almighty, but one of many Gods. In fact the One God Almighty only speaks through an array of intermediate beings, angelic and otherwise. Moses as trained in the Egyptian mystery schools would have known this. It was just that this Jehovah being was tasked to instruct Moses on how to lead the Jewish people in the way above described. This distinction always bothered me until at last it starts making sense!