The teaching ended, the boy stepped from his position with the air of one of the Elders, and rejoined his parents, who passed as rapidly as possible from the wondering crowd.  Then his mother reproached him, telling him of their distress and wearisome search.  The boy listened calmly and patiently until she had finished.  Then he asked, with his newly acquired air of authority, “Why sought ye me?” And when they answered him in the customary manner of parents, the boy took on still a greater air of authority, and in tones that though kindly, were full of power, he replied, “Knew ye not, that I must be in my Father’s House?  I must be about the things of my Father.”  And the parents, feeling themselves in the presence of the Mystery that had ever been about the child, followed Him silently from the Temple grounds.

And here closes the New Testament story of the boy Jesus at the age of thirteen, which story is not resumed until His appearance at the place of the preaching of John the Baptist, over seventeen years later, when the boy had reached the age of a man of thirty years.  When and how did he spend those seventeen years?  The New Testament is totally silent on this score.  Can anyone who has read the above imagine that Jesus spent these years as a growing youth and young man, working at His father’s carpenter bench in the village of Nazareth?  Would not the Master, having found his strength and power, have insisted upon developing the same?  Could the Divine Genius once self-recognized be content to be obscured amid material pursuits?  The New Testament is silent, but the Occult Traditions and Mystic Legends tell us the story of the missing seventeen years, and these we shall now give to you.

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The legends and traditions of the mystic and occult organizations and brotherhoods tell us that after the occurrence of Jesus and the Elders in the Temple, and his recovery by his parents, the latter were approached by members of the secret organization to which the Magi belonged, who pointed out to the parents the injustice of the plan of keeping the lad at the carpenter’s bench when He had shown evidences of such a marvelous spiritual development and such a wonderful intellectual grasp of weighty subjects.  It is told that after a long and serious consideration of the matter the parents finally consented to the plan advanced by the Magi, and allowed them to take the lad with them into their own land and retreats that He might there receive the instructions for which His soul craved, and for which His mind was fitted.

It is true that the New Testament does not corroborate these occult legends, but it is likewise true that it says nothing to the contrary.  It is silent regarding this important period of between seventeen and eighteen years.  It is to be remembered that when He appeared upon the scene of John’s ministration, the latter did not recognize Him, whereas had Jesus remained about His home, John, his cousin, would have been acquainted with his features and personal appearance.