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FOREWORD. The series of lectures now in the reader's hand is the out
come of many years' patient and persistent study of the carises of diversity and difference among the prevailing religions of the world. In presenting them to the enquiring public I have to announce the momentous discovery of a secret language or script that will revolutionize reli. gious belief and change the very complexion of thought. It has, indeed, been long surmised that the Bibles of the world contain 'pure, personifications of diverse physical forces and phenomena, e. 9., clouds, rain, spirit of vegetation, fire and the like, but the suppositiou does not satisfy the prying intellect and has failed to command general acquiescence which it should have done if true. Yet it is obvious from the number and nature of the discrepancion alone that are to be found in them that the scriptures of the world could not and were not intended to be read historically. The discovery that has now been made will show that the Vedas, the Qur'an, the Zend Avesta and, indeed, all other ancient mythological scriptures are composed in one siugle langnage ut withstanding the outward diversity of the alphabets and fougies in which they are couched. We may call this secret language Pictokrit to distinguish it from Prakrit, the people's tongue, and from Sanskrit, the language of the learued. The sig. nificance of the term Piotokrit lies in the fact that it gives expression to the moet sablime of human thought in pictorial form, its special merit being its capacity to embody whole philosoplies in a single picture or panel of paintings. Some of the matter dealt with here has already appeared in my earlier work, the Key of Knowledge, and a small portion of it was incorporated in the Appendix to
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