Ephesus The chief of the twelve Ionic cities on the coast of
Asia Minor, where the cultures of western
Asia and Greece blended. Associated with Artemis or Diana of the Ephesians, Greek name of the Mylitta, Cybele, etc., of the Asiatic cults. The Ephesian Artemis is represented as a female figure with many breasts, the Great Mother Multimamma. The original temple was built in the 6th century BC, burnt in 356 BC and so magnificently restored that it was enumerated among the seven wonders of the world.
Ephesus was one of the foci of the universal secret doctrine, a laboratory whence sprang light derived from the quintessence of Buddhist, Zoroastrian, and Chaldean philosophy (IU 2:l53). It was such in the early days of Christianity, and from it spread that Gnosis to which the Church was later so bitter an antagonist. It was "famous for its great metaphysical College where Occultism (
Gnosis) and Platonic philosophy were taught in the days of the Apostle Paul. . . . It was at Ephesus where was the great College of the Essenes and all the lore the Tanaim had brought from the
Chaldees" (TG 114).
