ISIS UNVEILED
A MASTER-KEY TO THE MYSTERIES OF
ANCIENT AND MODERN
SCIENCE and THEOLOGY
VOLUME I :
SCIENCE
VOL. II :
THEOLOGY.
By
H. P. BLAVATSKY
Scanned and edited using this;
CENTENARY ANNIVERSARY EDITION
BOTH VOLUMES BOUND IN ONE BOOK
A Photographic facsimile reproduction of the Original
Edition first published at New York City, U.S.A., in 1877.
THE THEOSOPHY COMPANY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
This electric version of ISIS follows
the pagination and stile of the CENTENARY ANNIVERSARY EDITION
except for the foot notes, instead of breaking up
the foot-notes, that are continued on other pages, do to lack of space on the
pages printed in paper books, we placed all the information for each
foot-note together on the page of its' origin.—
Editor Theosophy Co. of Arizona 2005
PUBLISHER’S PREFACE
This anniversary edition of ISIS
UNVEILED was first printed fourteen years ago—in 1931—on the centenary of the
birth of the author, H. P. Blavatsky. The present printing is identical with the
first, being a photographic reproduction of the original edition published in
New York in 1877. J. W. Bouton, the publisher, issued twelve editions of the
work, and while several later editions of ISIS UNVEILED have been printed, none
of them—with the exception of a facsimile edition by Rider of London—can be
trusted by those who desire the authentic text of H. P. Blavatsky’s first great
treatise. These editions were from reset type, with consequent unavoidable
errors, and suffer from attempts at correction or Improvement, and the
addition of extraneous matter; but they are all now out of Print.
The original production of ISIS UNVEILED was encompassed by almost
insurmountable obstacles. All public knowledge of, or even belief in, the actual
existence of perfected Men, the Mahatmas, or Great Souls, had for long centuries
been lost to humanity, both in the Orient and in the Occident. The
Wisdom-Religion, as the accumulated knowledge gained through a of spiritual and
intellectual evolution, was not even dreamed of by mystics of the West, while in
the East the belief everywhere prevailed that the Rishis of old had departed
from this earth at the commencement of its Kaliyuga or Dark Age and would not
return till milenniums hence when a new Golden Age would be inaugurated. Among
the great world religions,
I.
PUBLISHER’S PREFACE
priests and laity alike cast longing eyes back ward
to a Savior who had been, or forward to a dim future when a Savior would come.
None of them contained anything but the skeletal remains of a once-living
Spiritual gnosis; in none did anything remain but the broken tablets of the Law;
the letter of the Law could still be painfully spelled, but its spirit was lost.
Modern materialistic science in the West, with its repercussive influence in all
lands, was steadily conquering the domain of human thought as well as of
physical nature: mankind at large was fast losing all faith in immortality, all
interest in other than material existence and material well-being.
Alone, the strange and widespread phenomena miscalled Spiritualism had
attracted a vast attention and almost endless investigation amongst all classes
of men. Here, then, was the only available soil in which to sow the first seeds
of a philosophy which includes the whole of Nature. But of all men,
Spiritualists had least interest in philosophy. They were drunk with phenomena, the
more inviting because easily accessible and because no philosophical, ethical,
moral, scientific or religious preparation was necessary in order to become a
medium or to obtain supposed messages from the dead, as well as other phenomena
inexplicable from any accepted scientific standpoint.
As though all this were not enough, H. P. Blavatsky was a stranger in a strange
land, with a merely colloquial acquaintance with the English language, no
literary experience, no knowledge of the formalities and conventions of
acceptable composition. Of her two closest associates, Colonel H. S. Olcott was
a Spiritualist, who had even less acquaintance with philosophy than she had with
English; William Q. Judge, destined to be her greatest co-worker in future
years, was but twenty-four years of age. The parent theosophical society had
just been formed with a limited membership consisting almost entirely of ardent
Spiritualists. The task set herself by H. P. Blavatsky was of the same nature,
and as formidable, as any ever undertaken by any actual or legendary
philanthropist or savior. ISIS UNVEILED was begun by her in 1874, a bare year
after landing in New York City. Its writing went on in the midst of multifarious
other activities and interruptions, yet was completed and published in the early
autumn of 1877. When the contents of the work are considered and the attendant
circumstances weighed, ISIS UNVEILED offers to the thoughtful mind a spiritual
and intellectual phenomenon of the first magnitude. Without it, the Theosophical
Movement as well as the Theosophical Society would have been still-born. Without
it, her Mission and her Theosophy cannot be understood. Without it, her Secret
Doctrine can no more he grasped than can algebra without a knowledge of
arithmetic. Her writings are not discrete works, any one of which can be studied
apart from the rest, but one
II
PUBLISHER’S PREFACE
continuous serial unfoldment of so much of the
Wisdom-Religion as her Masters, from their inclusive point of view, considered
ample for the needs of the greatest minds until 1975, when, contingent upon the
use made of what she provided, the next Messenger may add further material for
future building upon the foundations laid by her. ISIS UNVEILED and The Secret
Doctrine are integral; both are parts of one stupendous whole. To the extent
that they are neglected, that the attention of students and inquirers is
diverted to interpretations, substitutions, and the many misguided and ambitious
later attempts to embellish and improve upon the recorded Theosophy of H. P.
Blavatsky to that extent will the philanthropy of her Masters and herself have
been abused and betrayed by its recipients.
That ISIS UNVEILED in its original publication embodies typographical and other
verbal errors, and is open to ample criticism on the score of its violation of literary
canons, was never denied by its author. What has been missed by its captious
critics is the simple fact that all these errors are so transparent that an
ordinarily intelligent child would observe them for what they are, if intent
upon getting at the meaning of the statements made.
Much subsequent controversy grew up over certain statements in the first volume
of ISIS UNVEILED; in particular over those made on pages 345 to 357 in reference
to “reincarnation.” From this controversy has sprung a whole mythology of
ignorance, including the legend that at the time of writing ISIS UNVEILED H. P.
Blavatsky herself was a Spiritualist medium, as unversed in what she was
conveying as were those for whom she wrote; that she herself at that period did
not believe in reincarnation, and that the Master who instructed her was himself
ignorant on that subject!
There is no doubt that her writing suffered at the hands of editors and
proof-readers, and on this, one of the Masters wrote in January, 1882, to Mr.
A. P. Sinnett, as follows:
By-the-bye, I’ll re-write for you pages 345 to 357, Vol. I., of Isis
jumbled, and confused by Olcott, who thought he was improving it!
For the convenience of students, we list in chronological order the subsequent
references made by H. P. Blavatsky to the mistakes in ISIS UNVEILED :
"Seeming Discrepancies,” first published in the Theosophist for June, 1882;
III
PUBLISHER’S PREFACE
" 'Isis Unveiled' and the ‘Theosophist’ on Reincarnation,”
first published in the Theosophist for August, 1882;
C.C.M.’ and ‘Isis Unveiled’,” first published in the
Theosophist for September, 1882;
“Theories about
Reincarnation and Spirits,” first published in the Path for
November, 1886, and republished in Theosophy for April, 1914;
A foot-note to some correspondence, first published in Lucifer for February, 1889, at pages 527-28;
“My Books,”
first published in Lucifer for May, 1891, and reprinted in Theosophy for June,
1914.
This was the last signed article from the pen of H. P. Blavatsky.
From these articles it will he seen that H. P. Blavatsky gave the widest possible publicity, both to the actual facts covering the mis-
understood passages in ISIS
UNVEILED, and to the nature of her mission and message. That those may be served
for whom the foregoing citations may not he readily accessible, the footnote to
Lucifer for February, 1889, is herewith given:
Since 1882 when the mistake was first found out in “Isis Unveiled,” it has been
repeatedly stated in the Theosophist, and last year in the Path that the word
“planet” [ 351, volume I of Isis ] was a mistake and that “cycle” was meant,
i.e., the “cycle of Devachanic rest.” This mistake, due to one of the literary
editors—the writer knowing English more than imperfectly twelve years ago, and
the editors being still more ignorant of Buddhism and Hinduism—has led to great
confusion and numberless accusations of contradictions between the statements in
his and later theosophical teaching.
The paragraph quoted meant to upset the theory of the French Reincarnationists
who maintain that the same personality is reincarnated, often a few days after
death, so that a grandfather can be reborn as his own grand-daughter. Hence the
idea was combated, and it was said that neither Buddha nor any of the Hindu
philosophers ever taught reincarnation in the same cycle, or of the came
personality, but of the “triune man” who, when properly united, was “capable of
running the race” forward to perfection. The same and a worse mistake occurs on
pages 346 and (Vol. I). For on the former it is stated that the Hindus dread
reincarnation ‘‘only on other and inferior planets,” instead of what is the
case, that Hindus dread reincarnation in other and inferior bodies, of brutes
and animals or transmigration. while on page 347 the said error of putting
“planet” instead of “cycle” and “personality,” shows the author (a professed
Buddhist) speaking as though
IV
PUBLISHER’S PREFACE
Buddha had never taught the
doctrine of reincarnation!! The sentence ought to read that the “former life
believed in by Buddhists is not a life in the same cycle and personality,” as no
one appreciates more than they do “the great doctrine of cycles.” As it reads
now, however, namely that “this former life believed in by the Buddhists is not
a life on this planet,” and this sentence on page 347 just preceded by that
other (paragraph 2 on page 346), “Thus like the revolutions of a wheel, there is
a regular succession of death and birth,” etc—the whole reads like the raving of
a lunatic, and a jumble of contradictory statements. If asked why the error was
permitted to remain and run through ten editions, it is answered that (a)
the attention of the author was drawn to it only in 1882; and (b) that the
undersigned was not in a position to alter it from stereotyped plates which
belonged to the American publisher and not to her. The work was written under
exceptional circumstances, and no doubt more than one great error may be
discovered in ISIS UNVEILED
The present edition of ISIS UNVEILED contains the photographic facsimile
reproduction not only of the original text, but of the original index. This
latter is immediately followed by a Publisher’s Note and a Supplemental Index
which, it is hoped, will together with the Publisher’s Preface, be of material
assistance to serious students of the synthetic Philosophy recorded by H. P. Blavatsky.
With the publication of the present Centenary Anniversary Edition of ISIS UNVEILED
there is completed the task
undertaken by the late Robert Crosbie and his associates—to make available to
students authentic reproductions of all the Theosophical writings of H. P.
Blavatsky, and of her Colleague, William Q. Judge.
THE THEOSOPHY COMPANY
August, 1931
V.
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
"Cecy est un livre de bonne Foy." — MONTAIGNE.
THE AUTHOR
Dedicates these Volumes
TO THE
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY,
WHICH WAS FOUNDED AT NEW YORK, A.D. 1875,
TO STUDY THE
SUBJECTS ON
WHICH THEY TREAT.
——————————
THE
work now submitted to public judgment is the fruit of a somewhat intimate
acquaintance with Eastern adepts and study of their science. It is offered to
such as are willing to accept truth wherever it may be found, and to defend it,
even looking popular prejudice straight in the face. It is an attempt to aid the
student to detect the vital principles which underlie the philosophical systems
of old.
The book is written in all sincerity. It is meant to do even justice, and
to speak the truth alike without malice or prejudice. But it shows neither mercy
for enthroned error, nor reverence for usurped authority. It demands for a
spoliated past, that credit for its achievements which has been too long
withheld. It calls for a restitution of borrowed robes, and the vindication of
calumniated but glorious reputations. Toward no form of worship, no religious
faith, no scientific hypothesis has its criticism been directed in any other
spirit. Men and parties, sects and schools are but the mere ephemera of the
world's day. TRUTH,
high-seated upon its rock of adamant, is alone eternal and supreme.
We believe in no Magic which transcends the scope and capacity of the
human mind, nor in "miracle," whether divine or diabolical, if such imply a
transgression of the laws of nature instituted from all eternity. Nevertheless,
we accept the saying of the gifted author of Festus, that the human
heart has not yet fully uttered itself, and that we have never attained or even
understood the extent of its powers. Is it too much to believe that man should
be developing new sensibilities and a closer relation with nature? The logic of
evolution must teach as much, if carried to its legitimate conclusions. If,
somewhere, in the line of ascent from vegetable or ascidian to the noblest man a
soul was evolved, gifted with intellectual qualities, it cannot be unreasonable
to infer and believe that a faculty of perception is also growing in man,
enabling him to descry facts and truths even beyond our ordinary ken. Yet we do
not hesitate to accept the assertion of Biffé, that "the essential is forever
the same. Whether we cut away the marble inward that hides the statue in the
vi
PREFACE.
block, or pile stone upon stone outward till the temple is completed, our
NEW
result is only an old idea. The latest of all the eternities
will find
its destined other half-soul in the earliest." When, years ago, we first
travelled over the East, exploring the penetralia of its
deserted sanctuaries,
two saddening and ever-recurring questions oppressed our thoughts: Where,
WHO, WHAT is
GOD?
Who ever saw the IMMORTAL
SPIRIT
of man, so as to be able to assure himself of man's immortality?
It was while most anxious to solve these perplexing problems that we came
into contact with certain men, endowed with such mysterious powers and such
profound knowledge that we may truly designate them as the sages of the Orient.
To their instructions we lent a ready ear. They showed us that by combining
science with religion, the existence of God and immortality of man's spirit may
be demonstrated like a problem of Euclid. For the first time we received the
assurance that the Oriental philosophy has room for no other faith than an
absolute and immovable faith in the omnipotence of man's own immortal self. We
were taught that this omnipotence comes from the kinship of man's spirit with
the Universal Soul — God! The latter, they said, can never be demonstrated but
by the former. Man-spirit proves God-spirit, as the one drop of water proves a
source from which it must have come. Tell one who had never seen water, that
there is an ocean of water, and he must accept it on faith or reject it
altogether. But let one drop fall upon his hand, and he then has the fact from
which all the rest may be inferred. After that he could by degrees understand
that a boundless and fathomless ocean of water existed. Blind faith would no
longer be necessary; he would have supplanted it with KNOWLEDGE. When one sees
mortal man displaying tremendous capabilities, controlling the forces of nature
and opening up to view the world of spirit, the reflective mind is overwhelmed
with the conviction that if one man's spiritual Ego can do this much,
the capabilities of the FATHER
SPIRIT must
be relatively as much vaster as the whole ocean surpasses the single drop in
volume and potency. Ex nihilo nihil fit; prove the soul of man
by its wondrous powers — you have proved God! In our studies, mysteries were
shown to be no mysteries. Names and places that to the Western mind have only a
significance derived from Eastern fable, were shown to be realities. Reverently
we stepped in spirit within the temple of Isis; to lift aside the veil of "the
one that is and was and shall be" at Saïs; to look through the rent curtain of
the Sanctum Sanctorum at Jerusalem; and even to interrogate within the crypts
which once existed beneath the sacred edifice, the mysterious Bath-Kol. The
Filia Vocis — the daughter of the divine voice —
vii PREFACE
responded from the mercy-seat within the veil,* and science, theology,
every human hypothesis and conception born of imperfect knowledge, lost forever
their authoritative character in our sight. The one-living God had spoken
through his oracle—man, and we were satisfied. Such knowledge is priceless; and
it has been hidden only from those who overlooked it, derided it, or denied its
existence.
From such as these we apprehend criticism, censure, and perhaps hostility,
although the obstacles in our way neither spring from the validity of proof, the
authenticated facts of history, nor the lack of common sense among the public
whom we address. The drift of modern thought is palpably in the direction of
liberalism in religion as well as science. Each day brings the reactionists
nearer to the point where they must surrender the despotic authority over the
public conscience, which they have so long enjoyed and exercised. When the Pope
can go to the extreme of fulminating anathemas against all who maintain the
liberty of the Press and of speech, or who insist that in the conflict of laws,
civil and ecclesiastical, the civil law should prevail, or that any method of
instruction solely secular, may be approved;† and Mr. Tyndall, as the
mouth-piece of nineteenth century science, says, ". . . the impregnable position
of science may be stated in a few words: we claim, and we shall wrest from
theology, the entire domain of cosmological theory" ‡—the end is not
difficult to foresee.
Centuries of subjection have not quite congealed the life-blood of men into
crystals around the nucleus of blind faith; and the nineteenth is witnessing the
struggles of the giant as he shakes off the Liliputian cordage and rises to his
feet. Even the Protestant communion of England and America, now engaged in the
revision of the text of its Oracles, will be compelled to show the
origin and merits of the text itself. The day of domineering over men with
dogmas has reached its gloaming.
Our work, then, is a plea for the recognition of the Hermetic philosophy,
the anciently universal Wisdom-Religion, as the only possible key to the
Absolute in science and theology. To show that we do not at all conceal from
ourselves the gravity of our undertaking, we may say in advance that it would
not be strange if the following classes should array themselves against us:
———————————————————————————————
* Lightfoot assures us that this voice, which had been used in times past for a
testimony from heaven, "was indeed performed by magic art" (vol. ii., p. 128).
This latter term is used as a supercilious expression, just because it was and
is still misunderstood. It is the object of this work to correct the erroneous
opinions concerning "magic art."
† Encyclical of
1864. ‡
"Fragments of Science."
New York, September, 1877.
——————————
PREFACE. . . . v
Dogmatic assumptions of modern
science and theology . . . ix
The Platonic philosophy affords the only middle ground . . . xi
Review of the ancient philosophical systems . . . xv
A Syriac manuscript on Simon Magus . . . xxiii
Glossary of terms used in this book . . . xxiii
——————————
——————————
The Oriental Kabala . . . 1
Ancient traditions supported by modern research . . . 3
The progress of mankind marked by cycles . . . 5
Ancient cryptic science . . . 7
Priceless value of the Vedas . . . 12
Mutilations of the Jewish sacred books in translation . . . 13
Magic always regarded as a divine science ... 25
Achievements of its adepts and hypotheses of their modern detractors . . . 25
Man's yearning for immortality . . . 37
The servility of society . . .
39
Prejudice and bigotry of men of science . . . 40
They are chased by psychical phenomena . . . 41
Lost arts . . . 49
The human will the master-force of forces . . . 57
Superficial generalizations of the French savants . . . 60
Mediumistic phenomena, to what attributable . . . 67
Their relation to crime . . . 71
CHAPTER III.
BLIND LEADERS OF THE
BLIND.
Huxley's derivation from the
Orohippus . . . 74
Comte, his system and disciples . . . 75
The London materialists . . . 85
Borrowed robes . . . 89
Emanation of the objective universe from the subjective . . . 92
CHAPTER IV.
THEORIES RESPECTING PSYCHIC PHENOMENA.
Theory of de Gasparin . . . 100
“ of Thury . . . 100
“ of des Mousseaux, de Mirville . . . 100
“ of Babinet . . . 101
“ of Houdin . . . 101
“ of MM. Royer and Jobart de Lamballe . . . 102
The twins "unconscious cerebration" and "unconscious ventriloquism" . 105
Theory of Crookes . . . 112
“ of Faraday . . . 116
“ of Chevreuil . . . 116
The Mendeleyeff commission of 1876 . . . 117
Soul blindness . . . 121
One primal force, but many
correlations . . . 126
Tyndall narrowly escapes a great discovery . . . 127
The impossibility of miracle . . . 128
Nature of the primordial substance . . . 133
Interpretation of certain ancient myths . . . 133
Experiments of the fakirs . . . 139
Evolution in Hindu allegory . . . 153
The debt we owe to Paracelsus .
. . 163
Mesmerism — its parentage, reception, potentiality . . . 165
"Psychometry" . . . 183
Time, space, eternity . . . 184
Transfer of energy from the visible to the invisible universe . . . 186
The Crookes experiments and Cox theory . . . 195
Attraction and repulsion
universal in all the kingdoms of nature . . . 206
Psychical phenomena depend on physical surroundings . . . 211
Observations in Siam . . . 214
Music in nervous disorders . . . 215
The "world-soul" and its potentialities . . . 216
Healing by touch, and healers . . . 217
"Diakka" and Porphyry's bad demons . . . 219
The quenchless lamp . . . 224
Modern ignorance of vital force . . . 237
Antiquity of the theory of force-correlation . . . 241
Universality of belief in magic . . . 247
Do the planets affect human
destiny? . . . 253
Very curious passage from Hermes . . . 254
The restlessness of matter . . . 257
Prophecy of Nostradamus fulfilled . . . 260
Sympathies between planets and plants . . . 264
Hindu knowledge of the properties of colors . . . 265
"Coincidences" the panacea of modern science . . . 268
The moon and the tides . . . 273
Epidemic mental and moral disorders . . . 274
The gods of the Pantheons only natural forces . . . 280
Proofs of the magical powers of Pythagoras . . . 283
The viewless races of ethereal space . . . 284
The "four truths" of Buddhism . . . 291
Meaning of the expression "coats
of skin" . . . 293
Natural selection and its results . . . 295
The Egyptian "circle of necessity" . . . 296
Pre-Adamite races . . . 299
Descent of spirit into matter . . . 302
The triune nature of man . . . 309
The lowest creatures in the scale of being . . . 310
Elementals specifically
described . . . 311
Proclus on the beings of the air . . . 312
Various names for elementals . . . 313
Swedenborgian views on soul-death . . . 317
Earth-bound human souls . . . 319
Impure mediums and their "guides" . . . 325
Psychometry an aid to scientific research . . . 333
Pere Felix arraigns the
scientists . . . 338
The "Unknowable" . . . 340
Danger of evocations by tyros . . . 342
Lares and Lemures . . . 345
Secrets of Hindu temples . . . 350
Reincarnation . . . 351
Witchcraft and witches . . . 353
The sacred soma trance . . . 357
Vulnerability of certain "shadows" . . . 363
Experiment of Clearchus on a sleeping boy . . . 365
The author witnesses a trial of magic in India . . . 369
Case of the Cevennois . . . 371
Invulnerability attainable by
man . . . 379
Projecting the force of the will . . . 380
Insensibility to snake-poison . . . 381
Charming serpents by music . . . 383
Teratological phenomena discussed . . . 385
The psychological domain confessedly unexplored . . . 407
Despairing regrets of Berzelius . . . 411
Turning a river into blood a vegetable phenomenon . . . 413
Vampirism — its phenomena
explained . . . 449
Bengalese jugglery . . . 457
The rationale of talismans . . .
462
Unexplained mysteries . . . 466
Magical experiment in Bengal . . . 467
Chibh Chondor's surprising feats . . . 471
The Indian tape-climbing trick an illusion . . . 473
Resuscitation of buried fakirs . . . 477
Limits of suspended animation . . . 481
Mediumship totally antagonistic to adeptship . . . 487
What are "materialized spirits"? . . . 493
The Shudala Madan . . . 495
Philosophy of levitation . . . 497
The elixir and alkahest . . . 503
Joan. — Advance our waving colors on the walls! — King Henry VI. Act IV.
"My life has been devoted to the
study of man, his destiny and his happiness."
— J. R.
BUCHANAN,
M.D., Outlines of Lectures on Anthropology.
IT
is nineteen centuries since, as we are told, the night of Heathenism and
Paganism was first dispelled by the divine light of Christianity; and
two-and-a-half centuries since the bright lamp of Modern Science began to shine
on the darkness of the ignorance of the ages. Within these respective epochs, we
are required to believe, the true moral and intellectual progress of the race
has occurred. The ancient philosophers were well enough for their respective
generations, but they were illiterate as compared with modern men of science.
The ethics of Paganism perhaps met the wants of the uncultivated people of
antiquity, but not until the advent of the luminous "Star of Bethlehem," was the
true road to moral perfection and the way to salvation made plain. Of old,
brutishness was the rule, virtue and spirituality the exception. Now, the
dullest may read the will of God in His revealed word; men have every incentive
to be good, and are constantly becoming better.
This is the assumption; what are the facts? On the one hand an unspiritual,
dogmatic, too often debauched clergy; a host of sects, and three warring great
religions; discord instead of union, dogmas without proofs, sensation-loving
preachers, and wealth and pleasure-seeking parishioners' hypocrisy and bigotry,
begotten by the tyrannical exigencies of respectability, the rule of the day,
sincerity and real piety exceptional. On the other hand, scientific hypotheses
built on sand; no accord upon a single question; rancorous quarrels and
jealousy; a general drift into materialism. A death-grapple of Science with
Theology for infallibility — "a conflict of ages."
At Rome, the self-styled seat of Christianity, the putative successor to
the chair of Peter is undermining social order with his invisible but
omnipresent net-work of bigoted agents, and incites them to revolutionize Europe
for his temporal as well as spiritual supremacy. We see him who calls himself
the "Vicar of Christ," fraternizing with the anti-Christian Moslem against
another Christian nation, publicly invoking the blessing of God upon the arms of
those who have for centuries withstood, with
fire and sword, the pretensions
of his Christ to Godhood! At Berlin — one of the great seats of learning —
professors of modern exact sciences, turning their backs on the boasted
results of enlightenment of the post-Galileonian period, are quietly snuffing
out the candle of the great Florentine; seeking, in short, to prove the
heliocentric system, and even the earth's rotation, but the dreams of deluded
scientists, Newton a visionary, and all past and present astronomers but clever
calculators of unverifiable problems. *
Between these two conflicting Titans — Science and Theology — is a bewildered
public, fast losing all belief in man's personal immortality, in a deity of any
kind, and rapidly descending to the level of a mere animal existence. Such is
the picture of the hour, illumined by the bright noonday sun of this Christian
and scientific era!
Would it be strict justice to condemn to critical lapidation the most humble
and modest of authors for entirely rejecting the authority of both these
combatants? Are we not bound rather to take as the true aphorism of this
century, the declaration of Horace Greeley: "I accept unreservedly the
views of no man, living or dead"? † Such, at all events, will be our
motto, and we mean that principle to be our constant guide throughout this work.
Among the many phenomenal outgrowths of our century, the strange creed of
the so-called Spiritualists has arisen amid the tottering ruins of self-styled
revealed religions and materialistic philosophies; and yet it alone offers a
possible last refuge of compromise between the two. That this unexpected ghost
of pre-Christian days finds poor welcome from our sober and positive century, is
not surprising. Times have strangely changed; and it is but recently that a
well-known Brooklyn preacher pointedly remarked in a sermon, that could Jesus
come back and behave in the streets of New York, as he did in those of
Jerusalem, he would find himself confined in the prison of the Tombs. ‡
What sort of welcome, then, could Spiritualism ever expect? True enough, the
weird stranger seems neither attractive nor promising at first sight. Shapeless
and uncouth, like an infant attended by seven nurses, it is coming out of its
teens lame and mutilated. The name of its enemies is legion; its friends and
protectors are a handful. But what of that? When was ever truth accepted a
priori? Because the champions of Spiritualism have in their fanaticism
magnified its qualities, and remained blind to its imperfections, that gives no
excuse to doubt its reality. A forgery is impossible when we have no model to
forge after. The fanaticism of Spiritualists is itself
————————————————————————————————————
* See the last chapter of this volume, p. 622.
† "Recollections of a Busy Life," p. 147. ‡
Henry Ward Beecher.
xi BEFORE THE VEIL.
a proof of the genuineness and
possibility of their phenomena. They give us facts that we may investigate, not
assertions that we must believe without proof. Millions of reasonable men and
women do not so easily succumb to collective hallucination. And so, while the
clergy, following their own interpretations of the
Bible, and science its
self-made Codex of possibilities in nature, refuse it a fair
hearing, real science and true religion are silent, and
gravely wait further developments.
The whole question of phenomena rests on the correct comprehension of old
philosophies. Whither, then, should we turn, in our perplexity, but to the
ancient sages, since, on the pretext of superstition, we are refused an
explanation by the modern? Let us ask them what they know of genuine science and
religion; not in the matter of mere details, but in all the broad conception of
these twin truths — so strong in their unity, so weak when divided. Besides, we
may find our profit in comparing this boasted modern science with ancient
ignorance; this improved modern theology with the "Secret doctrines" of the
ancient universal religion. Perhaps we may thus discover a neutral ground whence
we can reach and profit by both.
It is the Platonic philosophy, the most elaborate compend of the abstruse
systems of old India, that can alone afford us this middle ground. Although
twenty-two and a quarter centuries have elapsed since the death of Plato, the
great minds of the world are still occupied with his writings. He was, in the
fullest sense of the word, the world's interpreter. And the greatest philosopher
of the pre-Christian era mirrored faithfully in his works the spiritualism of
the Vedic philosophers who lived thousands of years before himself, and its
metaphysical expression. Vyasa, Djeminy, Kapila, Vrihaspati, Sumati, and so many
others, will be found to have transmitted their indelible imprint through the
intervening centuries upon Plato and his school. Thus is warranted the inference
that to Plato and the ancient Hindu sages was alike revealed the same wisdom. So
surviving the shock of time, what can this wisdom be but divine and eternal?
Plato taught justice as subsisting in the soul of its possessor and his
greatest good. "Men, in proportion to their intellect, have admitted his
transcendent claims." Yet his commentators, almost with one consent, shrink from
every passage which implies that his metaphysics are based on a solid
foundation, and not on ideal conceptions.
But Plato could not accept a philosophy destitute of spiritual aspirations;
the two were at one with him. For the old Grecian sage there was a single object
of attainment: REAL KNOWLEDGE. He considered those only to be genuine
philosophers, or students of truth, who possess the knowledge of the
really-existing, in opposition to the mere seeing; of
xii
BEFORE THE VEIL.
the
always-existing, in opposition to the transitory; and of that which
exists
permanently, in
opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is developed and destroyed
alternately. "Beyond all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws,
ideas, and principles, there is an INTELLIGENCE or
MIND [nou'"
, nous , the spirit],
the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas
are grounded; the Monarch and Lawgiver of the universe; the ultimate substance
from which all things derive their being and essence, the first and efficient
Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty, and excellency, and goodness,
which pervades the universe — who is called, by way of preëminence and
excellence, the Supreme Good, the God (
ὁ qeò"
) 'the God over all' (
ὁ epi pasi qeò"
)." * He is not
the truth nor the intelligence, but "the father of it." Though this eternal
essence of things may not be perceptible by our physical senses, it may be
apprehended by the mind of those who are not wilfully obtuse. "To you," said
Jesus to his elect disciples, "it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom
of God, but to them [ the
polloi^ ] it is not given; . .
. therefore speak I to them in parables [or allegories]; because they seeing,
see not, and hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand." †
The philosophy of Plato, we are assured by Porphyry, of the Neoplatonic
School was taught and illustrated in the MYSTERIES. Many have questioned and
even denied this; and Lobeck, in his Aglaophomus, has gone to the
extreme of representing the sacred orgies as little more than an empty show to
captivate the imagination. As though Athens and Greece would for twenty
centuries and more have repaired every fifth year to Eleusis to witness a solemn
religious farce! Augustine, the papa-bishop of Hippo, has resolved such
assertions. He declares that the doctrines of the Alexandrian Platonists were
the original esoteric doctrines of the first followers of Plato, and describes
Plotinus as a Plato resuscitated. He also explains the motives of the great
philosopher for veiling the interior sense of what he taught. ‡
————————————————————————————————————
* Cocker: "Christianity and Greek Philosophy," xi., p. 377.
† Gospel according to Matthew, xiii. 11, 13.
‡ "The accusations of atheism, the introducing of foreign
deities, and corrupting of the Athenian youth, which were made against Socrates,
afforded ample justification for Plato to conceal the arcane preaching of his
doctrines. Doubtless the peculiar diction or 'jargon' of the alchemists was
employed for a like purpose. The dungeon, the rack, and the fagot were employed
without scruple by Christians of every shade, the Roman Catholics especially,
against all who taught even natural science contrary to the theories entertained
by the Church. Pope Gregory the Great even inhibited the grammatical use of
Latin as heathenish. The offense of Socrates consisted in unfolding to his
disciples the arcane doctrine concerning the gods, which was taught in the
Mysteries and was a capital crime. He also was charged by Aristophanes with
introducing the new god Dinos into the
republic as the demiurgos or artificer, and the lord of the solar universe. The
Heliocentric system was also a doctrine of the Mysteries; and hence, when
Aristarchus the Pythagorean taught it openly, Cleanthes declared that the Greeks
ought to have called him to account and condemned him for blasphemy against the
gods," — ("Plutarch"). But Socrates had never been initiated, and hence divulged
nothing which had ever been imparted to him.
As to the
myths, Plato declares
in the Gorgias and the Phædon that they were the vehicles of
great truths well worth the seeking. But commentators are so little en
rapport with the great philosopher as to be compelled to acknowledge that
they are ignorant where "the doctrinal ends, and the mythical begins." Plato put
to flight the popular superstition concerning magic and dæmons, and developed
the exaggerated notions of the time into rational theories and metaphysical
conceptions. Perhaps these would not quite stand the inductive method of
reasoning established by Aristotle; nevertheless they are satisfactory in the
highest degree to those who apprehend the existence of that higher faculty of
insight or intuition, as affording a criterion for ascertaining truth.
Basing all his doctrines upon the presence of the Supreme Mind, Plato taught
that the nous, spirit, or rational soul of man, being "generated by the
Divine Father," possessed a nature kindred, or even homogeneous, with the
Divinity, and was capable of beholding the eternal realities. This faculty of
contemplating reality in a direct and immediate manner belongs to God alone; the
aspiration for this knowledge constitutes what is really meant by philosophy
— the love of wisdom. The love of truth is inherently the love of
good; and so predominating over every desire of the soul, purifying it and
assimilating it to the divine, thus governing every act of the individual, it
raises man to a participation and communion with Divinity, and restores him to
the likeness of God. "This flight," says Plato in the Theætetus,
"consists in becoming like God, and this assimilation is the becoming just and
holy with wisdom."
The basis of this assimilation is always asserted to be the preëxistence of
the spirit or nous. In the allegory of the chariot and winged steeds,
given in the Phædrus, he represents the psychical nature as composite
and two-fold; the thumos, or epithumetic part, formed from the substances of the
world of phenomena; and the qumoeidev"
thumoeides, the essence of which is linked to the eternal world. The
present earth-life is a fall and punishment. The soul dwells in "the grave which
we call the body," and in its incorporate state, and previous
to the discipline of education, the noetic or spiritual element is "asleep."
Life is thus a dream, rather than a reality. Like the captives in the
subterranean cave, described in The Republic, the back is turned to the
light, we perceive only the shadows of objects, and think them the actual
realities. Is not this
xiv
BEFORE THE VEIL.
the idea of Maya, or
the illusion of the senses in physical life, which is so marked a feature in
Buddhistical philosophy? But these shadows, if we have not given ourselves up
absolutely to the sensuous nature, arouse in us the reminiscence of that higher
world that we once inhabited. "The interior spirit has some dim and shadowy
recollection of its antenatal state of bliss, and some instinctive and proleptic
yearnings for its return." It is the province of the discipline of philosophy to
disinthrall it from the bondage of sense, and raise it into the empyrean of pure
thought, to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty. "The soul," says
Plato, in the Theætetus, "cannot come into the form of a man if it has
never seen the truth. This is a recollection of those things which our soul
formerly saw when journeying with Deity, despising the things which we now say
are, and looking up to that which REALLY IS. Wherefore the nous,
or spirit, of the philosopher (or student of the higher truth) alone is
furnished with wings; because he, to the best of his ability, keeps these things
in mind, of which the contemplation renders even Deity itself divine. By making
the right use of these things remembered from the former life, by constantly
perfecting himself in the perfect mysteries, a man becomes truly perfect — an
initiate into the diviner wisdom."
Hence we may understand why
the sublimer scenes in the Mysteries were always in the night. The life of the
interior spirit is the death of the external nature; and the night of the
physical world denotes the day of the spiritual. Dionysus, the night-sun, is,
therefore, worshipped rather than Helios, orb of day. In the Mysteries were
symbolized the preëxistent condition of the spirit and soul, and the lapse of
the latter into earth-life and Hades, the miseries of that life, the
purification of the soul, and its restoration to divine bliss, or reunion with
spirit. Theon, of Smyrna, aptly compares the philosophical discipline to the
mystic rites: "Philosophy," says he, "may be called the initiation into the true
arcana, and the instruction in the genuine Mysteries. There are five parts of
this initiation: I., the previous purification; II., the admission to
participation in the arcane rites; III., the epoptic revelation; IV., the
investiture or enthroning; V. — the fifth, which is produced from all these, is
friendship and interior communion with God, and the enjoyment of that felicity
which arises from intimate converse with divine beings. . . . Plato denominates
the epopteia, or personal view, the perfect contemplation of things
which are apprehended intuitively, absolute truths and ideas. He also considers
the binding of the head and crowning as analogous to the authority which any one
receives from his instructors, of leading others into the same contemplation.
The fifth gradation is the most perfect felicity arising from hence, and,
according
to Plato, an assimilation to divinity as far as is possible to human beings."*
Such is Platonism. "Out of
Plato," says Ralph Waldo Emerson, "come all things that are still written and
debated among men of thought." He absorbed the learning of his times — of Greece
from Philolaus to Socrates; then of Pythagoras in Italy; then what he could
procure from Egypt and the East. He was so broad that all philosophy, European
and Asiatic, was in his doctrines; and to culture and contemplation he added the
nature and qualities of the poet.
The followers of Plato generally adhered strictly to his psychological
theories. Several, however, like Xenocrates, ventured into bolder speculations.
Speusippus, the nephew and successor of the great philosopher, was the author of
the Numerical Analysis, a treatise on the Pythagorean numbers. Some of
his speculations are not found in the written Dialogues; but as he was
a listener to the unwritten lectures of Plato, the judgment of Enfield is
doubtless correct, that he did not differ from his master. He was evidently,
though not named, the antagonist whom Aristotle criticised, when professing to
cite the argument of Plato against the doctrine of Pythagoras, that all things
were in themselves numbers, or rather, inseparable from the idea of numbers. He
especially endeavored to show that the Platonic doctrine of ideas differed
essentially from the Pythagorean, in that it presupposed numbers and magnitudes
to exist apart from things. He also asserted that Plato taught that there could
be no real knowledge, if the object of that knowledge was not carried
beyond or above the sensible.
But Aristotle was no trustworthy witness. He misrepresented Plato, and he
almost caricatured the doctrines of Pythagoras. There is a canon of
interpretation, which should guide us in our examinations of every philosophical
opinion: "The human mind has, under the necessary operation of its own laws,
been compelled to entertain the same fundamental ideas, and the human heart to
cherish the same feelings in all ages." It is certain that Pythagoras awakened
the deepest intellectual sympathy of his age, and that his doctrines exerted a
powerful influence upon the mind of Plato. His cardinal idea was that there
existed a permanent principle of unity beneath the forms, changes, and other
phenomena of the universe. Aristotle asserted that he taught that "numbers are
the first principles of all entities." Ritter has expressed the opinion that the
formula of Pythagoras should be taken symbolically, which is doubtless correct.
Aristotle goes on to associate these numbers with the "forms" and
"ideas" of Plato. He even declares that Plato said:
————————————————————————————————————
* See Thomas Taylor: "Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries," p. 47. New York: J. W.
Bouton, 1875.
"forms are numbers," and that
"ideas are substantial existences — real beings." Yet Plato did not so teach. He
declared that the final cause was the Supreme Goodness — to ajgaqovn. "Ideas
are objects of pure conception for the human reason, and they are attributes of
the Divine Reason."* Nor did he ever say that "forms are numbers." What
he did say may be found in the Timæus: "God formed things as they first arose according to forms
and numbers."
It is recognized by modern science that all the higher laws of nature assume
the form of quantitative statement. This is perhaps a fuller elaboration or more
explicit affirmation of the Pythagorean doctrine. Numbers were regarded as the
best representations of the laws of harmony which pervade the cosmos. We know
too that in chemistry the doctrine of atoms and the laws of combination are
actually and, as it were, arbitrarily defined by numbers. As Mr. W. Archer
Butler has expressed it: "The world is, then, through all its departments, a
living arithmetic in its development, a realized geometry in its repose."
The key to the Pythagorean dogmas is the general formula of unity in
multiplicity, the one evolving the many and pervading the many. This is the
ancient doctrine of emanation in few words. Even the apostle Paul accepted it as
true. " Ex
autouÆ, kai dij autou', kai ei" auto;n ta; paÆnta " — Out of him and
through him and in him all things are. This, as we can see by the following
quotation, is purely Hindu and Brahmanical:
"When the dissolution — Pralaya — had arrived at its term, the great Being —
Para-Atma or Para-Purusha — the Lord existing through himself, out of whom and
through whom all things were, and are and will be . . . resolved to emanate from
his own substance the various creatures" (Manava-Dharma-Sastra, book
i., slokas 6 and 7).
The mystic Decad 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 is a way of expressing this idea. The
One is God, the Two, matter; the Three, combining Monad and Duad, and partaking
of the nature of both, is the phenomenal world; the Tetrad, or form of
perfection, expresses the emptiness of all; and the Decad, or sum of all,
involves the entire cosmos. The universe is the combination of a thousand
elements, and yet the expression of a single spirit — a chaos to the sense, a
cosmos to the reason.
The whole of this combination of the progression of numbers in the idea of
creation is Hindu. The Being existing through himself, Swayambhu or Swayambhuva,
as he is called by some, is one. He emanates from himself the creative
faculty, Brahma or Purusha (the divine male), and the one becomes Two;
out of this Duad, union of the purely intel-
————————————————————————————————————
* Cousin: "History of Philosophy," I., ix.
xvii
BEFORE THE VEIL.
earth around the sun, and of the
heliocentric system.* But we have good evidence that the latter system
was taught in the Mysteries, and that Socrates died for atheism, i.e.,
for divulging this sacred knowledge. Herakleides adopted fully the Pythagorean
and Platonic views of the human soul, its faculties and its capabilities. He
describes it as a luminous, highly ethereal essence. He affirms that souls
inhabit the milky way before descending "into generation" or sublunary
existence. His dæmons or spirits are airy and vaporous bodies.
In the Epinomis is
fully stated the doctrine of the Pythagorean numbers in relation to created
things. As a true Platonist, its author maintains that wisdom can only be
attained by a thorough inquiry into the occult nature of the creation; it alone
assures us an existence of bliss after death. The immortality of the soul is
greatly speculated upon in this treatise; but its author adds that we can attain
to this knowledge only through a complete comprehension of the numbers; for the
man, unable to distinguish the straight line from a curved one will never have
wisdom enough to secure a mathematical demonstration of the invisible, i.e.,
we must assure ourselves of the objective existence of our soul (astral
body) before we learn that we are in possession of a divine and immortal spirit.
Iamblichus says the same thing; adding, moreover, that it is a secret belonging
to the highest initiation. The Divine Power, he says, always felt indignant with
those "who rendered manifest the composition of the
icostagonus," viz., who delivered the method of inscribing in a sphere the
dodecahedron. †
The idea that "numbers" possessing the greatest virtue, produce always
what is good and never what is evil, refers to justice, equanimity of temper,
and everything that is harmonious. When the author speaks of every star as an
individual soul, he only means what the Hindu initiates and the Hermetists
taught before and after him, viz.: that every star is an independent planet,
which, like our earth, has a soul of its own, every atom of matter being
impregnated with the divine influx of the soul of the world. It breathes and
lives; it feels and suffers as well as enjoys life in its way. What naturalist
is prepared to dispute it on good evidence? Therefore, we must consider the
celestial bodies as the images of gods; as partaking of the divine powers in
their substance; and though they are not immortal in their soul-entity, their
agency in the economy of the universe is entitled to divine honors, such as we
pay to minor gods. The idea is plain, and one must be malevolent indeed to
misrepresent it. If the author of Epinomis places these fiery gods
higher than the animals, plants, and even mankind, all of which, as earthly
creatures, are assigned
————————————————————————————————————
* "Plato und die Alt. Akademie." †
One of the five solid
figures in Geometry.
by him a lower place, who can
prove him wholly wrong? One must needs go deep indeed into the profundity of the
abstract metaphysics of the old philosophies, who would understand that their
various embodiments of their conceptions are, after all, based upon an identical
apprehension of the nature of the First Cause, its attributes and method.
Again when the author of Epinomis locates between these highest and
lowest gods (embodied souls) three classes of dæmons, and peoples the universe
with invisible beings, he is more rational than our modern scientists, who make
between the two extremes one vast hiatus of being, the playground of blind
forces. Of these three classes the first two are invisible; their bodies are
pure ether and fire (planetary spirits); the dæmons
of the third class are clothed with vapory bodies; they are usually invisible,
but sometimes making themselves concrete become visible for a few seconds. These
are the earthly spirits, or our astral souls.
It is these doctrines, which, studied analogically, and on the principle of
correspondence, led the ancient, and may now lead the modern Philaletheian step
by step toward the solution of the greatest mysteries. On the brink of the dark
chasm separating the spiritual from the physical world stands modern science,
with eyes closed and head averted, pronouncing the gulf impassable and
bottomless, though she holds in her hand a torch which she need only lower into
the depths to show her her mistake. But across this chasm, the patient student
of Hermetic philosophy has constructed a bridge.
In his Fragments of Science Tyndall makes the following sad confession: "If you ask me whether
science has solved, or is likely in our day to solve the problem of this
universe, I must shake my head in doubt." If moved by an afterthought, he
corrects himself later, and assures his audience that experimental evidence has
helped him to discover, in the opprobrium-covered matter, the "promise and
potency of every quality of life," he only jokes. It would be as difficult for
Professor Tyndall to offer any ultimate and irrefutable proofs of what he
asserts, as it was for Job to insert a hook into the nose of the leviathan.
To avoid confusion that might easily arise by the frequent employment of
certain terms in a sense different from that familiar to the reader, a few
explanations will be timely. We desire to leave no pretext either for
misunderstanding or misrepresentation. Magic may have one signification to one
class of readers and another to another class. We shall give it the meaning
which it has in the minds of its Oriental students and practitioners. And so
with the words Hermetic Science, Occultism, Hierophant, Adept, Sorcerer,
etc.; there has been little agreement of late as to their meaning. Though
the distinctions between the terms are very often
insignificant — merely ethnic —
still, it may be useful to the general reader to know just what that is. We give
a few alphabetically.
ÆTHROBACY, is the Greek name for walking or being lifted in the air;
levitation, so called, among modern spiritualists. It may be either
conscious or unconscious; in the one case, it is magic; in the other, either
disease or a power which requires a few words of elucidation.
A symbolical explanation of æthrobacy is given in an old Syriac manuscript
which was translated in the fifteenth century by one Malchus, an alchemist. In
connection with the case of Simon Magus, one passage reads thus:
"Simon, laying his face upon the ground, whispered in her ear, 'O mother Earth,
give me, I pray thee, some of thy breath; and I will give thee mine; let me
loose, O mother, that I may carry thy words to the stars, and I will return
faithfully to thee after a while.' And the Earth strengthening her status, none
to her detriment, sent her genius to breathe of her breath on Simon,
while he breathed on her; and the stars rejoiced to be visited by the
mighty One."
The starting-point here is the recognized electro-chemical principle that bodies
similarly electrified repel each other, while those differently electrified
mutually attract. "The most elementary knowledge of chemistry," says Professor
Cooke, "shows that, while radicals of opposite natures combine most eagerly
together, two metals, or two closely-allied metalloids, show but little affinity
for each other."
The earth is a magnetic body; in fact, as some scientists have found, it is
one vast magnet, as Paracelsus affirmed some 300 years ago. It is charged with
one form of electricity — let us call it positive — which it evolves
continuously by spontaneous action, in its interior or centre of motion. Human
bodies, in common with all other forms of matter, are charged with the opposite
form of electricity — negative. That is to say, organic or inorganic bodies, if
left to themselves will constantly and involuntarily charge themselves with, and
evolve the form of electricity opposed to that of the earth itself. Now, what is
weight? Simply the attraction of the earth. "Without the attractions of the
earth you would have no weight," says Professor Stewart;* "and if you had
an earth twice as heavy as this, you would have double the attraction." How
then, can we get rid of this attraction? According to the electrical law above
stated, there is an attraction between our planet and the organisms upon it,
which holds them upon the surface of the ground. But the law of gravitation has
been counteracted in many instances, by levitations of persons and inanimate
objects; how account
————————————————————————————————————
* "The Sun and the Earth."
for this? The condition of our
physical systems, say theurgic philosophers, is largely dependent upon the
action of our will. If well-regulated, it can produce "miracles"; among others a
change of this electrical polarity from negative to positive; the man's
relations with the earth-magnet would then become repellent, and "gravity" for
him would have ceased to exist. It would then be as natural for him to rush into
the air until the repellent force had exhausted itself, as, before, it had been
for him to remain upon the ground. The altitude of his levitation would be
measured by his ability, greater or less, to charge his body with positive
electricity. This control over the physical forces once obtained, alteration of
his levity or gravity would be as easy as breathing.
The study of nervous diseases has established that even in ordinary
somnambulism, as well as in mesmerized somnambulists, the weight of the body
seems to be diminished. Professor Perty mentions a somnambulist, Koehler, who
when in the water could not sink, but floated. The seeress of Prevorst rose to
the surface of the bath and could not be kept seated in it. He speaks of Anna
Fleisher, who being subject to epileptic fits, was often seen by the
Superintendent to rise in the air; and was once, in the presence of two
trustworthy witnesses (two deans) and others, raised two and a half yards from
her bed in a horizontal position. The similar case of Margaret Rule is cited by
Upham in his History of Salem
Witchcraft. "In ecstatic subjects," adds Professor Perty, "the
rising in the air occurs much more frequently than with somnambulists. We are so
accustomed to consider gravitation as being a something absolute and
unalterable, that the idea of a complete or partial rising in opposition to it
seems inadmissible; nevertheless, there are phenomena in which, by means of
material forces, gravitation is overcome. In several diseases — as, for
instance, nervous fever — the weight of the human body seems to be increased,
but in all ecstatic conditions to be diminished. And there may, likewise, be
other forces than material ones which can counteract this power."
A Madrid journal, El Criterio Espiritista, of a recent date,
reports the case of a young peasant girl near Santiago, which possesses a
peculiar interest in this connection. "Two bars of magnetized iron held over her
horizontally, half a metre distant, was sufficient to suspend her body in the
air."
Were our physicians to experiment on such levitated subjects, it would be
found that they are strongly charged with a similar form of electricity to that
of the spot, which, according to the law of gravitation, ought to attract
them, or rather prevent their levitation. And, if some physical nervous
disorder, as well as spiritual ecstasy produce
unconsciously to the subject the
same effects, it proves that if this force in nature were properly studied, it
could be regulated at will.
ALCHEMISTS. — From
Al and Chemi, fire, or the god and patriarch, Kham,
also, the name of Egypt. The Rosicrucians of the middle ages, such as Robertus
de Fluctibus (Robert Fludd), Paracelsus, Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes),
Van Helmont, and others, were all alchemists, who sought for the
hidden spirit in every
inorganic matter. Some people — nay, the great majority — have accused
alchemists of charlatanry and false pretending. Surely such men as Roger Bacon,
Agrippa, Henry Kunrath, and the Arabian Geber (the first to introduce into
Europe some of the secrets of chemistry), can hardly be treated as impostors —
least of all as fools. Scientists who are reforming the science of physics upon
the basis of the atomic theory of Demokritus, as restated by John Dalton,
conveniently forget that Demokritus, of Abdera, was an alchemist, and that the
mind that was capable of penetrating so far into the secret operations of nature
in one direction must have had good reasons to study and become a Hermetic
philosopher. Olaus Borrichias says, that the cradle of alchemy is to be sought
in the most distant times.
ASTRAL
LIGHT. — The same as the sidereal light
of Paracelsus and other Hermetic philosophers. Physically, it is the ether
of modern science. Metaphysically, and in its spiritual, or occult sense, ether
is a great deal more than is often imagined. In occult physics, and alchemy, it
is well demonstrated to enclose within its shoreless waves not only Mr.
Tyndall's "promise and potency of every quality of life," but also the
realization of the potency of every quality of spirit. Alchemists
and Hermetists believe that their astral, or sidereal ether, besides the above
properties of sulphur, and white and red magnesia, or magnes, is the
anima mundi, the workshop of Nature and of all the cosmos, spiritually,
as well as physically. The "grand magisterium" asserts itself in the phenomenon
of mesmerism, in the "levitation" of human and inert objects; and may be called
the ether from its spiritual aspect.
The designation astral is ancient, and was used by some of the
Neoplatonists. Porphyry describes the celestial body which is always joined with
the soul as "immortal, luminous, and star-like." The root of this word may be
found, perhaps, in the Scythic
aistaer — which means star, or
the Assyrian Istar, which, according to Burnouf has the same sense. As
the Rosicrucians regarded
the real, as the direct opposite of the apparent, and
taught that what seems light to matter, is darkness to spirit,
they searched for
the latter in the astral ocean of invisible fire which
encompasses the world; and claim to have traced the equally invisible divine
spirit, which overshadows every man and is erroneously called soul, to
the very throne of the Invisible and Unknown
God. As the great cause must always remain invisible and imponderable, they could prove their assertions merely by demonstration of its effects in this world of matter, by calling them forth from the unknowable down into the knowable universe of effects. That this astral light permeates the whole cosmos, lurking in its latent state even in the minutest particle of rock, they demonstrate by the phenomenon of the spark from flint and from every other stone, whose spirit when forcibly disturbed springs to sight spark-like, and immediately disappears in the realms of the unknowable.
Paracelsus named it the
sidereal light, taking the term from the Latin. He regarded the starry host
(our earth included) as the condensed portions of the astral light
which "fell down into generation and matter," but whose magnetic or spiritual
emanations kept constantly a never-ceasing intercommunication between themselves
and the parent-fount of all — the astral light. "The stars attract from us to
themselves, and we again from them to us," he says. The body is wood and the
life is fire, which comes like the light from the stars and from heaven. "Magic
is the philosophy of alchemy," he says again.* Everything pertaining to
the spiritual world must come to us through the stars, and if we are in
friendship with them, we may attain the greatest magical effects.
"As fire passes through an iron stove, so do the stars pass through man with
all their properties and go into him as the rain into the earth, which gives
fruit out of that same rain. Now observe that the stars surround the
whole earth, as a shell does the egg; through the shell comes the air,
and penetrates to the centre of the world." The human body is subjected as well
as the earth, and planets, and stars, to a double law; it attracts and repels,
for it is saturated through with double magnetism, the influx of the astral
light. Everything is double in nature; magnetism is positive and negative,
active and passive, male and female. Night rests humanity from the day's
activity, and restores the equilibrium of human as well as of cosmic nature.
When the mesmerizer will have learned the grand secret of polarizing the action
and endowing his fluid with a bisexual force he will have become the greatest
magician living. Thus the astral light is androgyne, for equilibrium is the
resultant of two opposing forces eternally reacting upon each other. The result
of this is LIFE. When the two forces are expanded and
remain so long inactive, as to equal one another and so come to a complete rest,
the condition is DEATH.
A human being can blow either a hot or a cold breath; and can absorb either cold
or hot air. Every child knows how to regulate
————————————————————————————————————
* "De Ente Spirituali," lib. iv.; "de Ente Astrorum," book i.; and opera
omnia, vol. i., pp. 634 and 699.
the temperature of his breath;
but how to protect one's self from either hot or cold air, no physiologist has
yet learned with certainty. The astral light alone, as the chief agent in magic,
can discover to us all secrets of nature. The astral light is identical with the
Hindu akâsa, a word which we will now explain.
AKÂSA. — Literally the word means in Sanscrit sky, but in
its mystic sense it signifies the invisible sky; or, as the Brahmans
term it in the Soma-sacrifice (the Gyotishtoma Agnishtoma),
the god Akâsa, or god Sky. The language of the Vedas shows that the
Hindus of fifty centuries ago ascribed to it the same properties as do the
Thibetan lamas of the present day; that they regarded it as the source of life,
the reservoir of all energy, and the propeller of every change of matter. In its
latent state it tallies exactly with our idea of the universal ether; in its
active state it became the Akâsa, the all-directing and omnipotent god. In the
Brahmanical sacrificial mysteries it plays the part of Sadasya, or
superintendent over the magical effects of the religious performance, and it had
its own appointed Hotar (or priest), who took its name. In India, as in other
countries in ancient times, the priests are the representatives on earth of
different gods; each taking the name of the deity in whose name he acts.
The Akâsa is the indispensable agent of every Kritya (magical performance)
either religious or profane. The Brahmanical expression "to stir up the Brahma"
—Brahma jinvati — means to stir up the power which lies latent at the
bottom of every such magical operation, for the Vedic sacrifices are but
ceremonial magic. This power is the Akâsa or the occult electricity;
the alkahest of the alchemists in one sense, or the universal solvent, the same
anima mundi as the astral light. At the moment of the sacrifice, the
latter becomes imbued with the spirit of Brahma, and so for the time being is
Brahma himself. This is the evident origin of the Christian dogma of
transubstantiation. As to the most general effects of the Akâsa, the author of
one of the most modern works on the occult philosophy, Art-Magic, gives
for the first time to the world a most intelligible and interesting explanation
of the Akâsa in connection with the phenomena attributed to its influence by the
fakirs and lamas.
ANTHROPOLOGY. — The science of man; embracing among other things:
Physiology, or that branch of natural science which discloses the
mysteries of the organs and their functions in men, animals, and plants; and
also, and especially,
Psychology, or the great, and in our days, so neglected science of
the
soul, both as an entity distinct
from the spirit and in its relations with the spirit and body. In modern
science, psychology relates only or principally to conditions of the nervous
system, and almost absolutely ignores the psychical essence and nature.
Physicians denominate the science of insanity
psychology, and name
the lunatic chair in medical colleges by that designation.
CHALDEANS, or Kasdim. — At first a tribe, then a caste of
learned kabalists. They were the savants, the magians of Babylonia, astrologers
and diviners. The famous Hillel, the precursor of Jesus in philosophy and in
ethics, was a Chaldean. Franck in his Kabbala points to the close
resemblance of the "secret doctrine" found in the Avesta and the
religious metaphysics of the Chaldees.
DACTYLS (daktulos, a finger). — A name given to the
priests attached to the worship of Kybelé (Cybelè). Some archæologists
derive the name from
davktulo" , finger, because they were ten, the
same in number as the fingers of the hand. But we do not believe the latter
hypothesis is the correct one.
DÆMONS. — A name given by the ancient people, and especially the
philosophers of the Alexandrian school, to all kinds of spirits, whether good or
bad, human or otherwise. The appellation is often synonymous with that of gods
or angels. But some philosophers tried, with good reason, to make a just
distinction between the many classes.
DEMIURGOS, or Demiurge. — Artificer; the Supernal Power which built
the universe. Freemasons derive from this word their phrase of "Supreme
Architect." The chief magistrates of certain Greek cities bore the title.
DERVISHES, or the "whirling charmers," as they are called. Apart
from the austerities of life, prayer and contemplation, the Mahometan devotee
presents but little similarity with the Hindu fakir. The latter may become a sannyasi, or saint and holy mendicant; the former will never reach beyond his
second class of occult manifestations. The dervish may also be a strong
mesmerizer, but he will never voluntarily submit to the abominable and almost
incredible self-punishment which the fakir invents for himself with an
ever-increasing avidity, until nature succumbs and he dies in slow and
excruciating tortures. The most dreadful operations, such as flaying the limbs
alive; cutting off the toes, feet, and legs; tearing out the eyes; and causing
one's self to be buried alive up to the chin in the earth, and passing whole
months in this posture, seem child's play to them. One of the most common
tortures is that of Tshiddy-Parvady.* It consists in suspending the fakir
to one of the
————————————————————————————————————
* Or more commonly chãrkh pũjã.
mobile arms of a kind of gallows
to be seen in the vicinity of many of the temples. At the end of each of these
arms is fixed a pulley over which passes a rope terminated by an iron hook. This
hook is inserted into the bare back of the fakir, who inundating the soil with
blood is hoisted up in the air and then whirled round the gallows. From the
first moment of this cruel operation until he is either unhooked or the flesh of
his back tears out under the weight of the body and the fakir is hurled down on
the heads of the crowd, not a muscle of his face will move. He remains calm and
serious and as composed as if taking a refreshing bath. The fakir will laugh to
scorn every imaginable torture, persuaded that the more his outer body is
mortified, the brighter and holier becomes his inner, spiritual body.
But the Dervish, neither in India, nor in other Mahometan lands, will ever
submit to such operations.
DRUIDS. — A sacerdotal caste which flourished in Britain and Gaul.
ELEMENTAL
SPIRITS. — The creatures evolved in the
four kingdoms of earth, air, fire, and water, and called by the kabalists
gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines. They may be termed the forces of
nature, and will either operate effects as the servile agents of general law, or
may be employed by the disembodied spirits — whether pure or impure — and by
living adepts of magic and sorcery, to produce desired phenomenal results. Such
beings never become men.*
Under the general designation of fairies, and fays, these spirits of
the elements appear in the myth, fable, tradition, or poetry of all nations,
ancient and modern. Their names are legion — peris, devs, djins, sylvans,
satyrs, fauns, elves, dwarfs, trolls, norns, nisses, kobolds, brownies, necks,
stromkarls, undines, nixies, salamanders, goblins, ponkes, banshees, kelpies,
pixies, moss people, good people, good neighbors, wild women, men of peace,
white ladies — and many more. They have been seen, feared, blessed, banned, and
invoked in every quarter of the globe and in every age. Shall we then concede
that all who have met them were hallucinated?
————————————————————————————————————
* Persons who believe in the clairvoyant power, but are disposed to
discredit the existence of any other spirits in nature than disembodied human
spirits, will be interested in an account of certain clairvoyant observations
which appeared in the London Spiritualist of June 29, 1877. A
thunder-storm approaching, the seeress saw "a bright spirit emerge from a dark
cloud and pass with lightning speed across the sky, and, a few minutes after, a
diagonal line of dark spirits in the clouds." These are the Maruts of
the "Vedas" (See Max Müller's "Rig-Veda Sanhita").
The well-known and respected lecturer, author, and clairvoyant, Mrs. Emma
Hardinge Britten, has published accounts of her frequent experiences with these
elemental spirits.
These elementals are the
principal agents of disembodied but never visible spirits at
seances, and the producers of all the phenomena except the subjective.
ELEMENTARY
SPIRITS. — Properly, the
disembodied souls of the depraved; these souls having at some time
prior to death separated from themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their
chance for immortality. Eliphas Levi and some other kabalists make little
distinction between elementary spirits who have been men, and those beings which
people the elements, and are the blind forces of nature. Once divorced from
their bodies, these souls (also called "astral bodies") of purely materialistic
persons, are irresistibly attracted to the earth, where they live a temporary
and finite life amid elements congenial to their gross natures. From having
never, during their natural lives, cultivated their spirituality, but
subordinated it to the material and gross, they are now unfitted for the lofty
career of the pure, disembodied being, for whom the atmosphere of earth is
stifling and mephitic, and whose attractions are all away from it. After a more
or less prolonged period of time these material souls will begin to
disintegrate, and finally, like a column of mist, be dissolved, atom by atom, in
the surrounding elements.
ESSENES — from Asa, a healer. A sect of Jews said by Pliny
to have lived near the Dead Sea "per millia sæculorum" —
for thousands of ages. Some have supposed them to be extreme Pharisees; and
others — which may be the true theory — the descendants of the Benim-nabim
of the Bible, and think they were "Kenites" and "Nazarites." They had many Buddhistic ideas and practices; and it is noteworthy
that the priests of the Great Mother at Ephesus, Diana-Bhavani with
many breasts, were also so denominated. Eusebius, and after him De Quincey,
declared them to be the same as the early Christians, which is more than
probable. The title "brother," used in the early Church, was Essenean: they were
a fraternity, or a koinobion or community like the early converts. It
is noticeable that only the Sadducees, or Zadokites, the priest-caste and their
partisans, persecuted the Christians; the Pharisees were generally scholastic
and mild, and often sided with the latter. James the Just was a Pharisee till
his death; but Paul or Aher was esteemed a schismatic.
EVOLUTION. — The development of higher orders of animals from the
lower. Modern, or so-called exact science, holds but to a one-sided
physical evolution, prudently avoiding and ignoring the higher or spiritual
evolution, which would force our contemporaries to confess the superiority of
the ancient philosophers and psychologists over themselves. The ancient sages,
ascending to the UNKNOWABLE, made their starting-point from the first
manifestation of the unseen, the unavoidable, and from a strict logical
reasoning, the absolutely necessary creative Being, the
Demiurgos of the universe.
Evolution began with them from pure spirit, which descending lower and lower
down, assumed at last a visible and comprehensible form, and became matter.
Arrived at this point, they speculated in the Darwinian method, but on a far
more large and comprehensive basis.
In the Rig-Veda-Sanhita, the oldest book of the World * (to which even our most
prudent Indiologists and Sanscrit scholars assign an antiquity of between two
and three thousand years B.C.), in the first book, "Hymns to the Maruts," it is
said:
"Not-being and
Being are in the highest heaven, in the birthplace of Daksha, in the
lap of Aditi" (Mandala, i, Sukta 166).
"In the first age of the gods, Being (the comprehensible Deity) was born
from Not-being (whom no intellect can comprehend); after it were born the
Regions (the invisible), from them Uttânapada."
"From Uttânapad the Earth was born, the Regions (those that are visible) were
born from the Earth. Daksha was born of Aditi, and Aditi from Daksha" (Ibid.).
Aditi is the Infinite, and Daksha is dakska-pitarah, literally
meaning the father of gods, but understood by Max Müller and Roth to
mean the fathers of strength, "preserving, possessing, granting
faculties." Therefore, it is easy to see that "Daksha, born of Aditi and Aditi
from Daksha," means what the moderns understand by "correlation of forces"; the
more so as we find in this passage (translated by Prof. Müller):
"I place Agni, the source of all beings, the father of strength" (iii., 27,
2), a clear and identical idea which prevailed so much in the doctrines of the
Zoroastrians, the Magians, and the mediæval fire-philosophers. Agni is god of
fire, of the Spiritual Ether, the very substance of the divine essence of the
Invisible God present in every atom of His creation and called by the
Rosicrucians the "Celestial Fire." If we only carefully compare the verses from
this Mandala, one of which runs thus: "The Sky is your father, the Earth your
mother, Soma your brother, Aditi your sister" (i., 191, 6),† with the
inscription on the Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes, we will find
the same substratum of metaphysical philosophy, the identical doctrines!
"As all things were produced by the mediation of one being, so all things
were produced from this one thing by adaptation: 'Its father is the sun; its
mother is the moon'. . . . etc. Separate the earth
from the
————————————————————————————————————
* Translated by Max Müller, Professor of Comparative Philology at the Oxford
University, England.
† "Dyarih vah pitâ, prithivi mâtâ sômah bhrâtâ âditih svasâ."
fire, the subtile from the
gross. . . . What I had to say about the
operation of the sun is completed" (Smaragdine Tablet).*
Professor Max Müller sees in this Mandala "at last, something
like a theogony, though full of contradictions."† The alchemists,
kabalists, and students of mystic philosophy will find therein a perfectly
defined system of Evolution in the Cosmogony of a people who lived a score of
thousands of years before our era. They will find in it, moreover, a perfect
identity of thought and even doctrine with the Hermetic philosophy, and also
that of Pythagoras and Plato.
In Evolution, as it is now beginning to be understood, there is supposed to
be in all matter an impulse to take on a higher form — a supposition clearly
expressed by Manu and other Hindu philosophers of the highest antiquity. The
philosopher's tree illustrates it in the case of the zinc solution. The
controversy between the followers of this school and the Emanationists may be
briefly stated thus: The Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of "the
Unknowable"; the Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved — or, as the
word means, unwombed or born — except it has first been involved, thus
indicating that life is from a spiritual potency above the whole.
FAKIRS. — Religious devotees in East India. They are generally
attached to Brahmanical pagodas and follow the laws of Manu. A strictly
religious fakir will go absolutely naked, with the exception of a small piece of
linen called dhoti, around his loins. They wear their hair long, and it
serves them as a pocket, as they stick in it various objects — such as a pipe, a
small flute called vagudah, the sounds of which throw the serpents into
a cataleptic torpor, and sometimes their bamboo-stick (about one foot long) with
the seven mystical knots on it. This magical stick, or rather rod,
the fakir receives from his guru on the day of his initiation, together
with the three mantrams, which are communicated to him "mouth to ear."
No fakir will be seen without this powerful adjunct of his calling. It is, as
they all claim, the divining rod, the cause of every occult phenomenon produced
by them.‡ The Brahmanical fakir is entire-
————————————————————————————————————
* As the perfect identity of the philosophical and religious doctrines of
antiquity will be fully treated upon in subsequent chapters, we limit our
explanations for the present.
† "Rig-Veda-Anhita," p. 234.
‡ Philostratus assures us that the Brahmins were able, in his time, to
perform the most wonderful cures by merely pronouncing certain magical words.
"The Indian Brahmans carry a staff and a ring, by means of which they are able
to do almost anything." Origenes states the same ("Contra Celsum"). But if a
strong mesmeric fluid — say projected from the eye, and without any other
contact — is not added, no magical words would be efficacious.
ly distinct from the Mussulman
mendicant of India, also called fakirs in some parts of the British territory.
HERMETIST.— From Hermes, the god of Wisdom, known in Egypt, Syria,
and Phœnicia as Thoth, Tat, Adad, Seth, and Sat-an (the latter not to be
taken in the sense applied to it by Moslems and Christians), and in Greece
as Kadmus. The kabalists identify him with Adam Kadmon, the first
manifestation of the Divine Power, and with Enoch. There were two Hermes: the
elder was the Trismegistus, and the second an emanation, or "permutation" of
himself; the friend and instructor of Isis and Osiris. Hermes is the god of the
priestly wisdom, like Mazeus.
HIEROPHANT. — Discloser of sacred learning. The Old Man, the Chief
of the Adepts at the initiations, who explained the arcane knowledge to the
neophytes, bore this title. In Hebrew and Chaldaic the term was Peter,
or opener, discloser; hence, the Pope, as the successor of the hierophant of the
ancient Mysteries, sits in the Pagan chair of "St. Peter." The vindictiveness of
the Catholic Church toward the alchemists, and to arcane and astronomical
science, is explained by the fact that such knowledge was the ancient
prerogative of the hierophant, or representative of Peter, who kept the
mysteries of life and death. Men like Bruno, Galileo, and Kepler, therefore, and
even Cagliostro, trespassed on the preserves of the Church, and were accordingly
murdered.
Every nation had its Mysteries and hierophants. Even the Jews had their
Peter — Tanaïm or Rabbin, like Hillel, Akiba,* and other famous kabalists,
who alone could impart the awful knowledge contained in the Merkaba. In
India, there was in ancient times one, and now there are several hierophants
scattered about the country, attached to the principal pagodas, who are known as
the Brahma-âtmas. In Thibet the chief hierophant is the Dalay, or Taley-Lama of
Lha-ssa.† Among Christian nations, the Catholics alone have preserved
this "heathen" custom, in the person of their Pope, albeit they have sadly
disfigured its majesty and the dignity of the sacred office.
INITIATES. — In times of antiquity, those who had been initiated
into the arcane knowledge taught by the hierophants of the Mysteries; and in our
modern days those who have been initiated by the adepts of mystic lore into the
mysterious knowledge, which, notwithstanding the lapse of ages, has yet a few
real votaries on earth.
————————————————————————————————————
* Akiba was a friend of Aher, said to have been the Apostle Paul of
Christian story. Both are depicted as having visited Paradise. Aher took
branches from the Tree of Knowledge, and so fell from the true (Jewish)
religion. Akiba came away in peace. See 2d Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter
xii.
† Taley means ocean or sea.
KABALIST,
from hlbq ,
KABALA; an unwritten or oral tradition. The kabalist is a student of "secret science," one who interprets the hidden meaning
of the Scriptures with the help of the symbolical Kabala, and
explains the real one by these means. The Tanaim were the first kabalists among
the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the beginning of the third century
before the Christian era. The Books of Ezekiel, Daniel, Henoch, and the
Revelation of St. John, are purely kabalistical. This secret doctrine
is identical with that of the Chaldeans, and includes at the same time much of
the Persian wisdom, or "magic."
LAMAS. — Buddhist monks belonging to the Lamaic religion of Thibet,
as, for instance, friars are the monks belonging to the Popish or Roman Catholic
religion. Every lama is subject to the grand Taley-Lama, the Buddhist pope of
Thibet, who holds his residence at Lha-ssa, and is a reincarnation of Buddha.
MAGE, or Magian; from Mag or Maha. The
word is the root of the word magician. The Maha-âtma (the great Soul or Spirit)
in India had its priests in the pre-Vedic times. The Magians were priests of the
fire-god; we find them among the Assyrians and Babylonians, as well as among the
Persian fire-worshippers. The three magi, also denominated kings, that are said
to have made gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh to the infant Jesus, were
fire-worshippers like the rest, and astrologers; for they saw his star. The high
priest of the Parsis, at Surat, is called Mobed, others derived the
word from Megh; Meh-ab signifying something grand and noble. Zoroaster's
disciples were called Meghestom, according to Kleuker.
MAGICIAN. — This term, once a title of renown and distinction, has
come to be wholly perverted from its true meaning. Once the synonym of all that
was honorable and reverent, of a possessor of learning and wisdom, it has become
degraded into an epithet to designate one who is a pretender and a juggler; a
charlatan, in short, or one who has "sold his soul to the Evil One"; who misuses
his knowledge, and employs it for low and dangerous uses, according to the
teachings of the clergy, and a mass of superstitious fools who believe the
magician a sorcerer and an enchanter. But Christians forget, apparently, that
Moses was also a magician, and Daniel, "Master of the magicians,
astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers" (Daniel, v. II).
The word magician then, scientifically speaking, is derived from Magh,
Mah, Hindu or Sanscrit Maha — great; a man well versed in the
secret or esoteric knowledge; properly a Sacerdote.
MANTICISM, or mantic frenzy. During this state was developed the gift
of prophecy. The two words are nearly synonymous. One was as honored as the
other. Pythagoras and Plato held it in high esteem, and Socrates
advised his disciples to study
Manticism. The Church Fathers, who condemned so severely the mantic frenzy
in Pagan priests and Pythiæ, were not above applying it to their own uses.
The Montanists, who took their name from Montanus, a bishop of Phrygia, who was
considered divinely inspired, rivalled with the manteis or prophets. "Tertullian,
Augustine, and the martyrs of Carthage, were of the number," says the author of
Prophecy, Ancient and Modern. "The Montanists seem to have resembled
the Bacchantes in the wild enthusiasm that characterized their orgies,"
he adds. There is a diversity of opinion as to the origin of the word
Manticism. There was the famous Mantis the Seer, in the days of Melampus
and Prœtus, King of Argos; and there was Manto, the daughter of the prophet of
Thebes, herself a prophetess. Cicero describes prophecy and mantic frenzy by
saying that "in the inner recesses of the mind is divine prophecy hidden and
confined, a divine impulse, which when it burns more vividly is called furor"
(frenzy, madness).
But there is still another etymology possible for the word mantis,
and to which we doubt if the attention of the philologists was ever drawn. The
mantic frenzy may, perchance, have a still earlier origin. The two sacrificial
cups of the Soma-mystery used during the religious rites, and generally known as
grahas, are respectively called
Sukra and Manti.*
It is in the latter manti or manthi cup that Brahma is said to be
"stirred up." While the initiate drinks (albeit sparingly) of this sacred
soma-juice, the Brahma, or rather his "spirit," personified by the god Soma,
enters into the man and takes possession of him. Hence, ecstatic
vision, clairvoyance, and the gift of prophecy. Both kinds of divination — the
natural and the artificial — are aroused by the Soma. The Sukra-cup
awakens that which is given to every man by nature. It unites both spirit and
soul, and these, from their own nature and essence, which are divine, have a
foreknowledge of future things, as dreams, unexpected visions, and
presentiments, well prove. The contents of the other cup, the manti, which
"stirs the Brahma," put thereby the soul in communication not only with the
minor gods — the well-informed but not omniscient spirits — but actually with
the highest divine essence itself. The soul receives a direct illumination from
the presence of its "god"; but as it is not allowed to remember certain things,
well known only in heaven, the initiated person is generally seized with a kind
of sacred frenzy, and upon recovering from it, only remembers that which is
allowed to him. As to the other kind of seers and diviners — those who make a
————————————————————————————————————
* See "Aytareya Brahmanan," 3, I.
profession of and a living by it
— they are usually held to be possessed by a
gandharva, a deity which is nowhere so little honored as in India.
MANTRA. — A Sanskrit word conveying the same idea as the
"Ineffable Name." Some mantras, when pronounced according to magical formula
taught in the Atharva-Veda, produce an instantaneous and wonderful
effect. In its general sense, though, a mantra is either simply a prayer to the
gods and powers of heaven, as taught by the Brahmanical books, and especially
Manu, or else a magical charm. In its esoteric sense, the "word" of the mantra,
or mystic speech, is called by the Brahmans Vâch. It resides in the
mantra, which literally means those parts of the sacred books which are
considered as the Sruti, or direct divine revelation.
MARABUT. — A Mahometan pilgrim who has been to Mekka; a saint,
after whose death his body is placed in an open sepulchre built on the surface,
like other buildings, but in the middle of the streets and public places of
populated cities. Placed inside the small and only room of the tomb (and several
such public sarcophagi of brick and mortar may be seen to this day in the
streets and squares of Cairo), the devotion of the wayfarers keeps a lamp ever
burning at his head. The tombs of some of these marabuts have a great fame for
the miracles they are alleged to perform.
MATERIALIZATION. — A word employed by spiritualists to indicate the
phenomenon of "a spirit clothing himself with a material form." The far less
objectionable term, "form-manifestation," has been recently suggested by Mr. Stainton-Moses, of London. When the real nature of these apparitions is better
comprehended, a still more appropriate name will doubtless be adopted. To call
them materialized spirits is inadmissible, for they are not spirits but animated
portrait-statues.
MAZDEANS, from (Ahura) Mazda. (See Spiegel's Yasna, xl.)
They were the ancient Persian nobles who worshipped Ormazd, and, rejecting
images, inspired the Jews with the same horror for every concrete representation
of the Deity. "They seem in Herodotus's time to have been superseded by the
Magian religionists. The Parsis and Ghebers geberim, mighty men, of
Genesis vi. and x. 8) appear to be Magian religionists.
. . . By a curious muddling
of ideas, Zoro-Aster (Zero,
a circle, a son or
priest, Aster, Ishtar, or Astarte — in Aryan dialect, a star), the title of the
head of the Magians and fire-worshippers, or Surya-ishtara, the sun-worshipper,
is often confounded in modern times with Zara-tustra, the reputed Mazdean
apostle" (Zoroaster).
METEMPSYCHOSIS. — The progress of the soul from one stage of
existence to another. Symbolized and vulgarly believed to be rebirths in animal
bodies. A term generally misunderstood by every class of European and
American society, including many
scientists. The kabalistic axiom, "A stone becomes a plant, a plant an animal,
an animal a man, a man a spirit, and a spirit a god," receives an explanation in
Manu's Manava-Dharma-Sastra, and other Brahmanical books.
MYSTERIES. — Greek teletai, or finishings, as analogous to
teleuteia or death. They were observances, generally kept
secret from the profane and uninitiated, in which were taught by dramatic
representation and other methods, the origin of things, the nature of the human
spirit, its relations to the body, and the method of its purification and
restoration to higher life. Physical science, medicine, the laws of music,
divination, were all taught in the same manner. The Hippocratic oath was but a
mystic obligation. Hippocrates was a priest of Asklepios, some of whose writings
chanced to become public. But the Asklepiades were initiates of the Æsculapian
serpent-worship, as the Bacchantes were of the Dionysia; and both rites were
eventually incorporated with the Eleusinia. We will treat of the Mysteries fully
in the subsequent chapters.
MYSTICS. — Those initiated. But in the mediæval and later periods
the term was applied to men like Bœhmén the Theosophist, Molinos the Quietist,
Nicholas of Basle, and others who believed in a direct interior communion with
God, analogous to the inspiration of the prophets.
NABIA. — Seership, soothsaying. This oldest and most respected of
mystic phenomena, is the name given to prophecy in the Bible, and is
correctly included among the spiritual powers, such as divination, clairvoyant
visions, trance-conditions, and oracles. But while enchanters, diviners, and
even astrologers are strictly condemned in the Mosaic books, prophecy, seership,
and nabia appear as the special gifts of heaven. In early ages they were all
termed Epoptai, the Greek word for seers, clairvoyants; after which
they were designated as Nebim, "the plural of Nebo, the Babylonian god
of wisdom." The kabalist distinguishes between the seer and the
magician; one is passive, the other active; Nebirah, is one who
looks into futurity and a clairvoyant;
Nebi-poel, he who
possesses magic powers. We notice that Elijah and Apollonius resorted
to the same means to isolate themselves from the disturbing influences of the
outer world, viz.: wrapping their heads entirely in a woolen mantle; from its
being an electric non-conductor we must suppose.
OCCULTIST. — One who studies the various branches of occult
science. The term is used by the French kabalists (See Eliphas Levi's works).
Occultism embraces the whole range of psychological, physiological, cosmical,
physical, and spiritual phenomena. From the word occult, hidden or
secret; applying therefore to the study of the
Kabala, astrology,
alchemy, and all arcane sciences.
PAGAN
GODS. —
This term gods is erroneously understood by most of the reading public, to mean
idols. The idea attached to them is not that of something objective or
anthropomorphical. With the exception of occasions when "gods" mean either
divine planetary entities (angels), or disembodied spirits of pure men, the term
simply conveys to the mind of the mystic — whether Hindu Hotar, Mazdean Mage,
Egyptian hierophant, or disciple of the Greek philosophers — the idea of a
visible or cognized manifestation of an invisible potency of nature. And such
occult potencies are invoked under the appellation of various gods, who, for the
time being, are personating these powers. Thus every one of the numberless
deities of the Hindu, Greek, and Egyptian Pantheons, are simply Powers of the
"Unseen Universe." When the officiating Brahman invokes Aditya — who, in her
cosmic character, is the goddess-sun — he simply commands that potency
(personified in some god), which, as he asserts, "resides in the Mantra, as the
sacred Vâch." These god-powers are allegorically regarded as the divine
Hotars of the Supreme One; while the priest (Brahman) is the human
Hotar who officiates on earth, and representing that particular Power becomes,
ambassador-like, invested with the very potency which he personates.
PITRIS. — It is generally believed that the Hindu term Pitris
means the spirits of our direct ancestors; of disembodied people. Hence the
argument of some spiritualists that fakirs, and other Eastern wonder-workers,
are mediums; that they themselves confess to being unable to produce
anything without the help of the Pitris, of whom they are the obedient
instruments. This is in more than one sense erroneous. The Pitris are
not the ancestors of the present living men, but those of the human kind or
Adamic race; the spirits of human races which, on the great scale of
descending evolution, preceded our races of men, and were physically, as well as
spiritually, far superior to our modern pigmies. In Manava-Dharma-Sastra
they are called the Lunar ancestors.
PYTHIA, or Pythoness. — Webster dismisses the word very briefly by
saying that it was the name of one who delivered the oracles at the Temple of
Delphi, and "any female supposed to have the spirit of divination in her —
a witch," which is neither complimentary, exact, nor just. A Pythia, upon the
authority of Plutarch, Iamblichus, Lamprias, and others, was a nervous
sensitive; she was chosen from among the poorest class, young and pure. Attached
to the temple, within whose precincts she had a room, secluded from every other,
and to which no one but the priest, or seer, had admittance, she had no
communications with the outside world, and her life was more strict and ascetic
than that of a Catholic nun. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a fissure
in the ground, through which arose intoxicating vapors, these subterranean
exhalations penetrating her
whole system produced the prophetic mania. In this abnormal state she delivered
oracles. She was sometimes called ventriloqua vates,* the
ventriloquist-prophetess.
The ancients placed the astral soul of man,
fuch
, or his self-consciousness, in the pit of the stomach. The Brahmans shared
this belief with Plato and other philosophers. Thus we find in the fourth verse
of the second Nabhânedishtha Hymn it is said: "Hear, O sons of the gods
(spirits) one who speaks through his navel (nâbhâ) for he hails you in your
dwellings!"
Many of the Sanscrit scholars agree that this belief is one of the most
ancient among the Hindus. The modern fakirs, as well as the ancient
gymnosophists, unite themselves with their Âtman and the Deity by remaining
motionless in contemplation and concentrating their whole thought on their
navel. As in modern somnambulic phenomena, the navel was regarded as "the circle
of the sun," the seat of internal divine light.† Is the fact of a number
of modern somnambulists being enabled to read letters, hear, smell, and see,
through that part of their body to be regarded again as a simple "coincidence,"
or shall we admit at last that the old sages knew something more of
physiological and psychological mysteries than our modern Academicians? In
modern Persia, when a "magician" (often simply a mesmerizer) is consulted upon
occasions of theft and other puzzling occurrences, he makes his manipulations
over the pit of his stomach, and so brings himself into a state of clairvoyance.
Among the modern Parsis, remarks a translator of the Rig-vedas, there
exists a belief up to the present day that their adepts have a flame in their
navel, which enlightens to them all darkness and discloses the spiritual world,
as well as all things unseen, or at a distance. They call it the lamp of the
Deshtur, or high priest; the light of the Dikshita (the initiate), and
otherwise designate it by many other names.
SAMOTHRACES. — A designation of the Fane-gods worshipped at
Samothracia in the Mysteries. They are considered as identical with the Kabeiri,
Dioskuri, and Korybantes. Their names were mystical — denoting Pluto, Ceres or
Proserpina, Bacchus, and Æsculapius or Hermes.
SHAMANS, or Samaneans. — An order of Buddhists among the Tartars,
especially those of Siberia. They are possibly akin to the philosophers
————————————————————————————————————
* See Pantheon: "Myths," p. 31; also Aristophanes in "Vœstas," i., reg.
28.
† The oracle of Apollo was at Delphos, the city of the
delfu"
, womb or abdomen; the place of the temple was denominated the omphalos
or navel. The symbols are female and lunary; reminding us that the Arcadians
were called Proseleni, pre-Hellenic or more ancient than the period when Ionian
and Olympian lunar worship was introduced.
anciently known as
Brachmanes, mistaken sometimes for Brahmans.* They are all magicians,
or rather sensitives or mediums artificially developed. At present those
who act as priests among the Tartars are generally very ignorant, and far below
the fakirs in knowledge and education. Both men and women may be Shamans.
SOMA.— This Hindu sacred beverage answers to the Greek ambrosia or
nectar, drunk by the gods of Olympus. A cup of kykeon was also quaffed by the
mysta at the Eleusinian initiation. He who drinks it easily reaches Bradhna,
or place of splendor (Heaven). The soma-drink known to Europeans is not the
genuine beverage, but its substitute; for the initiated priests alone
can taste of the real soma; and even kings and rajas, when sacrificing, receive
the substitute. Haug shows by his own confession, in his Aytareya Brahmanan,
that it was not the Soma that he tasted and found nasty, but the juice from
the roots of the Nyagradha, a plant or bush which grows on the hills of Poona.
We were positively informed that the majority of the sacrificial priests of the
Dekkan have lost the secret of the true soma. It can be found neither in the
ritual books nor through oral information. The true followers of the primitive
Vedic religion are very few; these are the alleged descendants from the
Rishis, the real Agnihôtris, the initiates of the great Mysteries. The
soma-drink is also commemorated in the Hindu Pantheon, for it is called the
King-Soma. He who drinks of it is made to participate in the heavenly king,
because he becomes filled with it, as the Christian apostles and their converts
became filled with the Holy Ghost, and purified of their sins. The soma makes a
new man of the initiate; he is reborn and transformed, and his spiritual nature
overcomes the physical; it gives the divine power of inspiration, and develops
the clairvoyant faculty to the utmost. According to the exoteric explanation the
soma is a plant, but, at the same time it is an angel. It forcibly connects the
inner, highest "spirit" of man, which spirit is an angel like the
mystical soma, with his "irrational soul," or astral body, and thus united by
the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature, and
participate during life in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven.
Thus the Hindu soma is mystically, and in all respects the same that the
Eucharistic supper is to the Christian. The idea is similar. By
————————————————————————————————————
* From the accounts of Strabo and Megasthenes, who visited Palibothras, it
would seem that the persons termed by him Samanean, or Brachmane priests, were
simply Buddhists. "The singularly subtile replies of the Samanean or Brahman
philosophers, in their interview with the conqueror, will be found to contain
the spirit of the Buddhist doctrine," remarks Upham. (See the "History and
Doctrine of Buddhism"; and Hale's "Chronology," vol. iii, p. 238.)
means of the sacrificial prayers
— the mantras — this liquor is supposed to be transformed on the spot into real
soma— — or the angel, and even into Brahma himself. Some missionaries have
expressed themselves very indignantly about this ceremony, the more so, that,
generally speaking, the Brahmans use a kind of spirituous liquor as a
substitute. But do the Christians believe less fervently in the
transubstantiation of the communion-wine into the blood of Christ, because this
wine happens to be more or less spirituous? Is not the idea of the symbol
attached to it the same? But the missionaries say that this hour of
soma-drinking is the golden hour of Satan, who lurks at the bottom of the Hindu
sacrificial cup.*
SPIRIT. — The lack of any mutual agreement between writers in the
use of this word has resulted in dire confusion. It is commonly made synonymous
with soul; and the
lexicographers countenance the usage. This is the natural result of our
ignorance of the other word, and repudiation of the classification adopted by
the ancients. Elsewhere we attempt to make clear the distinction between the
terms "spirit" and "soul." There are no more important passages in this work.
Meanwhile, we will only add that "spirit" is the
nou'" of Plato, the immortal, immaterial, and purely divine principle in
man — the crown of the human Triad; whereas,
SOUL is the
fuch
, or the nephesh of the Bible; the vital principle, or
the breath of life, which every animal, down to the infusoria, shares with man.
In the translated Bible
it stands indifferently for life, blood, and soul. "Let us not kill
his nephesh," says the original text: "let us not kill him,"
translate the Christians (Genesis xxxvii. 21), and so on.
THEOSOPHISTS.— In the mediæval ages it was the name by which were
known the disciples of Paracelsus of the sixteenth century, the so-called
fire-philosophers or Philosophi per ignem. As well as the Platonists
they regarded the soul
fuch
and the divine spirit, nous
(nou'"
)as a particle of the great Archos — a fire taken from the eternal ocean of
light.
The Theosophical Society, to which these volumes are dedicated by the author
as a mark of affectionate regard, was organized at New York in 1875. The object
of its founders was to experiment practically in the occult powers of Nature,
and to collect and disseminate among Christians information about the Oriental
religious philosophies. Later, it has determined to spread among the "poor
benighted heathen" such evi-
————————————————————————————————————
* In their turn, the heathen may well ask the missionaries what sort of a
spirit lurks at the bottom of the sacrificial beer-bottle. That evangelical New
York journal, the "Independent," says: "A late English traveller found a
simple-minded Baptist mission church, in far-off Burmah, using for the communion
service, and we doubt not with God's blessing, Bass's pale ale instead of wine."
Circumstances alter cases, it seems!
dences as to the practical
results of Christianity as will at least give both sides of the story to the
communities among which missionaries are at work. With this view it has
established relations with associations and individuals throughout the East, to
whom it furnishes authenticated reports of the ecclesiastical crimes and
misdemeanors, schisms and heresies, controversies and litigations, doctrinal
differences and biblical criticisms and revisions, with which the press of
Christian Europe and America constantly teems. Christendom has been long and
minutely informed of the degradation and brutishness into which Buddhism,
Brahmanism, and Confucianism have plunged their deluded votaries, and many
millions have been lavished upon foreign missions under such false
representations. The Theosophical Society, seeing daily exemplifications of this
very state of things as the sequence of Christian teaching and example — the
latter especially — thought it simple justice to make the facts known in
Palestine, India, Ceylon, Cashmere, Tartary, Thibet, China, and Japan, in all
which countries it has influential correspondents. It may also in time have much
to say about the conduct of the missionaries to those who contribute to their
support.
THEURGIST.— From
Qeo"
, god, and
ergon
, work. The first school of practical theurgy in the Christian period was
founded by Iamblichus among the Alexandrian Platonists; but the priests attached
to the temples of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia, and who took an active part in
the evocations of the gods during the Sacred Mysteries, were known by this name
from the earliest archaic period. The purpose of it was to make spirits visible
to the eyes of mortals. A theurgist was one expert in the esoteric learning of
the Sanctuaries of all the great countries. The Neoplatonists of the school of
Iamblichus were called theurgists, for they performed the so-called "ceremonial
magic," and evoked the "spirits" of the departed heroes, "gods," and Daimonia (
daimonia , divine, spiritual entities). In the rare cases when the
presence of a tangible and visible spirit was required, the
theurgist had to furnish the weird apparition with a portion of his own flesh
and blood — he had to perform the
theopœa, or
the "creation of gods," by a mysterious process well known to the modern fakirs
and initiated Brahmans of India. This is what is said in the Book of
Evocations of the pagodas. It shows the perfect identity of rites and
ceremonial between the oldest Brahmanic theurgy and that of the Alexandrian
Platonists:
"The Brahman Grihasta (the evocator) must be in a state of complete purity
before he ventures to call forth the Pitris."
After having prepared a lamp, some sandal, incense, etc., and having traced
the magic circles taught to him by the superior guru, in order to keep away
bad spirits, he "ceases to breathe, and calls the fire to his
help to disperse his body." He
pronounces a certain number of times the sacred word, and "his soul escapes from
his body, and his body disappears, and the soul of the evoked spirit descends
into the double body and animates it." Then "His (Grihasta's) soul
reënters into his body, whose subtile particles have again been aggregating,
after having formed of their emanations an aërial body to the spirit he evoked."
And now, that he has formed for the Pitri a body with the particles the most
essential and pure of his own, the grihasta is allowed, after the ceremonial
sacrifice is over, to "converse with the souls of the ancestors and the Pitris,
and offer them questions on the mysteries of the Being and the
transformations of the imperishable."
"Then after having blown out his lamp he must light it again, and set at
liberty the bad spirits shut out from the place by the magical circles, and
leave the sanctuary of the Pitris."*
The school of Iamblichus was distinct from that of Plotinus and
Porphyry, who were strongly against ceremonial magic and practical theurgy as
dangerous, though these two eminent men firmly believed in both. "The
theurgic or benevolent magic, the Goëtic, or dark and evil
necromancy, were alike in preëminent repute during the first century of
the Christian era."† But never have any of the highly moral and pious
philosophers, whose fame has descended to us spotless of any evil deed,
practiced any other kind of magic than the theurgic, or benevolent, as
Bulwer-Lytton terms it. "Whoever is acquainted with the nature of
divinely luminous appearances
( fasmata ) knows also on what account it is requisite to abstain
from all birds (animal food), and especially for him who hastens to be liberated
from terrestrial concerns and to be established with the celestial gods," says
Porphyry.‡
Though he refused to practice theurgy himself, Porphyry, in his Life of
Plotinus, mentions a priest of Egypt, who, "at the request of a certain
friend of Plotinus (which friend was perhaps Porphyry himself, remarks T.
Taylor), exhibited to Plotinus, in the temple of Isis at Rome, the familiar
daimon, or, in modern language, the guardian angel of that
philosopher."§
The popular, prevailing idea was that the theurgists, as well as the
magicians, worked wonders, such as evoking the souls or shadows of the heroes
and gods, and doing other thaumaturgic works by supernatural powers.
YAJNA. — "The Yajna," say the Brahmans, exists from eternity, for
————————————————————————————————————
* "Book of Brahmanical Evocations," part iii.
† Bulwer-Lytton: "Last Days of Pompeii," p. 147.
‡ "Select Works," p. 159. §
Ibid., p. 92.
it proceeded forth from the
Supreme One, the Brahma-Prajapâti, in whom it lay dormant from "no
beginning." It is the key to the TRAIVIDYA, the thrice sacred science contained
in the Rig verses, which teaches the Yagus or sacrificial mysteries. "The Yajna"
exists as an invisible thing at all times; it is like the latent power of
electricity in an electrifying machine, requiring only the operation of a
suitable apparatus in order to be elicited. It is supposed to extend from the
Ahavaniya or sacrificial fire to the heavens, forming a bridge or
ladder by means of which the sacrificer can communicate with the world of gods
and spirits, and even ascend when alive to their abodes.*
This Yajna is
again one of the forms of the Akâsa, and the mystic word calling it into
existence and pronounced mentally by the initiated Priest is the Lost Word
receiving impulse through WILL-POWER.
To complete the list, we will now add that in the course of the following
chapters, whenever we use the term Archaic, we mean before the time of
Pythagoras; when Ancient, before the time of Mahomet; and when
Mediæval, the period
between Mahomet and Martin Luther. It will only be necessary to infringe the
rule when from time to time we may have to speak of nations of a pre-Pythagorean
antiquity, and will adopt the common custom of calling them "ancient."
——————————
Before closing this initial
chapter, we venture to say a few words in explanation of the plan of this work.
Its object is not to force upon the public the personal views or theories of its
author; nor has it the pretensions of a scientific work, which aims at creating
a revolution in some department of thought. It is rather a brief summary of the
religions, philosophies, and universal traditions of human kind, and the
exegesis of the same, in the spirit of those secret doctrines, of which none —
thanks to prejudice and bigotry — have reached Christendom in so unmutilated a
form, as to secure it a fair judgment. Since the days of the unlucky mediæval
philosophers, the last to write upon these secret doctrines of which they were
the depositaries, few men have dared to brave persecution and prejudice by
placing their knowledge upon record. And these few have never, as a rule,
written for the public, but only for those of their own and succeeding times who
possessed the key to their jargon. The multitude, not understanding them or
their doctrines, have been accustomed to regard them en masse as either
charlatans or dreamers. Hence the unmerited contempt into which the study of the
noblest of sciences — that of the spiritual man — has gradually fallen.
————————————————————————————————————
* "Aitareya Brahmanan," Introduction.
In undertaking to inquire into
the assumed infallibility of Modern Science and Theology, the author has been
forced, even at the risk of being thought discursive, to make constant
comparison of the ideas, achievements, and pretensions of their representatives,
with those of the ancient philosophers and religious teachers. Things the most
widely separated as to time, have thus been brought into immediate
juxtaposition, for only thus could the priority and parentage of discoveries and
dogmas be determined. In discussing the merits of our scientific contemporaries,
their own confessions of failure in experimental research, of baffling
mysteries, of missing links in their chains of theory, of inability to
comprehend natural phenomena, of ignorance of the laws of the causal world, have
furnished the basis for the present study. Especially (since Psychology has been
so much neglected, and the East is so far away that few of our investigators
will ever get there to study that science where alone it is understood), we will
review the speculations and policy of noted authorities in connection with those
modern psychological phenomena which began at Rochester and have now overspread
the world. We wish to show how inevitable were their innumerable failures,
and how they must continue until these pretended authorities of the West go to
the Brahmans and Lamaists of the far Orient, and respectfully ask them to impart
the alphabet of true science. We have laid no charge against scientists
that is not supported by their own published admissions, and if our citations
from the records of antiquity rob some of what they have hitherto viewed as
well-earned laurels, the fault is not ours but Truth's. No man worthy of the
name of philosopher would care to wear honors that rightfully belong to another.
Deeply sensible of the Titanic struggle that is now in progress between
materialism and the spiritual aspirations of mankind, our constant endeavor has
been to gather into our several chapters, like weapons into armories, every fact
and argument that can be used to aid the latter in defeating the former. Sickly
and deformed child as it now is, the materialism of To-Day is born of the brutal
Yesterday. Unless its growth is arrested, it may become our master. It is the
bastard progeny of the French Revolution and its reaction against ages of
religious bigotry and repression. To prevent the crushing of these spiritual
aspirations, the blighting of these hopes, and the deadening of that intuition
which teaches us of a God and a hereafter, we must show our false theologies in
their naked deformity, and distinguish between divine religion and human dogmas.
Our voice is raised for spiritual freedom, and our plea made for enfranchisement
from all tyranny, whether of SCIENCE or
THEOLOGY.
——————————
——————————
"Ego sum qui sum."
— An
axiom of Hermetic Philosophy.
"We commenced research where modern conjecture closes its faithless wings. And with us, those were the common elements of science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild chimeras, or despair of as unfathomable mysteries." — BULWER'S "ZANONI."
THERE
exists somewhere in this wide world an old Book — so very old that our modern
antiquarians might ponder over its pages an indefinite time, and still not quite
agree as to the nature of the fabric upon which it is written. It is the only
original copy now in existence. The most ancient Hebrew document on occult
learning — the Siphra Dzeniouta — was compiled from it, and
that at a time when the former was already considered in the light of a literary
relic. One of its illustrations represents the Divine Essence emanating from
ADAM * like a luminous arc proceeding to form a circle;
and then, having attained the highest point of its circumference, the ineffable
Glory bends back again, and returns to earth, bringing a higher type of humanity
in its vortex. As it approaches nearer and nearer to our planet, the Emanation
becomes more and more shadowy, until upon touching the ground it is as black as
night.
A conviction, founded upon seventy thousand years of experience,†
as they allege, has been entertained by hermetic philosophers of all periods
that matter has in time become, through sin, more gross and dense than it was at
man's first formation; that, at the beginning, the
————————————————————————————————————
* The name is used in the sense of the Greek word anqropo"
.
† The traditions of the Oriental Kabalists claim their science to be
older than that. Modern scientists may doubt and reject the assertion. They
cannot prove it false.
human body was of a half-ethereal nature; and that, before the fall, mankind communed freely with the now unseen universes. But since that time matter has become the formidable barrier between us and the world of spirits. The oldest esoteric traditions also teach that, before the mystic Adam, many races of human beings lived and died out, each giving place in its turn to another. Were these precedent types more perfect? Did any of them belong to the winged race of men mentioned by Plato in Phædrus? It is the special province of science to solve the problem. The caves of France and the relics of the stone age afford a point at which to begin.
As the cycle proceeded, man's eyes were more and more opened, until he came to know "good and evil" as well as the Elohim themselves. Having reached its summit, the cycle began to go downward. When the arc attained a certain point which brought it parallel with the fixed line of our terrestrial plane, the man was furnished by nature with "coats of skin," and the Lord God "clothed them."
This same belief in the pre-existence of a far more spiritual race than the one to which we now belong can be traced back to the earliest traditions of nearly every people. In the ancient Quiche manuscript, published by Brasseur de Bourbourg — the Popol Vuh — the first men are mentioned as a race that could reason and speak, whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once. According to Philo Judæus, the air is filled with an invisible host of spirits, some of whom are free from evil and immortal, and others are pernicious and mortal. "From the sons of EL we are descended, and sons of EL must we become again." And the unequivocal statement of the anonymous Gnostic who wrote The Gospel according to John, that "as many as received Him," i.e., who followed practically the esoteric doctrine of Jesus, would "become the sons of God," points to the same belief. (i., 12.) "Know ye not, ye are gods?" exclaimed the Master. Plato describes admirably in Phædrus the state in which man once was, and what he will become again: before, and after the "loss of his wings"; when "he lived among the gods, a god himself in the airy world." From the remotest periods religious philosophies taught that the whole universe was filled with divine and spiritual beings of divers races. From one of these evolved, in the course of time, ADAM, the primitive man.
The Kalmucks and some tribes of Siberia also describe in their legends earlier creations than our present race. These beings, they say, were possessed of almost boundless knowledge, and in their audacity even threatened rebellion against the Great Chief Spirit. To punish their presumption and humble them, he imprisoned them in bodies, and
so shut in their senses. From these they can escape but through long repentance, self-purification, and development. Their Shamans, they think, occasionally enjoy the divine powers originally possessed by all human beings.
The Astor Library of New York has recently been enriched by a facsimile of an Egyptian Medical Treatise, written in the sixteenth century B.C. (or, more precisely, 1552 B.C.), which, according to the commonly received chronology, is the time when Moses was just twenty-one years of age. The original is written upon the inner bark of Cyperus papyrus, and has been pronounced by Professor Schenk, of Leipsig, not only genuine, but also the most perfect ever seen. It consists of a single sheet of yellow-brown papyrus of finest quality, three-tenths of a metre wide, more than twenty metres long, and forming one roll divided into one hundred and ten pages, all carefully numbered. It was purchased in Egypt, in 1872-3, by the archæologist Ebers, of "a well-to-do Arab from Luxor." The New York Tribune, commenting upon the circumstance, says: The papyrus "bears internal evidence of being one of the six Hermetic Books on Medicine, named by Clement of Alexandria."
The editor further says: "At the time of Iamblichus, A.D. 363, the priests of Egypt showed forty-two books which they attributed to Hermes (Thuti). Of these, according to that author, thirty-six contained the history of all human knowledge; the last six treated of anatomy, of pathology, of affections of the eye, instruments of surgery, and of medicines.* The Papyrus Ebers is indisputably one of these ancient Hermetic works."
If so clear a ray of light has been thrown upon ancient Egyptian science, by the accidental (?) encounter of the German archæologist with one "well-to-do Arab" from Luxor, how can we know what sunshine may be let in upon the dark crypts of history by an equally accidental meeting between some other prosperous Egyptian and another enterprising student of antiquity!
The discoveries of modern science do not disagree with the oldest traditions
which claim an incredible antiquity for our race.
Within the last few years geology,
which previously had only conceded that man could be traced as far back as the
tertiary period, has found unanswerable proofs that human existence antedates
the last glaciation of Europe — over 250,000 years! A hard nut, this, for
Patristic Theology to crack; but an accepted fact with the ancient philosophers.
————————————————————————————————————
* Clement of Alexandria asserted that in his day the Egyptian priests
possessed forty-two Canonical Books.
Moreover, fossil implements have been exhumed together with human remains, which show that man hunted in those remote times, and knew how to build a fire. But the forward step has not yet been taken in this search for the origin of the race; science comes to a dead stop, and waits for future proofs. Unfortunately, anthropology and psychology possess no Cuvier; neither geologists nor archæologists are able to construct, from the fragmentary bits hitherto discovered, the perfect skeleton of the triple man — physical, intellectual, and spiritual. Because the fossil implements of man are found to become more rough and uncouth as geology penetrates deeper into the bowels of the earth, it seems a proof to science that the closer we come to the origin of man, the more savage and brute-like he must be. Strange logic! Does the finding of the remains in the cave of Devon prove that there were no contemporary races then who were highly civilized? When the present population of the earth have disappeared, and some archæologist belonging to the "coming race" of the distant future shall excavate the domestic implements of one of our Indian or Andaman Island tribes, will he be justified in concluding that mankind in the nineteenth century was "just emerging from the Stone Age"?
It has lately been the
fashion to speak of "the untenable conceptions of an uncultivated past." As
though it were possible to hide behind an epigram the intellectual quarries out
of which the reputations of so many modern philosophers have been carved!
Just as Tyndall is ever ready to disparage ancient philosophers — for a
dressing-up of whose ideas more than one distinguished scientist has derived
honor and credit — so the geologists seem more and more inclined to take for
granted that all of the archaic races were contemporaneously in a state of dense
barbarism. But not all of our best authorities agree in this opinion. Some of
the most eminent maintain exactly the reverse. Max Müller, for instance, says:
"Many things are still unintelligible to us, and the hieroglyphic language of
antiquity records but half of the mind's unconscious intentions. Yet more and
more the image of man, in whatever clime we meet him, rises before us, noble and
pure from the very beginning; even his errors we learn to understand, even his
dreams we begin to interpret. As far as we can trace back the footsteps of man,
even on the lowest strata of history, we see the divine gift of a sound and
sober intellect belonging to him from the very first, and the idea of a humanity
emerging slowly from the depths of an animal brutality can never be maintained
again." *
————————————————————————————————————
* "Chips from a German Work-shop," vol. ii., p. 7. "Comparative Mythology."
As it is claimed to be unphilosophical to inquire into first causes, scientists now occupy themselves with considering their physical effects. The field of scientific investigation is therefore bounded by physical nature. When once its limits are reached, enquiry must stop, and their work be recommenced. With all due respect to our learned men, they are like the squirrel upon its revolving wheel, for they are doomed to turn their "matter" over and over again. Science is a mighty potency, and it is not for us pigmies to question her. But the "scientists" are not themselves science embodied any more than the men of our planet are the planet itself. We have neither the right to demand, nor power to compel our "modern-day philosopher" to accept without challenge a geographical description of the dark side of the moon. But, if in some lunar cataclysm one of her inhabitants should be hurled thence into the attraction of our atmosphere, and land, safe and sound, at Dr. Carpenter's door, he would be indictable as recreant to professional duty if he should fail to set the physical problem at rest.
For a man of science to refuse an opportunity to investigate any new phenomenon, whether it comes to him in the shape of a man from the moon, or a ghost from the Eddy homestead, is alike reprehensible.
Whether arrived at by the method of Aristotle, or that of Plato, we need not stop to inquire; but it is a fact that both the inner and outer natures of man are claimed to have been thoroughly understood by the ancient andrologists. Notwithstanding the superficial hypotheses of geologists, we are beginning to have almost daily proofs in corroboration of the assertions of those philosophers.
They divided the interminable periods of human existence on this planet into cycles, during each of which mankind gradually reached the culminating point of highest civilization and gradually relapsed into abject barbarism. To what eminence the race in its progress had several times arrived may be feebly surmised by the wonderful monuments of old, still visible, and the descriptions given by Herodotus of other marvels of which no traces now remain. Even in his days the gigantic structures of many pyramids and world-famous temples were but masses of ruins. Scattered by the unrelenting hand of time, they are described by the Father of History as "these venerable witnesses of the long bygone glory of departed ancestors." He "shrinks from speaking of divine things," and gives to posterity but an imperfect description from hearsay of some marvellous subterranean chambers of the Labyrinth, where lay — and now lie — concealed, the sacred remains of the King-Initiates.
We can judge, moreover, of the lofty civilization reached in some
periods of antiquity by the historical descriptions of the ages of the Ptolemies, yet in that epoch the arts and sciences were considered to be degenerating, and the secret of a number of the former had been already lost. In the recent excavations of Mariette-Bey, at the foot of the Pyramids, statues of wood and other relics have been exhumed, which show that long before the period of the first dynasties the Egyptians had attained to a refinement and perfection which is calculated to excite the wonder of even the most ardent admirers of Grecian art. Bayard Taylor describes these statues in one of his lectures, and tells us that the beauty of the heads, ornamented with eyes of precious stones and copper eyelids, is unsurpassed. Far below the stratum of sand in which lay the remains gathered into the collections of Lepsius, Abbott, and the British Museum, were found buried the tangible proofs of the hermetic doctrine of cycles which has been already explained.
Dr. Schliemann, the enthusiastic Hellenist, has recently found, in his excavations in the Troad, abundant evidences of the same gradual change from barbarism to civilization, and from civilization to barbarism again. Why then should we feel so reluctant to admit the possibility that, if the antediluvians were so much better versed than ourselves in certain sciences as to have been perfectly acquainted with important arts, which we now term lost, they might have equally excelled in psychological knowledge? Such a hypothesis must be considered as reasonable as any other until some countervailing evidence shall be discovered to destroy it.
Every true savant admits that in many respects human knowledge is yet in its infancy. Can it be that our cycle began in ages comparatively recent? These cycles, according to the Chaldean philosophy, do not embrace all mankind at one and the same time. Professor Draper partially corroborates this view by saying that the periods into which geology has "found it convenient to divide the progress of man in civilization are not abrupt epochs which hold good simultaneously for the whole human race"; giving as an instance the "wandering Indians of America," who "are only at the present moment emerging from the stone age." Thus more than once scientific men have unwittingly confirmed the testimony of the ancients.
Any Kabalist well acquainted with the Pythagorean system of numerals and geometry can demonstrate that the metaphysical views of Plato were based upon the strictest mathematical principles. "True mathematics," says the Magicon, "is something with which all higher sciences are connected; common mathematics is but a deceitful phantasmagoria, whose much-praised infallibility only arises from this — that
materials, conditions, and references are made its foundation." Scientists who believe they have adopted the Aristotelian method only because they creep when they do not run from demonstrated particulars to universals, glorify this method of inductive philosophy, and reject that of Plato, which they treat as unsubstantial. Professor Draper laments that such speculative mystics as Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus should have taken the place "of the severe geometers of the old museum." * He forgets that geometry, of all sciences the only one which proceeds from universals to particulars, was precisely the method employed by Plato in his philosophy. As long as exact science confines its observations to physical conditions and proceeds Aristotle-like, it certainly cannot fail. But notwithstanding that the world of matter is boundless for us, it still is finite; and thus materialism will turn forever in this vitiated circle, unable to soar higher than the circumference will permit. The cosmological theory of numerals which Pythagoras learned from the Egyptian hierophants, is alone able to reconcile the two units, matter and spirit, and cause each to demonstrate the other mathematically.
The sacred numbers of the universe in their esoteric combination solve the great problem and explain the theory of radiation and the cycle of the emanations. The lower orders before they develop into higher ones must emanate from the higher spiritual ones, and when arrived at the turning-point, be reabsorbed again into the infinite.
Physiology, like everything else in this world of constant evolution, is subject to the cyclic revolution. As it now seems to be hardly emerging from the shadows of the lower arc, so it may be one day proved to have been at the highest point of the circumference of the circle far earlier than the days of Pythagoras.
Mochus, the Sidonian, the physiologist and teacher of the science of anatomy, flourished long before the Sage of Samos; and the latter received the sacred instructions from his disciples and descendants. Pythagoras, the pure philosopher, the deeply-versed in the profounder phenomena of nature, the noble inheritor of the ancient lore, whose great aim was to free the soul from the fetters of sense and force it to realize its powers, must live eternally in human memory.
The impenetrable veil of arcane secrecy was thrown over the sciences taught in
the sanctuary. This is
the cause of the modern depreciating of the ancient philosophies. Even Plato and
Philo Judæus have been accused by many a commentator of absurd inconsistencies,
whereas the
————————————————————————————————————
* "Conflict between Religion and Science," ch. i.
design which underlies the maze of metaphysical contradictions so perplexing to the reader of the Timæus, is but too evident. But has Plato ever been read understandingly by one of the expounders of the classics? This is a question warranted by the criticisms to be found in such authors as Stalbaum, Schleirmacher, Ficinus (Latin translation), Heindorf, Sydenham, Buttmann, Taylor and Burges, to say nothing of lesser authorities. The covert allusions of the Greek philosopher to esoteric things have manifestly baffled these commentators to the last degree. They not only with unblushing coolness suggest as to certain difficult passages that another phraseology was evidently intended, but they audaciously make the changes! The Orphic line:
"Of the song, the order of the sixth race close" —
which can only be interpreted as
a reference to the sixth race evolved in the consecutive evolution of
the spheres,* Burges says: ". . . was evidently taken from a cosmogony
where man was feigned to be
created the last."
†— Ought not one who undertakes to edit another's works at least
understand what his author means?
Indeed, the ancient philosophers seem to be generally held, even by the least
prejudiced of our modern critics, to have lacked that profundity and thorough
knowledge in the exact sciences of which our century is so boastful. It is even
questioned whether they understood that basic scientific principle: ex
nihilo nihil fit. If they suspected the indestructibility of matter at all,
— say these commentators — it was not in consequence of a firmly-established
formula but only through an intuitional reasoning and by analogy.
We hold to the contrary opinion. The speculations of these philosophers upon
matter were open to public criticism: but their teachings in regard to spiritual
things were profoundly esoteric. Being thus sworn to secrecy and religious
silence upon abstruse subjects involving the relations of spirit and matter,
they rivalled each other in their ingenious methods for concealing their real
opinions.
The doctrine of Metempsychosis has been abundantly ridiculed by men of
science and rejected by theologians, yet if it had been properly understood in
its application to the indestructibility of matter and the immortality of
spirit, it would have been perceived that it is a sublime conception. Should we
not first regard the subject from the stand-point
————————————————————————————————————
* In another place, we explain with some minuteness the Hermetic philosophy of
the evolution of the spheres and their several races.
† J. Burges: "The Works of Plato," p. 207, note.
of the ancients before venturing to disparage its teachers? The solution of the great problem of eternity belongs neither to religious superstition nor to gross materialism. The harmony and mathematical equiformity of the double evolution — spiritual and physical — are elucidated only in the universal numerals of Pythagoras, who built his system entirely upon the so-called "metrical speech" of the Hindu Vedas. It is but lately that one of the most zealous Sanskrit scholars, Martin Haug, undertook the translation of the Aitareya Brahmana of the Rig-Veda. It had been till that time entirely unknown; these explanations indicate beyond dispute the identity of the Pythagorean and Brahmanical systems. In both, the esoteric significance is derived from the number: in the former, from the mystic relation of every number to everything intelligible to the human mind; in the latter, from the number of syllables of which each verse in the Mantras consists. Plato, the ardent disciple of Pythagoras, realized it so fully as to maintain that the Dodecahedron was the geometrical figure employed by the Demiurgus in constructing the universe. Some of these figures had a peculiarly solemn significance. For instance four, of which the Dodecahedron is the trine, was held sacred by the Pythagoreans. It is the perfect square, and neither of the bounding lines exceeds the other in length, by a single point. It is the emblem of moral justice and divine equity geometrically expressed. All the powers and great symphonies of physical and spiritual nature lie inscribed within the perfect square; and the ineffable name of Him, which name otherwise, would remain unutterable, was replaced by this sacred number 4 the most binding and solemn oath with the ancient mystics — the Tetractys.
If the Pythagorean metempsychosis should be thoroughly explained and compared with the modern theory of evolution, it would be found to supply every "missing link" in the chain of the latter. But who of our scientists would consent to lose his precious time over the vagaries of the ancients. Notwithstanding proofs to the contrary, they not only deny that the nations of the archaic periods, but even the ancient philosophers had any positive knowledge of the Heliocentric system. The "Venerable Bedes," the Augustines and Lactantii appear to have smothered, with their dogmatic ignorance, all faith in the more ancient theologists of the pre-Christian centuries. But now philology and a closer acquaintance with Sanskrit literature have partially enabled us to vindicate them from these unmerited imputations. In the Vedas, for instance, we find positive proof that so long ago as 2000 B.C., the Hindu sages and scholars must have been acquainted with the rotundity of our globe and the Heliocentric system. Hence, Pythagoras and Plato knew well this astronomical truth; for Pythagoras obtained his knowledge
in India, or from men who had been there, and Plato faithfully echoed his teachings. We will quote two passages from the Aitareya Brahmana:
In the "Serpent-Mantra,"* the Brahmana declares as follows: that this Mantra is that one which was seen by the Queen of the Serpents, Sarpa-râjni; because the earth (iyam) is the Queen of the Serpents, as she is the mother and queen of all that moves (sarpat). In the beginning she (the earth) was but one head (round), without hair (bald), i.e., without vegetation. She then perceived this Mantra which confers upon him who knows it, the power of assuming any form which he might desire. She "pronounced the Mantra," i.e., sacrificed to the gods; and, in consequence, immediately obtained a motley appearance; she became variegated, and able to produce any form she might like, changing one form into another. This Mantra begins with the words: "Ayam gaûh pris'nir akramit" (x., 189).
The description of the earth in the shape of a round and bald head, which was soft at first, and became hard only from being breathed upon by the god Vayu, the lord of the air, forcibly suggests the idea that the authors of the sacred Vedic books knew the earth to be round or spherical; moreover, that it had been a gelatinous mass at first, which gradually cooled off under the influence of the air and time. So much for their knowledge about our globe's sphericity; and now we will present the testimony upon which we base our assertion, that the Hindus were perfectly acquainted with the Heliocentric system, at least 2000 years B.C.
In the same treatise the
Hotar, (priest), is taught how the Shastras should be
repeated, and how the phenomena of sunrise and sunset are to be explained. It
says: "The Agnishtoma is that one (that god) who burns. The sun never sets
nor rises. When people think the sun is setting, it is not so;
they are mistaken. For after having arrived at the end of the day, it produces
two opposite effects, making night to what is below, and day to what is on the
other side. When they (the people) believe it rises in the morning, the sun only
does thus: having reached the end of the night, it makes itself produce two
opposite effects, making day to what is below, and night to what is on the other
side. In fact the sun never sets; nor does it set for him who has such a
knowledge. . ."
† This sentence is so conclusive, that even the translator of the
Rig-Veda, Dr. Haug, was forced to remark it. He says this passage contains
"the denial of the existence of sunrise and sunset," and that the
author supposes the sun "to remain always in its high position." ‡
————————————————————————————————————
* From the Sanskrit text of the Aitareya Brahmanam. Rig-Veda, v., ch. ii.,
verse 23.
† Aitareya Brahmanam, book iii., c. v., 44. ‡
Ait. Brahm.,
vol. ii., p. 242.
In one of the earliest Nivids, Rishi Kutsa, a Hindu sage of the remotest antiquity, explains the allegory of the first laws given to the celestial bodies. For doing "what she ought not to do," Anahit (Anaitis or Nana, the Persian Venus), representing the earth in the legend, is sentenced to turn round the sun. The Sattras, or sacrificial sessions * prove undoubtedly that so early as in the eighteenth or twentieth century B.C., the Hindus had made considerable progress in astronomical science. The Sattras lasted one year, and were "nothing but an imitation of the sun's yearly course. They were divided, says Haug, into two distinct parts, each consisting of six months of thirty days each; in the midst of both was the Vishuvan (equator or central day), cutting the whole Sattras into two halves, etc." † This scholar, although he ascribes the composition of the bulk of the Brahmanas to the period 1400-1200 B.C., is of opinion that the oldest of the hymns may be placed at the very commencement of Vedic literature, between the years 2400-2000, B.C. He finds no reason for considering the Vedas less ancient than the sacred books of the Chinese. As the Shu-King or Book of History, and the sacrificial songs of the Shi-King, or Book of Odes, have been proved to have an antiquity as early as 2200, B.C., our philologists may yet be compelled before long to acknowledge, that in astronomical knowledge, the antediluvian Hindus were their masters.
At all events, there are facts which prove that certain astronomical calculations were as correct with the Chaldeans in the days of Julius Cæsar as they are now. When the calendar was reformed by the Conqueror, the civil year was found to correspond so little with the seasons, that summer had merged into the autumn months, and the autumn months into full winter. It was Sosigenes, the Chaldean astronomer, who restored order into the confusion, by putting back the 25th of March ninety days, thus making it correspond with the vernal equinox; and it was Sosigenes, again, who fixed the lengths of the months as they now remain.
In America, it was found by the Montezuman army, that the calendar of the Aztecs gave an equal number of days and weeks to each month. The extreme accuracy of their astronomical calculations was so great, that no error has been discovered in their reckoning by subsequent verifications; while the Europeans, who landed in Mexico in 1519, were, by the Julian calendar, nearly eleven days in advance of the exact time.
It is to the priceless and
accurate translations of the Vedic Books, and to the personal researches of Dr.
Haug, that we are indebted for the
————————————————————————————————————
* Ait. Brahm., book iv. †
Septenary Institutions; "Stone
him to Death," p. 20.
corroboration of the claims of the hermetic philosophers. That the period of Zarathustra Spitama (Zoroaster) was of untold antiquity, can be easily proved. The Brahmanas, to which Haug ascribes four thousand years, describe the religious contest between the ancient Hindus, who lived in the pre-Vedic period, and the Iranians. The battles between the Devas and the Asuras — the former representing the Hindus and the latter the Iranians — are described at length in the sacred books. As the Iranian prophet was the first to raise himself against what he called the "idolatry" of the Brahmans, and to designate them as the Devas (devils), how far back must then have been this religious crisis?
"This contest," answers Dr. Haug, "must have appeared to the authors of the Brahmanas as old as the feats of King Arthur appear to English writers of the nineteenth century."
There was not a philosopher
of any notoriety who did not hold to this doctrine of metempsychosis, as taught
by the Brahmans, Buddhists, and later by the Pythagoreans, in its esoteric
sense, whether he expressed it more or less intelligibly. Origen and Clemens
Alexandrinus, Synesius and Chalcidius, all believed in it; and the Gnostics, who
are unhesitatingly proclaimed by history as a body of the most refined, learned,
and enlightened men,* were all believers in metempsychosis. Socrates
entertained opinions identical with those of Pythagoras; and both, as the
penalty of their divine philosophy, were put to a violent death. The rabble has
been the same in all ages. Materialism has been, and will ever be blind to
spiritual truths. These philosophers held, with the Hindus, that God had infused
into matter a portion of his own Divine Spirit, which animates and moves every
particle. They taught that men have
two souls, of separate
and quite different natures: the one perishable — the Astral Soul, or the inner,
fluidic body — the other incorruptible and immortal — the Augoeides, or
portion of the Divine Spirit; that the mortal or Astral Soul perishes at each
gradual change at the threshold of every new sphere, becoming with every
transmigration more purified. The astral man, intangible and invisible as he
might be to our mortal, earthly senses, is still constituted of matter, though
sublimated. Aristotle, notwithstanding that for political reasons of his own he
maintained a prudent silence as to certain esoteric matters, expressed very
clearly his opinion on the subject. It was his belief that human souls are
emanations of God, that are finally re-absorbed into Divinity. Zeno, the founder
of the Stoics, taught that there are "two eternal qualities throughout nature:
the one active, or male; the other passive, or female: that the
————————————————————————————————————
* See Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
former is pure, subtile ether, or Divine Spirit; the other entirely inert in itself till united with the active principle. That the Divine Spirit acting upon matter produced fire, water, earth, and air; and that it is the sole efficient principle by which all nature is moved. The Stoics, like the Hindu sages, believed in the final absorption. St. Justin believed in the emanation of these souls from Divinity, and Tatian, the Assyrian, his disciple, declared that "man was as immortal as God himself." *
That profoundly significant verse of the Genesis, "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, I gave a living soul, . . . ." should arrest the attention of every Hebrew scholar capable of reading the Scripture in its original, instead of following the erroneous translation, in which the phrase reads, "wherein there is life." †
From the first to the last chapters, the translators of the Jewish Sacred Books misconstrued this meaning. They have even changed the spelling of the name of God, as Sir W. Drummond proves. Thus El, if written correctly, would read Al, for it stands in the original la— Al, and, according to Higgins, this word means the god Mithra, the Sun, the preserver and savior. Sir W. Drummond shows that Beth-El means the House of the Sun in its literal translation, and not of God. "El, in the composition of these Canaanite names, does not signify Deus, but Sol." ‡Thus Theology has disfigured ancient Theosophy, and Science ancient Philosophy.§
For lack of comprehension
of this great philosophical principle, the methods of modern science, however
exact, must end in nullity. In no one branch can it demonstrate the origin and
ultimate of things. Instead of tracing the effect from its primal source, its
progress is the reverse. Its higher types, as it teaches, are all evolved from
antecedent lower ones. It starts from the bottom of the cycle, led on step by
step in the great labyrinth of nature by a thread of matter. As soon as this
breaks and the clue is lost, it recoils in affright from the Incomprehensible,
and
————————————————————————————————————
* See Turner; also G. Higgins's "Anacalypsis." † Genesis, i,
30.
‡ Sir William Drummond: "Œdipus Judicus," p. 250.
§ The absolute necessity for the perpetration of such pious frauds by the
early fathers and later theologians becomes apparent, if we consider that if
they had allowed the word Al to remain as in the original, it would
have become but too evident — except for the initiated — that the Jehovah
of Moses and the sun were identical. The multitudes, which ignore that the
ancient hierophant considered our visible sun but as an emblem of the
central, invisible, and spiritual Sun, would have accused Moses — as many of our
modern commentators have already done — of worshipping the planetary bodies; in
short, of actual Zabaism.
confesses itself powerless. Not so did Plato and his disciples. With him the lower types were but the concrete images of the higher abstract ones. The soul, which is immortal, has an arithmetical, as the body has a geometrical, beginning. This beginning, as the reflection of the great universal ARCHÆUS, is self-moving, and from the centre diffuses itself over the whole body of the microcosm.
It was the sad perception of this truth that made Tyndall confess how powerless is science, even over the world of matter. "The first marshalling of the atoms, on which all subsequent action depends, baffles a keener power than that of the microscope." "Through pure excess of complexity, and long before observation can have any voice in the matter, the most highly trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem. We are struck dumb by an astonishment which no microscope can relieve, doubting not only the power of our instrument, but even whether we ourselves possess the intellectual elements which will ever enable us to grapple with the ultimate structural energies of nature."
The fundamental geometrical figure of the Kabala — that figure which tradition and the esoteric doctrines tell us was given by the Deity itself to Moses on Mount Sinai * — contains in its grandiose, because simple combination, the key to the universal problem. This figure contains in itself all the others. For those who are able to master it, there is no need to exercise imagination. No earthly microscope can be compared with the keenness of the spiritual perception. And even for those who are unacquainted with the GREAT SCIENCE, the description given by a well-trained child-psychometer of the genesis of a grain, a fragment of crystal, or any other object — is worth all the telescopes and microscopes of "exact science."
There may be more truth in
the adventurous pangenesis of Darwin — whom Tyndall calls a "soaring speculator"
— than in the cautious, line-bound hypothesis of the latter; who, in common with
other thinkers of his class, surrounds his imagination "by the firm frontiers of
reason." The theory of a microscopic germ which contains in itself "a world of
minor germs," soars in one sense at least into the infinite. It oversteps the
world of matter, and begins unconsciously busying itself in the world of spirit.
If we accept Darwin's theory of the development of species, we find that his
starting-point is placed in front of an open door. We are at liberty with him,
to either remain within, or cross the threshold, beyond
————————————————————————————————————
* Exodus, xxv., 40.
which lies the limitless and the incomprehensible, or rather the Unutterable. If our mortal language is inadequate to express what our spirit dimly foresees in the great "Beyond" — while on this earth — it must realize it at some point in the timeless Eternity.
Not so with Professor Huxley's theory of the "Physical Basis of Life." Regardless of the formidable majority of "nays" from his German brother-scientists, he creates a universal protoplasm and appoints its cells to become henceforth the sacred founts of the principle of all life. By making the latter identical in living man, "dead mutton," a nettle-sting, and a lobster; by shutting in, in the molecular cell of the protoplasm, the life-principle, and by shutting out from it the divine influx which comes with subsequent evolution, he closes every door against any possible escape. Like an able tactician he converts his "laws and facts" into sentries whom he causes to mount guard over every issue. The standard under which he rallies them is inscribed with the word "necessity"; but hardly is it unfurled when he mocks the legend and calls it "an empty shadow of my own imagination." *
The fundamental doctrines of spiritualism, he says, "lie outside the limits of philosophical inquiry." We will be bold enough to contradict this assertion, and say that they lie a great deal more within such inquiry than Mr. Huxley's protoplasm. Insomuch that they present evident and palpable facts of the existence of spirit, and the protoplasmic cells, once dead, present none whatever of being the originators or the bases of life, as this one of the few "foremost thinkers of the day" wants us to believe. †
The ancient Kabalist rested upon no hypothesis till he could lay its basis upon the firm rock of recorded experiment.
But the too great dependence upon physical facts led to a growth of materialism and a decadence of spirituality and faith. At the time of Aristotle, this was the prevailing tendency of thought. And though the Delphic commandment was not as yet completely eliminated from Grecian thought; and some philosophers still held that "in order to know what man is, we ought to know what man was" — still materialism had already begun to gnaw at the root of faith. The Mysteries themselves had degenerated in a very great degree into mere priestly speculations and religious fraud. Few were the true adepts and initiates, the heirs and descendants of those who had been dispersed by the conquering swords of various invaders of Old Egypt.
The time predicted by the
great Hermes in his dialogue with Æscu-
————————————————————————————————————
* "The Physical Basis of Life." A Lecture by T. H. Huxley.
† Huxley: "Physical Basis of Life."
lapius had indeed come; the time when impious foreigners would accuse Egypt of adoring monsters, and naught but the letters engraved in stone upon her monuments would survive — enigmas incredible to posterity. Their sacred scribes and hierophants were wanderers upon the face of the earth. Obliged from fear of a profanation of the sacred mysteries to seek refuge among the Hermetic fraternities — known later as the Essenes — their esoteric knowledge was buried deeper than ever. The triumphant brand of Aristotle's pupil swept away from his path of conquest every vestige of a once pure religion, and Aristotle himself, the type and child of his epoch, though instructed in the secret science of the Egyptians, knew but little of this crowning result of millenniums of esoteric studies.
As well as those who lived in the days of the Psammetics, our present-day philosophers "lift the Veil of Isis" — for Isis is but the symbol of nature. But, they see only her physical forms. The soul within escapes their view; and the Divine Mother has no answer for them. There are anatomists, who, uncovering to sight no indwelling spirit under the layers of muscles, the network of nerves, or the cineritious matter, which they lift with the point of the scalpel, assert that man has no soul. Such are as purblind in sophistry as the student, who, confining his research to the cold letter of the Kabala, dares say it has no vivifying spirit. To see the true man who once inhabited the subject which lies before him, on the dissecting table, the surgeon must use other eyes than those of his body. So, the glorious truth covered up in the hieratic writings of the ancient papyri can be revealed only to him who possesses the faculty of intuition — which, if we call reason the eye of the mind, may be defined as the eye of the soul.
Our modern science acknowledges a Supreme Power, an Invisible Principle, but denies a Supreme Being, or Personal God.* Logically, the difference between the two might be questioned; for in this case the Power and the Being are identical. Human reason can hardly imagine to itself an Intelligent Supreme Power without associating it with the idea of an Intelligent Being. The masses can never be expected to have a clear conception of the omnipotence and omnipresence of a supreme God, without investing with those attributes a gigantic projection of their own personality. But the kabalists have never looked upon the invisible EN-SOPH otherwise than as a Power.
So far our modern
positivists have been anticipated by thousands of ages, in their cautious
philosophy. What the hermetic adept claims to demonstrate is, that simple common
sense precludes the possibility that
————————————————————————————————————
* Prof. J. W. Draper: "Conflict Between Religion and Science."
the universe is the result of mere chance. Such an idea appears to him more absurd than to think that the problems of Euclid were unconsciously formed by a monkey playing with geometrical figures.
Very few Christians understand, if indeed they know anything at all, of the Jewish Theology. The Talmud is the darkest of enigmas even for most Jews, while those Hebrew scholars who do comprehend it do not boast of their knowledge. Their kabalistic books are still less understood by them; for in our days more Christian than Jewish students are engrossed in the elimination of their great truths. How much less is definitely known of the Oriental, or the universal Kabala! Its adepts are few; but these heirs elect of the sages who first discovered "the starry truths which shone on the great Shemaia of the Chaldean lore" * have solved the "absolute" and are now resting from their grand labor. They cannot go beyond that which is given to mortals of this earth to know; and no one, not even these elect, can trespass beyond the line drawn by the finger of the Divinity itself. Travellers have met these adepts on the shores of the sacred Ganges, brushed against them in the silent ruins of Thebes, and in the mysterious deserted chambers of Luxor. Within the halls upon whose blue and golden vaults the weird signs attract attention, but whose secret meaning is never penetrated by the idle gazers, they have been seen but seldom recognized. Historical memoirs have recorded their presence in the brilliantly illuminated salons of European aristocracy. They have been encountered again on the arid and desolate plains of the Great Sahara, as in the caves of Elephanta. They may be found everywhere, but make themselves known only to those who have devoted their lives to unselfish study, and are not likely to turn back.
Maimonides, the great
Jewish theologian and historian, who at one time was almost deified by his
countrymen and afterward treated as a heretic, remarks, that the more absurd and
void of sense the Talmud seems the more sublime is the secret meaning.
This learned man has successfully demonstrated that the Chaldean Magic, the
science of Moses and other learned thaumaturgists was wholly based on an
extensive knowledge of the various and now forgotten branches of natural
science. Thoroughly acquainted with all the resources of the vegetable, animal,
and mineral kingdoms, experts in occult chemistry and physics, psychologists as
well as physiologists, why wonder that the graduates or adepts instructed in the
mysterious sanctuaries of the temples, could perform wonders, which even in our
days of enlightenment would appear super-
————————————————————————————————————
* Bulwer's "Zanoni."
natural? It is an insult to human nature to brand magic and the occult science with the name of imposture. To believe that for so many thousands of years, one-half of mankind practiced deception and fraud on the other half, is equivalent to saying that the human race was composed only of knaves and incurable idiots. Where is the country in which magic was not practised? At what age was it wholly forgotten?
In the oldest documents now in our possession — the Vedas and the older laws of Manu — we find many magical rites practiced and permitted by the Brahmans.* Thibet, Japan and China teach in the present age that which was taught by the oldest Chaldeans. The clergy of these respective countries, prove moreover what they teach, namely: that the practice of moral and physical purity, and of certain austerities, developes the vital soulpower of self-illumination. Affording to man the control over his own immortal spirit, it gives him truly magical powers over the elementary spirits inferior to himself. In the West we find magic of as high an antiquity as in the East. The Druids of Great Britain practised it in the silent crypts of their deep caves; and Pliny devotes many a chapter to the "wisdom" † of the leaders of the Celts. The Semothees, — the Druids of the Gauls, expounded the physical as well as the spiritual sciences. They taught the secrets of the universe, the harmonious progress of the heavenly bodies, the formation of the earth, and above all — the immortality of the soul. ‡ Into their sacred groves — natural academies built by the hand of the Invisible Architect — the initiates assembled at the still hour of midnight to learn about what man once was and what he will be. § They needed no artificial illumination, nor life-drawing gas, to light up their temples, for the chaste goddess of night beamed her most silvery rays on their oak-crowned heads; and their white-robed sacred bards knew how to converse with the solitary queen of the starry vault. ∫∫
On the dead soil of the
long by-gone past stand their sacred oaks, now dried up and stripped of their
spiritual meaning by the venomous breath of materialism. But for the student of
occult learning, their vegetation is still as verdant and luxuriant, and as full
of deep and sacred truths, as at that hour when the arch-druid performed his
magical cures, and waving the branch of mistletoe, severed with his golden
sickle the green bough from its mother oak-tree. Magic is as old as man.
It is
————————————————————————————————————
* See the Code published by Sir William Jones, chap. ix., p. 11.
† Pliny: "Hist. Nat.," xxx. I: Ib., xvi., 14; xxv., 9, etc.
‡ Pomponius ascribes to them the knowledge of the highest sciences.
§ Cæsar, iii., 14. ∫∫
Pliny, xxx.
as impossible to name the time when it sprang into existence as to indicate on what day the first man himself was born. Whenever a writer has started with the idea of connecting its first foundation in a country with some historical character, further research has proved his views groundless. Odin, the Scandinavian priest and monarch, was thought by many to have originated the practice of magic some seventy years B.C. But it was easily demonstrated that the mysterious rites of the priestesses called Voïlers, Valas, were greatly anterior to his age.* Some modern authors were bent on proving that Zoroaster was the founder of magic, because he was the founder of the Magian religion. Ammianus Marcellinus, Arnobius, Pliny, and other ancient historians demonstrated conclusively that he was but a reformer of Magic as practiced by the Chaldeans and Egyptians. †
The greatest teachers of divinity agree that nearly all ancient books were written symbolically and in a language intelligible only to the initiated. The biographical sketch of Apollonius of Tyana affords an example. As every Kabalist knows, it embraces the whole of the Hermetic philosophy, being a counterpart in many respects of the traditions left us of King Solomon. It reads like a fairy story, but, as in the case of the latter, sometimes facts and historical events are presented to the world under the colors of a fiction. The journey to India represents allegorically the trials of a neophyte. His long discourses with the Brahmans, their sage advice, and the dialogues with the Corinthian Menippus would, if interpreted, give the esoteric catechism. His visit to the empire of the wise men, and interview with their king Hiarchas, the oracle of Amphiaraus, explain symbolically many of the secret dogmas of Hermes. They would disclose, if understood, some of the most important secrets of nature. Eliphas Levi points out the great resemblance which exists between King Hiarchas and the fabulous Hiram, of whom Solomon procured the cedars of Lebanon and the gold of Ophir. We would like to know whether modern Masons, even "Grand Lecturers" and the most intelligent craftsmen belonging to important lodges, understand who the Hiram is whose death they combine together to avenge?
Putting aside the purely
metaphysical teachings of the Kabala, if one would devote himself but
to physical occultism, to the so-called branch of therapeutics, the results
might benefit some of our modern sciences; such as chemistry and medicine. Says
Professor Draper: "Sometimes, not
————————————————————————————————————
* Munter, on the most ancient religion of the North before the time of Odin.
Memoires de la
Société des Antiquaires de France. Tome ii., p. 230.
†
Ammianus Marcellinus, xxvi., 6.
without surprise, we meet with ideas which we flatter ourselves originated in our own times." This remark, uttered in relation to the scientific writings of the Saracens, would apply still better to the more secret Treatises of the ancients. Modern medicine, while it has gained largely in anatomy, physiology, and pathology, and even in therapeutics, has lost immensely by its narrowness of spirit, its rigid materialism, its sectarian dogmatism. One school in its purblindness sternly ignores whatever is developed by other schools; and all unite in ignoring every grand conception of man or nature, developed by Mesmerism, or by American experiments on the brain — every principle which does not conform to a stolid materialism. It would require a convocation of the hostile physicians of the several different schools to bring together what is now known of medical science, and it too often happens that after the best practitioners have vainly exhausted their art upon a patient, a mesmerist or a "healing medium" will effect a cure! The explorers of old medical literature, from the time of Hippocrates to that of Paracelsus and Van Helmont, will find a vast number of well-attested physiological and psychological facts and of measures or medicines for healing the sick which modern physicians superciliously refuse to employ.* Even with respect to surgery, modern practitioners have humbly and publicly confessed the total impossibility of their approximating to anything like the marvellous skill displayed in the art of bandaging by ancient Egyptians. The many hundred yards of ligature enveloping a mummy from its ears down to every separate toe, were studied by the chief surgical operators in Paris, and, notwithstanding that the models were before their eyes, they were unable to accomplish anything like it.
In the Abbott Egyptological
collection, in New York City, may be seen numerous evidences of the skill of the
ancients in various handicrafts; among others the art of lace-making; and, as it
could hardly be expected but that the signs of woman's vanity should go side by
side with
————————————————————————————————————
* In some respects our modern philosophers, who think they make new discoveries
can be compared to "the very clever, learned, and civil gentleman" whom Hippocrates having met at Samos one day, describes very good-naturedly. "He
informed me," the Father of Medicine proceeds to say, "that he had lately
discovered an herb never before known in Europe or Asia, and that no disease,
however malignant or chronic, could resist its marvellous properties. Wishing to
be civil in turn, I permitted myself to be persuaded to accompany him to the
conservatory in which he had transplanted the wonderful specific. What I found
was one of the commonest plants in Greece, namely, garlic — the plant which
above all others has least pretensions to healing virtues." Hippocrates: "De
optima prædicandi ratione item judicii operum magni."
I.
those of man's strength, there are also specimens of artificial hair, and gold ornaments of different kinds. The New York Tribune, reviewing the contents of the Ebers Papyrus, says: — "Verily, there is no new thing under the sun. . . . Chapters 65, 66, 79, and 89 show that hair invigorators, hair dyes, pain-killers, and flea-powders were desiderata 3,400 years ago."
How few of our recent alleged discoveries are in reality new, and how many belong to the ancients, is again most fairly and eloquently though but in part stated by our eminent philosophical writer, Professor John W. Draper. His Conflict between Religion and Science — a great book with a very bad title — swarms with such facts. At page 13, he cites a few of the achievements of ancient philosophers, which excited the admiration of Greece. In Babylon was a series of Chaldean astronomical observations, ranging back through nineteen hundred and three years, which Callisthenes sent to Aristotle. Ptolemy, the Egyptian king-astronomer possessed a Babylonian record of eclipses going back seven hundred and forty-seven years before our era. As Prof. Draper truly remarks: "Long-continued and close observations were necessary before some of these astronomical results that have reached our times could have been ascertained. Thus, the Babylonians had fixed the length of a tropical year within twenty-five seconds of the truth; their estimate of the sidereal year was barely two minutes in excess. They had detected the precession of the equinoxes. They knew the causes of eclipses, and, by the aid of their cycle, called saros, could predict them. Their estimate of the value of that cycle, which is more than 6,585 days, was within nineteen and a half minutes of the truth."
"Such facts furnish incontrovertible proof of the patience and skill with which astronomy had been cultivated in Mesopotamia, and that, with very inadequate instrumental means, it had reached no inconsiderable perfection. These old observers had made a catalogue of the stars, had divided the zodiac into twelve signs; they had parted the day into twelve hours, the night into twelve. They had, as Aristotle says, for a long time devoted themselves to observations of star-occultations by the moon. They had correct views of the structure of the solar system, and knew the order of emplacement of the planets. They constructed sundials, clepsydras, astrolabes, gnomons."
Speaking of the world of eternal truths that lies "within the world of transient delusions and unrealities," Professor Draper says: "That world is not to be discovered through the vain traditions that have brought down to us the opinion of men who lived in the morning of civilization, nor in the dreams of mystics who thought that they were inspired. It is to be dis-
covered by the investigations of geometry, and by the practical interrogations of nature."
Precisely. The issue could not be better stated. This eloquent writer tells us a profound truth. He does not, however, tell us the whole truth, because he does not know it. He has not described the nature or extent of the knowledge imparted in the Mysteries. No subsequent people has been so proficient in geometry as the builders of the Pyramids and other Titanic monuments, antediluvian and postdiluvian. On the other hand, none has ever equalled them in the practical interrogation of nature.
An undeniable proof of this is the significance of their countless symbols. Every one of these symbols is an embodied idea, — combining the conception of the Divine Invisible with the earthly and visible. The former is derived from the latter strictly through analogy according to the hermetic formula — "as below, so it is above." Their symbols show great knowledge of natural sciences and a practical study of cosmical power.
As to practical results to be obtained by "the investigations of geometry," very fortunately for students who are coming upon the stage of action, we are no longer forced to content ourselves with mere conjectures. In our own times, an American, Mr. George H. Felt, of New York, who, if he continues as he has begun, may one day be recognized as the greatest geometer of the age, has been enabled, by the sole help of the premises established by the ancient Egyptians, to arrive at results which we will give in his own language. "Firstly," says Mr. Felt, "the fundamental diagram to which all science of elementary geometry, both plane and solid, is referable; to produce arithmetical systems of proportion in a geometrical manner; to identify this figure with all the remains of architecture and sculpture, in all which it had been followed in a marvellously exact manner; to determine that the Egyptians had used it as the basis of all their astronomical calculations, on which their religious symbolism was almost entirely founded; to find its traces among all the remnants of art and architecture of the Greeks; to discover its traces so strongly among the Jewish sacred records, as to prove conclusively that it was founded thereon; to find that the whole system had been discovered by the Egyptians after researches of tens of thousands of years into the laws of nature, and that it might truly be called the science of the Universe." Further it enabled him "to determine with precision problems in physiology heretofore only surmised; to first develop such a Masonic philosophy as showed it to be conclusively the first science and religion, as it will be the last"; and we may add, lastly, to prove by ocular demonstrations that the Egyptian sculptors and architects ob-
tained the models for the quaint figures which adorn the facades and vestibules of their temples, not in the disordered fantasies of their own brains, but from the "viewless races of the air," and other kingdoms of nature, whom he, like them, claims to make visible by resort to their own chemical and kabalistical processes.
Schweigger proves that the symbols of all the mythologies have a scientific foundation and substance.* It is only through recent discoveries of the physical electro-magnetical powers of nature that such experts in Mesmerism as Ennemoser, Schweigger and Bart, in Germany, Baron Du Potet and Regazzoni, in France and Italy, were enabled to trace with almost faultless accuracy the true relation which each Theomythos bore to some one of these powers. The Idæic finger, which had such importance in the magic art of healing, means an iron finger, which is attracted and repulsed in turn by magnetic, natural forces. It produced, in Samothrace, wonders of healing by restoring affected organs to their normal condition.
Bart goes deeper than Schweigger into the significations of the old myths, and studies the subject from both its spiritual and physical aspects. He treats at length of the Phrygian Dactyls, those "magicians and exorcists of sickness," and of the Cabeirian Theurgists. He says: "While we treat of the close union of the Dactyls and magnetic forces, we are not necessarily confined to the magnetic stone, and our views of nature but take a glance at magnetism in its whole meaning. Then it is clear how the initiated, who called themselves Dactyls, created astonishment in the people through their magic arts, working as they did, miracles of a healing nature. To this united themselves many other things which the priesthood of antiquity was wont to practice; the cultivation of the land and of morals, the advancement of art and science, mysteries, and secret consecrations. All this was done by the priestly Cabeirians, and wherefore not guided and supported by the mysterious spirits of nature?" † Schweigger is of the same opinion, and demonstrates that the phenomena of ancient Theurgy were produced by magnetic powers "under the guidance of spirits."
Despite their apparent
Polytheism, the ancients — those of the educated class at all events — were
entirely monotheistical; and this, too, ages upon ages before the days of Moses.
In the Ebers Papyrus this fact is shown conclusively in the following
words, translated from the first four lines of Plate I.: "I came from Heliopolis
with the great ones
————————————————————————————————————
* Schweigger: "Introduction to Mythology through Natural History."
† Ennemoser: "History of Magic," i, 3.
from Het-aat, the Lords of Protection, the masters of eternity and salvation. I came from Sais with the Mother-goddesses, who extended to me protection. The Lord of the Universe told me how to free the gods from all murderous diseases." Eminent men were called gods by the ancients. The deification of mortal men and supposititious gods is no more a proof against their monotheism than the monument-building of modern Christians, who erect statues to their heroes, is proof of their polytheism. Americans of the present century would consider it absurd in their posterity 3,000 years hence to classify them as idolaters for having built statues to their god Washington. So shrouded in mystery was the Hermetic Philosophy that Volney asserted that the ancient peoples worshipped their gross material symbols as divine in themselves; whereas these were only considered as representing esoteric principles. Dupuis, also, after devoting many years of study to the problem, mistook the symbolic circle, and attributed their religion solely to astronomy. Eberhart (Berliner Monatschrift ) and many other German writers of the last and present centuries, dispose of magic most unceremoniously, and think it due to the Platonic mythos of the Timæus. But how, without possessing a knowledge of the mysteries, was it possible for these men or any others not endowed with the finer intuition of a Champollion, to discover the esoteric half of that which was concealed, behind the veil of Isis, from all except the adepts?
The merit of Champollion as an Egyptologist none will question. He declares that everything demonstrates the ancient Egyptians to have been profoundly monotheistical. The accuracy of the writings of the mysterious Hermes Trismegistus, whose antiquity runs back into the night of time, is corroborated by him to their minutest details. Ennemoser also says: "Into Egypt and the East went Herodotus, Thales, Parmenides, Empedocles, Orpheus, and Pythagoras, to instruct themselves in Natural Philosophy and Theology." There, too, Moses acquired his wisdom, and Jesus passed the earlier years of his life.
Thither gathered the students of all countries before Alexandria was founded. "How comes it," Ennemoser goes on to say, "that so little has become known of these mysteries? through so many ages and amongst so many different times and people? The answer is that it is owing to the universally strict silence of the initiated. Another cause may be found in the destruction and total loss of all the written memorials of the secret knowledge of the remotest antiquity." Numa's books, described by Livy, consisting of treatises upon natural philosophy, were found in his tomb; but they were not allowed to be made known, lest they should reveal the most secret mysteries of the state religion. The
senate and the tribune of the people determined that the books themselves should be burned, which was done in public.*
Magic was considered a divine science which led to a participation in the attributes of Divinity itself. "It unveils the operations of nature," says Philo Judæus, "and leads to the contemplation of celestial powers." † In later periods its abuse and degeneration into sorcery made it an object of general abhorrence. We must therefore deal with it only as it was in the remote past, during those ages when every true religion was based on a knowledge of the occult powers of nature. It was not the sacerdotal class in ancient Persia that established magic, as it is commonly thought, but the Magi, who derive their name from it. The Mobeds, priests of the Parsis — the ancient Ghebers — are named, even at the present day, Magoï, in the dialect of the Pehlvi. ‡ Magic appeared in the world with the earlier races of men. Cassien mentions a treatise, well-known in the fourth and fifth centuries, which was accredited to Ham, the son of Noah, who in his turn was reputed to have received it from Jared, the fourth generation from Seth, the son of Adam. §
Moses was indebted for his knowledge to the mother of the Egyptian princess, Thermuthis, who saved him from the waters of the Nile. The wife of Pharaoh, ∫ Batria, was an initiate herself, and the Jews owe to her the possession of their prophet, "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and mighty in words and deeds." ¶ Justin Martyr, giving as his authority Trogus Pompeius, shows Joseph as having acquired a great knowledge in magical arts with the high priests of Egypt .**
The ancients knew more
concerning certain sciences than our modern savants have yet discovered.
Reluctant as many are to
confess as much, it has been acknowledged by more than one scientist. "The
degree of scientific knowledge existing in an early period of society was much
greater than the moderns are willing to admit"; says Dr. A. Todd Thomson, the
editor of Occult Sciences, by Salverte; "but," he adds, "it was
confined to the temples, carefully veiled from the eyes of the people and
opposed only to the priesthood." Speaking of the Kabala, the learned
Franz von Baader remarks that "not only our salvation and wisdom, but our
science itself came to us from the Jews." But why not complete the sentence and
tell the reader from whom the Jews got their wisdom? Origen, who had belonged
to the Alexandrian school of Platonists,
————————————————————————————————————
* "Hist. of Magic," vol. i, p. 3. †
Philo Jud.: "De
Specialibus Legibus."
‡ Zend-Avesta, vol. ii., p. 506. §
Cassian:
"Conference," i., 21.
∫ "De Vita et Morte Mosis," p. 199. ¶ Acts of the
Apostles, vii., 22.
** Justin, xxxvi., 2.
declares that Moses, besides the teachings of the covenant, communicated some very important secrets "from the hidden depths of the law" to the seventy elders. These he enjoined them to impart only to persons whom they found worthy.
St. Jerome names the Jews of Tiberias and Lydda as the only teachers of the mystical manner of interpretation. Finally, Ennemoser expresses a strong opinion that "the writings of Dionysius Areopagita have palpably been grounded on the Jewish Kabala." When we take in consideration that the Gnostics, or early Christians, were but the followers of the old Essenes under a new name, this fact is nothing to be wondered at. Professor Molitor gives the Kabala its just due. He says:
"The age of inconsequence and shallowness, in theology as well as in sciences, is past, and since that revolutionary rationalism has left nothing behind but its own emptiness, after having destroyed everything positive, it seems now to be the time to direct our attention anew to that mysterious revelation which is the living spring whence our salvation must come. . . the Mysteries of ancient Israel, which contain all secrets of modern Israel, would be particularly calculated to . . . found the fabric of theology upon its deepest theosophical principles, and to gain a firm basis to all ideal sciences. It would open a new path . . . to the obscure labyrinth of the myths, mysteries and constitutions of primitive nations. . .In these traditions alone are contained the system of the schools of the prophets, which the prophet Samuel did not found, but only restored, whose end was no other than to lead the scholars to wisdom and the highest knowledge, and when they had been found worthy, to induct them into deeper mysteries. Classed with these mysteries was magic, which was of a double nature — divine magic, and evil magic, or the black art. Each of these is again divisible into two kinds, the active and seeing; in the first, man endeavors to place himself en rapport with the world to learn hidden things; in the latter he endeavors to gain power over spirits; in the former, to perform good and beneficial acts; in the latter to do all kinds of diabolical and unnatural deeds." *
The clergy of the three
most prominent Christian bodies, the Greek, Roman Catholic, and Protestant,
discountenance every spiritual phenomenon manifesting itself through the
so-called "mediums." A very brief period, indeed, has elapsed since both the two
latter ecclesiastical corporations burned, hanged, and otherwise murdered every
helpless victim through whose organism spirits — and sometimes blind and as yet
unex-
————————————————————————————————————
* Molitor: "Philosophy of History and Traditions," Howitt's
Translation, p. 285
plained forces of nature — manifested themselves. At the head of these three churches, pre-eminent stands the Church of Rome. Her hands are scarlet with the innocent blood of countless victims shed in the name of the Moloch-like divinity at the head of her creed. She is ready and eager to begin again. But she is bound hand and foot by that nineteenth century spirit of progress and religious freedom which she reviles and blasphemes daily. The Græco-Russian Church is the most amiable and Christ-like in her primitive, simple, though blind faith. Despite the fact that there has been no practical union between the Greek and Latin Churches, and that the two parted company long centuries ago, the Roman Pontiffs seem to invariably ignore the fact. They have in the most impudent manner possible arrogated to themselves jurisdiction not only over the countries within the Greek communion but also over all Protestants as well. "The Church insists," says Professor Draper, "that the state has no rights over any thing which it declares to be within its domain, and that Protestantism being a mere rebellion, has no rights at all; that even in Protestant communities the Catholic bishop is the only lawful spiritual pastor." * Decrees unheeded, encyclical letters unread, invitations to ecumenical councils unnoticed, excommunications laughed at — all these have seemed to make no difference. Their persistence has only been matched by their effrontery. In 1864, the culmination of absurdity was attained when Pius IX. excommunicated and fulminated publicly his anathemas against the Russian Emperor, as a "schismatic cast out from the bosom of the Holy Mother Church." † Neither he nor his ancestors, nor Russia since it was Christianized, a thousand years ago, have ever consented to join the Roman Catholics. Why not claim ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Buddhists of Thibet, or the shadows of the ancient Hyk-Sos?
The mediumistic phenomena have manifested themselves at all times in Russia as well as in other countries. This force ignores religious differences; it laughs at nationalities; and invades unasked any individuality, whether of a crowned head or a poor beggar.
Not even the present
Vice-God, Pius IX., himself, could avoid the unwelcome guest.
For the last fifty years his Holiness has been known to be subject to very
extraordinary fits. Inside the Vatican they are termed Divine visions;
outside, physicians call them epileptic fits; and popular rumor attributes them
to an obsession by the ghosts of Peruggia, Castelfidardo, and Mentana!
————————————————————————————————————
* "Conflict between Religion and Science," p. 329.
† See "Gazette du Midi," and "Le Monde," of 3 May, 1864.
"The lights burn blue: it is now
dead midnight,
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh,
Methought the souls of all that I caused to be murdered
Came. . . .
"
*
The Prince of Hohenlohe, so famous during the first quarter of our century for his healing powers, was himself a great medium. Indeed, these phenomena and powers belong to no particular age or country. They form a portion of the psychological attributes of man — the Microcosmos.
For centuries have the
Klikouchy, †
the Yourodevoÿ,
‡ and other miserable creatures been afflicted with strange
disorders, which the Russian clergy and the populace attribute to possession by
the devil. They throng the entrances of the cathedrals, without daring to trust
themselves inside, lest their self-willed controlling demons might fling them on
the ground. Voroneg, Kiew, Kazan, and all cities which possess the
thaumaturgical relics of canonized saints, abound with such unconscious mediums.
One can always find numbers of them, congregating in hideous groups, and hanging
about the gates and porches. At certain stages of the celebration of the mass by
the officiating clergy, such as the appearance of the sacraments, or the
beginning of the prayer and chorus, "Ejey Cheroúvim," these
half-maniacs, half-mediums, begin crowing like cocks, barking, bellowing and
braying, and, finally, fall down in fearful convulsions. "The unclean one
cannot bear the holy prayer," is the pious explanation. Moved by pity, some
charitable souls administer restoratives to the "afflicted ones," and distribute
alms among them. Occasionally, a priest is invited to exorcise, in which event
he either performs the ceremony for the sake of love and charity, or the
alluring prospect of a twenty-copeck silver bit, according to his Christian
impulses. But these miserable creatures — who are mediums, for they prophesy and
see visions sometimes, when the fit is genuine § — are never molested
because of their misfortune. Why should the clergy persecute them, or people
hate and denounce them as damnable witches or wizards? Common sense and justice
surely suggest that if any are to be punished it is certainly not the victims
who cannot help themselves, but the demon who is alleged to control their
actions. The worst that happens to the patient is, that the priest inundates him
or her with holy water, and causes the poor creature to catch cold. This failing
in efficacy, the Klikoucha is left to the will
————————————————————————————————————
* Shakespere: "Richard III." †
Literally, the
screaming or the howling ones.
‡ The half-demented, the idiots.
§ But such is not always the case, for some among these beggars make a
regular and profitable trade of it.
of God, and taken care of in love and pity. Superstitious and blind as it is, a faith conducted on such principles certainly deserves some respect, and can never be offensive, either to man or the true God. Not so with that of the Roman Catholics; and hence, it is they, and secondarily, the Protestant clergy — with the exception of some foremost thinkers among them — that we purpose questioning in this work. We want to know upon what grounds they base their right to treat Hindus and Chinese spiritualists and kabalists in the way they do; denouncing them, in company with the infidels — creatures of their own making — as so many convicts sentenced to the inextinguishable fires of hell.
Far from us be the thought of the slightest irreverence — let alone blasphemy — toward the Divine Power which called into being all things, visible and invisible. Of its majesty and boundless perfection we dare not even think. It is enough for us to know that It exists and that It is all wise. Enough that in common with our fellow creatures we possess a spark of Its essence. The supreme power whom we revere is the boundless and endless one — the grand "CENTRAL SPIRITUAL SUN" by whose attributes and the visible effects of whose inaudible WILL we are surrounded — the God of the ancient and the God of modern seers. His nature can be studied only in the worlds called forth by his mighty FIAT. His revelation is traced with his own finger in imperishable figures of universal harmony upon the face of the Cosmos. It is the only INFALLIBLE gospel we recognize.
Speaking of ancient geographers, Plutarch remarks in Theseus, that they "crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts and unapproachable bogs." Do not our theologians and scientists do the same? While the former people the invisible world with either angels or devils, our philosophers try to persuade their disciples that where there is no matter there is nothing.
How many of our inveterate skeptics belong, notwithstanding their materialism, to Masonic Lodges? The brothers of the Rosie-Cross, mysterious practitioners of the mediæval ages, still live — but in name only. They may "shed tears at the grave of their respectable Master, Hiram Abiff "; but vainly will they search for the true locality, "where the sprig of myrtle was placed." The dead letter remains alone, the spirit has fled. They are like the English or German chorus of the Italian opera, who descend in the fourth act of Ernani into the crypt of Charlemagne, singing their conspiracy in a tongue utterly unknown to them. So, our modern knights of the Sacred Arch may descend every night if they choose
"through the nine arches into the bowels of the earth," — they "will never discover the sacred Delta of Enoch." The "Sir Knights in the South Valley" and those in "the North Valley" may try to assure themselves that "enlightenment dawns upon their minds," and that as they progress in Masonry "the veil of superstition, despotism, tyranny" and so on, no longer obscures the visions of their minds. But these are all empty words so long as they neglect their mother Magic, and turn their backs upon its twin sister, Spiritualism. Verily, "Sir Knights of the Orient," you may "leave your stations and sit upon the floor in attitudes of grief, with your heads resting upon your hands," for you have cause to bewail and mourn your fate. Since Philippe le Bel destroyed the Knights-Templars, not one has appeared to clear up your doubts notwithstanding all claims to the contrary. Truly, you are "wanderers from Jerusalem, seeking the lost treasure of the holy place." Have you found it? Alas, no! for the holy place is profaned; the pillars of wisdom, strength and beauty are destroyed. Henceforth, "you must wander in darkness," and "travel in humility," among the woods and mountains in search of the "lost word." "Pass on!" — you will never find it so long as you limit your journeys to seven or even seven times seven; because you are "travelling in darkness," and this darkness can only be dispelled by the light of the blazing torch of truth which alone the right descendants of Ormasd carry. They alone can teach you the true pronunciation of the name revealed to Enoch, Jacob and Moses. "Pass on! Till your R. S. W. shall learn to multiply 333, and strike instead 666 — the number of the Apocalyptic Beast, you may just as well observe prudence and act "sub rosa."
In order to demonstrate that the notions which the ancients entertained about dividing human history into cycles were not utterly devoid of a philosophical basis, we will close this chapter by introducing to the reader one of the oldest traditions of antiquity as to the evolution of our planet.
At the close of each "great
year," called by Aristotle — according to Censorinus — the greatest,
and which consists of six sars * our planet is subjected to a
thorough physical revolution. The polar and equatorial climates gradually
exchange places; the former moving slowly toward the Line, and the tropical
zone, with its exuberant vegetation and swarming animal life, replacing the
forbidding wastes of the icy poles. This
————————————————————————————————————
* Webster declares very erroneously that the Chaldeans called saros,
the cycle of eclipses, a period of about 6,586 years, "the time of
revolution of the moon's node." Berosus, himself a Chaldean astrologer, at the
Temple of Belus, at Babylon, gives the duration of the sar, or sarus, 3,600
years; a neros 600; and a sossus 60. (See, Berosus from Abydenus, "Of the
Chaldaean Kings and the Deluge." See also Eusebius, and Cory's MS. Ex.
Cod. reg. gall. gr. No. 2360, fol. 154.)
change of climate is necessarily attended by cataclysms, earthquakes, and other cosmical throes.* As the beds of the ocean are displaced, at the end of every decimillennium and about one neros, a semi-universal deluge like the legendary Noachian flood is brought about. This year was called the Heliacal by the Greeks; but no one outside the sanctuary knew anything certain either as to its duration or particulars. The winter of this year was called the Cataclysm or the Deluge, — the Summer, the Ecpyrosis. The popular traditions taught that at these alternate seasons the world was in turn burned and deluged. This is what we learn at least from the Astronomical Fragments of Censorinus and Seneca. So uncertain were the commentators about the length of this year, that none except Herodotus and Linus, who assigned to it, the former 10,800, and the latter 13,984, came near the truth.† According to the claims of the Babylonian priests, corroborated by Eupolemus, ‡ "the city of Babylon, owes its foundation to those who were saved from the catastrophe of the deluge; they were the giants and they built the tower which is noticed in history." § These giants who were great astrologers and had received moreover from their fathers, "the sons of God," every instruction pertaining to secret matters, instructed the priests in their turn, and left in the temples all the records of the periodical cataclysm that they had witnessed themselves. This is how the high priests came by the knowledge of the great years. When we remember, moreover, that Plato in the Timæus cites the old Egyptian priest rebuking Solon for his ignorance of the fact that there were several such deluges as the great one of Ogyges, we can easily ascertain that this belief in the Heliakos was a doctrine held by the initiated priests the world over.
The Neroses, the Vrihaspati, or
the periods called yugas or kalpas, are life-problems to solve. The Satya-yug
and Buddhistic cycles of chronology would make a mathematician stand aghast at
the array of ciphers. The Maha-kalpa embraces an untold number of periods far
————————————————————————————————————
* Before scientists reject such a theory — traditional as it is — it would
be in order for them to demonstrate why, at the end of the tertiary period, the
Northern Hemisphere had undergone such a reduction of temperature as to utterly
change the torrid zone to a Siberian climate? Let us bear in mind that the
heliocentric system came to us from upper India; and that the germs of all
great astronomical truths were brought thence by Pythagoras. So long as we lack
a mathematically correct demonstration, one hypothesis is as good as another.
†
Censorinus: "De Natal Die." Seneca: "Nat. Quæst.," iii., 29.
‡ Euseb.: "Præp.
Evan." Of the Tower of Babel and Abraham.
§ This is in flat contradiction of the Bible narrative, which tells us
that the deluge was sent for the special destruction of these giants.
The Babylon priests had no object to invent lies.
back in the antediluvian ages. Their system comprises a kalpa or grand period of 4,320,000,000 years, which they divide into four lesser yugas, running as follows:
1st. —Satya yug . . . . 1,728,000 years.
2d. — Tretya yug. . . . 1,296,000
"
3d. — Dvapa yug. . . . 864,000
"
4th. —Kali yug . . . . 432,000 "
Total. . . . . .
. . 4,320,000
which make one divine age or Maha-yug; seventy-one Maha-yugs make 306,720,000 years, to which is added a sandhi (or the time when day and night border on each other, morning and evening twilight), equal to a Satya-yug, 1,728,000, make a manwantara of 308,448,000 years; * fourteen manwantaras make 4,318,272,000 years; to which must be added a sandhi to begin the kalpa, 1,728,000 years, making the kalpa or grand period of 4,320,000,000 of years. As we are now only in the Kali-yug of the twenty-eighth age of the seventh manwantara of 308,448,000 years, we have yet sufficient time before us to wait before we reach even half of the time allotted to the world.
These ciphers are not
fanciful, but founded upon actual astronomical calculations, as has been
demonstrated by S. Davis. † Many a scientist, Higgins among others,
notwithstanding their researches, has been utterly perplexed as to which of
these was the secret cycle. Bunsen has demonstrated that the Egyptian
priests, who made the cyclic notations, kept them always in the profoundest
mystery. ‡ Perhaps their difficulty arose from the fact that the
calculations of the ancients applied equally to the spiritual progress of
humanity as to the physical. It will not be difficult to understand the close
correspondence drawn by the ancients between the cycles of nature and of
mankind, if we keep in mind their belief in the constant and all-potent
influences of the planets upon the fortunes of humanity. Higgins justly believed
that the cycle of the Indian system, of 432,000, is the true key of the secret
cycle. But his failure in trying to decipher it was made apparent; for as it
pertained to the mystery of the creation, this cycle was the most inviolable of
all. It was repeated in symbolic figures only in the Chaldean Book of
Numbers, the original of which, if now ex-
————————————————————————————————————
* Coleman, who makes this calculation, allowed a serious error to escape the
proofreader; the length of the manwantara is given at 368,448,000, which is just
sixty million years too much.
† S. Davis: "Essay in the Asiatic Researches"; and Higgins's
"Anacalypsis"; also see Coleman's "Mythology of the Hindus." Preface, p. xiii.
‡ Bunsen: "Egypte," vol. i.
tant, is certainly not to be found in libraries, as it formed one of the most ancient Books of Hermes,* the number of which is at present undetermined.
Calculating by the secret period of the Great Neros and the Hindu Kalpas,
some kabalists, mathematicians and archeologists who knew naught of the secret
computations made the above number of 21,000 years to be 24,000 years, for the
length of the great year, as it was to the renewal only of our globe that they
thought the last period of 6,000 years applied. Higgins gives as a reason for
it, that it was anciently thought that the equinoxes preceded only after the
rate of 2,000, not 2,160, years in a sign; for thus it would allow for the
length of the great year four times 6,000 or 24,000 years. "Hence," he says,
"might arise their immensely-lengthened cycles; because, it would be the same
with this great year as with the common year, till it travelled round an
immensely-lengthened circle, when it would come to the old point again." He
therefore accounts for the 24,000 in the following manner: "If the angle which
the plane of the ecliptic makes with the plane of the equator had decreased
gradually and regularly, as it was till very lately supposed to do, the two
planes would have coincided in about ten ages, 6,000 years;
————————————————————————————————————
* The forty-two Sacred Books of the Egyptians mentioned by Clement of
Alexandria as having existed in his time, were but a portion of the Books of
Hermes. Iamblichus, on the authority of the Egyptian priest Abammon, attributes
1200 of such books to Hermes, and Manetho 36,000. But the testimony of
Iamblichus as a neo-Platonist and theurgist is of course rejected by modern
critics. Manetho, who is held by Bunsen in the highest consideration as a
"purely historical personage" . . . with whom "none of the later native
historians can be compared . . . ." (See "Egypte," i, p. 97), suddenly becomes a
Pseudo-Manetho, as soon as the ideas propounded by him clash with the scientific
prejudices against magic and the occult knowledge claimed by the ancient
priests. However, none of the archeologists doubt for a moment the almost
incredible antiquity of the Hermetic books. Champollion shows the greatest
regard for their authenticity and great truthfulness, corroborated as it is by
many of the oldest monuments. And Bunsen brings irrefutable proofs of their age.
From his researches, for instance, we learn that there was a line of sixty-one
kings before the days of Moses, who preceded the Mosaic period by a
clearly-traceable civilization of several thousand years. Thus we are warranted
in believing that the works of Hermes Trismegistus were extant many ages before
the birth of the Jewish law-giver. "Styli and inkstands were found on monuments
of the fourth Dynasty, the oldest in the world," says Bunsen. If the eminent
Egyptologist rejects the period of 48,863 years before Alexander, to which
Diogenes Laertius carries back the records of the priests, he is evidently more
embarrassed with the ten thousand of astronomical observations, and remarks that
"if they were actual observations, they must have extended over 10,000
years" (p. 14). "We learn, however," he adds, "from one of their own old
chronological works . . . that the genuine Egyptian traditions concerning the
mythological period, treated of myriads of years." ("Egypte," i, p.
15).
in ten ages, 6,000 years more,
the sun would have been situated relatively to the Southern Hemisphere as he is
now to the Northern; in ten ages, 6,000 years more, the two planes would
coincide again; and, in ten ages, 6,000 years more, he would be situated as he
is now, after a lapse of about twenty-four or twenty-five thousand years in all.
When the sun arrived at the equator, the ten ages or six thousand years would
end, and the world would be destroyed by fire; when he arrived at the
southern point, it would be destroyed by water. And thus, it would be destroyed
at the end of every 6,000 years, or ten neroses." *
This method of calculating by the neroses, without allowing any
consideration for the secrecy in which the ancient philosophers, who were
exclusively of the sacerdotal order, held their knowledge, gave rise to the
greatest errors. It led the Jews, as well as some of the Christian Platonists,
to maintain that the world would be destroyed at the end of six thousand years.
Gale shows how firmly this belief was rooted in the Jews. It has also led modern
scientists to discredit entirely the hypothesis of the ancients. It has given
rise to the formation of different religious sects, which, like the Adventists
of our century, are always living in the expectation of the approaching
destruction of the world.
As our planet revolves once every year around the sun and at the same time turns once in every twenty-four hours upon its own axis, thus traversing minor circles within a larger one, so is the work of the smaller cyclic periods accomplished and recommenced, within the Great Saros.
The revolution of the physical world, according to the ancient doctrine, is attended by a like revolution in the world of intellect — the spiritual evolution of the world proceeding in cycles, like the physical one.
Thus we see in history a regular alternation of ebb and flow in the tide of human progress. The great kingdoms and empires of the world, after reaching the culmination of their greatness, descend again, in accordance with the same law by which they ascended; till, having reached the lowest point, humanity reasserts itself and mounts up once more, the height of its attainment being, by this law of ascending progression by cycles, somewhat higher than the point from which it had before descended.
The division of the
history of mankind into Golden, Silver, Copper and Iron Ages, is not a fiction.
We see the same thing in the literature of peoples. An age of great inspiration
and unconscious productiveness is invariably followed by an age of criticism and
consciousness. The one affords material for the analyzing and critical intellect
of the other.
Thus, all those great characters who tower like giants in the history
of mankind, like Buddha-Siddartha, and Jesus, in the realm of spiritual, and
————————————————————————————————————
* Higgins: "Anacalypsis."
Alexander the Macedonian and Napoleon the Great, in the realm of physical conquests, were but reflexed images of human types which had existed ten thousand years before, in the preceding decimillennium, reproduced by the mysterious powers controlling the destinies of our world. There is no prominent character in all the annals of sacred or profane history whose prototype we cannot find in the half-fictitious and half-real traditions of bygone religions and mythologies. As the star, glimmering at an immeasurable distance above our heads, in the boundless immensity of the sky, reflects itself in the smooth waters of a lake, so does the imagery of men of the antediluvian ages reflect itself in the periods we can embrace in an historical retrospect.
"As above, so it is below.
That which has been, will return again.
As in heaven, so on earth."
The world is always ungrateful to its great men. Florence has built a statue to Galileo, but hardly even mentions Pythagoras. The former had a ready guide in the treatises of Copernicus, who had been obliged to contend against the universally established Ptolemaic system. But neither Galileo nor modern astronomy discovered the emplacement of the planetary bodies. Thousands of ages before, it was taught by the sages of Middle Asia, and brought thence by Pythagoras, not as a speculation, but as a demonstrated science. "The numerals of Pythagoras," says Porphyry, "were hieroglyphical symbols, by means whereof he explained all ideas concerning the nature of all things." *
Verily, then, to antiquity
alone have we to look for the origin of all things. How well Hargrave Jennings
expresses himself when speaking of Pyramids, and how true are his words when he
asks: "Is it at all reasonable to conclude, at a period when knowledge was at
the highest, and when the human powers were, in comparison with ours at the
present time, prodigious, that all these indomitable, scarcely believable
physical effects — that such achievements as those of the Egyptians — were
devoted to a mistake? that the myriads of the Nile were fools laboring in the
dark, and that all the magic of their great men was forgery, and that we, in
despising that which we call their superstition and wasted power, are alone the
wise? No! there is much more in these old religions than probably — in the
audacity of modern denial, in the confidence of these superficial-science times,
and in the derision of these days without faith — is in the least degree
supposed. We do not understand the old time.
. . . Thus we see how
classic practice and heathen teaching may be made to reconcile — how even the
Gentile and the Hebrew, the mytho-
————————————————————————————————————
* "De Vite Pythag."
logical and the Christian doctrine harmonize in the general faith founded on Magic. That Magic is indeed possible is the moral of this book." *
It is possible. Thirty years ago, when the first rappings of Rochester awakened slumbering attention to the reality of an invisible world; when the gentle shower of raps gradually became a torrent which overflowed the whole globe, spiritualists had to contend but against two potencies — theology and science. But the theosophists have, in addition to these, to meet the world at large and the spiritualists first of all.
"There is a personal God, and there is a personal Devil!" thunders the Christian preacher. "Let him be anathema who dares say nay!" "There is no personal God, except the gray matter in our brain," contemptuously replies the materialist. "And there is no Devil. Let him be considered thrice an idiot who says aye." Meanwhile the occultists and true philosophers heed neither of the two combatants, but keep perseveringly at their work. None of them believe in the absurd, passionate, and fickle God of superstition, but all of them believe in good and evil. Our human reason, the emanation of our finite mind, is certainly incapable of comprehending a divine intelligence, an endless and infinite entity; and, according to strict logic, that which transcends our understanding and would remain thoroughly incomprehensible to our senses cannot exist for us; hence, it does not exist. So far finite reason agrees with science, and says: "There is no God." But, on the other hand, our Ego, that which lives and thinks and feels independently of us in our mortal casket, does more than believe. It knows that there exists a God in nature, for the sole and invincible Artificer of all lives in us as we live in Him. No dogmatic faith or exact science is able to uproot that intuitional feeling inherent in man, when he has once fully realized it in himself.
Human nature is like
universal nature in its abhorrence of a vacuum.
It feels an intuitional yearning
for a Supreme Power. Without a God, the cosmos would seem to it but like a
soulless corpse. Being forbidden to search for Him where alone His traces would
be found, man filled the aching void with the personal God whom his spiritual
teachers built up for him from the crumbling ruins of heathen myths and hoary
philosophies of old. How otherwise explain the mushroom growth of new sects,
some of them absurd beyond degree? Mankind have one innate, irrepressible
craving, that must be satisfied in any religion that would supplant the
dogmatic, undemonstrated and undemonstrable theology of our Christian ages. This
is the yearning after the proofs of immortality. As Sir Thomas Browne has
expressed it: . . . . "it is the heaviest stone that
————————————————————————————————————
* "The Rosicrucians," etc., by Hargrave Jennings.
melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him that he is at the end of his nature, or that there is no future state to come, unto which this seems progressive, and otherwise made in vain." Let any religion offer itself that can supply these proofs in the shape of scientific facts, and the established system will be driven to the alternative of fortifying its dogmas with such facts, or of passing out of the reverence and affection of Christendom. Many a Christian divine has been forced to acknowledge that there is no authentic source whence the assurance of a future state could have been derived by man. How could then such a belief have stood for countless ages, were it not that among all nations, whether civilized or savage, man has been allowed the demonstrative proof? Is not the very existence of such a belief an evidence that thinking philosopher and unreasoning savage have both been compelled to acknowledge the testimony of their senses? That if, in isolated instances, spectral illusion may have resulted from physical causes, on the other hand, in thousands of instances, apparitions of persons have held converse with several individuals at once, who saw and heard them collectively, and could not all have been diseased in mind?
The greatest thinkers of Greece and Rome regarded such matters as demonstrated facts. They distinguished the apparitions by the names of manes, anima and umbra: the manes descending after the decease of the individual into the Underworld; the anima, or pure spirit, ascending to heaven; and the restless umbra (earth-bound spirit), hovering about its tomb, because the attraction of matter and love of its earthly body prevailed in it and prevented its ascension to higher regions.
"Terra legit
carnem tumulum
circumvolet umbra,
Orcus habet manes, spiritus
astra petit,"
says Ovid, speaking of the threefold constituents of souls.
But all such definitions must be subjected to the careful analysis of philosophy. Too many of our thinkers do not consider that the numerous changes in language, the allegorical phraseology and evident secretiveness of old Mystic writers, who were generally under an obligation never to divulge the solemn secrets of the sanctuary, might have sadly misled translators and commentators. The phrases of the mediæval alchemist they read literally; and even the veiled symbolology of Plato is commonly misunderstood by the modern scholar. One day they may learn to know better, and so become aware that the method of extreme necessarianism was practiced in ancient as well as in modern philosophy; that from the first ages of man, the fundamental truths of all that we are permitted to know on earth was in the safe keeping of the adepts of the sanc-
tuary; that the difference in creeds and religious practice was only external; and that those guardians of the primitive divine revelation, who had solved every problem that is within the grasp of human intellect, were bound together by a universal freemasonry of science and philosophy, which formed one unbroken chain around the globe. It is for philology and psychology to find the end of the thread. That done, it will then be ascertained that, by relaxing one single loop of the old religious systems, the chain of mystery may be disentangled.
The neglect and withholding of these proofs have driven such eminent minds as Hare and Wallace, and other men of power, into the fold of modern spiritualism. At the same time it has forced others, congenitally devoid of spiritual intuitions, into a gross materialism that figures under various names.
But we see no utility in prosecuting the subject further. For, though in the opinion of most of our contemporaries, there has been but one day of learning, in whose twilight stood the older philosophers, and whose noontide brightness is all our own; and though the testimony of scores of ancient and mediæval thinkers has proved valueless to modern experimenters, as though the world dated from A.D. I , and all knowledge were of recent growth, we will not lose hope or courage. The moment is more opportune than ever for the review of old philosophies. Archæologists, philologists, astronomers, chemists and physicists are getting nearer and nearer to the point where they will be forced to consider them. Physical science has already reached its limits of exploration; dogmatic theology sees the springs of its inspiration dry. Unless we mistake the signs, the day is approaching when the world will receive the proofs that only ancient religions were in harmony with nature, and ancient science embraced all that can be known. Secrets long kept may be revealed; books long forgotten and arts long time lost may be brought out to light again; papyri and parchments of inestimable importance will turn up in the hands of men who pretend to have unrolled them from mummies, or stumbled upon them in buried crypts; tablets and pillars, whose sculptured revelations will stagger theologians and confound scientists, may yet be excavated and interpreted. Who knows the possibilities of the future? An era of disenchantment and rebuilding will soon begin — nay, has already begun. The cycle has almost run its course; a new one is about to begin, and the future pages of history may contain full evidence, and convey full proof that
"If ancestry can be in aught
believed,
Descending spirits have conversed with man,
And told him secrets of the world unknown."
"Pride, where wit fails, steps in
to our defence
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
. . . " —
POPE.
"But why should the operations of nature be changed? There may be a deeper
philosophy than we dream of — a philosophy that discovers the secrets of nature,
but does not alter, by penetrating them, its course." —
BULWER.
IS it enough for
man to know that he exists? Is it enough to be formed a human being to enable
him to deserve the appellation of MAN? It is our decided impression and
conviction, that to become a genuine spiritual entity, which that designation
implies, man must first create himself anew, so to speak — i.e.,
thoroughly eliminate from his mind and spirit, not only the dominating influence
of selfishness and other impurity, but also the infection of superstition and
prejudice. The latter is far different from what we commonly term antipathy
or sympathy. We are at first irresistibly or unwittingly drawn
within its dark circle by that peculiar influence, that powerful current of
magnetism which emanates from ideas as well as from physical bodies. By this we
are surrounded, and finally prevented through moral cowardice — fear of public
opinion — from stepping out of it. It is rare that men regard a thing in either
its true or false light, accepting the conclusion by the free action of their
own judgment. Quite the reverse. The conclusion is more commonly reached by
blindly adopting the opinion current at the hour among those with whom they
associate. A church member will not pay an absurdly high price for his pew any
more than a materialist will go twice to listen to Mr. Huxley's talk on
evolution, because they think that it is right to do so; but merely because Mr.
and Mrs. So-and-so have done it, and these personages are THE
S
— AND S—'s.
The same holds good with everything else. If psychology had had its Darwin, the descent of man as regards moral qualities might have been found inseparably linked with that of his physical form. Society in its servile condition suggests to the intelligent observer of its mimicry a kinship between the Simia and human beings even more striking than is exhibited in the external marks pointed out by the great anthropologist.
The many varieties of the ape — "mocking presentments of ourselves" — appear to have been evolved on purpose to supply a certain class of expensively-dressed persons with the material for genealogical trees.
Science is daily and rapidly moving toward the great discoveries in chemistry and physics, organology, and anthropology. Learned men ought to be free from preconceptions and prejudices of every kind; yet, although thought and opinion are now free, scientists are still the same men as of old. An Utopian dreamer is he who thinks that man ever changes with the evolution and development of new ideas. The soil may be well fertilized and made to yield with every year a greater and better variety of fruit; but, dig a little deeper than the stratum required for the crop, and the same earth will be found in the subsoil as was there before the first furrow was turned.
Not many years ago, the person who questioned the infallibility of some theological dogma was branded at once an iconoclast and an infidel. Væ victis! . . . Science has conquered. But in its turn the victor claims the same infallibility, though it equally fails to prove its right. "Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis," the saying of the good old Lotharius, applies to the case. Nevertheless, we feel as if we had some right to question the high-priests of science.
For many years we have watched the development and growth of that apple of discord — MODERN SPIRITUALISM. Familiar with its literature both in Europe and America, we have closely and eagerly witnessed its interminable controversies and compared its contradictory hypotheses. Many educated men and women — heterodox spiritualists, of course — have tried to fathom the Protean phenomena. The only result was that they came to the following conclusion: whatever may be the reason of these constant failures — whether such are to be laid at the door of the investigators themselves, or of the secret Force at work — it is at least proved that, in proportion as the psychological manifestations increase in frequency and variety, the darkness surrounding their origin becomes more impenetrable.
That phenomena are actually witnessed, mysterious in their nature — generally and perhaps wrongly termed spiritual — it is now idle to deny. Allowing a large discount for clever fraud, what remains is quite serious enough to demand the careful scrutiny of science. "E pur se muove," the sentence spoken ages since, has passed into the category of household words. The courage of Galileo is not now required to fling it into the face of the Academy. Psychological phenomena are already on the offensive.
The position assumed by modern scientists is that even though the occurrence of certain mysterious phenomena in the presence of the
mediums be a fact, there is no proof that they are not due to some abnormal nervous condition of those individuals. The possibility that they may be produced by returning human spirits need not be considered until the other question is decided. Little exception can be taken to this position. Unquestionably, the burden of proof rests upon those who assert the agency of spirits. If the scientists would grapple with the subject in good faith, showing an earnest desire to solve the perplexing mystery, instead of treating it with undignified and unprofessional contempt, they would be open to no censure. True, the great majority of "spiritual" communications are calculated to disgust investigators of even moderate intelligence. Even when genuine they are trivial, commonplace, and often vulgar. During the past twenty years we have received through various mediums messages purporting to be from Shakespere, Byron, Franklin, Peter the Great, Napoleon and Josephine, and even from Voltaire. The general impression made upon us was that the French conqueror and his consort seemed to have forgotten how to spell words correctly; Shakespere and Byron had become chronic inebriates; and Voltaire had turned an imbecile. Who can blame men trained to habits of exactitude, or even simply well-educated persons, for hastily concluding that when so much palpable fraud lies upon the surface, there could hardly be truth if they should go to the bottom? The huckstering about of pompous names attached to idiotic communications has given the scientific stomach such an indigestion that it cannot assimilate even the great truth which lies on the telegraphic plateaux of this ocean of psychological phenomena. They judge by its surface, covered with froth and scum. But they might with equal propriety deny that there is any clear water in the depths of the sea when an oily scum was floating upon the surface. Therefore, if on one hand we cannot very well blame them for stepping back at the first sight of what seems really repulsive, we do, and have a right to censure them for their unwillingness to explore deeper. Neither pearls nor cut diamonds are to be found lying loose on the ground; and these persons act as unwisely as would a professional diver, who should reject an oyster on account of its filthy and slimy appearance, when by opening it he might find a precious pearl inside the shell.
Even the just and severe rebukes of some of their leading men are of no avail and the fear on the part of men of science to investigate such an unpopular subject, seems to have now become a general panic. "The phenomena chase the scientists, and the scientists run away from the phenomena," very pointedly remarks M. A. N. Aksakof in an able article on Mediumism and the St. Petersburg Scientific Committee. The attitude
of this body of professors toward the subject which they had pledged themselves to investigate was throughout simply disgraceful. Their premature and prearranged report was so evidently partial and inconclusive as to call out a scornful protest even from unbelievers.
The inconsistency of the logic of our learned gentlemen against the philosophy of spiritualism proper is admirably pointed out by Professor John Fisk — one of their own body. In a recent philosophical work, The Unseen World, while showing that from the very definition of the terms , matter and spirit, the existence of spirit cannot be demonstrated to the senses, and that thus no theory is amenable to scientific tests, he deals a severe blow at his colleagues in the following lines:
"The testimony in such a case," he says, "must, under the conditions of the present life, be forever inaccessible. It lies wholly outside the range of experience. However abundant it may be, we cannot expect to meet it. And, accordingly, our failure to produce it does not raise even the slightest presumption against our theory. When conceived in this way, the belief in the future life is without scientific support, but at the same time it is placed beyond the need of scientific support and the range of scientific criticism. It is a belief which no imaginable future advance of physical discovery can in any way impugn. It is a belief which is in no sense irrational, and which may be logically entertained without in the least affecting our scientific habit of mind, or influencing our scientific conclusions." "If now," he adds, "men of science will accept the position that spirit is not matter, nor governed by the laws of matter, and refrain from speculations concerning it restricted by their knowledge of material things, they will withdraw what is to men of religion, at present, their principal cause of irritation."
But, they will do no such thing. They feel incensed at the brave, loyal, and highly commendable surrender of such superior men as Wallace, and refuse to accept even the prudent and restrictive policy of Mr. Crookes.
No other claim is advanced for a hearing of the opinions contained in the present work than that they are based upon many years' study of both ancient magic and its modern form, Spiritualism. The former, even now, when phenomena of the same nature have become so familiar to all, is commonly set down as clever jugglery. The latter, when overwhelming evidence precludes the possibility of truthfully declaring it charlatanry, is denominated an universal hallucination.
Many years of wandering among "heathen" and "Christian" magicians, occultists, mesmerisers; and the tutti quanti of white and black art, ought to be sufficient, we think, to give us a certain right to
feel competent to take a practical view of this doubted and very complicated question. We have associated with the fakirs, the holy men of India, and seen them when in intercourse with the Pitris. We have watched the proceedings and modus operandi of the howling and dancing dervishes; held friendly communications with the marabouts of European and Asiatic Turkey; and the serpent-charmers of Damascus and Benares have but few secrets that we have not had the fortune to study. Therefore, when scientists who have never had an opportunity of living among these oriental jugglers and can judge at the best but superficially, tell us that there is naught in their performances but mere tricks of prestidigitation, we cannot help feeling a profound regret for such hasty conclusions. That such pretentious claims should be made to a thorough analysis of the powers of nature, and at the same time such unpardonable neglect displayed of questions of purely physiological and psychological character, and astounding phenomena rejected without either examination or appeal, is an exhibition of inconsistency, strongly savoring of timidity, if not of moral obliquity.
If, therefore, we should
ever receive from some contemporaneous Faraday the same fling that that
gentleman made years since, when, with more sincerity than good breeding, he
said that "many dogs have the power of coming to much more logical
conclusions than some spiritualists," * we fear we must still persist.
Abuse is not argument, least of all, proof. Because such men as Huxley and
Tyndall denominate spiritualism "a degrading belief" and oriental magic
"jugglery," they cannot thereby take from truth its verity. Skepticism, whether
it proceeds from a scientific or an ignorant brain, is unable to overturn the
immortality of our souls — if such immortality is a fact — and plunge them into
post-mortem annihilation. "Reason is subject to error," says Aristotle;
so is opinion; and the personal views of the most learned philosopher are often
more liable to be proved erroneous, than the plain common sense of his own
illiterate cook. In the Tales of the Impious Khalif,
Barrachias-Hassan-Oglu, the Arabian sage holds a wise discourse: "Beware, O my
son, of self-incense," he says. "It is the most dangerous, on account of its
agreeable intoxication. Profit by thy own wisdom, but learn to respect the
wisdom of thy fathers likewise. And remember, O my beloved, that the light of
Allah's truth will often penetrate much easier an empty head, than one that is
so crammed with learning that many a silver ray is crowded out for want of
space; . . . such is the case with our over-wise Kadi."
————————————————————————————————————
* W. Crookes, F.R.S.: "Researches in the Phenomena of
Spiritualism."
These representatives of modern science in both hemispheres seem never to have exhibited more scorn, or to have felt more bitterly toward the unsolvable mystery, than since Mr. Crookes began the investigation of the phenomena, in London. This courageous gentleman was the first to introduce to the public one of those alleged "materialized" sentries that guard the forbidden gates. Following after him, several other learned members of the scientific body had the rare integrity, combined with a degree of courage, which, in view of the unpopularity of the subject, may be deemed heroic, to take the phenomena in hand.
But, alas! although the spirit, indeed, was willing, the mortal flesh proved weak. Ridicule was more than the majority of them could bear; and so, the heaviest burden was thrown upon the shoulders of Mr. Crookes. An account of the benefit this gentleman reaped from his disinterested investigations, and the thanks he received from his own brother scientists, can be found in his three pamphlets, entitled, Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism.
After a while, the members appointed on the Committee of the Dialectical Society and Mr. Crookes, who had applied to his mediums the most crucial tests, were forced by an impatient public to report in so many plain words what they had seen. But what could they say, except the truth? Thus, they were compelled to acknowledge: 1st. That the phenomena which they, at least, had witnessed, were genuine, and impossible to simulate; thus showing that manifestations produced by some unknown force, could and did happen. 2d. That, whether the phenomena were produced by disembodied spirits or other analogous entities, they could not tell; but that manifestations, thoroughly upsetting many preconceived theories as to natural laws, did happen and were undeniable. Several of these occurred in their own families. 3d. That, notwithstanding all their combined efforts to the contrary, beyond the indisputable fact of the reality of the phenomena, "glimpses of natural action not yet reduced to law," * they, to borrow the expression of the Count de Gabalis, "could make neither head nor tail on't."
Now this was precisely what a skeptical public had not bargained for. The
discomfiture of the believers in spiritualism had been impatiently anticipated
before the conclusions of Messrs. Crookes, Varley, and the Dialectical Society
were announced. Such a confession on the part of their brother-scientists was
too humiliating for the pride of even those who had timorously abstained from
investigation. It was regarded as really too much, that such vulgar and
repulsive manifestations of phe-
————————————————————————————————————
* W. Crookes: "Experiments on Psychic Force," page 25.
nomena which had always, by common consent of educated people, been regarded as nursery tales, fit only to amuse hysterical servant-girls and afford revenue to professional somnambulists — that manifestations which had been consigned by the Academy and Institute of Paris to oblivion, should so impertinently elude detection at the hands of experts in physical sciences.
A tornado of indignation followed the confession. Mr. Crookes depicts it in his pamphlet on Psychic Force. He heads it very pointedly with the quotation from Galvani: "I am attacked by two very opposite sects — the scientists and the know-nothings, yet I know that I have discovered one of the greatest forces in nature. . . . " He then proceeds:
"It was taken for granted that the results of my experiments would be in
accordance with their preconceptions. What they really desired was not the
truth, but an additional witness in favor of their own foregone
conclusions. When they found the facts which that investigation established
could not be made to fit those opinions, why,.
. . so much the worse for
the facts. They try to creep out of their own confident recommendations of the
inquiry, by declaring 'that Mr. Home is a clever conjurer who has duped us all.'
'Mr. Crookes might, with equal propriety, examine the performances of an Indian
juggler.' 'Mr. Crookes must get better witnesses before he can be believed.'
'The thing is too absurd to be treated seriously.' 'It is impossible, and
therefore can't be.'. . .
(I never said it was
impossible, I only said it was true.) 'The observers have all been biologized,
and fancy they saw things occur which really never took place,' etc.,
etc., etc." *
After expending their
energy on such puerile theories as "unconscious cerebration," "involuntary
muscular contraction," and the sublimely ridiculous one of the "cracking
knee-joints" (le muscle craqueur); after meeting ignominious
failures by the obstinate survival of the new force, and finally, after every
desperate effort to compass its obliteration, these filii diffidentiæ —
as St. Paul calls their class — thought best to give up the whole thing in
disgust. Sacrificing their courageously persevering brethren as a holocaust on
the altar of public opinion, they withdrew in dignified silence. Leaving the
arena of investigation to more fearless champions, these unlucky experimenters
are not likely to ever enter it again.†It is easier by far to deny the
reality of such manifestations from a secure distance, than find for them a
proper place among the classes of
————————————————————————————————————
* W. Crookes: "Spiritualism Viewed by the Light of Modern Science." See
"Quarterly Journal of Science."
† A. Aksakof: "Phenomena of Mediumism."
natural phenomena accepted by exact science. And how can they, since all such phenomena pertain to psychology, and the latter, with its occult and mysterious powers, is a terra incognita for modern science. Thus, powerless to explain that which proceeds directly from the nature of the human soul itself — the existence of which most of them deny — unwilling at the same time to confess their ignorance, scientists retaliate very unjustly on those who believe in the evidence of their senses without any pretence to science.
"A kick from thee, O Jupiter! is sweet," says the poet Tretiakowsky, in an old Russian tragedy. Rude as those Jupiters of science may be occasionally toward us credulous mortals, their vast learning — in less abstruse questions, we mean — if not their manners, entitles them to public respect. But unfortunately it is not the gods who shout the loudest.
The eloquent Tertullian, speaking of Satan and his imps, whom he accuses of ever mimicking the Creator's works, denominates them the "monkeys of God." It is fortunate for the philosophicules that we have no modern Tertullian to consign them to an immortality of contempt as the "monkeys of science."
But to return to genuine scientists. "Phenomena of a merely objective character," says A. N. Aksakof, "force themselves upon the representatives of exact sciences for investigation and explanation; but the high-priests of science, in the face of apparently such a simple question . . . are totally disconcerted! This subject seems to have the privilege of forcing them to betray, not only the highest code of morality — truth, but also the supreme law of science — experiment! . . . They feel that there is something too serious underlying it. The cases of Hare, Crookes, de Morgan, Varley, Wallace, and Butleroff create a panic! They fear that as soon as they concede one step, they will have to yield the whole ground. Time-honored principles, the contemplative speculations of a whole life, of a long line of generations, are all staked on a single card!" *
In the face of such
experience as that of Crookes and the Dialectical Society, of Wallace and the
late Professor Hare, what can we expect from our luminaries of erudition? Their
attitude toward the undeniable phenomena is in itself another phenomenon. It is
simply incomprehensible, unless we admit the possibility of another
psychological disease, as mysterious and contagious as hydrophobia. Although we
claim no honor for this new discovery, we nevertheless propose to recognize it
under the name of scientific psychophobia.
————————————————————————————————————
* A. N. Aksakof: "Phenomena of Mediumism."
They ought to have learned by this time, in the school of bitter experience, that they can rely on the self-sufficiency of the positive sciences only to a certain point; and that, so long as there remains one single unexplained mystery in nature, the word "impossible" is a dangerous word for them to pronounce.
In the Researches on the Phenomena of Spiritualism, Mr. Crookes submits to the option of the reader eight theories "to account for the phenomena observed."
These theories run as follows:
"First Theory. —
The phenomena are all the result of tricks, clever mechanical arrangements,
or legerdemain; the mediums are impostors, and the rest of the company fools.
"Second Theory. —
The persons at a seance are the victims of a sort of mania, or delusion,
and imagine phenomena to occur which have no real objective existence.
"Third Theory. —
The whole is the result of conscious or unconscious cerebral action.
"Fourth Theory. —
The result of the spirit of the medium, perhaps in association with the
spirits of some or all of the people present.
"Fifth Theory. —
The actions of evil spirits, or devils, personifying whom or what they
please, in order to undermine Christianity, and ruin men's souls. (Theory of our
theologians.)
"Sixth Theory. —
The actions of a separate order of beings living on this earth, but
invisible and immaterial to us. Able, however, occasionally to manifest their
presence, known in almost all countries and ages as demons (not necessarily
bad), gnomes, fairies, kobolds, elves, goblins, Puck, etc. (One of the claims of
the kabalists.)
"Seventh Theory. —
The actions of departed human beings. (The spiritual theory par
excellence.)
"Eighth Theory.
— (The psychic force) . . . an adjunct to the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh
theories."
The first of these theories having been proved valid only in exceptional, though unfortunately still too frequent cases, must be ruled out as having no material bearing upon the phenomena themselves. Theories the second and the third are the last crumbling entrenchments of the guerilla of skeptics and materialists, and remain, as lawyers say, "Adhuc sub judice lis est." Thus, we can deal in this work but with the four remaining ones, the last, eighth, theory being according to Mr. Crookes's opinion, but "a necessary adjunct" of the others.
How subject even a scientific opinion is to error, we may see, if we only compare the several articles on spiritual phenomena from the able
pen of that gentleman, which appeared from 1870 to 1875. In one of the first we read: . . . "the increased employment of scientific methods will promote exact observations and greater love of truths among inquirers, and will produce a race of observers who will drive the worthless residuum of spiritualism hence into the unknown limbo of magic and necromancy." And in 1875, we read, over his own signature, minute and most interesting descriptions of the materialized spirit — Katie King! *
It is hardly possible to suppose that Mr. Crookes could be under electro-biological influence or hallucination for two or three consecutive years. The "spirit" appeared in his own house, in his library, under the most crucial tests, and was seen, felt, and heard by hundreds of persons.
But Mr. Crookes denies that he ever took Katie King for a disembodied spirit. What was it then? If it was not Miss Florence Cook, and his word is our sufficient guarantee for it — then it was either the spirit of one who had lived on earth, or one of those that come directly under the sixth theory of the eight the eminent scientist offers to the public choice. It must have been one of the classes named: Fairies, Kobolds, Gnomes, Elves, Goblins, or a Puck. †
Yes; Katie King must have been a fairy — a Titania. For to a fairy only could be applied with propriety the following poetic effusion which Mr. Crookes quotes in describing this wonderful spirit:
"Round her she made an
atmosphere of life;
The very air seemed lighter from her eyes;
They were so soft and beautiful and rife
With all we can imagine of the skies;
Her overpowering presence makes you feel
It would not be idolatry to kneel!"
‡
And thus, after having
written, in 1870, his severe sentence against spiritualism and magic; after
saying that even at that moment he believed "the whole affair a superstition,
or, at least, an unexplained trick — a delusion of the senses;"§ Mr.
Crookes, in 1875, closes his letter with the following memorable words: — "To
imagine, I say, the Katie King of the last three years to be the result of
imposture does more violence to one's reason and common sense than to believe
her to be what she herself affirms." ∫ This last remark, moreover,
conclusively proves that : 1 .
————————————————————————————————————
* "The Last of Katie King," pamphlet iii., p. 119. †
Ibid., pam. i., p. 7.
‡ "The Last of Katie King," pamp. iii., p. 112. §
Ibid., p. 112.
∫ "Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism," p. 45.
Notwithstanding Mr. Crookes's full convictions that the somebody calling herself Katie King was neither the medium nor some confederate, but on the contrary an unknown force in nature, which — like love — "laughs at locksmiths"; 2. That that hitherto unrecognized form of Force, albeit it had become with him "not a matter of opinion, but of absolute knowledge," — the eminent investigator still did not abandon to the last his skeptical attitude toward the question. In short, he firmly believes in the phenomenon, but cannot accept the idea of its being the human spirit of a departed somebody.
It seems to us, that, as far as public prejudice goes, Mr. Crookes solves one mystery by creating a still deeper one: the obscurum per obscurius. In other words, rejecting "the worthless residuum of spiritualism," the courageous scientist fearlessly plunges into his own "unknown limbo of magic and necromancy!"
The recognized laws of physical science account for but a few of the more objective of the so-called spiritual phenomena. While proving the reality of certain visible effects of an unknown force, they have not thus far enabled scientists to control at will even this portion of the phenomena. The truth is that the professors have not yet discovered the necessary conditions of their occurrence. They must go as deeply into the study of the triple nature of man — physiological, psychological, and divine — as did their predecessors, the magicians, theurgists, and thaumaturgists of old. Until the present moment, even those who have investigated the phenomena as thoroughly and impartially as Mr. Crookes, have set aside the cause as something not to be discovered now, if ever. They have troubled themselves no more about that than about the first cause of the cosmic phenomena of the correlation of forces, whose endless effects they are at such pains to observe and classify. Their course has been as unwise as that of a man who should attempt to discover the sources of a river by exploring toward its mouth. It has so narrowed their views of the possibilities of natural law that very simple forms of occult phenomena have necessitated their denial that they can occur unless miracles were possible; and this being a scientific absurdity the result has been that physical science has latterly been losing prestige. If scientists had studied the so-called "miracles" instead of denying them, many secret laws of nature comprehended by the ancients would have been again discovered. "Conviction," says Bacon, "comes not through arguments but through experiments."
The ancients were always distinguished — especially the Chaldean astrologers and Magians — for their ardent love and pursuit of knowledge in every branch of science. They tried to penetrate the secrets of na-
ture in the same way as our modern naturalists, and by the only method by which this object can be obtained, namely: by experimental researches and reason. If our modern philosophers cannot apprehend the fact that they penetrated deeper than themselves into the mysteries of the universe, this does not constitute a valid reason why the credit of possessing this knowledge should be denied them or the imputation of superstition laid at their door. Nothing warrants the charge; and every new archæological discovery militates against the assumption. As chemists they were unequalled, and in his famous lecture on The Lost Arts, Wendell Phillips says: "The chemistry of the most ancient period had reached a point which we have never even approached." The secret of the malleable glass, which, "if supported by one end by its own weight, in twenty hours dwindles down to a fine line that you can curve around your wrist," would be as difficult to rediscover in our civilized countries as to fly to the moon.
The fabrication of a cup of glass which was brought by an exile to Rome in the reign of Tiberius, — a cup "which he dashed upon the marble pavement, and it was not crushed nor broken by the fall," and which, as it got "dented some" was easily brought into shape again with a hammer, is a historic fact. If it is doubted now it is merely because the moderns cannot do the same. And yet, in Samarkand and some monasteries of Thibet such cups and glass-ware may be found to this day; nay, there are persons who claim that they can make the same by virtue of their knowledge of the much-ridiculed and ever-doubted alkahest — the universal solvent. This agent that Paracelsus and Van Helmont maintain to be a certain fluid in nature, "capable of reducing all sublunary bodies, as well homogeneous as mixed, into their ens primum, or the original matter of which they are composed; or into an uniform, equable, and potable liquor, that will unite with water, and the juices of all bodies, and yet retain its own radical virtues; and, if again mixed with itself will thereby be converted into pure elementary water": what impossibilities prevent our crediting the statement? Why should it not exist and why the idea be considered Utopian? Is it again because our modern chemists are unable to produce it? But surely it may be conceived without any great effort of imagination that all bodies must have originally come from some first matter, and that this matter, according to the lessons of astronomy, geology and physics, must have been a fluid. Why should not gold — of whose genesis our scientists know so little — have been originally a primitive or basic matter of gold, a ponderous fluid which, as says Van Helmont, "from its own nature, or a strong cohesion between its particles, acquired afterward a solid form?"
There seems to be very little absurdity to believe in a "universal ens that resolves all bodies into their ens genitale." Van Helmont calls it "the highest and most successful of all salts; which having obtained the supreme degree of simplicity, purity, subtilty, enjoys alone the faculty of remaining unchanged and unimpaired by the subjects it works upon, and of dissolving the most stubborn and untractable bodies; as stones, gems, glass, earth, sulphur, metals, etc., into red salt, equal in weight to the matter dissolved; and this with as much ease as hot water melts down snow."
It is into this fluid that the makers of malleable glass claimed, and now claim, that they immersed common glass for several hours, to acquire the property of malleability.
We have a ready and palpable proof of such possibilities. A foreign correspondent of the Theosophical Society, a well-known medical practitioner, and one who has studied the occult sciences for upward of thirty years, has succeeded in obtaining what he terms the "true oil of gold," i.e., the primal element. Chemists and physicists have seen and examined it, and were driven to confess that they neither knew how it was obtained nor could they do the same. That he desires his name to remain unknown is not to be wondered at; ridicule and public prejudice are more dangerous sometimes than the inquisition of old. This "Adamic earth" is next-door neighbor to the alkahest, and one of the most important secrets of the alchemists. No Kabalist will reveal it to the world, for, as he expresses it in the well-known jargon: "it would explain the eagles of the alchemists, and how the eagles' wings are clipped," a secret that it took Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes) twenty years to learn.
As the dawn of physical science broke into a glaring day-light, the spiritual sciences merged deeper and deeper into night, and in their turn they were denied. So, now, these greatest masters in psychology are looked upon as "ignorant and superstitious ancestors"; as mountebanks and jugglers, because, forsooth, the sun of modern learning shines to-day so bright, it has become an axiom that the philosophers and men of science of the olden time knew nothing, and lived in a night of superstition. But their traducers forget that the sun of to-day will seem dark by comparison with the luminary of to-morrow, whether justly or not; and as the men of our century think their ancestors ignorant, so will perhaps their descendants count them for know-nothings. The world moves in cycles. The coming races will be but the reproductions of races long bygone; as we, perhaps, are the images of those who lived a hundred centuries ago. The time will come when those who now in public slan-
der the hermetists, but ponder in secret their dust-covered volumes; who plagiarize their ideas, assimilate and give them out as their own — will receive their dues. "Who," honestly exclaims Pfaff — "what man has ever taken more comprehensive views of nature than Paracelsus? He was the bold creator of chemical medicines; the founder of courageous parties; victorious in controversy, belonging to those spirits who have created amongst us a new mode of thinking on the natural existence of things. What he scattered through his writings on the philosopher's stone, on pigmies and spirits of the mines; on signs, on homunculi, and the elixir of life, and which are employed by many to lower his estimation, cannot extinguish our grateful remembrance of his general works, nor our admiration of his free, bold exertions, and his noble, intellectual life." *
More than one pathologist, chemist, homoeopathist, and magnetist has quenched his thirst for knowledge in the books of Paracelsus. Frederick Hufeland got his theoretical doctrines on infection from this mediæval "quack," as Sprengel delights in calling one who was immeasurably higher than himself. Hemman, who endeavors to vindicate this great philosopher, and nobly tries to redress his slandered memory, speaks of him as the "greatest chemist of his time." † So do Professor Molitor, ‡ and Dr. Ennemoser, the eminent German psychologist. § According to their criticisms on the labors of this Hermetist, Paracelsus is the most "wondrous intellect of his age," a "noble genius." But our modern lights assume to know better, and the ideas of the Rosicrucians about the elementary spirits, the goblins and the elves, have sunk into the "limbo of magic" and fairy tales for early childhoods. ∫∫
We are quite
ready to concede to skeptics that one-half, and even more, of seeming phenomena,
are but more or less clever fraud. Recent exposures, especially of
"materializing" mediums, but too well prove the fact.
Unquestionably numerous others are still in store, and this will
————————————————————————————————————
* Pfaff's "Astrology." Berl. †
"Medico-Surgical Essays."
‡ "The Philosophy of Hist." §
On Theoph. Paracelsus. —
Magic.
∫∫ Kemshead says in his "Inorganic Chemistry" that "the element
hydrogen was first mentioned in the sixteenth century by Paracelsus, but
very little was known of it in any way." (P. 66.) And why not be fair and
confess at once that Paracelsus was the re-discoverer of hydrogen as he
was the re-discoverer of the hidden properties of the magnet and animal
magnetism? It is easy to show that according to the strict vows of secrecy taken
and faithfully observed by every Rosicrucian (and especially by the alchemist)
he kept his knowledge secret. Perhaps it would not prove a very difficult task
for any chemist well versed in the works of Paracelsus to demonstrate that
oxygen, the discovery of which is credited to Priestley, was known to the
Rosicrucian alchemists as well as hydrogen.
continue until tests have become so perfect and spiritualists so reasonable as no longer to furnish opportunity to mediums or weapons to adversaries.
What should sensible spiritualists think of the character of angel guides, who after monopolizing, perhaps for years, a poor medium's time, health and means, suddenly abandon him when he most needs their help? None but creatures without soul or conscience would be guilty of such injustice. Conditions? — Mere sophistry. What sort of spirits must they be who would not summon if necessary an army of spirit-friends (if such there be) to snatch the innocent medium from the pit dug for his feet? Such things happened in the olden time, such may happen now. There were apparitions before modern spiritualism, and phenomena like ours in every previous age. If modern manifestations are a reality and palpable facts, so must have been the so-called "miracles" and thaumaturgic exploits of old; or if the latter are but fictions of superstition so must be the former, for they rest on no better testimony.
But, in this daily-increasing torrent of occult phenomena that rushes from one end of the globe to the other, though two-thirds of the manifestations are proved spurious, what of those which are proved genuine beyond doubt or cavil? Among these may be found communications coming through non-professional as well as professional mediums, which are sublime and divinely grand. Often, through young children, and simple-minded ignorant persons, we receive philosophical teachings and precepts, poetry and inspirational orations, music and paintings that are fully worthy of the reputations of their alleged authors. Their prophecies are often verified and their moral disquisitions beneficent, though the latter is of rarer occurrence. Who are those spirits, what those powers or intelligences which are evidently outside of the medium proper and entities per se? These intelligences deserve the appellation; and they differ as widely from the generality of spooks and goblins that hover around the cabinets for physical manifestations, as day from night.
We must confess that the situation appears to be very grave. The control of mediums by such unprincipled and lying "spirits" is constantly becoming more and more general; and the pernicious effects of seeming diabolism constantly multiply. Some of the best mediums are abandoning the public rostrum and retiring from this influence; and the movement is drifting churchward. We venture the prediction that unless spiritualists set about the study of ancient philosophy, so as to learn to discriminate between spirits and to guard themselves against the baser sort, twenty-five years more will not elapse before they will have to fly to the Romish communion to escape these "guides" and "controls" that they have fondled so long. The signs of this catastrophe already exhibit
themselves. At a recent convention at Philadelphia, it was seriously proposed to organize a sect of Christian Spiritualists! This is because, having withdrawn from the church and learned nothing of the philosophy of the phenomena, or the nature of their spirits, they are drifting about on a sea of uncertainty like a ship without compass or rudder. They cannot escape the dilemma; they must choose between Porphyry and Pio Nono.
While men of genuine science, such as Wallace, Crookes, Wagner, Butlerof, Varley, Buchanan, Hare, Reichenbach, Thury, Perty, de Morgan, Hoffmann, Goldschmidt, W. Gregory, Flammarion, Sergeant Cox and many others, firmly believe in the current phenomena, many of the above named reject the theory of departed spirits. Therefore, it seems but logical to think that if the London "Katie King," the only materialized something which the public is obliged more or less to credit out of respect to science, — is not the spirit of an ex-mortal, then it must be the astral solidified shadow of either one of the Rosicrucian spooks — "fantasies of superstition" — or of some as yet unexplained force in nature. Be it however a "spirit of health or goblin damn'd" it is of little consequence; for if it be once proved that its organism is not solid matter, then it must be and is a "spirit," an apparition, a breath. It is an intelligence which acts outside our organisms and therefore must belong to some existing even though unseen race of beings. But what is it? What is this something which thinks and even speaks but yet is not human; that is impalpable and yet not a disembodied spirit; that simulates affection, passion, remorse, fear, joy, but yet feels neither? What is this canting creature which rejoices in cheating the truthful inquirer and mocking at sacred human feeling? For, if not Mr. Crookes's Katie King, other similar creatures have done all these. Who can fathom the mystery? The true psychologist alone. And where should he go for his text-books but to the neglected alcoves of libraries where the works of despised hermetists and theurgists have been gathering dust these many years.
Says Henry More, the
revered English Platonist, in his answer to an attack on the believers of
spiritual and magic phenomena by a skeptic of that age, named Webster: *
"As for that other opinion, that the
————————————————————————————————————
* "Letter to J. Glanvil, chaplain to the king and a fellow of the Royal
Society." Glanvil was the author of the celebrated work on Apparitions and
Demonology entitled "Sadducismus Triumphatus, or a full and plain evidence
concerning witches and apparitions," in two parts, "proving partly by Scripture,
and partly by a choice collection of modern relations, the real existence of
apparitions, spirits and witches." — 1700.
greater part of the reformed divines hold, that it was the Devil that appeared in Samuel's shape, it is beneath contempt; for though I do not doubt but that in many of these necromantic apparitions, they are ludicrous spirits, not the souls of the deceased that appear, yet I am clear for the appearing of the soul of Samuel, and as clear that in other necromancies, it may be such kinds of spirits, as Porphyrius above describes, 'that change themselves into omnifarious forms and shapes, and one while act the parts of dæmons, another while of angels or gods, and another while of the souls of the departed.' And I confess such a spirit as this might personate Samuel here, for anything Webster alleged to the contrary, for his arguments indeed are wonderfully weak and wooden."
When such a metaphysician and philosopher as Henry More gives such testimony as this, we may well assume our point to have been well taken. Learned investigators, all very skeptical as to spirits in general and "departed human spirits" in particular, during the last twenty years have taxed their brains to invent new names for an old thing. Thus, with Mr. Crookes and Sergeant Cox, it is the "psychic force." Professor Thury of Geneva calls it the "psychode" or ectenic force; Professor Balfour Stewart, the "electro-biological power"; Faraday, the "great master of experimental philosophy in physics," but apparently a novice in psychology, superciliously termed it an "unconscious muscular action," an "unconscious cerebration," and what not? Sir William Hamilton, a "latent thought"; Dr. Carpenter, "the ideo-motor principle," etc., etc. So many scientists — so many names.
Years ago the old German philosopher, Schopenhauer, disposed of this force
and matter at the same time; and since the conversion of Mr. Wallace, the great
anthropologist has evidently adopted his ideas. Schopenhauer's doctrine is that
the universe is but the manifestation of the will. Every force in nature is also
an effect of will, representing a higher or lower degree of its objectiveness.
It is the teaching of Plato, who stated distinctly that everything visible was
created or evolved out of the invisible and eternal WILL, and after its fashion.
Our Heaven — he says — was produced according to the eternal pattern of the
"Ideal World," contained, as everything else, in the dodecahedron, the
geometrical model used by the Deity. * With Plato, the Primal Being is
an emanation of the Demiurgic Mind (Nous), which contains from
the eternity the "idea" of the "to be created world" within
itself, and which idea he produces out of himself. † The laws of nature
are the established relations of this idea to the forms of its
manifestations; "these
————————————————————————————————————
* Plato: "Timæus Soerius," 97. †
See Movers'
"Explanations," 268.
forms," says Schopenhauer, "are
time, space, and causality. Through time and space the idea varies in its
numberless manifestations."
These ideas are far from being new, and even with Plato they were not
original. This is what we read in the Chaldean Oracles: * "The
works of nature co-exist with the intellectual [
noe;rw
], spiritual Light of the Father. For it is the soul [
Yuch
] which adorned the great heaven, and which adorns it after the Father."
"The incorporeal world then was already completed, having its seat in the
Divine Reason," says Philo † who is erroneously accused of deriving his
philosophy from Plato's.
In the Theogony
of Mochus, we find Æther first, and then the air; the two principles from
which Ulom, the intelligible [
nohvtoß
] God (the visible universe of matter) is born. ‡
In the Orphic hymns, the Eros-Phanes evolves from the Spiritual Egg, which
the Æthereal winds impregnate, Wind § being "the spirit of God," who is
said to move in Æther, "brooding over the Chaos" — the Divine "Idea." In the
Hindu Katakopanisad, Purusha, the Divine Spirit, already stands before
the original matter, from whose union springs the great Soul of the World, "Maha
= Atma, Brahm, the Spirit of Life"; ∫∫ these latter appellations are
identical with the Universal Soul, or Anima Mundi, and the Astral Light
of the theurgists and kabalists.
Pythagoras brought his doctrines from the eastern sanctuaries, and Plato
compiled them into a form more intelligible than the mysterious numerals of the
sage — whose doctrines he had fully embraced — to the uninitiated mind. Thus,
the Cosmos is "the
Son" with Plato, having for his father and mother the Divine Thought and Matter.
¶
"The Egyptians," says Dunlap, ** "distinguish between an older and
younger Horus, the former the brother of Osiris, the latter the son
of Osiris and Isis." The first is the Idea of the world
remaining in the Demiurgic Mind, "born in darkness before the creation of the
world." The second Horus is this "Idea" going forth from the Logos,
becoming clothed with matter, and assuming an actual existence. ††
"The mundane God, eternal, boundless, young and old, of winding form,"
‡‡ say the Chaldean Oracles.
This "winding form" is a figure
to express the vibratory motion of the Astral Light, with which the ancient
priests were perfectly well
————————————————————————————————————
* Cory: "Chaldean Oracles," 243. †
Philo Judæus:
"On the Creation," x.
‡ Movers: "Phoinizer," 282. § K. O. Müller,
236.
∫∫ Weber: "Akad. Vorles," 213, 214, etc. ¶
Plutarch,
"Isis and Osiris," i., vi.
** "Spirit History of Man," p. 88. ††
Movers: "Phoinizer," 268.
‡‡ Cory: "Fragments," 240.
acquainted, though they may have differed in views of ether, with modern scientists; for in the Æther they placed the Eternal Idea pervading the Universe, or the Will which becomes Force, and creates or organizes matter.
"The will," says Van Helmont, "is the first of all powers. For through the will of the Creator all things were made and put in motion. . . . The will is the property of all spiritual beings, and displays itself in them the more actively the more they are freed from matter." And Paracelsus, "the divine," as he was called, adds in the same strain: "Faith must confirm the imagination, for faith establishes the will. . . . Determined will is a beginning of all magical operations. . . . Because men do not perfectly imagine and believe the result, is that the arts are uncertain, while they might be perfectly certain."
The opposing power alone of unbelief and skepticism, if projected in a current of equal force, can check the other, and sometimes completely neutralize it. Why should spiritualists wonder that the presence of some strong skeptics, or of those who, feeling bitterly opposed to the phenomenon, unconsciously exercise their will-power in opposition, hinders and often stops altogether the manifestations? If there is no conscious power on earth but sometimes finds another to interfere with or even counterbalance it, why wonder when the unconscious, passive power of a medium is suddenly paralyzed in its effects by another opposing one, though it also be as unconsciously exercised? Professors Faraday and Tyndall boasted that their presence at a circle would stop at once every manifestation. This fact alone ought to have proved to the eminent scientists that there was some force in these phenomena worthy to arrest their attention. As a scientist, Prof. Tyndall was perhaps pre-eminent in the circle of those who were present at the seance; as a shrewd observer, one not easily deceived by a tricking medium, he was perhaps no better, if as clever, as others in the room, and if the manifestations were but a fraud so ingenious as to deceive the others, they would not have stopped, even on his account. What medium can ever boast of such phenomena as were produced by Jesus, and the apostle Paul after him? Yet even Jesus met with cases where the unconscious force of resistance overpowered even his so well directed current of will. "And he did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief."
There is a reflection of every one of these views in Schopenhauer's philosophy. Our "investigating" scientists might consult his works with profit. They will find therein many a strange hypothesis founded on old ideas, speculations on the "new" phenomena, which may prove as reasonable as any, and be saved the useless trouble of inventing new
theories. The psychic and ectenic forces, the "ideo-motor" and "electro-biological powers"; "latent thought" and even "unconscious cerebration" theories, can be condensed in two words: the kabalistic ASTRAL LIGHT.
The bold theories and opinions expressed in Schopenhauer's works differ widely with those of the majority of our orthodox scientists. "In reality," remarks this daring speculator, "there is neither matter nor spirit. The tendency to gravitation in a stone is as unexplainable as thought in human brain. . . . If matter can — no one knows why — fall to the ground, then it can also — no one knows why — think. . . . As soon, even in mechanics, as we trespass beyond the purely mathematical, as soon as we reach the inscrutable, adhesion, gravitation, and so on, we are faced by phenomena which are to our senses as mysterious as the WILL and THOUGHT in man — we find ourselves facing the incomprehensible, for such is every force in nature. Where is then that matter which you all pretend to know so well; and from which — being so familiar with it — you draw all your conclusions and explanations, and attribute to it all things? That, which can be fully realized by our reason and senses, is but the superficial: they can never reach the true inner substance of things. Such was the opinion of Kant. If you consider that there is in a human head some sort of a spirit, then you are obliged to concede the same to a stone. If your dead and utterly passive matter can manifest a tendency toward gravitation, or, like electricity, attract and repel, and send out sparks — then, as well as the brain, it can also think. In short, every particle of the so-called spirit, we can replace with an equivalent of matter, and every particle of matter replace with spirit. . . . Thus, it is not the Cartesian division of all things into matter and spirit that can ever be found philosophically exact; but only if we divide them into will and manifestation, which form of division has naught to do with the former, for it spiritualizes every thing: all that, which is in the first instance real and objective — body and matter — it transforms into a representation, and every manifestation into will." *
These views corroborate what we have expressed about the various names
given to the same thing. The disputants are battling about mere words. Call the
phenomena force, energy, electricity or magnetism, will, or spirit-power, it
will ever be the partial manifestation of the soul, whether disembodied
or imprisoned for a while in its body — of a portion of that intelligent,
omnipotent, and individual WILL, pervading all nature, and known, through the
insufficiency of human language to express correctly psychological images, as —
GOD.
————————————————————————————————————
* "Parerga," ii., pp. 111, 112.
The ideas of some of our schoolmen about matter are, from the kabalistic standing-point, in many a way erroneous. Hartmann calls their views "an instinctual prejudice." Furthermore, he demonstrates that no experimenter can have anything to do with matter properly termed, but only with the forces into which he divides it. The visible effects of matter are but the effects of force. He concludes thereby, that that which is now called matter is nothing but the aggregation of atomic forces, to express which the word matter is used: outside of that, for science matter is but a word void of sense. Notwithstanding many an honest confession on the part of our specialists — physicists, physiologists and chemists — that they know nothing whatever of matter,* they deify it. Every new phenomenon which they find themselves unable to explain, is triturated, compounded into incense, and burned on the altar of the goddess who patronizes modern scientists.
No one can better treat his subject than does Schopenhauer in his Parerga. In this work he discusses at length animal magnetism, clairvoyance, sympathetic cures, seership, magic, omens, ghost-seeing, and other spiritual matters. "All these manifestations," he says, "are branches of one and the same tree, and furnish us with irrefutable proofs of the existence of a chain of beings which is based on quite a different order of things than that nature which has at its foundation laws of space, time and adaptability. This other order of things is far deeper, for it is the original and the direct one; in its presence the common laws of nature, which are simply formal, are unavailing; therefore, under its immediate action neither time nor space can separate any longer the individuals, and the separation impendent on these forms presents no more insurmountable barriers for the intercourse of thoughts and the immediate action of the will. In this manner changes may be wrought by quite a different course than the course of physical causality, i.e., through an action of the manifestation of the will exhibited in a peculiar way and outside the individual himself. Therefore the peculiar character of all the aforesaid manifestations is the visio in distante et actio in distante (vision and action at a distance) in its relation to time as well as in its relation to space. Such an action at a distance is just what constitutes the fundamental character of what is called magical; for such is the immediate action of our will, an action liberated from the causal conditions of physical action, viz., contact."
"Besides that," continues
Schopenhauer, "these manifestations present to us a substantial and perfectly
logical contradiction to materialism, and even to naturalism, because in the
light of such manifestations,
————————————————————————————————————
* See Huxley: "Physical Basis of Life."
that order of things in nature which both these philosophies seek to present as absolute and the only genuine, appears before us on the contrary purely phenomenal and superficial, and containing at the bottom of it a substance of things à parte and perfectly independent of its own laws. That is why these manifestations — at least from a purely philosophical point of view — among all the facts which are presented to us in the domain of experiment, are beyond any comparison the most important. Therefore, it is the duty of every scientist to acquaint himself with them." *
To pass from the philosophical speculations of a man like Schopenhauer to
the superficial generalizations of some of the French Academicians, would be
profitless but for the fact that it enables us to estimate the intellectual
grasp of the two schools of learning. What the German makes of profound
psychological questions, we have seen. Compare with it the best that the
astronomer Babinet and the chemist Boussingault can offer by way of explaining
an important spiritualistic phenomenon. In 1854-5 these distinguished
specialists presented to the Academy a memoire, or monograph, whose
evident object was to corroborate and at the same time make clearer Dr.
Chevreuil's too complicated theory in explanation of the turning-tables, of the
commission for the investigation of which he was a member.
Here it is verbatim: "As to the movements and oscillations
alleged to happen with certain tables, they can have no cause other than
the invisible and involuntary vibrations of the experimenter's muscular
system; the extended contraction of the muscles manifesting itself at such time
by a series of vibrations, and becoming thus a visible tremor which
communicates to the object a circumrotary motion. This rotation is thus enabled
to manifest itself with a considerable energy, by a gradually quickening motion,
or by a strong resistance, whenever it is required to stop. Hence the physical
explanation of the phenomenon becomes clear and does not offer the slightest
difficulty." †
None whatever. This scientific hypothesis — or demonstration shall we say? — is as clear as one of M. Babinet's nebulæ examined on a foggy night.
And still, clear as it may
be, it lacks an important feature, i.e., common sense. We are at a loss
to decide whether or not Babinet accepts en desespoir de cause
Hartmann's proposition that "the visible effects of matter are nothing
but the effects of a force," and, that in order to form a
clear conception of matter, one must first form one of force. The philosophy to
the school of which belongs Hartmann, and which is
————————————————————————————————————
* Schopenhauer: "Parerga." Art. on "Will in Nature."
†"Revue des Deux Mondes," Jan. 15, 1855, p. 108.
partly accepted by several of the greatest German scientists, teaches that the problem of matter can only be solved by that invisible Force, acquaintance with which Schopenhauer terms the "magical knowledge," and "magical effect or action of Will." Thus, we must first ascertain whether the "involuntary vibrations of the experimenter's muscular system," which are but "actions of matter," are influenced by a will within the experimenter or without. In the former case Babinet makes of him an unconscious epileptic; the latter, as we will further see, he rejects altogether, and attributes all intelligent answers of the tipping or rapping tables to "unconscious ventriloquism."
We know that every exertion of will results in force, and that, according to the above-named German school, the manifestations of atomic forces are individual actions of will, resulting in the unconscious rushing of atoms into the concrete image already subjectively created by the will. Democritus taught, after his instructor Leucippus, that the first principles of all things contained in the universe were atoms and a vacuum. In its kabalistic sense, the vacuum means in this instance the latent Deity, or latent force, which at its first manifestation became WILL, and thus communicated the first impulse to these atoms — whose agglomeration, is matter. This vacuum was but another name for chaos, and an unsatisfactory one, for, according to the Peripatetics "nature abhors a vacuum."
That before Democritus the
ancients were familiar with the idea of the indestructibility of matter is
proved by their allegories and numerous other facts. Movers gives a definition
of the Phœnician idea of the ideal sun-light as a spiritual influence issuing
from the highest God, IAO, "the light conceivable only by
intellect — the physical and spiritual Principle of all things; out of which the
soul emanates." It was the male Essence, or Wisdom, while the primitive matter
or Chaos was the
female. Thus the two first principles —
co-eternal and infinite, were already
with the primitive Phœnicians, spirit and matter. Therefore the theory is as
old as the world; for Democritus was not the first philosopher who taught it;
and intuition existed in man before the ultimate development of his reason. But
it is in the denial of the boundless and endless Entity, possessor of that
invisible Will which we for lack of a better term call
GOD,
that lies the powerlessness of every materialistic science to explain the occult
phenomena. It is in the rejection a priori of everything which might
force them to cross the boundary of exact science and step into the domain of
psychological, or, if we prefer, metaphysical physiology, that we find the
secret cause of their discomfiture by the manifestations, and their absurd
theories to account for them. The ancient philosophy affirmed that it is in
consequence of the manifestation of that Will — termed by Plato the Divine
Idea — that everything visible and invisible
sprung into existence. As that Intelligent Idea, which, by directing its sole will-power toward a centre of localized forces called objective forms into being, so can man, the microcosm of the great Macrocosm, do the same in proportion with the development of his will-power. The imaginary atoms — a figure of speech employed by Democritus, and gratefully seized upon by the materialists — are like automatic workmen moved inwardIy by the influx of that Universal Will directed upon them, and which, manifesting itself as force, sets them into activity. The plan of the structure to be erected is in the brain of the Architect, and reflects his will; abstract as yet, from the instant of the conception it becomes concrete through these atoms which follow faithfully every line, point and figure traced in the imagination of the Divine Geometer.
As God creates, so man can create. Given a certain intensity of will, and the shapes created by the mind become subjective. Hallucinations, they are called, although to their creator they are real as any visible object is to any one else. Given a more intense and intelligent concentration of this will, and the form becomes concrete, visible, objective; the man has learned the secret of secrets; he is a MAGICIAN.
The materialist should not object to this logic, for he regards thought as matter. Conceding it to be so, the cunning mechanism contrived by the inventor; the fairy scenes born in the poet's brain; the gorgeous painting limned by the artist's fancy; the peerless statue chiselled in ether by the sculptor; the palaces and castles built in air by the architect — all these, though invisible and subjective, must exist, for they are matter, shaped and moulded. Who shall say, then, that there are not some men of such imperial will as to be able to drag these air-drawn fancies into view, enveloped in the hard casing of gross substance to make them tangible?
If the French scientists reaped no laurels in the new field of investigation, what more was done in England, until the day when Mr. Crookes offered himself in atonement for the sins of the learned body? Why, Mr. Faraday, some twenty years ago, actually condescended to be spoken to once or twice upon the subject. Faraday, whose name is pronounced by the anti-spiritualists in every discussion upon the phenomena, as a sort of scientific charm against the evil-eye of Spiritualism, Faraday, who "blushed" for having published his researches upon such a degrading belief, is now proved on good authority to have never sat at a tipping table himself at all! We have but to open a few stray numbers of the Journal des Debats, published while a noted Scotch medium was in England, to recall the past events in all their primitive freshness. In one of these numbers, Dr. Foucault, of Paris, comes out as a champion for the eminent English experimenter. "Pray, do not imagine," says he,
"that the grand physicist had ever himself condescended so far as to sit prosaically at a jumping table." Whence, then, came the "blushes" which suffused the cheeks of the "Father of Experimental Philosophy"? Remembering this fact, we will now examine the nature of Faraday's beautiful "Indicator," the extraordinary "Medium-Catcher," invented by him for the detection of mediumistic fraud. That complicated machine, the memory of which haunts like a nightmare the dreams of dishonest mediums, is carefully described in Comte de Mirville's Question des Esprits.
The better to prove to the experimenters the reality of their own impulsion, Professor Faraday placed several card-board disks, united to each other and stuck to the table by a half-soft glue, which, making the whole adhere for a time together, would, nevertheless, yield to a continuous pressure. Now, the table having turned — yes, actually having dared to turn before Mr. Faraday, which fact is of some value, at least — the disks were examined; and, as they were found to have gradually displaced themselves by slipping in the same direction as the table, it thus became an unquestionable proof that the experimenters had pushed the tables themselves.
Another of the so-called scientific tests, so useful in a phenomenon alleged to be either spiritual or psychical, consisted of a small instrument which immediately warned the witnesses of the slightest personal impulsion on their part, or rather, according to Mr. Faraday's own expression, "it warned them when they changed from the passive to the active state." This needle which betrayed the active motion proved but one thing, viz.: the action of a force which either emanated from the sitters or controlled them. And who has ever said that there is no such force? Every one admits so much, whether this force passes through the operator, as it is generally shown, or acts independently of him, as is so often the case. "The whole mystery consisted in the disproportion of the force employed by the operators, who pushed because they were forced to push, with certain effects of rotation, or rather, of a really marvellous race. In the presence of such prodigious effects, how could any one imagine that the Lilliputian experiments of that kind could have any value in this newly discovered Land of Giants?" *
Professor Agassiz, who
occupied in America nearly the same eminent position as a scientist which Mr.
Faraday did in England, acted with a still greater unfairness. Professor J. R.
Buchanan, the distinguished anthropologist, who has treated Spiritualism in some
respects more scientifically than any one else in America, speaks of Agassiz, in
a recent article, with
————————————————————————————————————
* Comte de Mirville: "Question des Esprits."
a very just indignation. For, of all other men, Professor Agassiz ought to believe in a phenomenon to which he had been a subject himself. But now that both Faraday and Agassiz are themselves disembodied, we can do better by questioning the living than the dead.
Thus a force whose secret powers were thoroughly familiar to the ancient theurgists, is denied by modern skeptics. The antediluvian children — who perhaps played with it, using it as the boys in Bulwer-Lytton's Coming Race, use the tremendous "vril" — called it the "Water of Phtha"; their descendants named it the Anima Mundi, the soul of the universe; and still later the mediæval hermetists termed it "sidereal light," or the "Milk of the Celestial Virgin," the "Magnes," and many other names. But our modern learned men will neither accept nor recognize it under such appellations; for it pertains to magic, and magic is, in their conception, a disgraceful superstition.
Apollonius and Iamblichus held that it was not "in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul within, that lies the empire of man, aspiring to be more than men." * Thus they had arrived at a perfect cognizance of their godlike souls, the powers of which they used with all the wisdom, outgrowth of esoteric study of the hermetic lore, inherited by them from their forefathers. But our philosophers, tightly shutting themselves up in their shells of flesh, cannot or dare not carry their timid gaze beyond the comprehensible. For them there is no future life; there are no godlike dreams, they scorn them as unscientific; for them the men of old are but "ignorant ancestors," as they express it; and whenever they meet during their physiological researches with an author who believes that this mysterious yearning after spiritual knowledge is inherent in every human being, and cannot have been given us utterly in vain, they regard him with contemptuous pity.
Says a Persian proverb: "The darker the sky is, the brighter the stars will shine." Thus, on the dark firmament of the mediæval ages began appearing the mysterious Brothers of the Rosie Cross. They formed no associations, they built no colleges; for, hunted up and down like so many wild beasts, when caught by the Christian Church, they were unceremoniously roasted. "As religion forbids it," says Bayle, "to spill blood," therefore, "to elude the maxim, Ecclesia non novit sanguinem, they burned human beings, as burning a man does not shed his blood!"
Many of these mystics, by
following what they were taught by some treatises, secretly preserved from one
generation to another, achieved discoveries which would not be despised even in
our modern days of exact sciences. Roger Bacon, the friar, was laughed at as a
quack, and
————————————————————————————————————
* Bulwer-Lytton: "Zanoni."
is now generally numbered among "pretenders" to magic art; but his discoveries were nevertheless accepted, and are now used by those who ridicule him the most. Roger Bacon belonged by right if not by fact to that Brotherhood which includes all those who study the occult sciences. Living in the thirteenth century, almost a contemporary, therefore, of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, his discoveries — such as gunpowder and optical glasses, and his mechanical achievements — were considered by every one as so many miracles. He was accused of having made a compact with the Evil One.
In the legendary history of Friar Bacon, as "well as in an old play written by Robert Green, a dramatist in the days of Queen Elizabeth, it is recounted, that, having been summoned before the king, the friar was induced to show" some of his skill before her majesty the queen. So he waved his hand (his wand, says the text), and "presently was heard such excellent music, that they all said they had never heard the like." Then there was heard a still louder music and four apparitions suddenly presented themselves and danced until they vanished and disappeared in the air. Then he waved his wand again, and suddenly there was such a smell "as if all the rich perfumes in the whole world had been there prepared in the best manner that art could set them out." Then Roger Bacon having promised a gentleman to show him his sweetheart, he pulled a hanging in the king's apartment aside and every one in the room saw "a kitchen-maid with a basting-ladle in her hand." The proud gentleman, although he recognized the maiden who disappeared as suddenly as she had appeared, was enraged at the humiliating spectacle, and threatened the friar with his revenge. What does the magician do? He simply answers: "Threaten not, lest I do you more shame; and do you take heed how you give scholars the lie again!"
As a commentary on this, the modern historian * remarks: "This may
be taken as a sort of exemplification of the class of exhibitions which were
probably the result of a superior knowledge of natural sciences." No
one ever doubted that it was the result of precisely such a knowledge, and the
hermetists, magicians, astrologers and alchemists never claimed anything else.
It certainly was not their fault that the ignorant masses, under the influence
of an unscrupulous and fanatical clergy, should have attributed all such works
to the agency of the devil. In view of the atrocious tortures provided by the
Inquisition for all suspected of either black or white magic, it is not strange
that these philosophers neither boasted nor even acknowledged the fact of such
an intercourse. On the contrary, their own writings prove that they held that
magic is "no more than the
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* T. Wright: "Narratives of Sorcery and Magic."
application of natural active causes to passive things or subjects; by means thereof, many tremendously surprising but yet natural effects are produced."
The phenomena of the mystic odors and music, exhibited by Roger Bacon, have been often observed in our own time. To say nothing of our personal experience, we are informed by English correspondents of the Theosophical Society that they have heard strains of the most ravishing music, coming from no visible instrument, and inhaled a succession of delightful odors produced, as they believed, by spirit-agency. One correspondent tells us that so powerful was one of these familiar odors — that of sandal-wood — that the house would be impregnated with it for weeks after the seance. The medium in this case was a member of a private family, and the experiments were all made within the domestic circle. Another describes what he calls a "musical rap." The potencies that are now capable of producing these phenomena must have existed and been equally efficacious in the days of Roger Bacon. As to the apparitions, it suffices to say that they are evoked now in spiritualistic circles, and guaranteed by scientists, and their evocation by Roger Bacon is thus made more probable than ever.
Baptista Porta, in his treatise on Natural Magic, enumerates a whole catalogue of secret formulæ for producing extraordinary effects by employing the occult powers of nature. Although the "magicians" believed as firmly as our spiritualists in a world of invisible spirits, none of them claimed to produce his effects under their control or through their sole help. They knew too well how difficult it is to keep away the elementary creatures when they have once found the door wide open. Even the magic of the ancient Chaldeans was but a profound knowledge of the powers of simples and minerals. It was only when the theurgist desired divine help in spiritual and earthly matters that he sought direct communication through religious rites, with pure spiritual beings. With them, even, those spirits who remain invisible and communicate with mortals through their awakened inner senses, as in clairvoyance, clairaudience and trance, could only be evoked subjectively and as a result of purity of life and prayer. But all physical phenomena were produced simply by applying a knowledge of natural forces, although certainly not by the method of legerdemain, practiced in our days by conjurers.
Men possessed of such knowledge and exercising such powers patiently toiled for something better than the vain glory of a passing fame. Seeking it not, they became immortal, as do all who labor for the good of the race, forgetful of mean self. Illuminated with the light of eternal truth, these rich-poor alchemists fixed their attention upon the things that lie beyond the common ken, recognizing nothing inscrutable but the First
Cause, and finding no question unsolvable. To dare, to know, to will, and REMAIN SILENT, was their constant rule; to be beneficent, unselfish, and unpretending, were, with them, spontaneous impulses. Disdaining the rewards of petty traffic, spurning wealth, luxury, pomp, and worldly power, they aspired to knowledge as the most satisfying of all acquisitions. They esteemed poverty, hunger, toil, and the evil report of men, as none too great a price to pay for its achievement. They, who might have lain on downy, velvet-covered beds, suffered themselves to die in hospitals and by the wayside, rather than debase their souls and allow the profane cupidity of those who tempted them to triumph over their sacred vows. The lives of Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, and Philalethes are too well known to repeat the old, sad story.
If spiritualists are anxious to keep strictly dogmatic in their notions of the "spirit-world," they must not set scientists to investigate their phenomena in the true experimental spirit. The attempt would most surely result in a partial re-discovery of the magic of old — that of Moses and Paracelsus. Under the deceptive beauty of some of their apparitions, they might find some day the sylphs and fair Undines of the Rosicrucians playing in the currents of psychic and odic force.
Already Mr. Crookes, who fully credits the being, feels that under the fair skin of Katie, covering a simulacrum of heart borrowed partially from the medium and the circle, there is no soul! And the learned authors of The Unseen Universe, abandoning their "electro-biological" theory, begin to perceive in the universal ether the possibility that it is a photographic album of EN-SOPH — the Boundless.
We are far from believing that all the spirits that communicate at circles are of the classes called "Elemental," and "Elementary." Many — especially among those who control the medium subjectively to speak, write, and otherwise act in various ways — are human, disembodied spirits. Whether the majority of such spirits are good or bad, largely depends on the private morality of the medium, much on the circle present, and a great deal on the intensity and object of their purpose. If this object is merely to gratify curiosity and to pass the time, it is useless to expect anything serious. But, in any case, human spirits can never materialize themselves in propria personâ. These can never appear to the investigator clothed with warm, solid flesh, sweating hands and faces, and grossly-material bodies. The most they can do is to project their æthereal reflection on the atmospheric waves, and if the touch of their hands and clothing can become upon rare occasions objective to the senses of a living mortal, it will be felt as a passing breeze gently sweeping over the touched spot, not as a human hand or material body. It is useless to plead that the "materialized spirits" that have exhibited themselves with
beating hearts and loud voices
(with or without a trumpet) are human spirits. The voices — if such
sound can be termed a voice at all — of a spiritual apparition once heard can
hardly be forgotten. That of a pure spirit is like the tremulous murmur of an
Æolian harp echoed from a distance; the voice of a suffering, hence impure, if
not utterly bad spirit, may be assimilated to a
human voice issuing from an empty barrel.
This is not our philosophy, but that of the numberless generations of theurgists and magicians, and based upon their practical experience. The testimony of antiquity is positive on this subject: Daimoniw'n fwnai; a&narqroi eijsiv. . . . * The voices of spirits are not articulated. The spirit-voice consists of a series of sounds which conveys the impression of a column of compressed air ascending from beneath upward, and spreading around the living interlocutor. The many eye-witnesses who testified in the case of Elizabeth Eslinger, namely: † the deputy-governor of the prison of Weinsberg, Mayer, Eckhart, Theurer, and Knorr (sworn evidence), Duttenhofer, and Kapff, the mathematician, testified that they saw the apparition like a pillar of clouds. For the space of eleven weeks, Doctor Kerner and his sons, several Lutheran ministers, the advocate Fraas, the engraver Duttenhofer, two physicians, Siefer and Sicherer, the judge Heyd, and the Baron von Hugel, with many others, followed this manifestation daily. During the time it lasted, the prisoner Elizabeth prayed with a loud voice uninterruptedly; therefore, as the "spirit" was talking at the same time, it could be no ventriloquism; and that voice, they say, "had nothing human in it; no one could imitate its sounds."
Further on we will give abundant proofs from ancient authors concerning
this neglected truism. We will now only again assert that no spirit claimed by
the spiritualists to be human was ever proved to be such on sufficient
testimony. The influence of the disembodied ones can be felt, and
communicated subjectively by them to sensitives. They can produce
objective
manifestations, but they cannot produce themselves otherwise than as
described above. They can control the body of a medium, and express their
desires and ideas in various modes well known to spiritualists; but not
materialize what is matterless and purely spiritual — their
divine essence. Thus every so-called "materialization" — when genuine —
is either produced (perhaps) by the will of that spirit
whom the "appearance" is claimed to be but can only personate at best, or by the
elementary goblins themselves, which are generally too stupid to deserve the
honor of being called devils. Upon rare occasions the spirits are able to subdue
and control these soulless beings, which are ever ready to
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* See Des Mousseaux's "Dodone," and "Dieu et les dieux," p. 326.
† "Apparitions," translated by C. Crowe, pp. 388, 391, 399.
assume pompous names if left to themselves, in such a way that the mischievous spirit "of the air," shaped in the real image of the human spirit, will be moved by the latter like a marionette, and unable to either act or utter other words than those imposed on him by the "immortal soul." But this requires many conditions generally unknown to the circles of even spiritualists most in the habit of regularly attending seances. Not every one can attract human spirits who likes. One of the most powerful attractions of our departed ones is their strong affection for those whom they have left on earth. It draws them irresistibly, by degrees, into the current of the Astral Light vibrating between the person sympathetic to them and the Universal Soul. Another very important condition is harmony, and the magnetic purity of the persons present.
If this philosophy is wrong, if all the "materialized" forms emerging in darkened rooms from still darker cabinets, are spirits of men who once lived upon this earth, why such a difference between them and the ghosts that appear unexpectedly — ex abrupto — without either cabinet or medium? Who ever heard of the apparitions, unrestful "souls," hovering about the spots where they were murdered, or coming back for some other mysterious reasons of their own, with "warm hands" feeling like living flesh, and but that they are known to be dead and buried, not distinguishable from living mortals? We have well-attested facts of such apparitions making themselves suddenly visible, but never, until the beginning of the era of the "materializations," did we see anything like them. In the Medium and Day Break, of September 8, 1876, we read a letter from "a lady travelling on the continent," narrating a circumstance that happened in a haunted house. She says: ". . . A strange sound proceeded from a darkened corner of the library . . . on looking up she perceived a cloud or column of luminous vapor; . . .the earth-bound spirit was hovering about the spot rendered accursed by his evil deed. . ." As this spirit was doubtless a genuine elementary apparition, which made itself visible of its own free will — in short, an umbra — it was, as every respectable shadow should be, visible but impalpable, or if palpable at all, communicating to the feeling of touch the sensation of a mass of water suddenly clasped in the hand, or of condensed but cold steam. It was luminous and vapory; for aught we can tell it might have been the real personal umbra of the "spirit," persecuted, and earth-bound, either by its own remorse and crimes or those of another person or spirit. The mysteries of after-death are many, and modern "materializations" only make them cheap and ridiculous in the eyes of the indifferent.
To these assertions may be opposed a fact well known among spiritualists: The writer has publicly certified to having seen such materialized forms. We have most assuredly done so, and are ready to repeat the
testimony. We have recognized such figures as the visible representations of acquaintances, friends, and even relatives. We have, in company with many other spectators, heard them pronounce words in languages unfamiliar not only to the medium and to every one else in the room, except ourselves, but, in some cases, to almost if not quite every medium in America and Europe, for they were the tongues of Eastern tribes and peoples. At the time, these instances were justly regarded as conclusive proofs of the genuine mediumship of the uneducated Vermont farmer who sat in the "cabinet." But, nevertheless, these figures were not the forms of the persons they appeared to be. They were simply their portrait statues, constructed, animated and operated by the elementaries. If we have not previously elucidated this point, it was because the spiritualistic public was not then ready to even listen to the fundamental proposition that there are elemental and elementary spirits. Since that time this subject has been broached and more or less widely discussed. There is less hazard now in attempting to launch upon the restless sea of criticism the hoary philosophy of the ancient sages, for there has been some preparation of the public mind to consider it with impartiality and deliberation. Two years of agitation have effected a marked change for the better.
Pausanias writes that four hundred years after the battle of Marathon, there were still heard in the place where it was fought, th