“The Dark Ages knew of no mystery schools such as had flourished in Antiquity. The Pythagorean and Orphic brotherhoods, the Platonic Academy, the Hermetic and Mithraic cults all had disappeared from Europe along with the Roman Empire. Their vision of man as a microcosm, reflecting in miniature the whole universe and its source…were almost lost. The new official religion of Christianity could barely tolerate such ideas, even among its own intellectual elite. The Church's power rested on the divinity of one man only, Jesus Christ, and on one path to salvation for the rest: that of obedience.”
— Joscelyn Godwin, The Goldenthe Thread: The Ageless Wisdom of the Western Mystery Traditions

Image: Destruction from The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole

Lol, 'merica!

i think u guys'll appreciate that