Note 134 — Chapter III · PROGRESS UNDER ANCIENT RELIGIONS
Reading edition
As the centuries lapsed the course of popular religion was rather downward than upward, if it can be measured by the multiplication of superstitions.134 When under the Ramesside dynasty the high-priests of Amen became by marriage with the royal family the virtual rulers, sacerdotalism went from bad to worse.135 The priests, who held the allegorical key to mythology, seem to have been the main multipliers of magic and fable, mummery, ceremonial, and symbol; and they jealously guarded their specialty against lay competition.136 Esoteric and exoteric doctrine flourished in their degrees side by side,137 the instructed few apparently often accepting or acting upon both; and primitive rites all the while flourished on the level of the lowest savagery,138 though the higher ethical teaching even improves, as in India.