Conspiracy file · Hidden masters since 1614

Empyreans

In Secret Mystery School, the Empyreans are philosophers who unlocked their minds, cheat death by moving from body to body and travel the world through the ether. They are fiction, built from a real and long tradition: the hidden masters of Rosicrucian, Theosophical and Ascended Master lore.

Also known as Ascended Masters · Hidden Masters · Mahatmas · Secret Chiefs

On the record Timeline From the comics In Paranoid American comics Sources & further reading

From Secret Mystery School #2

The story

The word comes from the Greek empyros, "in fire". In medieval cosmology the Empyrean was the highest heaven, a realm of pure light beyond the moving planets and stars where God and the blessed dwell. Dante ends his Paradiso there, around 1320, and Milton's angels live in "the Empyreal Heaven".

The comic's Empyreans, once human and now nearly immortal, belong to another family: hidden masters. The Rosicrucian manifestos of 1614 to 1616 announced a secret brotherhood of adepts. In 1875 Helena Blavatsky co-founded the Theosophical Society in New York and was soon taking instruction, she said, from Mahatmas living in Tibet, by letters that appeared out of thin air. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn answered to Secret Chiefs of its own.

In the 20th century the masters became Ascended Masters. Guy Ballard's I AM movement, born on Mount Shasta in 1930, and the churches that followed it teach that Saint Germain, Jesus and others mastered life and now guide humanity from higher planes. Secret Mystery School keeps the masters and the mountain, and turns them into bickering philosophers serving out centuries of detention.

Memorandum for the recordSubject: Empyreans

On the record

"Empyrean" comes from the Greek empyros, "fiery"; medieval writers used it for the highest heaven, beyond the sphere of the fixed stars.
Dante's Paradiso, finished around 1320, ends in the Empyrean with a vision of God as light.
Three Rosicrucian manifestos (1614, 1615 and 1616) announced a secret fraternity of adepts. Its existence was never proven.
Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott and William Quan Judge founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875.
Letters said to come from the Mahatmas Koot Hoomi and Morya, written to A. P. Sinnett between 1880 and 1885, are now in the British Library.
An 1885 report for the Society for Psychical Research by Richard Hodgson concluded that Blavatsky and her associates wrote them.
Guy Ballard said he met Saint Germain on Mount Shasta in 1930; his I AM Activity taught that Ascended Masters guide humanity.

The theory

A brotherhood of perfected beings, once human, quietly guides world history (Theosophy; the I AM movement; Alice Bailey's "Hierarchy").
Masters speak and write through chosen students, as Blavatsky and many later channelers claimed.
The Count of Saint Germain, an 18th-century adventurer who hinted at a great age, never died and became an Ascended Master.
The masters keep retreats inside mountains, Mount Shasta and the Grand Teton among them (Guy Ballard).

Timeline

c. 1320Dante completes the Paradiso, which ends in the Empyrean
1614The first Rosicrucian manifesto, the Fama Fraternitatis
1667Milton's Paradise Lost
1784The Count of Saint Germain dies in Eckernförde, Germany
1875The Theosophical Society is founded in New York
1880The Mahatma letters to A. P. Sinnett begin
1885The Hodgson report calls the letters a fraud
1888The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn is founded in London
1930Guy Ballard's encounter with Saint Germain on Mount Shasta

From the comics

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From Secret Mystery School #1 · Pages 10-11

I Am an Empyrean

Inside the mountain, the being in Sophia's head finally introduces itself: an Empyrean, a former human who has survived for millennia by passing from one student's body to the next. The comic's invention, built from old parts: Theosophy's hidden masters and the Ascended Masters said to live on this very mountain.

In the I AM movement's teaching, Ascended Masters were once ordinary humans who mastered life and "ascended". Guy Ballard said he met one, Saint Germain, on Mount Shasta in 1930.
Passing a mind into a student has a real-world cousin in channeling: Blavatsky and many later mediums said masters spoke or wrote through them.

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