The Cycle which formed the beginning of all Messianic dispensations was known as the Cycle of Knowledge; that knowledge which pertains to physical life: everything which relates to Earth and its formation; the Heavens and their formation and order; all laws concerning the government of worlds; the secrets of Alchemy (or Chemistry); of Language, or human speech in its various forms; and, crowning that Dispensation, Mathematics as the Key-stone in the Archway of Knowledge; the glory of the primal Messianic Dispensation. Thus you perceive that the first culmination and crystallization in human form which brought to the earth the Messianic Dispensation of Knowledge, was that which afterward was crystallized into the various sciences, but which is epitomized in mathematics.

All traces of this period of the primal beginnings of Knowledge, as said before, are lost, excepting such as tradition weaves and such as were crystallized into Science under sacred orders and handed down by embodied Angels. During the most ancient civilization of Egypt it was known that there was once a land, a primal "Eden," which was the continent wherein this knowledge was first made known; and it was handed down through tradition like that of "Atlantis." All continents now existing were still submerged; the sea spread all over other portions of the earth, save a few barren waste places.

The race unto which this Primal Dispensation came were descendants of a race, as said before, of angelic beings who were thus created as the progenitors of all human races, and who gave the first race its generic life. Unto their successors came the first Dispensation, the first Christ, or Lord of Life; who taught the conquering of the earth by the might of Knowledge.

As that Dispensation had its beginning in the first dim twilight of spiritual light upon the earth, so all races that were to follow in other parts of the world must unfold through that twilight to their light, through its culmination to their added Knowledge; for each succeeding race or Dispensation must not only attain its own height, but must pass through the separate Messianic stages to an added height.

Thus we perceive why the beginning of all Dispensations must be the first needed Dispensation, which is Knowledge. As Knowledge includes all the secret sources of human power over matter, so the first perception which came to man, separating him from his mere physical life and giving him knowledge of the achievements of the spirit, were through revelations to the mind; the knowledge that is now secondary was then primal.

This Intellectual splendor, the Angels declare, was the highest knowledge that could then be taught; no Spiritual knowledge, no added light, no higher moral instruction, nothing which bears any resemblance to the Messianic teaching of subsequent Dispensations was known in that, the first or Primal Dispensation.

To conquer the earth by physical instinct required no revelation to man; but to conquer by the power of the mind was the First Revelation, the first step of human progress revealed in the first Messianic life. When in tradition or history you have recourse to the various deities to whom all knowledge was ascribed, when descending through Egypt you trace the line of material knowledge through beings (like Memnon), who are worshiped as half men, half gods, you will understand that this worship had its origin in the fact, that the First Dispensation or larger Cycle included twelve lesser Messiahs, each of whom taught one distinct branch of material knowledge, afterward made a science. Therefore it is very natural that those who first gave the twelve portions of this knowledge to the earth should be worshiped as tutelar deities, for they were lesser Messiahs. The Messiah who epitomized the whole of the larger cycle was the one who was crowned with the full splendor of all the twelve departments of human knowledge. When we enumerate these, as we shall endeavor to do in the next lesson, and give you a more complete statement of the knowledge or perception that must have been the possession of each Messiah to perceive and reveal the exact principles of knowledge in each direction, you will understand why, in the beginning of human worship and human praise, there is an intermingling of devotion for the Angels and the intermediate Messiahs, as well as for that which constitutes the Messiah of the first primal revelation as epitomizing all knowledge, and for the Most High.

Under the Dispensation announced by Oress and Oressa, the Angel who bore the first message of the first Dispensation, the light that was given to the earth was the light of revealed Truth regarding material science; no experiment, no deduction gave this knowledge; it came as all Primal Knowledge must come, by revelation and culminations in the Messianic Cycles. The speech of each primal nation is perfect of its kind; it is in the deterioration of nations that speech becomes imperfect. The knowledge of mathematics, chemistry, and astronomy was then and there stamped upon the Earth, to be the inheritance of succeeding nations, including that which was passing through the primal stages. You thus perceive that every department of human knowledge, every attainment of man's victory over the earth by mental power, was primarily an inspiration and not the result of experiment or the inductive methods that you understand and that prevail between dispensations.

As Creation preceded the generic process in life, as the first race was created, so everything that pertained to the necessary requirements of human beings were primarily created.

Whatever the subsequent methods of imparting knowledge may be you are perfectly well aware that the perception, both of the methods and the knowledge, must come from within.

The first Messiah gave to the earth the first knowledge of the nature and relations of atoms or primal substance; of organisms upon the earth, and of worlds; secondly the knowledge of the laws of motion, of light and heat, and how their dynamical relations were regulated; third, the knowledge of dynamics (mechanics), by which man mentally may conquer the substance around him, other than by the labor of his hands; fourth, the knowledge of chemistry (Alchemy), as related to the elements at his command; such as the power of water, the power of wind, and the power of tides, the power of air; and thus he was made to understand the dynamic power of light and heat; fifth, the knowledge of the relation of the first to the sixth, which is the point where mathematics enters chemistry, solving within the crucibles the problem of the relations of atoms one to the other. Mathematics being the key-stone, in its first and second parts, it forms the sixth and seventh degrees of knowledge; then what follows: the perfect revelation of speech, the perfect revelation of form, the perfect combination and action of the elements of earth with any other world; until, finally, the archway is complete as said before, in Mathematics, including Geometry and Astronomy. The various Messianic stages which form the vast cycle of the dispensation of knowledge, are crowned in the culmination of the perfect Messianic life; the threefold nature which has ever been handed down in subsequent Dispensations, the perfect recognition of this Deific light which can conquer, by the power of mind, every force on the earth and in the skies.

*The ancients understood four primal elements: Earth (or solid substance), air, fire and water, but these were subdivided until there were twelve.