Importance of the Evil Principle

All antiquity solved the enigma of the existence of Evil, by supposing the existence of a Principle of Evil, of Demons, fallen Angels, an Ahriman, a Typhon, a Siva, a Loki, or a Satan, that, first falling themselves, and plunged in misery and darkness tempted man to his fall, and brought sin into the world. All believed in a future life, to be attained by purification and trials; in a state or successive states of reward and punishment; and in a Mediator or Redeemer, by whom the Evil Principle was to be overcome, and the Supreme Deity reconciled to his creatures. The belief was general, that He was to be born of a Virgin, and suffer a painful death.

Brahmans exterminated the Buddhists...But their blood fertilized the new doctrine, which produced a new society under the name of Gymnosophists; and a large number, fleeing to Ireland, planted their doctrine there, and there erected the round towers, some of which still stand solid and unshaken as at first, visible monuments of the remotest ages.

Man had fallen, but not by the tempting of the the serpent. For, with the Phoenicians, the serpent was deemed to partake of the divine nature...He was deemed to be immortal, unless slain by violence, becoming young again in his old age, by entering into and consuming himself. Hence the serpent in a circle, holding his tail in his mouth, was an emblem of eternity...

But he may rise again, by following the teachings of Heavenly Wisdom, and the Angels whom God commissions to aid him in escaping from the entanglement of the body; and by fighting bravely against Evil, the existence of which God has allowed solely to furnish him with the means of exercising his free will(281).

The degree of Rose teaches three things; - the unity, immutability, and goodness of God; the immortality of the Soul, and the ultimate defeat and extinction of evil and wrong and sorrow, by a Redeemer or Messiah, yet to come, if he has not already appeared.

The "X" was the sign of the Creative Wisdom or Logos, the Son of God.

Plato says, "He expresses him upon the Universe in the figure of the letter X. The next Power to the Supreme God was decussated or figured in the shape of this Cross on the Universe.

-Albert Pike, from Morals and Dogma (Knight of the Rose Croix)