This excerpt is from "The Secret In The Bible" by Tony Bushby

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The House of the Panthers

 

In ancient Egyptian records filed in the Alexandrian Library, brief mention is

made of a god named Leo who resided on the Pyramid Plateau with fifteen

associates. That grouping was called ‘Leo-prds’ and the short reference to

their existence provided the origin of the use of the word Leo as the symbol

of a lion. In those times, ‘Leo’ did not originally describe an animal and it is

probable that the ‘leopard’ of the cat family was named from that group of

gods. That animal was originally called ‘Panthera Leo-pardus’ (Panther Leopardus,Leo-pard, Leo-prds) and the name later evolved to ‘panther leopard’.

Subsequently, the word Panther became a group name or general term for

all members of the cat family, large and small, and distinction of the various

types was only given in later times.

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Similarly, in early history the big tawny yellow-coated cat known today as a lion was called ‘Panthera Leo’ or ‘Leo Panther’ (Leo the Panther). When ‘leo’ was pluralized it became ‘leon’, and after the Moors attached that name to it around 450, ‘panther’ subsequently became ‘lion’ in English. When the titles ‘lion’ or ‘leopard’ are found used in writings pre-dating the Fourth Century, they could be correctly replaced with their original appellation, ‘Panther’.

 

In mythology, the first monster that Hercules exterminated was the Nemean Panther, and from its skin he made a long coat that when worn rendered him indestructible. Hercules’ costume became the trademark of the descendants of the Leo-prds who were later called ‘Panthers’ and they carried forward the special knowledge of their forefathers. The Panthers developed a confidential teaching system around the Osiris rites and their name became synonymous with ‘secret information’. It was that group who were directly responsible for the advent of all later Mystery Schools and, even today, a family group of people on Earth still carries the Panther knowledge. In early ritual performances, high initiates wore ceremonial costumes fashioned from Panther skins and embossed with five-pointed stars, striking garments that symbolically represented the special wisdom that they possessed.

 

Later Egyptian priests wore skin of lions, tigers, panthers, pumas and leopards in their ritualistic re-enactment of earlier Panther procedures and the type of fur represented particular levels of initiation. The skin was generally thrown over the left shoulder and swayed with the movement of the body; sometimes it was carefully adjusted over one shoulder and under the other to bring the curve of the chest into prominence. The head of the animal, skillfully prepared and enlivened by large eyes of enamel, rested on the shoulder or fell just below the waist of the wearer; the paws, with the claws attached, hung down over the thighs and to complete their adornment, a blue or black wig was worn.

Statue of priest Aa-nen wearing the Panther regalia (XVIII Dynasty; Turin Museum)

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The feline skins were obligatory to be worn for certain orders of priests,or for dignitaries, performing priestly functions of a prescribed nature. The sacerdotal costume was a survival of the ancient attire of the head of the family and those who inherited or had obtained the right of wearing the Panther skin on certain occasions bore, under the ancient empire, the title of Oîrû-basit,’ Chiefs of the Fur’. Wild beast’s skins later became the insignia of authority with which priests and princes adorned themselves on great days and at religious ceremonies.

 

Leo the Lion became king of the animal family and in allegories

perpetuated by the Mysteries, Leo opened ‘The Secret Book’. The Leo-prds

originally developed the Secret concealed in that book and it was eventually

encoded into the Bible by a later Initiate of their line who thus preserved

the Order’s ancient sacred knowledge. In later times, those who achieved

initiation into the highest Panther Mysteries were awarded the appellation

‘Panther’, and that title was included into their family and given names.

In that regard, Julius Caesar, Emperors Augustus and Tiberius, Rabbi Jesus,

Joseph of Arimathea, and Agrippa, who built the Roman Pantheon to the

gods, were all recorded in history as carrying the Panther (Panthera in Latin)

designation, and that directly identified them as initiated bearers of special

knowledge. They were ‘versed in all the Wisdom of the Gods and their

understanding of the Bible revealed that for centuries it was read by the

uninitiated in a sense contrary to its intent.

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(My note: Panthera in Latin is pronounced like the band PANTERA)

 

Initiation processes

 

The principles of secrecy and silence are the reasons why the Panther

Secret remained concealed for so long. Those virtues constitute the core of

all Mystery Schools and were the safeguard of the Institution, ensuring its

security and perpetuity. That principle existed in all ancient Mysteries and in

some systems of religion. Secret ceremonies were practiced and the knowledge

revealed to candidates was held in strict confidence. Lucius Apuleius (Second

Century), an initiate into the Mysteries of Isis, confirmed the rule: ‘By no

peril will I ever be compelled to disclose to the uninitiated the things that I

have had entrusted to me on condition of silence’. That secret worship was

THE SECRET IN THE BIBLE, termed the Mysteries to which none were admitted but those selected by preparatory ceremonies called Initiation, a programmed alteration of individual consciousness. The term ‘initiation’ was first used by Romans to designate admission into their secret and sacred rites and was derived from the word initia, which signified the first principle of a science. The person presiding at the ceremony was called the Mystagogue and revealed and explained sacred matters to the candidate. He was also called the hierophant, the word signifying literally the ‘one who makes or conducts an initiate’.

 

The ceremonies of initiation were time-consuming, and candidates

to whom the Secret was eventually revealed undertook long periods of

instruction. A planned period of specific teaching was in place for aspirants

and they were entranced for periods of varying length…the more advanced

the degree for which they had entered the longer and deeper was their

entrancement. During that time, various elements of achieving the overall

knowledge were gradually released, and every year only a comparatively few

were fully initiated into the Mysteries, consequently the number of persons

who knew the School’s deepest secrets was never at any time large.

Initiation was not obtained by filling out an application form. The

full process took many years of the candidate’s life and was won by merit,

perseverance, discipline, integrity, honour, worthiness and increasing spiritual

perception. The Mystery Schools would not initiate a slave or a person

convicted of any felony, nor would they accept anyone who was not of sound

body and mind. Particularly in later Egyptian Mysteries, circumcision of the

candidate was required before admission and he was then given a code-name,

a tradition still carried on today in Freemasonry. Initiation was designed

for the aspirer to face and undergo a series of ordeals and trials preliminary

to admission into higher levels of secret knowledge and the transition to

greater enlightenment required dedication and study. Approach to the great

mystery was heavily guarded and total ostracism pronounced upon initiates

who deliberately divulged secrets entrusted to them. Offenders were often

killed, because keepers of the Secret held the power of life and death of those

in their custody.

 

The writings of First Century historian, Pliny (Caius Plinius Secundus),

graphically described the story of a person called Anaxarchus, an initiate into the Mysteries, who was imprisoned in order to brutally extort from him secrets with which he had been entrusted. So serious did he take the confidentiality of the Secret, he bit out his own tongue and threw it in theface of Nicocreon, the tyrant of Cyprus. Likewise, the Athenians revered a brazen statue that was represented without a tongue to denote the sanctity with which they regarded their oath-bound secrets. In the Eleusinian and the Bacchi Mysteries, initiates dared not reveal the inner Secret and between the Chaldean and Asian Magi, the same rule applied.

 

It is doubtful that the Gnostics, Neo-Platonists and medieval philosophers required such an extreme penalty but they, even so in the present Masonic Order, issued the strictest of warnings to the candidate never to reveal the entrusted Secret. Even today in Masonry, the ‘Lost Word’, or the ‘Master’s Word’, is communicated to the candidate near the ear and in ‘a low breath’, him again being cautioned to its secrecy. He swears under dire penalties not to divulge the secrets of the Order, although Masons today no longer possess the awesome power of the Ancients.

 

The secrets that successful candidates learned in the Mystery Schools depended upon the degree through they passed, but their experiences could roughly be condensed into two results and they formed the core of the revelations they received. Later initiates termed those differing understandings, the Evening walk (to public audiences) and the Morning walk (to select disciples). In the words of Pythagoras, when turning away unsuitable applicants from his own academy at Croton, ‘not every kind of wood is suitable for the making of Mercury’. In the earlier degrees, called the Lesser Mysteries, the candidates became acquainted with the human soul, pictured as a little birdman in the system of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Lesser Mysteries candidates who achieved full initiation in their division did not learn the ‘Secret’. In advanced degrees, they became acquainted with the divine soul, and the supernormal character of the instruction leading to that result, they called the Greater Mysteries. The Greater Mysteries allowed candidates to experience the ‘Secret’ only on one occasion and the instruction involved an external, physical, almost brutal way to the ‘end revealing’. That was a daunting and life-threatening experience for them but the Secret inthe Bible, however, allows access to the intrinsic element of the Greater Mysteries in an almost angelic way, and only the highest initiates used the hidden instruction.

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It all started in Egypt.  The very basis of the Panther’s mysterious knowledge was the cause of the Mystery Schools coming into being and looking deeply into the substance ofthe Greater Mysteries discloses the core of the Secret in a usable earthly form.

 

That may sound complex but it shall become clear in the following chapters. Ancient writings revealed that the Panther knowledge was introduced into Egypt in the earliest days of mankind, a point gleaned from Plato’s ‘Timaeus’in which Solon (640-558 BC) was told by Egyptian priests of a chronologydating back 9000 years before his time. That presupposed the existence ofhistorical archives in Egypt covering vast periods and Herodotus claimed that priests with whom he was acquainted were indeed in possession of prehistoric records. Herodotus’s writings lead his readers to understand that all Secret Schools of the ancient world were branches from the original

Panther teachings and were channels of other countries through which one basic philosophic principle was disseminated. Herodotus asserted that the Mysteries known to Greek priests were originally derived directly from

Egyptian temples. Prominent and learned Greeks, and later some Romans, traveled to Egypt to seek for themselves the Ancient Wisdom of Temple priests. Before the development of their respective Schools, both Pythagoras and Plato admitted to having sat at the feet of Egyptian priests in their search for secret knowledge.

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A work entitled Crata Repoa, or ‘Initiations of the Egyptian Priests’, was published at Berlin in 1770. It was produced from writings of great antiquity and professed to reveal the whole formula of initiation used by early Egyptian priests in the subterranean chambers and crypts of ancient temples. Accordingto Crata Repoa, the mystery teachings were divided into seven degrees, the first devoted to instructions in the physical sciences and the second to geometry and architecture. In the third degree, the candidate was instructed in the symbolical death of Osiris, and was acquainted with the hieroglyphic language. In the fourth, he was presented with the book of the laws of Egypt, and became a judge. The instructions of the fifth degree were dedicated to chemistry, and the sixth to astronomy and mathematical sciences. In the seventh and last degree, the candidate received a detailed explanation of all mysteries, his head was shaved, and he was presented with an ankh-cross, which he was to carry constantly, a white mantle, and a square headdress. To each degree was attached a secret word and a sign."

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Incredible, the singer of Pantera, synchronistically, had a shaved head? Which was a unique look, when everyone else went for long hair. 

 

THE LOST HIST ORY OF THE PYRAMIDS

There is significance in the fact that the jackal-headed god Anubis is constantly referred to by ancient Egyptian priests as ‘he who is guide over Half the World’ (evening), words of vital significance in this study.

 

In the Tutankhamun tomb-discovery, the entrance was patiently watched over by a startling lifelike effigy of Anubis and it is not difficult to imagine the same black dog head, gilded collar, pointed ears erect, white eyes glaring, crouched,with its forepaws out-stretched, sitting in front of the Black Pyramid, ‘waiting for his disc to appear in the night sky’ (The Moon).The Greeks called the cult city of Anubis, Sinopolis (later Cynopolis) and this author contends that that complex still exists under the sand southwest of the location of the Black Pyramid.

 

The clue to its nature was in the phonetics of the word ‘sea’ and that simply derived from ‘C’ because of the object’s shape. Thus, the Bible described the holy ‘C’ (Holy Sea; Holy See) as a religious item with hornsand made of brass. It was a ‘great treasure’ that was held in high respect and worshipped as a god in the Temple of Jerusalem.

 

From descriptions given, it was probable that Ezra and his group removed the depiction of Sin from the summit of the Black Pyramid before parting from Babylon at the end of the Exile. In ancient pictographs, Sin was represented in human form accompanied with a thin crescent with ‘…his horns breaking through to shine on the heaven…and on the seventh day, to a circle he begins to swell’. They carried it to the Temple at Jerusalem, painted it red (the Red C), and reassembled it vertically on the altar amid great public fanfare. In later times, it was walked through in pious ceremonies and was subsequently destroyed in the year 68. The interpretation of the Holy C shown here was styled from the personal crest of Alexander the Great (c. 356-322 BC) who was called ‘Ichthys’ after his deification. He was a dedicated worshipper of Sin, and the Ichthys logo was long associated with the worship of Amun (the Moon). It was later used in Christian symbolismand revealed the importance of Moon worship in New Testament narratives, graphically illustrated when ‘sin’ is changed to read ‘Sin’.

 

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Consider that the word “pantheon” refers to gods

 

The Pyramid Builders

 

The Book of the Dead recorded that the god Thoth was designer and builder of the Great Pyramid and those words were carved into stone at the very dawn of civilization on planet Earth. Elements of that same story were alsofound in the Pyramid Texts that dated to around 2450 BC and presented in a context that suggested that they were exceedingly old even then. Orthodox Egyptologists, however, constantly insist the builder of the Great Pyramid was Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops in Greek) and that he built it as a tomb specifically for himself. This they state as a fact. It is curious, however, that among all documents that offer evidence to the life and times of Khufu (Cheops), nothing is presented that conclusively links him with the construction of the Great Pyramid. In fact, the opposite applies. A stele in the form of a huge stone scarab symbolizing the god Khepra was found during excavations near the Great Pyramid in June 1954. The inscription carved upon its back stated that Cheops was buried near the south face ofthe Great Pyramid. 

 

Roman inscription at Giza said the Sphinx was ‘the work of the Immortal Gods’, being an intrinsic part of ‘a Message sent from Heaven by the Masters of Wisdom’ and that directly connected Leo to the structure. Leo

was also chosen as the emblem for an Egyptian city called Leo-polis and the word ‘Leonine’ was attached to anything pertaining to, or resembling, Leo. Because the original God Leo represented Mystery and divine leadership, thirteen popes subsequently called themselves ‘Leo'.