Neophyte is a word that comes from the compound Greek neophutos (νεόφυτος), from neos (νέος) “new” and phuton (φυτόν) “plant, child”. H. P. Blavatsky defined it as follows:
Neophyte (Gr.). A novice; a postulant or candidate for the Mysteries. The methods of initiation varied. Neophytes had to pass in their trials through all the four elements, emerging in the fifth as glorified Initiates. Thus having passed through Fire (Deity), Water (Divine Spirit), Air (the Breath of God), and the Earth (Matter), they received a sacred mark, a tat and a tau, or a + and a ┬. The latter was the monogram of the Cycle called the Naros, or Neros. As shown by Dr. E. V. Kenealy, in his Apocalypse, the cross in symbolical language (one of the seven meanings)“+ exhibits at the same time three primitive letters, of which the word LVX or Light is compounded. . . . The Initiates were marked with this sign, when they were admitted into the perfect mysteries. We constantly see the Tau and the Resh united thus ♀. Those two letters in the old Samaritan, as found on coins, stand, the first for 400, the second for 200 = 600. This is the staff of Osiris.” Just so, but this does not prove that the Naros was a cycle of 600 years; but simply that one more pagan symbol had been appropriated by the Church.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Theosophical Glossary (Krotona, CA: Theosophical Publishing House, 1973), 227.