This is the latest in my series of republications of the writings of the important 20th century Irish esotericist Colonel Charles Seymour.

October 1937

When Moses the Egyptian initiate on the barren, sun-smitten wastes of Horeb, the Holy Mountain of God, asked the Spirit of the Burning Bush for his name, he got the curious reply that is the title of this article. If the Hebrew text is examined it will be found that it is ‘Yod, He, Vau, He’ – that is, God as the Creator of All – whom Moses supposed the speaker to have been. That it is no mere angel but the great Creator God who speaks is evident from the terms that are used in the Hebrew text.

The title has been variously translated as:

1. I am that I am.

2. I am because I am.

3. I am who I am.

4. I will be that I will be.

Dr Peake has pointed out in his commentary that the modern English rendering which most clearly conveys this abstract metaphysical idea is, ‘I will be what I will be.’ Another great scholar, Dr Cheyne, in his Encyclopaedia Biblica (p. 3322) says bluntly that this explanation is ‘simply the product of a religious-philosophical speculation and far too abstract to be by any possibility correct’.

Speaking generally it may be said that most commentators admit that we have no idea what this term meant to the people who first wrote it. It seems to be a play on the verb hayah, to be.

As Dr Cheyne and the other commentators may have had no great practical knowledge of the Ancient Mysteries in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Basin some three to four thousand years ago, let us look at the phrase from the point of view of Mystery teaching and ritual practices.

One of the first concessions that modern scholasticism ought to make is to acknowledge that as practical metaphysicians the ancient mystics and initiates were equal to and possibly better than the scholars of today. No modern biblical scholar would care to put himself on a par with the great prophets and writers of the bible, or of the Hermes Trismegistic literature.

Let us consider what may possibly be the explanation of Jehovah, of Elohim, of the god of nature who speaks to man in the flesh via a burning bush.

The records of modern spiritualism, of witchcraft (consider the case of Joan of Arc), and of twentieth-century psychology have made us familiar with phenomena of this nature. It excites little surprise either in the devout or the sceptic of today. In the past, the devout tended to canonize the person who spoke thus with the Deity. In the present, the doctor is inclined to treat him as a candidate for an asylum. Yet many mediums believe (or say they believe) that God speaks through them. The professional priesthoods, of course, explain this as the work of the devil, while the psychologist hints at some pathology, which after all is no more difficult to understand than the presence of his ‘Horned Majesty’.

In any case neither priest nor psychologist ever dreams of following the advice of St John – ‘Prove the Spirits’. To them it is immaterial whether the saying be true or the advice be good. The Devil appearing as an Angel of Light to deceive the unwary is a useful theological weapon as Jesus found when fighting the orthodoxy of his time.

To the Ancient Mysteries, the first objective at which the initiate aimed was the awakening of the god within. Today we call this the higher self or the Holy Guardian Angel; in the past it was named as the Osiris, or Isis within. This process of awakening is as well known now as then. It is called Henosis or Identification and has been described at length by Dr Angus in his book The Mystery Religions and Christianity. In one form or another Henosis is the central idea of yoga, both Eastern and Western. It is also the basis of ‘New Thought’, as taught by Emerson and the other great American leaders who had the inner vision. These men were teachers who were truly in touch with the Great Mother who rules in the empty(!) spaces of the woods, mountains, prairies and deserts of the New World.

Henosis was brought about through knowing the self, that is, through analysing that the self is an integral divine unit, a divine henad, or god (see Proclus, Props. 113-65). True realization resulted in the conscious uniting of the divine human henad with the substance of the god (or henad) invoked by means of the secret knowledge of the Mysteries. This henosis gave the worshipper the power of, and the protection of, the deity invoked.

We can turn this teaching into more modern form by saying: initiation confers the realization of a greater self subjective to and behind the ordinary everyday self of a man. At a later stage it also confers the realization of a still greater self in nature which is objective to and infinitely vaster than either the lower or the higher self.

Now the unity of the higher and lower self in man is the Baptism of Water, but the unity of the whole man with the greater self behind nature is the Baptism of Fire. They are, respectively, the initiations of the moon-goddess and the sun-god.

Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he had taken his initiation by water in the Temple of Egypt. He took his initiation by fire when alone on the sun-scorched rocks of Mount Horeb. There is nothing unique about Moses’ experience except its final result – the escape of the Children of Israel from Egypt.

There is a Mithraic ritual in G. R. S. Mead, Echoes of the Gnosis, Vol. 6, which gives a secret and solemn rite for one person only. This is not a ritual for the initiation of a neophyte of the lower grades, but for one who is to initiate himself in the solitary Mystery of apotheosis. It is a fire rite: it is the invocation of the First Fire in nature and the First Fire in the initiate. It is the worship of the Holy Fire, and beholding the Deathless Eyes, by virtue of the Deathless Spirit, the Deathless Aeon, the Master of the Diadems of Fire. [This is a reference to the Mithras Liturgy in the PGM.]

In the language of the bible, Horeb is ‘the bright mountain’, the mountain of the sun, the mountain of fire, for the word ‘Horeb’ means literally ‘glowing heat’. Sinai is the mountain of Sin the moon-goddess. In the cosmological theory of the time, these two were the Light and Dark Pillars of Manifestation, the cosmic sun and moon powers, the Yin and Yang.

The result of this supreme initiation on the Mountain of Glowing Heat is a tremendous influx of spiritual power, for fire is the symbol of spirit. And it is well to remember that such an initiation is, from the material point of view, a subjective experience. ‘The bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed;’ which is a very clear hint as to the nature of this experience. Such an influx of spiritual force always brings, at least temporarily, a great expansion of mental power. For the brief moments of vision, the soul forgets its weaknesses, its limitations. It realizes that it was, is and ever will be, divine. And with this realization the superconscious mind casts into the conscious mind the tremendous ideal, EHEIEH ASHER EHEIEH, ‘I will be what I will be,’ or ‘I will be what I will to be.’

It is only when the glory has passed and reaction sets in, that man cries out his despair at being unable to communicate fully the experience to his fellow men. The fiery baptism is passed, the vision fades, the lonely self-initiation is past. Yet the echoes remain even when the halting conscious mind takes charge of the shaken personality.

EHEIEH ASHER EHEIEH