These volumes, complete in themselves as a series of studies in a definite body of tradition, are intended to serve ultimately as a small contribution to the preparation of the way leading towards a solution of the vast problems involved in the scientific study of the Origins of the Christian Faith. They might thus perhaps be described as the preparation of materials to serve for the historic, mythic, and mystic consideration of the Origins of Christianity, -where the term "mythic" is used in its true sense of inner, typical, sacred and "logic", as opposed to the external processioning of physical events known as "historic", and where the term "mystic" is used as that which pertains to initiation and the mysteries. The serious consideration of the matter contained in these pages will, I hope, enable the attentive reader to outline in his mind, however vaguely, some small portion of the environment of infant Christianity, and allow him to move a few steps round the cradle of Christendom. Though the material that we have collected, has, as to its externals, been tested, as far as our hands are capable of the work, by the methods of scholarship and criticism, it has nevertheless at the same time been allowed ungrudgingly to show itself the outward expression of a truly vital endeavour of immense interest and value to all who are disposed to make friends with it. For along this ray of the Trismegistic tradition we may allow ourselves to be drawn backwards in time towards the holy of holies of the Wisdom of Ancient Egypt. The sympathetic study of this material may well prove an initiatory process towards an understanding of that Archaic Gnosis.
About the Author: George Robert Stowe Mead was an English author, editor, translator, and an influential member of the Theosophical Society as well as the founder of the Quest Society. Having shown academic potential he began studying mathematics at St John's College, Cambridge. Eventually shifting his education towards the study of Classics he gained much knowledge of both Greek and Latin. In 1884 he completed a bachelor of arts degree, and in the same year he began to practice the position of public school master While still at Cambridge University Mead read Esoteric Buddhism by Alfred Percy Sinnett. This comprehensive theosophical account of the eastern religion prompted Mead to contact two theosophists in London named Bertam Keightly and Mohini Chatterji, which eventually led him to join the Theosophical Society. Mead became a member of the Theosophical Society in 1884. He abandoned his teaching profession in 1889 to be Blavatsky's private secretary and also became a joint-secretary of the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society. Contributing intellectually to the Theosophical Society, at first most interested in eastern religions, he quickly became more and more attracted to western esotericism of religion and philosophy, particularly Neoplatonism, Gnosticism and Hermeticism, though his scholarship and publications continued to engage with eastern religion. Making many contributions to the Theosophical Society's Lucifer magazine as joint editor, he eventually became the sole editor of The Theosophical Review in 1907 (as Lucifer was renamed in 1897). As of February 1909, Mead resigned in protest of Annie Besant's reinstating of Charles Webster Leadbeater to membership in the society. While this prompted Mead's resignation, his frustration at the dogmatism of the Theosophical Society may also have been a major contributor to his break with the society. He had been a member for twenty-five years. In March 1909 Mead founded the Quest Society, composed of 150 defectors of the Theosophical Society and 100 new members. The Quest Society had lectures at Kensington Town Hall in central London but its most focused effort was in its publishing of The Quest: A Quarterly Review which ran from 1909-1931 with many contributors. Among notable names influenced by Mead there can be found: Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, Hermann Hesse, Kenneth Rexroth, and Robert Duncan. In her celebrated biography of Jung, Deirdre Bair states that Carl Gustav Jung was also influenced by George Mead.