Searchable Theosophical Texts
Theosophy House
A Modern Panarion
A Collection of Fugitive Fragments
From the Pen of
H P Blavatsky
First Published 1895
The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
The Eddy Manifestations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Dr. Beard
Criticized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The Lack of Unity
among Spiritualists . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
The Holmes Controversy.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The Holmes
Controversy (continued) . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Notice to Mediums.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
A Rebuke . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Occultism or Magic.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Spiritualistic
Tricksters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
The Search after
Occultism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
The Science of
Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55
An Unsolved Mystery
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Spiritualism in
Spiritualism and
Spiritualists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72
What is Occultism?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78
A Warning to
Mediums. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
(New)
Huxley and Shade. .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88
Can the Double
Murder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Fakirs and Tables .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103
A Protest . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
The Fate of the
Occultist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Buddhism in
Russian Atrocities
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Washing the
Disciples’ Feet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Trickery or Magic ?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121
The Jews in
H. P. Blavatsky’s
Masonic Patent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128
Views of the
Theosophists . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
A Society without a
Dogma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Elementaries . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Kabalistic Views of
‘‘Spirits” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
The Knout. As
Wielded by the Great Russian Theosophist. Mr. Coleman’s
First Appearance. .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
iv Contents
Page
Indian Metaphysics
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
“H. M.’’ and the
Todas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
The Todas . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
The Ahkoond of
Swat. The Founder of Many Mystical Societies . . . . . 179
The Ærya Samàj . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .184
Parting Words . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .188
‘Not a Christian”!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
The Retort
Courteous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
‘‘Scrutator Again’’
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
A Republican
Citizen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
The Theosophists and
their Opponents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Echoes from
Missionaries
Militant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
The History of a
“Book” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
A French View of
Women’s Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Occult Phenomena .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Hindu
Widow-Marriage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
“Oppressed
Widowhood” in
‘‘Esoteric
Buddhism’’ and its Critic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .249
Mr. A. Lillie’s
Delusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
What is Theosophy?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
What are the
Theosophists? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Antiquity of the
Vedas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Persian
Zoroastrianism and Russian Vandalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Cross and Fire . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
War in
A
Which First—the Egg
or the Bird?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
The Pralaya of
Modern Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
The Yoga Philosophy
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
A Year of Theosophy
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .348
“A Word with Our
Friends”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .353
Questions Answered
about Yoga Vidyâ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .357
The Missing Link .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Hypnotism . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
The Leaven of
Theosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
Count St. Germain .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Lamas and Druses. .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .375
A Reply to Our
Critics. Our Final Answer to Several Objections. . . . . . . . 387
‘‘The Claims of
Occultism’’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
A Note on Eliphas
Levi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .398
The Six-Pointed and
Five-Pointed Stars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .401
The Grand
Inquisitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
The Bright Spot of
Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
v contents
Page
“Is it Idle to
Argue Further?”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
Fragments of Occult
Truth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
Notes on some
Aryan-Arhat Esoteric Tenets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
The Thoughts of the
Dead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
Dreamland and
Somnambulism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
Are Dreams but Idle
Visions? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
Spiritualism and
Occult Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .490
Reincarnation in
PREFACE
THE title A Modern
Panarion has been taken from the controversial Panarion of the Church Father
Epiphanius in which he attacked the various sects and heresies of the first
four centuries of the Christian era. The Panarion was so called as being a
“basket” of scraps and fragments. We are told that this Panarion was “a kind of
medicine chest, in which he had collected means of healing against the
poisonous bite of the heretical serpent.”
A Modern Panarion
is of a like nature with the intent of the Christian Father; only in the
nineteenth century, heresy has in many instances become orthodoxy, and
orthodoxy heresy, and the Panarion of H. P. Blavatsky is intended as a means of
healing against the errors of ecclesiasticism, dogma and bigotry, and the blind
negation of materialism and pseudo-science.
EDITORS.
THE H. P. B.
MEMORIAL FUND
In 1891 the
following resolutions were passed by all the Sections of the Theosophical
Society :—
Resolved:
1. That the most
fitting and permanent memorial of H. P. B.’s life and work would be the
production and publication of such papers, books and translations as will tend
to promote that intimate union between the life and thought of the Orient and
the Occident to the bringing about of which her life was devoted.
2. That an “H. P.
B. Memorial Fund” be instituted for this purpose, to which all those who feel
gratitude or admiration towards H. P. B. for her work, both within and without
the T. S., are earnestly invited to contribute as their means may allow.
3. That the
President of the Theosophical Society, together with the General Secretaries of
all Sections of the same, constitute the Committee of Management of this Fund.
4. That the
Presidents of Lodges in each Section be a Committee to collect and forward to
the General Secretary of their respective Sections the necessary funds for this
purpose.
THE EDDY
MANIFESTATIONS
—————
[ The following
letter was addressed to a contemporary journal by Mine. Blavatsky, and was
handed to us for publication in The Daily Graphic, as we have been taking the
lead in the discussion of the curious subject of Spiritualism.—EDIT0R “DAILY
GRAPHIC.”]
AWARE in the past
of your love of justice and fair play, I most earnestly solicit the use of your
columns to reply to an article by Dr. G. M. Beard in relation to the Eddy
family in
I do not know Dr.
Beard personally, nor do I care to know how far he is entitled to wear the
laurels of his profession as an M.D., but what I do know is that he may never
hope to equal, much less to surpass, such men and savants as Crookes, Wallace,
or even Flammarion, the French astronomer, all of whom have devoted years to
the investigation of Spiritualism. All of them came to the conclusion that,
supposing even the well-known phenomenon of the materialization of spirits did
not prove the identity of the persons whom they purported to represent, it was
not, at all events, the work of mortal hands; still less was it a fraud.
Now to the Eddys.
Dozens of visitors have remained there for weeks and even for months; not a
single séance has taken place with out some of them realizing the personal
presence of a friend, a relative, a mother, father, or dear departed child. But
lo! here comes Dr. Beard, stops less than two days, applies his powerful
electrical battery, under which the spirit does not even wink or flinch,
closely examines the
2 ————————————————————
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A MODERN PANARION.
cabinet (in which
he finds nothing), and then turns his back and declares most emphatically “that
he wishes it to be perfectly under-stood that if his scientific name ever
appears in connection with the Eddy family, it must be only to expose them as
the greatest frauds who cannot do even good trickery.” Consummatum est!
Spiritualism is defunct. Requiescat in Pace! Dr. Beard has killed it with one
word. Scatter ashes over your venerable but silly heads, 0 Crookes, Wallace and
Varley! Henceforth you must be considered as demented, psychologized lunatics,
and so must it be with the many thousands of Spiritualists who have seen and
talked with their friends and relatives departed, recognizing them at Moravia,
at the Eddys’, and elsewhere throughout the length and breadth of this
continent. But is there no escape from the horns of this dilemma? Yea verily,
Dr. Beard writes thus: “When your correspondent returns to
To this I reply,
backed as I am by the testimony of hundreds of reliable witnesses, that all the
wardrobe of Niblo’s Theatre would not suffice to attire the numbers of
“spirits” that emerge night after night from an empty little closet.
Let Dr. Beard rise
and explain the following fact if he can: I remained fourteen days at the
Eddys’. In that short period of time I saw and recognized fully, out of 119
apparitions, seven “spirits.” I admit that I was the only one to recognize
them, the rest of the audience not having been with me in my numerous travels
throughout the East, but their various dresses and costumes were plainly seen
and closely examined by all.
The first was a
Georgian boy, dressed in the historical Caucasian attire, the picture of whom
will shortly appear in The Daily Graphic. I recognized and questioned him in
Georgian upon circumstances known only to myself. I was understood and
answered. Requested by me in
3 ———————————————————THE EDDY MANIFESTATIONS.
his mother tongue
(upon the whispered suggestion of Colonel Olcott) to play the Lezguinka, a
Circassian dance, he did so immediately upon the guitar.
Second—A little old
man appears. He is dressed as Persian merchants generally are. His dress is
perfect as a national costume. Everything is in its right place, down to the
“babouches” that are off his feet, he stepping out in his stockings. He speaks
his name in a loud whisper. It is “Hassan Aga,” an old man whom I and my family
have known for twenty years at
Third—A man of
gigantic stature comes forth, dressed in the picturesque attire of the warriors
of
Fourth—A Circassian
comes out. I can imagine myself at
Fifth—Au old woman
appears with Russian headgear. She comes out and addresses me in Russian,
calling me by an endearing term that she used in my childhood. I recognize an
old servant of my family, a nurse of my sister.
Sixth—A large
powerful negro next appears on the platform. His head is ornamented with a
wonderful coiffure something like horns wound about with white and gold. His
looks are familiar to me, but I do not at first recollect where I have seen
him. Very soon he begins to make some vivacious gestures, and his mimicry helps
me to recognize him at a glance. It is a conjurer from
4 ————————————————————
-------
A MODERN PANARION.
Seventh and last—A
large, grey-haired gentleman comes out attired in the conventional suit of
black. The Russian decoration of
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
I2
DR. BEARD
CRITICIZED
—————
As Dr. Beard has
scorned (in his scientific grandeur) to answer the challenge sent to him by
your humble servant in the number of The Daily Graphic for the 13th* of October
last, and has preferred instructing the public in general rather than one
“credulous fool” in particular, let her come from Circassia or Africa, I fully
trust you will permit me to use your paper once more in order that by pointing
out some very spicy peculiarities of this amazingly scientific exposure, the
public might better judge at whose door the aforesaid elegant epithet could be
most appropriately laid.
For a week or so an
immense excitement, a thrill of sacrilegious fear, if I may be allowed this expression,
ran through the psychologized frames of the Spiritualists of New York. It was
rumoured in ominous whispers that G. Beard, M.D., the Tyndall of America, was
coming out with his peremptory exposure of the Eddys’ ghosts and—the
Spiritualists trembled for their gods!
The dreaded day has
come, the number of The Daily Graphic for November the 9th is before us. We
have read it carefully, with respectful awe, for true science has always been
an authority for us (weak- minded fool though we may be), and so we handled the
dangerous exposure with a feeling somewhat akin to that of a fanatic Christian
opening a volume of Büchner. We perused it to the last: we turned the page over
and over again, vainly straining our eyes and brains to detect therein one word
of scientific proof or a solitary atom of over whelming evidence that would
thrust into our Spiritualistic bosom the venomous fangs of doubt. But no, not a
particle of reasonable explanation or of scientific evidence that what we have
all seen, heard and felt at the Eddys’ was but delusion. In our feminine
modesty, still allowing the said article the benefit of the doubt, we
disbelieved our
—————
* This appears to
be a misprint, unless the challenge had been made on the 13th, and was Only
repeated in the letter of Oct. 2 —Eds.
6 ————————————————————
-------
A MODERN PANARION.
own senses, and so
devoted a whole day to the picking up of sundry bits of criticism from judges
that we believe more competent than ourselves, and at last came collectively to
the following conclusion:
The Daily Graphic
has allowed Dr. Beard in its magnanimity nine columns of its precious pages to
prove—what? Why, the following:
First, that he, Dr.
Beard, according to his own modest assertions (see columns second and third) is
more entitled to occupy the position of an actor intrusted with characters of
simpletons (Molière’s “Tartuffe” might fit him perhaps as naturally) than to
undertake the difficult part of a Prof. Faraday vis-à-vis the Chittenden D. D.
Home.
Secondly, that
although the learned doctor was “overwhelmed already with professional labours”
(a nice and cheap reclame, by the way) and scientific researches, he gave the
latter another direction, and so went to the Eddys. That, arrived there, he
played with Horatio Eddy, for the glory of science and the benefit of humanity,
the difficult character of a “dishevelled simpleton,” and was rewarded in his
scientific research by finding on the said suspicious premises a professor of
bumps “a poor harmless fool”! Galileo, of famous memory, when he detected the
sun in its involuntary imposture chuckled certainly less over his triumph than
does Dr. Beard over the discovery of this “poor fool” No. 1. Here we modestly
suggest that perhaps the learned doctor had no need to go as far as Chittenden
for that.
Further, the
doctor, forgetting entirely the wise motto, Non bis in idem, discovers and
asserts throughout the length of his article that all the past, present and
future generations of pilgrims to the “Eddy homestead” are collectively fools,
and that every solitary member of this numerous body of Spiritualistic pilgrims
is likewise “a weak- minded, credulous fool”! Query—the proof of it, if you
please, Dr. Beard? Answer—Dr. Beard has said so, and Echo responds, Fool!
Truly miraculous
are thy doings, indeed, 0 Mother Nature! The cow is black and its milk is
white! But then, you see, those ill-bred, ignorant Eddy brothers have allowed
their credulous guests to eat up all the “trout” caught by Dr. Beard and paid
for by him seventy-five cents per pound as a penalty; and that fact alone might
have turned him a little—how shall we say—sour, prejudiced? No, erroneous in
his statement, will answer better.
For erroneous he
is, not to say more. When, assuming an air of scientific authority, he affirms
that the séance-room is generally so dark
7 ————————————————————DR. BEARD CRITICIZED.
that one cannot
recognize at three feet distance his own mother, he says what is not true. When
he tells us further that he saw through a hole in one of the shawls and the
space between them all the manœuvres of Horatio’s arm, he risks finding himself
contradicted by thousands who, weak-minded though they may be, are not blind
for all that, neither are they confederates of the Eddys, but far more reliable
wit nesses in their simple-minded honesty than Dr. Beard is in his would-be
scientific and unscrupulous testimony. The same when he says that no one is
allowed to approach the spirits nearer than twelve feet dis tance, still less
to touch them, except the “two simple-minded ignorant idiots” who generally sit
on both ends of the platform. To my knowledge many other persons have sat there
besides those two.
Dr. Beard ought to
know this better than anyone else, as he has sat there himself. A sad story is
in circulation, by the way, at the Eddys’. The records of the spiritual séances
at Chittenden have devoted a whole page to the account of a terrible danger
that threatened for a moment to deprive
It becomes evident
that the said neglected logic was keeping company at the time with old mother
Truth at the bottom of her well, neither of them being wanted by Dr. Beard. I
myself have sat upon the upper step of the platform for fourteen nights by the
side of Mrs. Cleveland. I got up every time “Honto” approached me to within an
inch of my face in order to see her the better. I have touched her
8 ————————————————————
-------
A MODERN PANARION.
hands repeatedly as
other spirits have been touched, and even embraced her nearly every night.
Therefore, when I
read Dr. Beard’s preposterous and cool assertion that “a very low order of
genius is required to obtain command of a few words in different languages and
so to mutter them to credulous Spiritualists,” I feel every right in the world
to say in my turn that such a scientific exposure as Dr. Beard has come out
with in his article does not require any genius at all; per contra, it requires
a ridiculous faith on the part of the writer in his own infallibility, as well
as a positive confidence in finding in all his readers what he elegantly terms
“weak- minded fools.” Every word of his statement, when it is not a most
evident untruth, is a wicked and malicious insinuation built on the very
equivocal authority of one witness against the evidence of thousands.
Says Dr Beard, “I
have proved that the life of the Eddys is one long lie, the details need no
further discussion.” The writer of the above lines forgets, by saying these
imprudent words, that some people might think that “like attracts like.” He
went to Chittenden with deceit in his heart and falsehood on his lips, and so
judging his neighbour by the character he assumed himself, he takes everyone
for a knave when he does not put him down as a fool. Declaring so positively
that he has proved it, the doctor forgets one trifling circumstance, namely,
that he has proved nothing whatever.
Where are his
boasted proofs? When we contradict him by saying that the séance-room is far
from being as dark as he pretends it to be, and that the spirits themselves
have repeatedly called out through Mrs. Eaton’s voice for more light, we only
say what we can prove before any jury. When Dr. Beard says that all the spirits
are personated by W. Eddy, he advances what would prove to be a greater
conundrum for solution than the apparition of spirits themselves. There he
falls right away into the domain of Cagliostro: for if Dr. B. has seen five or
six spirits in all, other persons, myself included, have seen one hundred and
nineteen in less than a fortnight, nearly all of whom were differently dressed.
Besides, the accusation of Dr. Beard implies the idea to the public that the
artist of The Daily Graphic who made the sketches of so many of those
apparitions, and who is not a “credulous Spiritualist” himself, is likewise a
humbug, propagating to the world what he did not see, and so spreading at large
the most preposterous and outrageous lie.
When the learned
doctor will have explained to us how any man in
9 ————————————————————DR. BEARD CRITICIZED.
his shirt-sleeves
and a pair of tight pants for an attire can possibly conceal on his person (the
cabinet having been previously found empty) a whole bundle of clothes, women’s
robes, hats, caps, head-gears, and entire stilts of evening dress, white
waistcoats and neckties included, then he will be entitled to more belief than
he is at present. That would be a proof indeed, for, with all due respect to
his scientific mind, Dr. Beard is not the first Œdipus that has thought of
catching the Sphinx by its tail and so unriddling the mystery. We have known
more than one “weak-minded fool,” ourselves included, that has lahoured under a
similar delusion for more than one night, but all of us were finally obliged to
repeat the words of the great Galileo, “E pur, se muove!” and give it up.
But Dr. Beard does
not give it up. Preferring to keep a scornful silence as to any reasonable
explanation, he hides the secret of the above mystery in the depths of his
profoundly scientific mind. “His life is given to scientific researches,” you
see; “his physiological knowledge and neuro-physiological learning are
immense,” for he says so, and skilled as he is in combating fraud by still
greater fraud (see column the eighth), spiritualistic humbug has no more
mysteries for him. In five minutes the scientist had done more towards science
than all the rest of the scientists put together have done in years of labour,
and “would feel ashamed if he had not.” (See same column.) In the overpowering
modesty of his learning he takes no credit to himself for having done so,
though he has discovered the astounding, novel fact of the “cold benumbing
sensation.” How Wallace, Crookes and Varley, the naturalist-anthropologist, the
chemist and electrician, will blush with envy in their old country!
A far wiser mind
than Dr. Beard (will he dispute the fact?) has suggested, centuries ago, that
the tree was to be judged according to its fruits. Spiritualism,
notwithstanding the desperate efforts of more scientific men than himself, has
stood its ground without flinching for more than a quarter of a century. Where
are the fruits of the tree of science that blossoms on the soil of Dr. Beard’s
mind? If we are to
10 ————————————————————
-------
A MODERN PANARION.
judge of them by
his article, then verily the said tree needs more than usual care. As for the
fruits, it would appear that they are as yet in the realms of “sweet delusive
hope.” But then, perhaps the doctor was afraid to crush his readers under the
weight’ of his learning (true merit has been in all times modest and
unassuming), and that accounts for the learned doctor withholding from us any
scientific proof of the fraud that he pretends to be exposing, except the
above-mentioned fact of the “cold benumbing sensation.” But how Horatio can
keep his hand and arm ice cold under a warm shawl for half an hour at a time,
in summer as well as in any other season, and that without having some ice
concealed about his person, or how he can prevent it from thawing—all the above
is a mystery that Dr. Beard doesn’t reveal for the sent. Maybe he will tell us
something of it in his book that he advertises in the article. Well, we only
hope that the former will be more satisfactory than the latter.
I will add but a
few words before ending my debate with Dr. Beard for ever. All that he says
about the lamp concealed in a bandbox, the strong confederates, etc., exists
only in his imagination, for the mere sake of argument, we suppose. “False in
one, false in all,” says Dr. Beard in column the sixth. These words are a just
verdict on his own article.
Here I will briefly
state what I reluctantly withheld up to the present moment from the knowledge
of all such as Dr. Beard. The fact was too sacred in my eyes to allow it to be
trifled with in newspaper gossiping. But now, in order to settle the question
at once, I deem it my duty as a Spiritualist to surrender it to the opinion of
the public.
On the last night
that I spent with the Eddys I was presented by Georgo Dix and Mayflower with a
silver decoration, the upper part of a medal with which I was but too familiar.
I quote the precise words of the spirit: “We bring you this decoration, for we
think you will value it more highly than anything else. You will recognize it,
for it is the badge of honour that was presented to your father by his
Government for the campaign of 1828, between
These words were
spoken in the presence of forty witnesses. Col. Olcott will describe the fact
and give the design of the decoration.
I have the said
decoration in my possession. I know it as having
11 ————————————————————DR. BEARD CRITICIZED.
belonged to my
father. More, I have identified it by a portion that, through carelessness, I
broke myself many years ago, and, to settle all doubt in relation to it, I
possess the photograph of my father (a picture that has never been at the
Eddys’, and could never possibly have been seen by any of them) on which this
medal is plainly visible.
Query for Dr.
Beard: How could the Eddys know that my father was buried at
Willing as we are
to give every one his due, we feel compelled to say on behalf of Dr. Beard that
he has not boasted of more than he can do, in advising the Eddys' to take a few
private lessons of him in the trickery of mediumship. The learned doctor must
be expert in such trickeries. We are likewise ready to admit that in saying as
he did that “his article would only confirm the more the Spiritualists in their
belief” (and he ought to have added, “convince no one else”), Dr. Beard has
proved himself to be a greater “prophetic medium” than any other in this
country!
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
23,
THE LACK OF UNITY
AMONG
SPIRITUALISTS
—————
[ From a letter
received from Mme. Blavatsky last week we make the following extracts, want of
space alone preventing us from publishing it entire. It was written in her
usual lively and entertaining style, and her opinions expressed are worthy of
careful study, many of them being fully consistent with the true state of
affairs.—EDIT0R “SPIRITUAL SCIENTIST” (Dec. 3rd, 1874).]
As it is, I have
only done my duty; first, towards Spiritualism, that I have defended as well as
I could from the attacks of imposture under its too transparent mask of
science; then towards two helpless slandered “mediums”—the last word becoming
fast in our days the synonym of “martyr”; secondly, I have contributed my mite
towards opening the eyes of an indifferent public to the real, intrinsic value
of such a man as Dr. Beard. But I am obliged to confess that I really do not
believe that I have done any good—at least, any practical good—to Spiritualism
itself; and I never hope to perform such a feat as that were I to keep on for
an eternity bombarding all the newspapers of America with my challenges and
refutations of the lies told by the so-called “scientific exposers.”
It is with a
profound sadness in my heart that I acknowledge this fact, for I begin to think
there is no help for it. For over fifteen years have I fought my battle for the
blessed truth; I have travelled and preached it—though I never was born for a
lecturer—from the snow- covered tops of the Caucasian Mountains, as well as
from the sandy valleys of the Nile. I have proved the truth of it practically
and by persuasion. For the sake of Spiritualism I have left my home, an easy
life amongst a civilized society, and have become a wanderer upon the face of
this earth. I had already seen my hopes realized, beyond the most sanguine
expectations, when, in my restless desire for more knowledge, my unlucky star
brought me to
Knowing this
country to be the cradle of modern Spiritualism, I
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came over here from
What little I have
done towards defending phenomena I am ever ready to do over and over again, as
long as I have a breath of life left in me. But what good will it ever do? We
have a popular and wise Russian saying that “one Cossack on the battle-field is
no warrior.” Such is my case, together with that of many other poor, struggling
wretches, everyone of whom, like a solitary scout, sent far ahead in advance of
the army, has to fight his own battle, and defend the post entrusted to him,
unaided by anyone but himself. There is no union between Spiritualists, no
entante cordiale, as the French say. Judge Edmonds said, some years ago, that
they numbered in their ranks over eleven millions in this country alone; and I
believe it to be true; in which case, it is but to be the more deplored. When
one man—as Dr. Beard did and will do yet—dares to defy such a formidable body
as that, there must be some cause for it. His insults, gross and vulgar as they
are, are too fearless to leave one particle of doubt that if he does it, it is
but because he knows too well that he can do so with impunity and perfect ease.
Year after year the American Spiritualists have allowed themselves to be
ridiculed and slighted by everyone who had a mind to do so, protesting so
feebly as to give their opponents the most erroneous idea of their weakness. Am
I wrong, then, in saying that our Spiritualists are more to be blamed than Dr.
Beard himself in all this ridiculous polemic? Moral cowardice breeds more
contempt than the “familiarity” of the old motto. How can we expect such a
scientific sleight-of-hand as he is to respect a body that does not respect
itself?
My humble opinion
is, that the majority of our Spiritualists are too much afraid for their
“respectability” when called upon to confess and acknowledge their “belief.”
Will you agree with me, if I say that the dread of the social Areopagus is so
deeply rooted in the hearts of your American people, that to endeavour to tear it
out of them would be undertaking to shake the whole system of society from top
to bottom? “Respectability” and “fashion” have brought more than one utter
materialist to select (for mere show) the Episcopalian and other wealthy
churches. But Spiritualism is not “fashionable,” as yet, and that’s
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where the trouble
is. Notwithstanding its immense and daily increasing numbers, it has not won,
till now, the right of citizenship. Its chief leaders are not clothed in gold
and purple and fine raiment; for, not unlike Christianity in the beginning of
its era, Spiritualism numbers in its ranks more of the humble and afflicted ones,
than of the powerful and wealthy of this earth. Spiritualists belonging to the
latter class will seldom dare to step out in the arena of publicity and boldly
proclaim their belief in the face of the whole world; that hybrid monster,
called “public opinion,” is too much for them; and what does a Dr. Beard care
for the opinion of the poor and the humble ones? He knows but too well that his
insulting terms of “fools” and “weak minded idiots,” as his accusations of
credulousness, will never be applied to themselves by any of the proud castes
of modern “Pharisees”; Spiritualists as they know themselves to be, and have
perhaps been for years, if they deign to notice the insult at all, it will be
but to answer him as the cowardly apostle did before them, “Man, I tell thee, I
know him not!”
St. Peter was the
only one of the remaining eleven that denied his Christ thrice before the
Pharisees; that is just the reason why, of all the apostles, he is the most
revered by the Catholics, and has been selected to rule over the most wealthy
as the most proud, greedy and hypocritical of all the churches in Christendom.
And so, half Christians and half believers in the new dispensation, the
majority of those eleven millions of Spiritualists stand with one foot on the
threshold of Spiritualism, pressing firmly with the other one the steps leading
to the altars of their “fashionable” places of worship, ever ready to leap over
under the protection of the latter in hours of danger. They know that under the
cover of such immense “respectability” they are perfectly safe. Who would
presume or dare to accuse of “credulous stupidity’’ a member belonging to
certain ‘‘fashionable congregations’’? Under the powerful and holy shade of any
of those “pillars of truth” every heinous crime is liable to become immediately
transformed into but a slight and petty deviation from strict Christian virtue.
Jupiter, for all his numberless “Don Juan” like frolics, was not the less on
that account considered by his worshippers as the “Father of Gods”!
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A FEW weeks ago, in
a letter, extracts from which have appeared in The Spiritual Scientist of
December 3rd, I alluded to the deplorable lack of accord between American
Spiritualists, and the consequences of the same. At that time I had just fought
out my useless battle with a foe who, though beneath my own personal notice,
had insulted all the Spiritualists of this country, as a body, in a caricature
of a so-called scientific exposé. In dealing with him I dealt with but one of
the numerous “bravos” enlisted in the army of the bitter opponents of belief;
and my task was, comparatively speaking, an easy one, if we take it for granted
that falsehood can hardly withstand truth, as the latter will ever speak for
itself. Since that day the scales have turned; prompted now, as then, by the
same love of justice and fair play, I feel compelled to throw down my glove
once more in our defence, seeing that so few of the adherents to the cause are
bold enough to accept that duty, and so many of them show the white feather of
pusillanimity.
I indicated in my
letter that such a state of things, such a complete lack of harmony, and such
cowardice, I may add, among their ranks, subjected the Spiritualists and the
cause to constant attacks from a compact, aggressive public opinion, based upon
ignorance and wicked prejudice, intolerant, remorseless and thoroughly
dishonest in the employment of its methods. As a vast army, amply equipped, may
be cut to pieces by an inferior force well trained and handled, so
Spiritualism, numbering its hosts by millions, and able to vanquish every
reactionary theology by a little well-directed effort, is constantly harassed,
weakened, impeded, by the convergent attacks of pulpit and press, and by the
treachery and cowardice of its trusted leaders. It is one of these professed
leaders that I propose to question to-day, as closely as my rights, not only as
a widely known Kabalist but also as a resident of the United States, will allow
me. When I see the numbers of believers in this country, the broad basis of
their belief, the im-
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pregnability of
their position, and the talent that is embraced within their ranks, I am
disgusted at the spectacle that they manifest at this very moment, after the
Katie King—how shall we say—fraud? By no means, since the last word of this
sensational comedy is far from being spoken.
There is not a
country on the face of our planet, with a jury attached to its courts of
justice, but gives the benefit of the doubt to every criminal brought within
the law, and affords him a chance to be heard and tell his story.
Is such the case
between the pretended “spirit performer,” the alleged bogus Katie King, and the
Holmes mediums? I answer most decidedly no, and mean to prove it, if no one
else does.
I deny the right of
any man or woman to wrench from our hands all possible means of finding out the
truth. I deny the right of any editor of a daily newspaper to accuse and
publish accusations, refusing at the same time to hear one word of
justification from the defendants, and so, instead of helping people to clear
up the matter, leaving them more than ever to grope their way in the dark.
The biography of
“Katie King” has come out at last; a sworn certificate, if you please, endorsed
(under oath?) by Dr. Child, who throughout the whole of this “burlesque”
epilogue has ever appeared in it, like some inevitable deus-ex-machinâ. The
whole of this made- up elegy (by whom? evidently not by Mrs. White) is redolent
with the perfume of erring innocence, of Magdalene-like tales of woe and
sorrow, tardy repentance and the like, giving us the abnormal idea of a
pickpocket in the act of robbing our soul of its most precious, thrilling
sensations. The carefully-prepared explanations on some points that appear now
and then as so many stumbling-blocks in the way of a seemingly fair exposé do
not preclude, nevertheless, through the whole of it, the possibility of doubt;
for many awkward semblances of truth, partly taken from the confessions of that
fallen angel, Mrs. White, and partly—most of them we should say—copied from the
private note-book of her “amanuensis,” give you a fair idea of the veracity of
this sworn certificate. For instance, according to her own statement and the
evidence furnished by the habitue’s of the Holmeses, Mrs. White having never
been present at any of the dark circles (her alleged acting as Katie King
excluding all possibility, on her part, of such a public exhibition of flesh
and bones), how comes she to know so well, in every particular, about the tricks
of the mediums, the pro-
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gramme of their
performances, etc.? Then, again, Mrs. White who remembers so well—by rote we
may say—every word exchanged between Katie King and Mr. Owen, the spirit and
Dr. Child, has evidently forgotten all that was ever said by her in her bogus
personation to Dr. Felger; she does not even remember a very important secret
communicated by her to the latter gentleman! What an extraordinary combination
of, memory and absence of mind at the same time. May not a certain
memorandum-book, with its carefully-noted contents, account for it, perhaps?
The document is signed, under oath, with the name of a non-existing spirit,
Katie King. . . . Very clever!
All protestations
of innocence or explanations sent in by Mr. or Mrs. Holmes, written or verbal,
are peremptorily refused publication by the press. No respectable paper dares
takes upon itself the responsibility of such an unpopular cause.
The public feel
triumphant; the clergy, forgetting in the excitement of their victory the
Brooklyn scandal, rub their hands and chuckle; a certain exposer of
materialized spirits and mind-reading, like some monstrous anti-spiritual
mitrailleuse shoots forth a volley of missiles, and sends a condoling letter to
Mr. Owen; Spiritualists, crestfallen, ridiculed and defeated, feel crushed for
ever under the pretended exposure and that overwhelming, pseudonymous evidence.
. . . The day of Waterloo has come for us, and sweeping away the last remnants
of the defeated army, it remains for us to ring our own death-knell.
Spirits, beware!
henceforth, if you lack prudence, your materialized forms will have to stop at
the cabinet doors, and in a perfect tremble melt away from sight, singing in
chorus Edgar Poe’s “Never more.” One would really suppose that the whole belief
of the Spiritualists hung at the girdles of the Holmeses, and that in case they
should be unmasked as tricksters, we might as well vote our phenomena an old
woman’s delusion.
Is the scraping off
of a barnacle the destruction of a ship? But, moreover, we are not sufficiently
furnished with any plausible proofs at all.
Colonel Olcott is
here and has begun investigations. His first tests with Mrs. Holmes alone, for
Mr. Holmes is lying sick at Vineland, have proved satisfactory enough, in his
eyes, to induce Mr. Owen to return to the spot of his first love, namely, the
Holmeses’ cabinet. He began by tying Mrs. Holmes up in a bag, the string drawn
tightly round her neck, knotted and sealed in the presence of Mr. Owen, Col.
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Olcott and a third
gentleman. After that the medium was placed in the empty cabinet, which was
rolled away into the middle of the room, and it was made a perfect
impossibility for her to use her hands. The door being closed, hands appeared
in the aperture, then the outlines of a face came, which gradually formed into
the classical head of John King, turban, beard and all. He kindly allowed the
investigators to stroke his beard, touch his warm face, and patted their hands
with his. After the séance was over, Mrs. Holmes, with many tears of gratitude
in the presence of the three gentlemen, assured Mr. Owen most solemnly that she
had spoken many a time to Dr. Child about “Katie” leaving her presents in the
house and dropping them about the place, and that she—Mrs. Holmes—wanted Mr.
Owen to know it; but that the doctor had given her most peremptory orders to
the contrary, forbidding her to let the former know it, his precise words
being, “Don’t do it, it’s useless; he must not know it I leave the question of
Mrs. Holmes’ veracity as to this fact for Dr. Child to settle with her.
On the other hand,
we have tile woman, Eliza White, exposer and accuser of the Holmeses, who
remains up to the present day a riddle and an Egyptian mystery to every man and
woman of this city, except to the clever and equally invisible party—a sort of
protecting deity— who took the team in hand, and drove the whole concern of
“Katie’s” materialization to destruction, in what he considered such a
first-rate way. She is not to be met, or seen, or interviewed, or even spoken
to by anyone, least of all by the ex-admirers of “Katie King” herself, so
anxious to get a peep at the modest, blushing beauty who deemed her self worthy
of personating the fair spirit. Maybe it’s rather dangerous to allow them the
chance of comparing for themselves the features of both? But the most
perplexing fact of this most perplexing imbroglio is that Mr. R. D. Owen, by
his Own confession to me, has never, not even on the day of the exposure, seen
Mrs. White, or talked to her, or had other wise the least chance to scan her
features close enough for him to identify her. He caught a glimpse of her
general outline but once, viz., at the mock séance of Dec. 5th referred to in
her biography, when she appeared to half a dozen of witnesses (invited to
testify and identify the fraud) emerging de nova from the cabinet, with her
face closely covered with a double veil (!) after which the sweet vision
vanished and appeared no more. Mr. Owen adds that he is not prepared to swear to
the identity of Mrs. White and Katie King.
May I he allowed to
enquire as to the necessity of such a profound
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mystery, after the
promise of a public exposure of all the fraud? It seems to me that the said
exposure would have been far more satisfactory if conducted otherwise. Why not
give the fairest chance to R. D. Owen, the party who has suffered the most on
account of this disgusting swindle—if swindle there is—to compare Mrs. White
with his Katie? May I suggest again that it is perhaps because the spirit’s
features are but too well impressed on his memory, poor, noble, confiding
gentleman. Gauze dresses and moonshine, coronets and stars can possibly be
counterfeited in a half-darkened room, while features, answering line for line
to the “spirit Katie’s” face, are not so easily made up; the latter require
very clever preparations. A lie may be easy enough for a smooth tongue, but no
pug nose can lie itself into a classical one.
A very honourable
gentleman of my acquaintance, a fervent admirer of the “spirit Katie’s” beauty,
who has seen and addressed her at two feet distance about fifty times, tells me
that on a certain evening, when Dr. Child begged the spirit to let him see her
tongue (did the honour-able doctor want to compare it with Mrs. White’s
tongue—the lady having been his patient?), she did so, and upon her opening her
mouth, the gentleman in question assures me that he plainly saw, what in his
admiring phraseology he terms “the most beautiful set of teeth—two rows of
pearls.” He remarked most particularly those teeth. Now there are some wicked,
slandering gossips, who happen to have cultivated most intimately Mrs. White’s
acquaintance in the happy days of her innocence, before her fall and subsequent
exposé and they tell us very bluntly (we beg the penitent angel’s pardon, we
repeat but a hear say) that this lady can hardly number among her other natural
charms the rare beauty of pearly teeth, or a perfect, most beautiful formed
hand and arm. Why not show her teeth at once to the said admirer, and so shame
the slanderers? Why shun “Katie’s” best friends? If we were so anxious as she
seems to be to prove “who is who,” we would surely submit with pleasure to the
operation of showing our teeth, yea, even in a court of justice. The above
fact, trifling as it may seem at first sight, would be considered as a very
important one by any intelligent juryman in a question of personal
identification.
Mr. Owen's
statement to us, corroborated by “Katie King” herself in her biography, a sworn
document, remember, is in the following words:
“She consented to
have an interview with some gentlemen who had seen her personating the spirit,
on condition that she would be allowed to
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keep a veil over
her face all the time she was conversing with them.” (Philadelphia Inquirer,
Jan. 11th, 4 col., “K. K. Biography.”)
Now pray why should
these “too credulous weak-minded gentle men,” as the immortal Dr. Beard would
say, he subjected again to such an extra strain on their blind faith? We should
say that that was just the proper time to come out and prove to them what was
the nature of the mental aberration they were labouring under for so many
months. Well, if they do swallow this new veiled proof they are welcome to it.
Vulgus vult decipi
decipiatur! But I expect something more substantial before submitting in guilty
silence to be laughed at. As it is, the case stands thus:
According to the
same biography (same column) the mock séance was prepared and carried out to
everyone’s heart’s content, through the endeavours of an amateur detective,
who, by the way, if any one wants to know, is a Mr. W. 0. Leslie. a contractor
or agent for the Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York Railroad, residing in
this city. If the press and several of the most celebrated victims of the fraud
are under bond of secrecy with him, I am. not, and mean to say what I know. And
so the said séance took place on Dec. 5th last, which fact appearing in sworn
evidence, implies that Mr. Leslie had wrested from Mrs. White the confession of
her guilt at least several days previous to that date, though the precise day
of the ‘‘amateur’s’’ triumph is very cleverly withheld in the sworn
certificate. Now comes a new conundrum.
On the evenings of
Dec. 2nd and 3rd at two séances held at the Holmeses’, I, myself, in the
presence of Robert Dale Owen and Dr. Child (chief manager of those
performances, from whom I got on the same morning an admission card), together
with twenty more witnesses, saw the spirit of Katie step out of the cabinet
twice, in full form and beauty, and I can swear in any court of justice that
she did not bear the least resemblance to Mrs. White’s portrait.
As I am unwilling
to base my argument upon any other testimony than my own, I will not dwell upon
the alleged apparition of Katie King at the Holmeses’ on Dec. 5th to Mr.
Roberts and fifteen others, among whom was Mr. W. H. Clarke, a reporter for The
Daily Graphic, for I happened to be out of town, though, if this fact is
demonstrated, it will go far against Mrs. White, for on that precise evening,
and at the same hour, she was exhibiting herself as the bogus Katie at the mock
séance. Something still more worthy of consideration is found in the
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most positive
assertion of a gentleman, a Mr. Wescott, who on that evening of the 5th on his
way home from the real séance, met in the car Mr. Owen, Dr. Child and his wife,
all three returning from the mock séance. Now it so happened that this
gentleman mentioned to them about having just seen the spirit Katie come out of
the cabinet, adding ‘‘he thought she never looked better” ; upon hearing which
Mr. Robert Dale Owen stared at him in amazement, and all the three looked
greatly perplexed.
And so I have but
insisted on the apparition of the spirit at the mediums’ house on the evenings
Dec. 2nd and 3rd, when I witnessed the phenomenon, together with Robert Dale
Owen and other parties.
It would be worse
than useless to offer or accept the poor excuse that the confession of the
woman White, her exposure of the fraud, the delivery to Mr. Leslie of all her
dresses and presents received by her in the name of Katie King, the disclosure
of the sad news by this devoted gentleman to Mr. Owen, and the preparation of
the mock séance cabinet and other important matters, had all of them taken
place on the 4th the more so, as we are furnished with most positive proofs
that Dr. Child at least, if not Mr. Owen. knew all about Mr. Leslie’s success
with Mrs. White several days beforehand. Knowing then of the fraud, how could
Mr. Leslie allow it to be still carried on, as the fact of Katie’s apparition
at the Holmeses’ on Dec. 2nd and 3rd prove to have been the case? Any
gentleman, even with a very moderate degree of honour about him, would never
allow the public to be fooled and defrauded any longer, unless he had time firm
resolution of catching the bogus spirit on the spot and proving the imposition.
But no such thing occurred. Quite the contrary; for Dr. Child, who had
constituted himself from the first not only chief superintendent of the
séances, cabinet and materialization business, but also cashier and
ticket-holder (paying the mediums at first ten dollars per séance, as he did,
and subsequently fifteen dollars, and pocketing the rest of the proceeds), on
that same evening of the 3rd took the admission money from every visitor as
quietly as he ever did. I will add, furthermore, that I, in propriâ personâ,
handed him on that very night a five—dollar bill, and that he (Dr. Child) kept
the whole of it, remarking that the balance could he made good to us by future
séance.
Will Dr. Child
presume to say that getting ready, as he then was, in company with Mr. Leslie,
to produce the bogus Katie King on the 5th of December, he knew nothing, as
yet, of the fraud on the 3rd?
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Further; in the
same biography (chap. viii, column the 1st), it is stated that, immediately
upon Mrs. White’s return from Blissfield, Mich., she called on Dr. Child, and
offered to expose the whole humbug she had been engaged in, but that he would
not listen to her. Upon that occasion she was not veiled, as indeed there was
no necessity for her to be, since by Dr. Child’s own admission she had been a
patient of his, and under his medical treatment. In a letter from Holmes to Dr.
Child, dated Blissfield, Aug. 28th, 1874, the former writes:
Mrs. White says you
and the friends were very rude, wanted to look into all our boxes and trunks
and break open locks. What were you looking for, or expecting to find?
All these several
circumstances show in the clearest possible manner that Dr. Child and Mrs.
White were on terms much more intimate then than that of casual acquaintance,
and it is the height of absurdity to assert that if Mrs. White and Katie King
were identical, the fraud was not perfectly well known to the “Father
Confessor” (see narrative of John and Katie King, p. 45). But a side light is
thrown upon this comedy from the pretended biography of John King and his
daughter Katie, written at their dictation in his own office by Dr. Child
himself. This book was given out to the world as an authentic revelation from
these two spirits. It tells us that they stepped in and stepped out of his
office, day after day, as any mortal being might, and after holding brief
conversations, followed by long narratives, they fully endorsed the genuineness
of their own apparition in the Holmeses’ cabinet. Moreover, the spirits
appearing at the public séances corroborated the statements which they made to
their amanuensis in his office; the two dovetailing together and making a
consistent story. Now, if the Holmeses’ Kings were Mrs. White, who were the
spirits visiting the doctor’s office? and if the spirits visiting him were
genuine, who were those that appeared at the public séances? In which
particular has the “Father Confessor” defrauded the public? In selling a book
containing false biographies or exposing bogus spirits at the Holmeses’? Which
or both? Let the doctor choose.
If his conscience
is so tender as to force him into print with his certificate and affidavits why
does it not sink deep enough to reach his pocket, and compel him to refund to
us the money obtained by him under false pretences? According to his own
confession, the Holmeses received from him, up to the time they left town,
about $1,2OO, for four months of daily séances. That he admitted every night as
many visitors
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as he could
possibly find room for—sometimes as many as thirty-five— is a fact that will be
corroborated by every person who has seen the phenomena more than once.
Furthermore, some six or seven reliable witnesses have told us that the modest
fee of $1 was only for the habitués, too curious or over-anxious visitors
having to pay sometimes as much as $5, and in one instance $10. This last fact
I give under all reserve, not having had to pay so much as that myself.
Now let an
impartial investigator of this Philadelphia imbroglio take a pencil and cast up
the profit left after paying the mediums, in this nightly spirit speculation
lasting many months. The result would be to show that the business of a spirit
“Father Confessor” is, on the whole, a very lucrative one.
Ladies and
gentlemen of the spiritual belief, methinks we are all of us between the horns
of a very wonderful dilemma. If you happen to find your position comfortable, I
do not, and so will try to extricate myself.
Let it be perfectly
understood, though, that I do not intend in the least to undertake at present
the defence of the Holmeses. They may be the greatest frauds for what I know or
care. My only purpose is to know for a certainty to whom I am indebted for my
share of ridicule— small as it may be, luckily for me. If we Spiritualists are
to be laughed and scoffed at and ridiculed and sneered at, we ought to know at
least the reason why. Either there was a fraud or there was none. If the fraud
is a sad reality, and Dr. Child by some mysterious combination of his personal
cruel fate has fallen the first victim to it, after having proved himself so
anxious for the sake of his honour and character to stop at once the further
progress of such a deceit on a public that had hitherto looked on him alone as
the party responsible for the perfect integrity and genuineness of a phenomenon
so fully endorsed by him in all particulars, why does not the doctor come out
the first and help us to the clue of all this mystery? Well aware of the fact
that the swindled and defrauded parties can at any day assert their rights to
the restitution of moneys laid out by them solely on the ground of their entire
faith in him they had trusted, why does he not sue the Holmeses and so prove
his own innocence? He cannot but admit that in the eyes of some initiated
parties, his cause looks far more ugly as it now stands than the accusation
under which the Holmeses vainly struggle. Or, if there was no fraud, or if it
is not fully proved, as it cannot well be on the shallow testimony of a
nameless woman signing documents
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with pseudonyms,
why then all this comedy on the part of the principal partner in the “Katie
materialization” business? Was not Dr. Child the institutor, the promulgator,
and we may say the creator of what proves to have been but a bogus phenomenon,
after all? Was not lie the advertising agent of this incarnated humbug—the
Barnum of this spiritual show? And now that he has helped to fool not only
Spiritualists but the world at large, whether as a confederate himself or one
of the weak-minded fools—no matter, so long as it is demonstrated that it was
he that helped us to this scrape—he imagines that by helping to accuse the mediums,
and expose the fraud, by fortifying with his endorsement all manner of bogus
affidavits and illegal certificates from non-existing parties, he hopes to find
himself henceforth perfectly clear of responsibility to the persons he has
dragged after him into this infamous swamp!
We must demand a
legal investigation. We have the right to insist upon it, for we Spiritualists
have bought this right at a dear price:
with the life-long reputation of Mr. Owen as an able and reliable writer and
trustworthy witness of the phenomena, who may henceforth be regarded as a
doubted and ever-ridiculed visionary by sceptical wise-acres. We have bought
this right with the prospect that all of us, whom Dr. Child has unwittingly or
otherwise (time will prove it) fooled into belief in his Katie King, will
become for a time the butts for end-less raillery, satires and jokes from the
press and ignorant masses. We regret to feel obliged to contradict on this
point such an authority in all matters as The Daily Graphic, but if orthodox
laymen rather decline to see this fraud thoroughly investigated in a court of
justice for fear of the Holmeses becoming entitled to the crown of martyrs, we
have no such fear as that, and repeat with Mr. Hudson Tuttle that “better
perish the cause with the impostors than live such a life of eternal ostracism,
with no chance for justice or redress.”
Why in the name of
all that is wonderful should Dr. Child have all the laurels of this unfought
battle, in which the attacked army seems for ever doomed to be defeated without
so much as a struggle? Why should he have all the material benefit of this
materialized humbug, and R. D. Owen, an honest Spiritualist, whose name is
universally respected, have all the kicks and thumps of the sceptical press? Is
this fair and just? How long shall we Spiritualists be turned over like so many
scapegoats to the unbelievers by cheating mediums and speculating prophets?
Like some modern shepherd Paris, Mr. Owen fell a
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victim to the
snares of this pernicious, newly materialized Helen; and on him falls heaviest
the present reaction that threatens to produce a new Trojan war. But the Homer of
the Philadelphia Iliad, the one who has appeared in the past as the elegiac
poet and biographer of that same Helen, and who appears in the present kindling
up the spark of doubt against the Holmeses, till, if not speedily quenched, it
might become a roaring ocean of flames—he that plays at this present hour the
unparalleled part of a chief justice presiding at his own trial and deciding in
his own case-—Dr. Child, we say, turning back on the spirit daughter of his own
creation, and backing the mortal, illegitimate off spring furnished by
somebody, is left unmolested! Only fancy, while R. D. Owen is fairly crushed
under the ridicule of the exposure, Dr. Child, who has endorsed false spirits,
now turns state’s evidence and endorses as fervently spirit certificates,
swearing to the same in a court of justice
If ever I may hope
to get a chance of having my advice accepted by some one anxious to clear up
all this sickening story, I would insist that the whole matter be forced into a
real court of justice and unriddled before a jury. If Dr. Child is, after all,
an honest man whose trusting nature was imposed upon, lie must be the first to
offer us all the chances that he in his power of getting at the bottom of all
these endless “whys” and “bows.” If he does not, in such a case we will try for
ourselves to solve the following mysteries:
1st, Judge Allen,
of Vineland, now in Philadelphia, testifies to the fact that when the cabinet,
made up under the direct supervision and instructions of Dr. Child, was brought
home to the Holmeses, the doctor worked at it himself, unaided, one whole day,
and with his tools, Judge Allen being at the time at the mediums’, whom he was
visiting. If there was a trap-door or “two cut boards” connected with it, who
did the work? Who can doubt that such clever machinery, fitted in such a way as
to baffle frequent and close examinations on the part of the sceptics, requires
an experienced mechanic of more than ordinary ability? Further, unless well
paid, he could hardly be bound to secrecy. Who paid him? Is it Holmes out of
his ten-dollar nightly fee? We ought to ascertain it.
2nd, If it is true,
as two persons are ready to swear, that the party, calling herself Eliza White,
alias “Frank,” alias Katie King, and so forth, is no widow at all, having a
well materialized husband, who is living, and who keeps a drinking saloon in a
Connecticut town—then
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in such case the
fair widow has perjured herself and Dr. Child has endorsed the perjury. We
regret that he should endorse the statements of the former as rashly as he
accepted the fact of her materialization.
3rd, Affidavits and
witnesses (five in all) are ready to prove that on a certain night, when Mrs.
White was visibly in her living body, refreshing her penitent stomach in
company with impenitent associates in a lager beer saloon, having no claims to
patrician “patronage,” Katie King, in her spirit form, was as visibly seen at
the door of her cabinet.
4th On one
occasion, when Dr. Child (in consequence of some prophetic vision, maybe)
invited Mrs. White to his own house, where he locked her up with the inmates,
who entertained her the whole of the evening, for the sole purpose of
convincing (he always seems anxious to convince somebody of something) some
doubting sceptics of the reality of the spirit-form, the latter appeared in the
séance-room and talked with R. D. Owen in the presence of all the company. The
Spiritualists were jubilant that night, and the doctor the most triumphant of
them all. Many are the witnesses ready to testify to the fact, but Dr. Child,
when questioned, seems to have entirely forgotten this important occurrence.
5th Who is the
party whom she claims to have engaged to personate General Rawlings? Let him
come out and swear to it, so that we will all see his great resemblance to the
defunct warrior.
6th, Let her name
the friends from whom she borrowed the costumes to personate “Sauntee” and
“Richard.” They must prove it under oath. Let them produce the dresses. Can she
tell us where she got the shining robes of the second and third spheres?
7th Only some
portions of Holmes’ letters to “Frank” are published in the biography: some of
them for the purpose of proving their co- partnership in the fraud at
Blissfield. Can she name the house and parties with whom she lodged and boarded
at Blissfield, Michigan?
When all the above
questions are answered and demonstrated to our satisfaction, then, and only
then, shall we believe that the Holmeses are the only guilty parties to a
fraud, which, for its consummate rascality and brazenness, is unprecedented in
the annals of Spiritualism.
I have read some of
Mr. Holmes’ letters, whether original or forged, no matter, and blessed as I am
with a good memory, I well remember certain sentences that have been, very
luckily for the poetic creature,
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suppressed by the
blushing editor as being too vile for publication. One of the most modest of
the paragraphs runs thus:
Now, my advice to
you, Frank, don’t crook your elbow too often; no use doubling up and squaring
your fists again.
Oh, Katie King!
Remember, the above
is addressed to the woman who pretends to have personated the spirit of whom R.
D. Owen wrote thus:
I particularly
noticed this evening the ease and harmony of her motions. In Naples, (luring
five years, I frequented a circle famed for courtly demeanour; but never in the
best-bred lady of rank accosting her visitors, have I seen Katie out-rivalled.
And further:
A well-known artist
of Philadelphia, after examining Katie, said to me that he had seldom seen
features exhibiting more classic beauty. “Her movements and, bearing,” he
added, “are the very ideal of grace.”
Compare for one
moment this admiring description with the quotation from Holmes’ letter. Fancy
an ideal of classic beauty and grace crooking her elbow in a lager beer saloon,
and—judge for yourselves !
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
1111, Girard
Street, Philadelphia.
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(Continued.)
IN the last
Religio-Philosophical Journal (for February 2 in the Philadelphia department,
edited by Dr. Child, under the most poetical heading of “After the Storm comes
the Sunshine,” we read the following:
I have been waiting
patiently for the excitement in reference to the Holmes fraud to subside a
little. I will now make some further statements and answer some questions.
Further:
The stories of my
acquaintance with Mrs. White are all fabrications.
Further still:
I shall not notice
the various reports put forth about my pecuniary relations farther than to say
there is a balance due to me for money loaned to the Holmeses.
I claim the right
to answer the above three quotations, the more so that the second one consigns
me most unceremoniously to the ranks of the liars. Now if there is, in my
humble judgment, anything more contemptible than a cheat, it is certainly a
liar.
The rest of this
letter, editorial, or whatever it may be, is unanswerable, for reasons that
will be easily understood by whoever reads it. ‘When petulant Mr. Pancks (in
Littie Dorrit) spanked the benevolent Christopher Casby, this venerable
patriarch only mildly lifted up his blue eyes heavenward, and smiled more
benignly than ever. Dr. Child, tossed about and as badly spanked by public
opinion, smiles as sweetly as Mr. Casby, talks of “sunshine,” and quiets his
urgent accusers by assuring them that ‘‘it is all fabrications.”
I don’t know whence
Dr. Child takes his “sunshine,” unless he draws it from the very bottom of his
innocent heart.
For my part, since
I came to Philadelphia, I have seen little but slush and dirt; slush in the
streets, and dirt in this exasperating Katie King mystery.
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I would strongly
advise Dr. Child not to accuse me of “fabrication,” whatever else he may be
inclined to ornament me with. What I say I can prove, and am ever willing to do
so at any day. If he is innocent of all participation in this criminal fraud,
let him “rise and explain.”
If he succeeds in
clearing his record, I will be the first to rejoice, and promise to offer him
publicly my most sincere apology for the “erroneous suspicions” I labour under
respecting his part in the affair; but he must first prove that he is
thoroughly innocent. Hard words prove nothing, and he cannot hope to achieve
such a victory by simply accusing people of “fabrications.” If he does not
abstain from applying epithets unsupported by substantial proofs, he risks, as
in the game of shuttlecock and battledore, the chance of receiving the missile
back, and maybe that it will hurt him worse than he expects.
In the article in
question he says:
The stories of my
acquaintance with Mrs. White are all fabrications. I did let her in two or
three times, but the entry and hall were so dark that it was impossible to
recognize her or any one. I have seen her several times, and knew that she
looked more like Katie King than Mr. [?] or Mrs. Holmes.
Mirabile dietu!
This beats our learned friend, Dr. Beard. The latter denies, point-blank, not
only “materialization,” which is not yet actually proved to the world, but also
every spiritual phenomenon. But Dr. Child denies being acquainted with a woman
whom he confesses him self to have seen “several times,” received in his
office, where she was seen repeatedly by others, and yet at the same time
admits that he “knew she looked like Katie King,” etc. By the way, we have all
laboured under the impression that Dr. Child admitted in The Inquirer that he
saw Mrs. White for the first time and recognized her as Katie King only on that
morning when she made her affidavit at the office of the justice of the peace.
A “fabrication” most likely. In the R.-P. Journal for October 2 1874, Dr. Child
wrote thus:
Your report does
not for a moment shake my confidence in our Katie King, as she comes to me
every day and talks to me. On several occasions Katie had come to me and
requested Mr. Owen and myself to go there [ to the Holmeses’] and she would
come and repeat what she had told me above.
Did Dr. Child
ascertain where Mrs. White was at the time of the spirit’s visits to him?
As to Mrs. White, I
know her well. I have on many occasions let her into the house. I saw her at
the time the manifestations were going on in Blissfield. She has since gone to
Massachusetts.
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And still the
doctor assures us he was not acquainted with Mrs. White. What signification
does he give to the word “acquaintance” in such a case? Did he not go, in the
absence of the Holmeses, to their house, and talk with her and even quarrel
with the woman? Another fabricated story, no doubt. I defy Dr. Child to print
again, if he dare, such a word as fabrication in relation to myself, after he
has read a certain statement that I reserve for the last.
In all this
pitiful, humbugging romance of an “exposure” by a too material she-spirit,
there has not been given us a single reasonable explanation of even so much as
one solitary fact. It began with a bogus biography, and threatens to end in a
bogus fight, since every single duel requires at least two participants, and
Dr. Child prefers extracting sunshine from the cucumbers of his soul and
letting the storm subside, to fighting like a man for his own fair name. He
says that “he shall not notice” what people say about his little speculative
transactions with the Holmeses. He assures us that they owe him money. Very
likely, but it does not alter the alleged fact of his having paid $10 for every
séance and pocketing the balance. Dare he say that he did not do it? The
Holmeses' say otherwise, and the statements in writing of various witnesses
corroborate them.
The Holmeses may be
scamps in the eyes of certain persons, and the only ones in the eyes of the
more prejudiced; but as long as their statements have not been proven false,
their word is as good as the word of Dr. Child; aye, in a court of justice
even, the “Mediums Holmes” would stand just on the same level as any spiritual
prophet or clairvoyant who might have been visited by the same identical
spirits that visited the former. So long as Dr. Child does not legally prove
them to be cheats and himself innocent, why should not they be as well entitled
to belief as himself?
From the first hour
of the Katie King mystery, if people have accused them, no one so far as I
know—not even Dr. Child himself—has proved, or even undertaken to prove, the
innocence of their ex-cashier and recorder. The fact that every word of the
ex-leader and president of the Philadelphian Spiritualists would be published
by every spiritual paper (and here we must confess to our wonder that he does
not hasten much to avail himself of this opportunity) while any statement
coming from the Holmeses' would be pretty sure of rejection, would not
necessarily imply the fact that they alone are guilty; it would only go towards
showing that, notwithstanding the divine truth of our faith and the
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teachings of our
invisible guardians, some Spiritualists have not profited by them to learn
impartiality and justice.
These “mediums” are
persecuted; so far it is but justice, since they themselves admitted their
guilt about the photography fraud, and unless it can be shown that they were
thereunto controlled by lying spirits their own mouths condemn them; but what
is less just, is that they are slandered and abused on all points and made to
bear alone all the weight of a crime, where confederacy peeps out from every
page of the story. No one seems willing to befriend them—these two helpless
uninfluential creatures, who, if they sinned at all, perhaps sinned through
weakness and ignorance—to take their case in hand, and by doing justice to
them, do justice at the same time to the cause of truth. If their guilt should
be as evident as the daylight at noon, is it not ridiculous that their partner,
Dr. Child, should show surprise at being so much as suspected! History records
but one person—the legitimate spouse of the great Cæsar—whose name has to remain
enforced by law as above suspicion. Methinks that if Dr. Child possesses some
natural claims to his self-assumed title of Katie King’s “Father Confessor,” he
can have none whatever to share the infallibility of Madame Cæsar's virtue.
Being pretty sure as to this myself, and feeling, moreover, somewhat anxious to
swell the list of pertinent questions, which are called by our disingenuous
friend “fabrications,” with at least one fact, I will now proceed to furnish
your readers with the following:
“Katie’s” picture
has been, let us say, proved a fraud, an imposition on the credulous world, and
is Mrs. White’s portrait. This counterfeit has been proved by the beauty of the
“crooking elbow,” in her bogus autobiography (the proof sheets of which Dr.
Child was seen correcting), by the written confession of the Holmeses', and,
lastly, by Dr. Child himself.
Out of the several
bogus portraits of the supposed spirit, the most spurious one has been
declared—mostly on the testimony endorsed by Dr. Child and “over his signature”—to
be the one where the pernicious and false Katie King is standing behind the
medium.
The operation of
this delicate piece of imposture proved so difficult as to oblige the Holmeses'
to take into the secret of the conspiracy the photographer.
Now Dr. Child
denies having had anything whatever to do with the sittings for those pictures.
He denies it most emphatically, and goes so far as to say (we have many
witnesses and proofs of this) that he
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was out of town,
four hundred miles away, when the said pictures were taken. And so he was,
bless his dear prophetic soul! Meditating and chatting with the nymphs and goblins
of Niagara Falls, so that, when he pleads an alibi, it’s no “fabrication” but
the truth for once.
Unfortunately for
the veracious Dr. Child—”whose character and reputation for truthfulness and
moral integrity no one doubts,” here we quote the words of “Honesty” and
“Truth,” transparent pseudonyms of an “amateur” for detecting, exposing and
writing under the cover of secrecy, who tried to give a friendly push to the
doctor in two articles, but failed in both—unfortunately for H. T. Child, we
say, he got inspired in some evil hour to write a certain article, and for
getting the wise motto, Verba volant, scripta manent, to publish it in The
Daily Graphic on Nov. 6th, together with the portraits of John and Katie King.
Now for tins
bouquet of the endorsement of a fact by a truthful man, ‘‘whose moral integrity
no one can doubt.’’
To The Editor of
“The Daily Graphic.”
On the evening of
July 20th, after a large and successful séance, in which Katie had walked out
into the room in the presence of thirty persons and had disappeared and
reappeared in full view, she remarked to Mr. Leslie and myself that if we, with
four others whom she named, would remain after the séance, she would like to
try for her photograph. We did so, and there were present six persons besides
the photographer. I had procured two dozen magnesian spirals, and, when all was
ready, she opened the door of the cabinet and stood in it, while Mr. Holmes on
one side, and I upon the other, burned these, making a brilliant light. We
tried two plates, but neither of them was satisfactory.
Another effort was
made on July 23rd, which was successful. We asked her if she would try to have
it taken by daylight. She said she would. We sat with shutters often at 4 pm.
In a few moments Katie appeared at the aperture and said she was ready. She
asked to have one of the windows closed, and that we should hold a shawl to
screen her. As soon as the camera was ready she came out and walked behind the
shawl to the middle of the room, a distance of six or eight feet, where she
stood in front of the camera. She remained in that position until the first
picture was taken, when she retired to the cabinet.
Mr. Holmes proposed
that she should permit him to sit in front of the camera, and should come out
and place her hand upon his shoulder. To this she assented, and desired all
present to avoid looking into her eyes, as this disturbed the conditions very
much.
The second picture
was then taken in which she stands behind Mr. Holmes. When the camera was
closed she showed great signs of weakness, and it was necessary to assist her
back to the cabinet, and when she got to the door she appeared ready to sink to
the floor and disappeared [?]. The cabinet door was opened, but she was not to
be
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seen. In a few
minutes she appeared again and remarked that she had not been sufficiently
materialized, and said she would like to try again, if we could wait a little
while. We waited about fifteen minutes, when she rapped on the cabinet,
signifying that she was ready to come out. She did so, and we obtained the
Third negative.
(Signed) DR. H. T.
CHILD.
And so, Dr. Child,
we have obtained this, we did that, and we did many other things. Did you? Now,
besides Dr. Child’s truthful assertions about his being out of town, especially
at the time this third negative was obtained, we have the testimony of the photographer,
Dr. Selger, and other witnesses to corroborate the fact. At the same time, I
suppose that Dr. Child will not risk a denial of his own article. I have it in
my possession and keep it, together with many others as curious, printed like
it, and written in black and white. Who fabricates stories? Can the doctor
answer?
How will he creep
out of this dilemma? What rays of his spiritual “sunshine” will be able to
de-materialize such a contradictory fact as this one? Here we have an article
taking up two spacious columns of The Daily Graphic, in which he asserts as
plainly as possible, that he was present himself at the sittings of Katie King
for her portrait, that the spirit come out boldly, in full daylight, that she
disappeared on the threshold of the cabinet, and that he, Dr. Child, helping
her back to it on account of her great weakness, saw that there was no one in
the said cabinet, for the door remained opened. Who did he help? Whose
fluttering heart beat against his paternal arm and waistcoat? Was it the bonny
Eliza? Of course, backed by such reliable testimony of such a truly trustworthy
witness, the pictures sold like wild-fire. Who got the proceeds? Who kept them?
If Dr. Child was not in town when the pictures were taken, then this article is
an “evident fabrication.” On the other hand, if what he says in it is truth,
and he was present at all at the attempt of this bogus picture-taking, then he
certainly must have known “who was who, in 1874,” as the photographer knew it,
and as surely it did not require Argus-eyes to recognize in full daylight with
only one shutter partially closed, a materialized, ethereal spirit, from a
common, “elbow-crooking” mortal woman, whom, though not acquainted with her,
the doctor still “knew well.”
If our
self-constituted leaders, our prominent recorders of the phenomena, will humbug
and delude the public with such reliable statements as this one, how can we
Spiritualists wonder at the masses of incredulous scoffers that keep on
politely taking us for “lunatics” when they do
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not very rudely
call us “liars and charlatans” to our faces? It is not the occasionally
cheating “mediums” that have or can impede the progress of our cause; it’s the
exalted exaggerations of some fanatics on one hand, and the deliberate,
unscrupulous statements of those who delight in dealing in “wholesale
fabrications” and “pious frauds” that have arrested the unusually rapid
spreading of Spiritualism in 1874 and brought it to a dead stop in 1875. For
how many years to come yet, who can tell?
In his “After the
Storm comes the Sunshine,” the Doctor makes the following melancholy
reflection:
It has been suggested
that going into an atmosphere of fraud, such as surrounds these mediums [
Holmeses] and being sensitive [ poor Yorick!] I was more liable to be deceived
than others.
We shudder indeed
at the thought of the exposure of so much sensitiveness to so much pollution.
Alas! soiled dove! how very sensitive must a person be who picks up such evil
influences that they actually force him into the grossest of fabrications and
make him invent stories and endorse facts that he has not and could not have
seen. If Dr. Child, victim to his too sensitive nature, is liable to fall so
easily as that under the control of wicked “Diakka,” our friendly advice to him
is to give up Spiritualism as soon as possible, and join a Young Men’s
Christian Association; for then, under the protecting wing of the true orthodox
Church, he can begin a regular fight, like a second St. Anthony, with the
orthodox devil. Such Diakka as he fell in with at the Holmeses’ must beat Old
Nick by long odds, and if he could not withstand them by the unaided strength
of his own pure soul, he may with “bell, book and candle” and the use of holy
water be more fortunate in a tug with Satan, crying as other “Father
Confessors” have heretofore, “Exorciso vos in nomine Lucis!” and signify ing
his triumph with a robust Laus Deo.
H. P. BLAVATSKY
Philadelphia,
March,1875
NOTICE TO MEDIUMS
IN compliance with
the request of the Honourable Alexander Aksakoff, Counsellor of State in the
Imperial Chancellery at St. Petersburg, the undersigned hereby give notice that
they are prepared to receive applications from physical mediums who may he
willing to go to Russia, for examination before the committee of the Imperial
University.
To avoid
disappointment, it may be well to state that the undersigned will recommend no
mediums whose personal good character is not satisfactorily shown; nor any who
will not submit themselves to a thorough scientific test of their mediumistic
powers, in the city of New York, prior to sailing; nor any who cannot exhibit
most of their phenomena in a lighted room, to be designated by the undersigned,
and with such ordinary furniture as may be found therein.
Approved
applications will be immediately forwarded to St. Petersburg, and upon receipt
of orders thereon from the scientific commission or its representative, M.
Aksakoff, proper certificates and instructions will be given to accepted
applicants, and arrangements made for defraying expenses.
Address the
undersigned, in care of E. Gerry Brown, Editor of The Spiritual Scientist, 18,
Exchange Street, Boston, Mass., who is hereby authorized to receive personal
applications from mediums in the New England States.
HENRY S. OLCOTT.
HELEN P. BLAVATSKY.
A REBUKE
—————
I AM truly sorry
that a Spiritualist paper like The Religio-Philosophical Journal, which claims
to instruct and enlighten its readers, should suffer such trash as Mr. Jesse
Sheppard is contributing to its columns to appear without review. I will not
dwell upon the previous letter of this very gifted personage, although
everything he has said concerning Russia and life at St. Petersburg might be
picked to pieces by anyone having merely a superficial acquaintance with the
place and the people; nor will I stop to sniff at his nosegays of high-sounding
names—his Princess Boulkoffs and Princes This and That, which are as
preposterously fictitious as though, in speaking of Americans, some Russian
singing-medium were to mention his friends Prince Jones or Duke Smith, or Earl
Brown—for if he chooses to manufacture noble patrons from the oversloppings of
his poetic imagination, and it amuses him or his readers, no great harm is
done. But when it comes to his saying the things he does in the letter of July
3rd in that paper, it puts quite a different face upon the matter. Here he
pretends to give historical facts—which never existed. He tells of things he
saw clairvoyantly, and his story is such a tissue of ridiculous, gross
anachronisms that they not only show his utter ignorance of Russian history,
but are calculated to injure the cause of Spiritualism by throwing doubt upon
all clairvoyant descriptions. Secondarily in importance they destroy his own
reputation for veracity, stamp him as a trickster and a false writer, and bring
the gravest suspicion upon his claim to possess any mediumship whatever.
What faith can
anyone, acquainted with the rudiments of history, have in a medium who sees
another (Catherine II) giving orders to strangle her son (Paul I), when we all
know that the Emperor Paul ascended the throne upon the decease of the very
mother whom the inventive genius of this musical prodigy makes guilty of
infanticide?
Permit me, 0 young
seer and Spiritualist, as a Russian somewhat
37 ———————————————————————A REBUKE.
read in the history
of her country, to refresh your memory. Spiritualism has been laughed at quite
enough recently in consequence of such pious frauds as yours, and as Russian
savants are about to investigate the subject, we may as well go to them with
clean hands. The journal which gives you its hospitality goes to my country,
and its interests will certainly suffer if you are allowed to go on with your
embroidery and spangle-work without rebuke. Remember, young poetico-historian,
that the Emperor Paul was the paternal grandfather of the present Czar, and
everyone who has been at St. Petersburg knows that the “old palace,” which to
your spiritual eye wears such “an appearance of dilapidation and decay, worthy
of a castle of the Middle Ages,” and the one where your Paul was strangled, is
an every-day, modern-looking, respectable building, the successor of one which
was pulled down early in the reign of the late Emperor Nicholas, and known from
the beginning until now as the Pawlowsky Military College for the “Cadets.” And
the two assassins, begotten in your clairvoyant loins—Petreski and Kofski!
Really now, Mr. Sheppard, gentlemanly assassins ought to be very much obliged
to you for these pretty aliases!
It is fortunate for
you, dear sir, that it did not occur to you to discuss these questions in St.
Petersburg, and that you evolved your history from the depths of your own
consciousness, for in our autocratical country one is not permitted to discuss
the little unpleasantnesses of the imperial family history, and the rule would
not be relaxed for a Spanish grandee, or even that more considerable personage,
an American singing-medium. An attempt on your part to do so would assuredly
have interfered with your grand concert, under imperial patronage, and might
have led to your journeying to the borders of Russia under an armed escort
befitting your exalted rank.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
OCCULTISM OR MAGIC
—————
AMONG the numerous
sciences pursued by the well-disciplined army of earnest students of the
present century, none has had less honours or more scoffing than the oldest of
them—the science of sciences, the venerable mother-parent of all our modern
pigmies. Anxious in their petty vanity to throw the veil of oblivion over their
undoubted origin, the self-styled positive scientists, ever on the alert,
present to the courageous scholar who tries to deviate from the beaten highway
traced out for him by his dogmatic predecessors, a formidable range of serious
obstacles.
As a rule,
Occultism is a dangerous, double-edged weapon for one to handle who is
unprepared to devote his whole life to it. The theory of it, unaided by serious
practice, will ever remain in the eyes of those prejudiced against such an
unpopular cause an idle, crazy speculation, fit only to charm the ears of
ignorant old women. When we cast a look behind us and see how for the last
thirty years modern Spiritualism has been dealt with, notwithstanding the
occurrence of daily, hourly proofs which speak to all our senses, stare us in
the eyes, and utter their voices from “beyond the great gulf,” how can we hope,
I say, that Occultism or Magic—which stands in relation to Spiritualism as the
infinite to the finite, as the cause to the effect, or as unity to
multifariousness—will easily gain ground where Spiritualism is scoffed at? One
who rejects priori or even doubts the immortality of man’s soul can never
believe in its Creator; and, blind to what is heterogeneous in his eyes, will
remain still more blind to the proceeding of the latter from homogeneity. In
relation to the Kabalah, or the compound mystic text-book of the great secrets
of Nature, we do not know of anyone in the present century who could have
commanded a sufficient dose of that moral courage which fires the heart of the
true Adept with the sacred flame of propagandism, to force him into defying
public opinion by displaying familiarity with that sublime work. Ridicule is
the dead-
39————————————————————OCCULTISM OR MAGIC.
liest weapon of the
age, and while we read in the records of history of thousands of martyrs who
joyfully braved flames and faggots in support of their mystic doctrines in the
past centuries, we would scarcely be likely to find one individual in the
present times who would be brave enough even to defy ridicule by seriously
undertaking to prove the great truths embraced in the traditions of the Past.
As an instance of
the above, I will mention the article on Rosicrucianism, signed “Hiraf.” This
ably-written essay—notwithstanding some fundamental errors, which, though they
are such, would be hardly noticed except by those who had devoted their lives
to the study of Occultism in its various branches of practical
teaching—indicates with certainty to the practical reader that, for theoretical
knowledge, at least, the author need fear few rivals, still less superiors. His
modesty, which I cannot too much appreciate in his case—though he is safe
enough behind the mask of his fancy pseudonym—need not give him any
apprehensions. There are few critics in this country of Positivism who would
willingly risk themselves in an encounter with such a powerful disputant, on
his own ground. The weapons he seems to hold in reserve, in the arsenal of his
wonderful memory, his learning, and his readiness to give any further
information that enquirers may wish for, will undoubtedly scare off every
theorist, unless he is perfectly sure of himself, which few are. But
book-learning—and here I refer only to the subject of Occultism—vast as it may
be, will always
prove insufficient even to the analytical mind—the most accustomed to extract
the quintessence of truth, disseminated throughout thousands of
contradictory statements—unless supported by personal experience and practice.
Hence “Hiraf” can only expect an encounter with some one who may hope to find a
chance to refute some of his bold assertions on the plea of having just such a
slight practical experience. Still, it must not be understood that these
present lines are intended to criticize our too modest essayist. Far from poor,
ignorant me be such a presumptuous thought. My desire is simple: to help him in
his scientific, but, as I said before, rather hypothetical researches, by
telling a little of the little I picked up in my long travels throughout the
length and breadth of the East—that cradle of Occultism—in the hope of
correcting certain erroneous notions he seems to be labouring under, and which
are calculated to confuse uninitiated sincere enquirers, who might desire to
drink at his own source of knowledge.
In the first place,
“Hiraf” doubts whether there are in existence, in
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England or
elsewhere, what we term regular colleges for the neophytes of this Secret
Science. I will say from personal knowledge that such places there are in the
East—in India, Asia Minor, and other countries. As in the primitive days of
Socrates and other sages of antiquity, so now, those who are willing to learn
the Great Truth will ever find the chance if they only “try” to meet some one
to lead them to the door of one “who knows when and how.” If “Hiraf” is right
about the seventh rule of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, which says that
“the Rose-crux becomes and is not made,” he may err as to the exceptions which
have ever existed among other Brotherhoods devoted to the pursuit of the same
secret knowledge. Then again, when he asserts, as he does, that Rosicrucianism
is almost forgotten, we may answer him that we do not wonder at it, and add, by
way of parenthesis, that, strictly speaking, the Rosicrucians do not now even
exist, the last of that fraternity having departed in the person of Cagliostro.
“Hiraf” ought to
add to the word Rosicrucianism “that particular sect” at least, for it was but
a sect after all, one of many branches of the same tree.
By forgetting to
specify that particular denomination and by including under the name of
Rosicrucians all those who, devoting their lives to Occultism congregated
together in Brotherhoods, “Hiraf” commits an error by which he may unwittingly
lead people to believe that the Rosicrucians having disappeared, there are no
more Kabalists practising Occultism on the face of the earth. He also becomes
thereby guilty of an anachronism, attributing to the Rosicrucians the building
of the pyramids and other majestic monuments, which indelibly exhibit in their
architecture the symbols of the grand religions of the past. For it is not so.
If the main object in view was, and still is, alike, with all the great family
of the ancient and modern Kabalists, the dogmas and formulas of certain sects
differ greatly. Springing one after the other from the great Oriental
mother-root, they scattered broadcast all over the world, and each of them
desiring to out-rival the other by plunging deeper and deeper into the secrets
jealously guarded by Nature, some of them became guilty of the greatest
heresies against the primitive Oriental Kabalah.
While the first
followers of the secret sciences, taught to the Chaldæans by nations whose very
name was never breathed in history, remained stationary in their studies,
having arrived at the maximum, the Omega of the knowledge permitted to man,
many of the subse-
41 ————————————————————OCCULTISM OR MAGIC.
quent sects
separated from them, and, in their uncontrollable thirst for more knowledge,
trespassed beyond the boundaries of truth and fell into fictions. In
consequence of Pythagoras—so says Jamblichus— having by sheer force of energy
and daring penetrated into the mysteries of the Temple of Thebes, obtained
therein his initiation and afterwards studied the sacred sciences in Egypt for
twenty-two years, many foreigners were subsequently admitted to share the
knowledge of the wise men of the East, who, as a consequence, had many of their
secrets divulged. Later still, unable to preserve them in their purity, these
mysteries were so mixed up with fictions and fables of the Grecian mythology
that truth was wholly distorted.
As the primitive
Christian religion divided, in course of time, into numerous sects, so the
science of Occultism gave birth to a variety of doctrines and various
brotherhoods. So the Egyptian Ophites became the Christian Gnostics, shooting
forth the Basilideans of the second century, and the original Rosicrucians
created subsequently the Paracelsists, or Fire Philosophers, the European
Alchemists, and other physical branches of their sect. (See Hargrave Jennings’
Rosicrucians.) To call indifferently every Kabalist a Rosicrucian, is to commit
the same error as if we were to call every Christian a Baptist on the ground
that the latter are also Christians.
The Brotherhood of
the Rosy Cross was not founded until the middle of the thirteenth century. and
notwithstanding the assertions of the learned Mosheim, it derives its name
neither from the Latin word Ros (dew), nor from a cross, the symbol of Lux. The
origin of the Brotherhood can he ascertained by any earnest, genuine student of
Occultism, who happens to travel in Asia Minor, if he chooses to fall in with
some of the Brotherhood, and if he is willing to devote himself to the
head-tiring work of deciphering a Rosicrucian manuscript—the hardest thing in
the world-—for it is carefully preserved in the archives of the very Lodge
which was founded by the first Kabalist of that name, but which now goes by
another name. The founder of it, a German Ritter, of the name of Rosencranz,
was a man who, after acquiring a very suspicious reputation through the
practice of the Black Art in his native place, reformed in consequence of a
vision. Giving up his evil practices, he made a solemn vow, and went on foot to
Palestine, in order to make his amende honorable at the Holy Sepulchre. Once
there, the Christian God, the meek, but well-informed Nazarene—trained as he
was in the high school of the Essenians, those
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virtuous
descendants of the botanical as well as astrological and magical Chald to
Rosencranz, a Christian would say, in a vision, but I would suggest, in the
shape of a materialized spirit. The purport of this visitation, as well as the
subject of their conversation, remained for ever a mystery to many of the
Brethren; but immediately after that, the ex-sorcerer and Ritter disappeared,
and was heard of no more till the mysterious sect of Rosicrucians was added to
the family of Kabalists, and their powers aroused popular attention, even among
the Eastern populations, indolent and accustomed as they are to live among
wonders. The Rosicrucians strove to combine together the most various branches
of Occultism, and they soon became renowned for the extreme purity of their
lives and their extraordinary powers, as well as for their thorough knowledge
of the secret of secrets.
As alchemists and
conjurers they became proverbial. Later (I need not inform “Hiraf” precisely
when, as we drink at two different sources of knowledge), they gave birth to
the more modern Theosophists, at whose head was Paracelsus, and to the
Alchemists, one of the most celebrated of whom was Thomas Vaughan (seventeenth
century), who wrote the most practical things on Occultism under the name of
Eugenius Philalethes. I know and can prove that Vaughan was, most positively,
“made before he became.”
The Rosicrucian
Kabalah is but an epitome of the Jewish and the Oriental ones, combined, the
latter being the most secret of all. The Oriental Kabalah, the practical, full,
and only existing copy, is carefully preserved at the headquarters of this
Brotherhood in the East, and, I may safely vouch, will never come out of its
possession. Its very existence has been doubted by many of the European
Rosicrucians. One who wants “to become” has to hunt for his knowledge through
thousands of scattered volumes, and pick up facts and lessons, bit by bit.
Unless he takes the nearest way and consents “to be made,” he will never become
a practical Kabalist, and with all his learning will remain at the threshold of
the “mysterious gate.” The Kabalah may be used and its truths imparted on a
smaller scale now than it was in antiquity, and the existence of the mysterious
Lodge, on account of its secrecy, doubted, but it does exist and has lost none
of the primitive secret powers of the ancient Chaldæans The lodges, few in
number, are divided into sections and known but to the Adepts; no one would be
likely to find them out, unless the Sages themselves found the neophyte worthy
of initiation. Unlike the European Rosicrucians—who,
43 ————————————————————OCCULTISM OR MAGIC.
in order “to become
and not to be made,” have constantly put into practice the word of St. John,
who says, “Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force,” and who
have struggled alone, violently robbing Nature of her secrets—the Oriental
Rosicrucians (for such we will call them, being denied the right to pronounce
their true name), in the serene beatitude of their divine knowledge, are ever
ready to help the earnest student struggling “to become” with practical
knowledge, which dissipates, like a heavenly breeze, the blackest clouds of
sceptical doubt.
“Hiraf” is right
again when he says that
Knowing that their
mysteries, if divulged, in the present chaotic state of society, would produce
mere confusion and death,
they shut up that knowledge within themselves. Heirs to the early heavenly
wisdom of their first forefathers, they keep the keys which unlock the most
guarded of Nature’s secrets, and impart them only gradually and with the
greatest caution. But still they do impart sometimes.
Once all such a
cercle vicieux, “Hiraf” sins likewise in a certain comparison he makes between
Christ, Buddha, and Khoung-foo-tsee, or Confucius. A comparison can hardly be
made between the two former wise and spiritual Illuminati, and the Chinese
philosopher. The higher aspirations and views of the two Christs can have
nothing to do with the cold, practical philosophy of the latter, brilliant
anomaly as he was among a naturally dull and materialistic people, peaceful and
devoted to agriculture from the earliest ages of their history. Confucius can
never bear the slightest comparison with the two great Reformers. Whereas the
principles and doctrines of Christ and Buddha were calculated to embrace the
whole of humanity, Confucius confined his attention solely to his own country,
trying to apply his profound wisdom and philosophy to the wants of his
countrymen, and little troubling his head about the rest of mankind. Intensely
Chinese in patriotism and views, his philosophical doctrines are as much devoid
of the purely poetic element, which characterizes the teachings of Christ and
Buddha, the two divine types, as the religious tendencies of his people lack in
that spiritual exaltation which we find, for instance, in India.
Khoung-foo-tsee has not even the depth of feeling and the slight spiritual
striving of his contemporary, Lao-tsee. Says the learned Ennemoser:
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The spirits of
Christ and Buddha have left indelible, eternal traces all over the face of the
world. The doctrines of Confucius can he mentioned only as the most brilliant
proceedings of cold human reasoning.
Harvey, in his
Universal History, has depicted the Chinese nation perfectly, in a few words:
Their heavy,
childish, cold, sensual nature explains the peculiarities of their history.
Hence any
comparison between the first two Reformers and Confucius, in an essay on
Rosicrucianism, in which “Hiraf” treats of the Science of Sciences and invites
the thirsty for knowledge to drink at her inexhaustible source, seems
inadmissible.
Further, when our
learned author asserts so dogmatically that the Rosicrucian learns, though he
never uses, the secret of immortality in earthly life, he asserts only what he
himself, in his practical inexperience, thinks impossible. The words “never”
and “impossible” ought to be erased from the dictionary of humanity, until the
time at least when the great Kabalah shall all be solved, and so rejected or
accepted. The Count St. Germain is, until this very time, a living mystery, and
the Rosicrucian Thomas Vaughan another one. The countless authorities we have
in literature, as well as in oral tradition (which sometimes is the more
trustworthy), about this wonderful Count’s having been met and recognized in
different centuries, is no myth. Anyone who admits one of the practical truths
of the occult sciences taught by the Kabalah tacitly admits them all. It must
be Hamlet’s “to be or not to be,” and if the Kabalah is true, then St. Germain
need be no myth.
But I am digressing
from my object, which is, firstly, to show the slight differences between the
two Kabalahs, that of the Rosicrucians and time Oriental one; and, secondly, to
say that the hope expressed by “Hiraf” to see the subject better appreciated at
some future day than it has been till now, may perhaps become more than a hope.
Time will show man things; till then, let us heartily thank “Hiraf” for this
first well-aimed shot at those stubborn scientific runaways, who, once before
the Truth, avoid looking her in the face, and dare not even throw a glance
behind them, lest they should be forced to see that which would greatly lessen
their self-sufficiency. As a practical follower of Eastern Spiritualism, I can
confidently wait for the time, when, with the timely help of those ‘‘who
know,’’ American Spiritualism, which even in its present shape has proved such
a sore in the side of the materialists, will become a science and a thing of
mathematical certi-
45 ———————————————————OCCULTISM OR MAGIC.
tude, instead of
being regarded only as the crazy delusion of epileptic monomaniacs.
The first Kabalah
in which a mortal man ever dared to explain the greatest mysteries of the
universe, and show the keys to
Those masked doors
in the ramparts of Nature through which no mortal can ever pass without rousing
dread sentries never seen upon this side her wall,
was compiled by a
certain Simeon Ben Iochai, who lived at the time of the second Temple’s
destruction. Only about thirty years after the death of this renowned Kabalist,
his MSS. and written explanations, which had till then remained in his
possession as a most precious secret, were used by his son Rabbi Elizzar and
other learned men. Making a compilation of the whole, they so produced the
famous work called Sohar (God’s splendour). This book proved an inexhaustible
mine for all the subsequent Kabalists, their source of information and
knowledge, and all more recent and genuine Kabalahs were more or less carefully
copied from the former. Before that, all the mysterious doctrines had come down
in an unbroken line of merely oral tradition as far back as man could trace
himself on earth. They were scrupulously and jealously guarded by the wise men
of Chald India, Persia and Egypt, and passed from one Initiate to another, in
the same purity of form as when handed down to the first man by the angels,
students of God’s great Theosophic Seminary. For the first time since the
world’s creation, the secret doctrines, passing through Moses who was initiated
in Egypt, underwent some slight alterations.
In consequence of
the personal ambition of this great prophet medium, he succeeded in passing off
his familiar spirit, the wrathful “Jehovah,” for the spirit of God himself, and
so won undeserved laurels and honours. The same influence prompted him to alter
some of the principles of the great oral Kabalah in order to make them the more
secret. These principles were laid out in symbols by him in the first four
books of the Pentateuch, but for some mysterious reasons he with held them from
Deuteronomy. Having initiated his seventy Elders in his own way, the latter
could give but what they had received them selves, and so was prepared the
first opportunity for heresy, and the erroneous interpretation of the symbols.
While the Oriental Kabalah remained in its pure primitive shape, the Mosaic or
Jewish one was full of drawbacks, and the keys to many of the secrets—forbidden
by the Mosaic law—purposely misinterpreted. The powers conferred by it on the
Initiates were formidable still, and of all the most renowned
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Kabalists, King
Solomon and his bigoted parent, David, not withstanding his penitential psalms,
were the most powerful. But still the doctrine remained secret and purely oral,
until, as I have said before, the days of the second Temple’s destruction.
Philologically speaking, the very word Kabalah is formed from two Hebrew words,
meaning to receive, as in former times the Initiate received it orally and
directly from his Master, and the very book of the Sohar was written out on
received information, which was handed down as an unvarying stereo typed
tradition by the Orientals, and altered, through the ambition of Moses, by the
Jews.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
SPIRITUALISTIC
TRICKSTERS
—————
A MOST outrageous
swindle was perpetrated upon the public last Sunday evening at the Boston
Theatre. Some persons with no higher aspirations in the world than a lust for a
few dollars to fill their pockets, depleted by unsuccessful cheap shows,
advertised a “séance,” and engaged as “mediums” some of the most impudent
impostors with which the world is cursed. They furthermore abused public
confidence by causing it to be understood that these people were to appear
before the scientific commission at St. Petersburg.
Is it not about
time that some Society in Boston should be sufficiently strong financially, and
have members who will have the requisite energy to act in an emergency like
this? Common sense would dictate what might be done, and a determined will
would overcome all obstacles. Spiritualism needs a Vigilance Committee. Public
opinion will justify any measures that will tend to check this trifling. “Up,
and at them!” should be the watchword until we have rid society of these pests
and their supporters.
The press of Boston
are disposed to be fair towards Spiritualists. But if Spiritualists do not care
enough for Spiritualism to defend it from tricksters who have not sufficient
skill to merit them the title of jugglers, how can they expect any different
treatment than that it is receiving?
As a proof of the
sincerity of the Boston press and also in support and further explanation of
the above we might mention that the following card, sent to all the morning
dailies, was accepted and printed in Tuesday’s edition.
Boston, July 19,
1875.
—————
SIR,—The
undersigned desire to say that the persons who advertised a so-called
spiritualistic exhibition at the Boston Theatre last evening were guilty of
false representations to the public. We are alone empowered by the Academy of
Sciences attached to the Imperial University of St. Petersburg, Russia, to
select the mediums
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who shall be
invited by that body to display their powers during the forthcoming scientific
investigation of Spiritualism, and Mr. H. Gerry Brown, editor . Scientist, of
this city, is our only authorized deputy.
Neither “F.
Warren,” “Prof. J. T. Bates,” “Miss I “Mrs. S. Gould,” nor “Miss Lillie
Darling” has been selected, or is at all likely to be selected for that honour.
As this swindle may
be again attempted, we desire to say, once for all, that no medium accepted by
us will be obliged to exhibit his powers to earn money to de fray his expenses,
nor will any such exhibition be tolerated. The Imperial University of St.
Petersburg makes its investigation in the interest of science—not to assist
charlatans to give juggling performances in theatres, upon the strength of our
certificates.
HENRY S. OLC0YT.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
THE SEARCH AFTER
OCCULTISM
—————
[ The Spiritual
Scientist.]
BEING daily in
receipt of numerous letters, written with the view of obtaining advice as to
the best method of receiving information respecting Occultism, and the direct
relation it bears to modern Spiritualism, and not having sufficient time at my
disposal to answer these requests, I now propose to facilitate the mutual
labour of myself and correspondents by naming herein a few of the principal
works treating upon Magism, and the mysteries of such modern Hermetists.
To this I feel
bound to add, respecting what I have stated before, to wit: that would-be
aspirants must not lure themselves with the idea of any possibility of their
becoming practical Occultists by mere book-knowledge. The works of the Hermetic
philosophers were never intended for the masses, as Mr. Charles Sotheran, a
learned member of the Society Rosæ Crucis, in a late essay observes;
Gabriel Rossetti in
his disquisitions on the anti-papal spirit which produced the Reformation shows
that the art of speaking and writing in a language which bears a double interpretation
is of very great antiquity, that it was in practice among the priests of Egypt,
brought thence by the Manichees, whence it passed to the Ternplars and
Albigenses, spread over Europe, and brought about the Reformation.
The ablest book
that was ever written on Symbols and Mystic Orders, is most certainly Hargrave
Jennings’ The Rosicrucians, and yet it has been repeatedly called “obscure
trash” in my presence, and that too, by individuals who were most decidedly
well-versed in the rites and mysteries of modern Freemasonry. Persons who lack
even the latter knowledge, can easily infer from this what would be the amount
of information they might derive from still more obscure and mystical works;
for if we compare Hargrave Jennings’ book with some of the mediæval treatises
and ancient works of the most noted Alchemists and Magi, we might find the
latter as much more obscure than the former—as regards language—as a pupil in
celestial philosophy would
50 ————————————————————A M0DERN PANARION.
find the Book of
the Heavens, if he should examine a far distant star with the naked eye, rather
than with the help of a powerful telescope. Far from me, though, the idea of
disparaging in anyone the laudable impulse to search ardently after Truth,
however arid and ungrateful the task may appear at first sight; for my own
principle has ever been to make the Light of Truth the beacon of my life. The
words uttered by Christ eighteen centuries ago: “Believe and you will
understand,” can be applied in the present case, and repeating them with but a
slight modification, I may well say: “Study and you will believe.”
But to
particularize one or another book on Occultism, to those who are anxious to
begin their studies in the hidden mysteries of nature, is something the responsibility
of which I am not prepared to assume. What may be clear to one who is
intuitional, if read in the same book by another person might prove
meaningless. Unless one is prepared to devote to it his whole life, the
superficial knowledge of Occult Sciences will lead him surely to become the
target for millions of ignorant scoffers to aim their blunderbusses loaded with
ridicule and chaff against. Besides this, it is in more than one way dangerous
to select this science as a mere pastime. One must bear for ever in mind the
impressive fable of Œdipus, and beware of the same consequences. Œdipus
unriddled but one-half of the enigma offered him by the Sphinx and caused its
death; the other half of the mystery avenged the death of the symbolic monster,
and forced the King of Thebes to prefer blindness and exile in his despair
rather than face what he did not feel him self pure enough to encounter. He
unriddled the man, the form, and had forgotten God, the idea.
If a man would
follow in the steps of Hermetic philosophers he must prepare himself beforehand
for martyrdom. He must give up personal pride and all selfish purposes, and be
ready for everlasting encounters with friends and foes. He must part, once for
all, with every remembrance of his earlier ideas, on all and on everything.
Existing religions, knowledge, science, must rebecome a blank book for him, as
in the days of his babyhood, for if he wants to succeed he must learn a new
alphabet on the lap of Mother Nature, every letter of which will afford a new
insight to him, every syllable and word an Unexpected revelation. The two
hitherto irreconcilable foes, science and theology—the Montecchi and Capuletti
of the nineteenth century—will ally themselves with the ignorant masses against
the modern Occultist. If we have outgrown the age of stakes, we are in the
heyday, per
51 ——————————————————THE SEARCH AFTER OCCULTISM.
contra, of slander,
the venom of the press, and all these mephitic venticelli of calumny so vividly
expressed by the immortal Don Basilio. To science it will be the duty—arid and
sterile as a matter of course—of the Kabbalist to prove that from the beginning
of time there was but one positive science—Occultism; that it was the
mysterious lever of all intellectual forces, the Tree of Knowledge of good and
evil of the allegorical paradise, from whose gigantic trunk sprang in every
direction boughs, branches and twigs, the former shooting forth straight enough
at first, the latter deviating with every inch of growth, assuming more and
more fantastical appearances, till at last one after the other lost its vital
juice, got deformed, and, drying up, finally broke off, scattering the ground
afar with heaps of rubbish. To theology the Occultist of the future will have
to demonstrate that the Gods of the mythologies, the Elohims of Israel as well
as the religious and theological mysteries of Christianity, to begin with the
Trinity, sprang from the sanctuaries of Memphis and Thebes; that their mother
Eve is but the spiritualized Psyche of old, both of them paying a like penalty
for their curiosity, descending to Hades or hell, the latter to bring back to
earth the famous Pandora’s box, the former to search out and crush the head of
the serpent—symbol of time and evil, the crime of both expiated by the pagan
Prometheus and the Christian Lucifer; the first delivered by Hercules, the
second conquered by the Saviour.
Furthermore, the
Occultist will have to prove to Christian theology, publicly, what many of its
priesthood are well aware of in secret, namely, that their God on earth was a
Kabbalist, the meek representative of a tremendous Power, which, if misapplied,
might shake the world to its foundations; and that of all their evangelical
symbols, there is not one but can be traced up to its parent fount. For instance,
their incarnated Verbum or Logos was worshipped at his birth by the three Magi
led on by the star, and received from them the gold, the frankincense and
myrrh—the whole of which is simply an excerpt from the Kabalah our modern
theologians despise, and the representation of another and still more
mysterious “Ternary” embodying allegorically in its emblems the highest secrets
of the Kabalah.
A clergy whose main
object has ever been to make of their Divine Cross the gallows of Truth and
Freedom, could not do otherwise than try and bury in oblivion the origin of
that same cross, which, in the most primitive symbols of the Egyptians’ magic,
represents the key to heaven. Their anathemas are powerless in our days—the
multitude is
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wiser; but the
greatest danger awaits us just in that latter direction, if we do not succeed
in making the masses remain at least neutral—till they come to know better—in
this forthcoming conflict between Truth, Superstition and Presumption, or to
express it in other terms, Occult Spiritualism, Theology and Science. We have
to fear neither the miniature thunderbolts of the clergy, nor the unwarranted
negations of science. But Public Opinion, this invisible, intangible,
omnipresent, despotic tyrant—this thousand-headed Hydra, the more dangerous for
being composed of individual mediocrities—is not an enemy to be scorned by any
would-be Occultist, courageous as he may be. Many of the far more innocent
Spiritualists have left their sheepskins in the clutches of this ever-hungry,
roaring lion, for he is the most dangerous of our three classes of enemies.
What will be the fate in such a case of an unfortunate Occultist, if he once
succeeds in demonstrating the close relationship existing between the two? The
masses of people, though they do not generally appreciate the science of truth
or have real knowledge, on the other hand are unerringly directed by mere
instinct; they have intuitionally—if I may be allowed to so express myself—an
idea of what is formidable in its genuine strength. People will never conspire
except against real Power. In their blind ignorance, the Mysteries and the
Unknown have been, and ever will be, objects of terror for them. Civilization
may progress; human nature will remain the same throughout all ages.
Occultists, beware!
Let it be
understood then that I address myself but to the truly courageous and
persevering. Besides the danger expressed above, the difficulties in becoming a
practical Occultist in this country are next to insurmountable. Barrier upon
barrier, obstacles in every form and shape, will present themselves to the
student; for the keys of the Golden Gate leading to the Infinite Truth lie
buried deep, and the gate itself is enclosed in a mist which clears up only
before the ardent rays of implicit faith. Faith alone—one grain of which as
large as a mustard-seed, according to the words of Christ, can lift a mountain—is
able to find out how simple becomes the Kabalah to the Initiate once he has
succeeded in conquering the first abstruse difficulties. The dogma of it is
logical, easy and absolute. The necessary union of ideas and signs; the trinity
of words, letters, numbers, and theorems; the religion of it can be compressed
into a few words. “It is the Infinite condensed in the hand of an infant,” says
Eliphas Lévi. Ten ciphers, twenty-two alphabetical letters, one triangle, a
square and a circle. Such are
53 ——————————————————THE SEARCH AFTER OCCULTISM.
the elements of the
Kabalah from whose mysterious bosom sprang all the religions of the past and
present; which endowed all the Free-masonic associations with their symbols and
secrets, which alone can reconcile human reason with God and Faith, Power with
Freedom, Science with Mystery, and which has alone the keys of present, past
and future.
The first
difficulty for the aspirant lies in the utter impossibility of his
comprehending, as I said before, the meaning of the best books written by
Hermetic philosophers. These, who mainly lived in the mediæval ages, prompted
on the one hand by their duty towards their brethren, and by their desire to
impart only to them and their successors the glorious truths, and on the other
very naturally desirous to avoid the clutches of the bloodthirsty Christian
Inquisition, enveloped themselves more than ever in mystery. They invented new
signs and hieroglyphs, renovated the ancient symbolical language of the high
priests of antiquity, who had used it as a sacred barrier between their holy
rites and the ignorance of the profane, and created a veritable Kabalistic
slang. This latter, which continually blinded the false neophyte, attracted
towards the science only by his greediness for wealth and power which he would
have surely misused were he to succeed, is a living, eloquent, clear language,
but it is and can become such only to the true disciple of Hermes.
But were it even
otherwise, and could books on Occultism, written in a plain and precise
language be obtained in order to get initiated in the Kabalah, it would not be
sufficient to understand and meditate on certain authors. Galatinus and Pic de
la Mirandola, Paracelsus and Robertus de Fluctibus do not furnish one with the
key to the practical mysteries. They simply state what can be done and why it
is done; but they do not tell one how to do it. More than one philosopher who
has by heart the whole of the Hermetic literature, and who has devoted to the
study of it upwards of thirty or forty years of his life, fails when he
believes he is about reaching the final great result. One must understand the
Hebrew authors, such as Sepher Yelzirah, for instance, learn by heart the great
book of the Zohar in its original tongue, master the Kabalah Denudata from the
Collection of 1684 (Paris); follow up the Kabalistic pneumatics at first, and
then throw oneself headlong into the turbid waters of that mysterious * . . .
never tried to explain:
the Prophecy of
Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, two Kabalistic treatises,
—————
* The cutting is here imperfect—some paragraph or so wanting.
54 ————————————————————A M0DERN PANARION.
reserved without
doubt for the commentaries of the Magi kings, books closed with the seven seals
to the faithful Christian, but perfectly clear to the Infidel initiated in the
Occult Sciences.
Thus the works on
Occultism, were not, I repeat, written for the masses, but for those of the
Brethren who make the solution of the mysteries of the Kabalah the principal
object of their lives, and who are supposed to have conquered the first
abstruse difficulties of the Alpha of Hermetic philosophy.
To fervent and
persevering candidates for the above science, I have to offer but one word of
advice, “try and become.” One single journey to the Orient, made in the proper
spirit, and the possible emergencies arising from the meeting of what may seem
no more than the chance acquaintances and adventures of any traveller, may
quite as likely as not throw wide open to the zealous student the heretofore
closed doors of the final mysteries. I will go farther and say that such a
journey, performed with the omnipresent idea of the one object, and with the
help of a fervent will, is sure to produce more rapid, better, and far more
practical results, than the most diligent study of Occultism in books—even
though one were to devote to it dozens of years.
In the name of
Truth, yours,
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
THE SCIENCE OF
MAGIC
—————
HAPPENING to be on
a visit to Ithaca, where spiritual papers in general, and The Banner of Light
in particular, are very little read, but where, luckily, The Scientist has
found hospitality in several houses, I learned through your paper of the
intensely interesting and very erudite attack in an editorial of The Banner, on
“Magic,” or rather on those who had the absurdity to believe in Magic. As hints
concerning myself—at least in the fragment I see—are very decently veiled, and,
as it appears, Col. Olcott alone, just now, is offered by way of a pious
holocaust on the altar erected to the angel-world by some Spiritualists, who
seem to be terribly in earnest, I will—leaving the said gentleman to take care
of himself, provided he thinks it worth his trouble—proceed to say a few words
only, in reference to the alleged non-existence of Magic.
Were I to give
anything on my own authority and base my defence of Magic only on what I have
seen myself and know to he true in relation to that science, as a resident of
many years’ standing in India and Africa, I might, perhaps, risk to be called
by Mr. Colby—with that unprejudiced, spiritualized politeness, which so
distinguishes the venerable editor of The Banner of Light—”an irresponsible
woman”; and that would not be for the first time either. Therefore, to his
astonishing assertion that no Magic whatever either exists or has existed in
this world, I will try to find as good authorities as himself, and maybe better
ones, and thus politely proceed to contradict him on that particular point.
Heterodox
Spiritualists, like myself, must be cautious in our days and proceed with
prudence, if they do not wish to be persecuted with all the untiring vengeance
of that mighty army of” Indian controls” and miscellaneous “guides” of our
bright Summer-Land.
When the writer of
the editorial says that he—
Does not think it at all improbable that there are humbugging spirits who try
to fool certain aspirants to occult knowledge with the notion that there is
such a thing as magic, (?)
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then, on the other
hand, I can answer him that I, for one, not only think it probable but I am
perfectly sure and can take my oath to the certainty, that more than once
spirits who were either very elementary or very unprogressed ones, calling
themselves Theodore Parker, have been most decidedly fooling and
disrespectfully humbugging our most esteemed editor of The Banner of Light into
the notion that the Apennines were in Spain, for instance.
Furthermore,
supported in my assertions by thousands of intelligent Spiritualists, generally
known for their integrity and truthfulness I could furnish numberless proofs
and instances where the Elementary Diakka, Esrito malims etfarfadeto and other
such-like unreliable and ignorant denizens of the spirit-world, arraying
themselves in pompous, world-known and famous names, suddenly gave the
bewildered witnesses such deplorable, unheard-of, slipslop trash, and betirnes
some thing worse, that more than one person who, previous to that, was an
earnest believer in the spiritual philosophy, has either silently taken to his
heels, or if he happened to have been formerly a Roman Catholic, has devoutly
tried to recall to memory with which hand he used to cross himself, and then
cleared out with the most fervent exclamation of “ Vade reyro, Satanas!” Such
is the opinion of every educated Spiritualist.
If that indomitable
Attila. the persecutor of modern Spiritualism and mediums, Dr. G. Beard, had
offered such a remark against Magic, I would not wonder, as a too profound
devotion to blue pill and black draught is generally considered the best
antidote against mystic and spiritual speculations; but for a firm
Spiritualist—a believer in invisible, mysterious worlds swarming with beings,
the true nature of which is still an unriddled mystery to everyone—to step in
and then sarcastically reject that which has been proved to exist and believed
in for countless ages by millions of persons, wiser than himself, is too audacious!
And that sceptic is the editor of a leading Spiritual paper!—a man whose first
duty should be to help his readers to seek, untiringly and perseveringly, for
the truth in whatever form it might present itself; but who takes the risk of
dragging thousands of people into error, by pinning them to his personal
rose-water faith and credulity. Every serious, earnest-minded Spiritualist must
agree with me in saying, that if modern Spiritualism remains, for a few years
only, in its present condition of chaotic anarchy, or still worse, if it is
allowed to run its mad course, shooting forth on all sides idle hypotheses
based on
57 ———————————————————THE SCIENCE OP MAGIC.
superstitious,
groundless ideas, then will the Dr. Beards, Dr. Marvins and others, known as
scientific (?) sceptics, triumph indeed.
Really, it seems to
be a waste of time to answer such ridiculous, ignorant assertions as the one
which forced me to take up my pen. Any well-read Spiritualist who finds the
statement “that there ever was such a science as magic, has never been proved,
nor ever will be,” will need no answer from myself, nor anyone else, to cause
him to shrug his shoulders and smile, as he probably has smiled, at the
wonderful attempt of Mr. Colby’s spirits to reorganize geography by placing the
Apennines in Spain.
Why, man alive, did
you never open a book in your life besides your own records of Tom, Dick and
Harry descending from upper spheres to remind their Uncle Sam that he had torn
his gaiters or broken his pipe in the far West?
Did you suppose
that Magic is confined to witches riding astride broomsticks and then turning
themselves into black cats? Even the latter superstitious trash, though it was
never called Magic but Sorcery, does not appear so great an absurdity for one
to accept who firmly believes in the transfiguration of Mrs. Compton into Katie
Brinks. The laws of nature are unchangeable. The conditions under which a
medium can be transformed, entirely absorbed in the process by the spirit, into
the semblance of another person, will hold good whenever that spirit, or rather
force, should have a fancy to take the form of a cat.
The exercise of
magical power is the exercise of powers natural but superior to the ordinary
functions of Nature. A miracle is not a violation of the laws of Nature, except
for ignorant people. Magic is but a science, a profound knowledge of the Occult
forces in Nature, and of the laws governing the visible or the invisible world.
Spiritualism in the hands of an Adept becomes Magic, for he is learned in the
art of blending together the laws of the universe, without breaking any of them
and thereby violating Nature. In the hands of an experienced medium,
Spiritualism becomes unconscious sorcery; for, by allowing himself to become
the helpless tool of a variety of spirits, of whom he knows nothing save what
the latter permit him to know, he opens, unknown to himself, a door of
communication between the two worlds, through which emerge the blind forces of
Nature lurking in the astral light, as well as good and bad spirits.
A powerful
mesmerizer, profoundly learned in his science, such as
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Baron Dupotet, and
Regazzoni Pietro d’Amicis of Bologna, are magicians, for they have become the
Adepts, the initiated ones, into the great mystery of our Mother Nature. Such
men as the above-mentioned— and such were Mesmer and Cagliostro—control the
spirits instead of allowing their subjects or themselves to be controlled by
them; and Spiritualism is safe in their hands. In the absence of experienced
Adepts though, it is always safer for a naturally clairvoyant medium to trust
to good luck and chance, and try to judge of the tree by its fruits. Bad
spirits will seldom communicate through a pure, naturally good and virtuous
person; and it is still more seldom that pure spirits will choose impure
channels. Like attracts like.
But to return to
Magic. Such men as Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lulli, Cornelius Agrippa,
Paracelsus, Robert Fludd, Eugenius Philalethes, Kunrath, Roger Bacon and others
of similar character, in our sceptical century, are generally taken for
visionaries; but so, too, are modern Spiritualists and mediums—nay worse, for charlatans
and poltroons; but never were the Hermetic philosophers taken by anyone for
fools and idiots, as, unfortunately for ourselves and the cause, every
unbeliever takes all of us believers in Spiritualism to be. Those Hermetics and
philosophers may be disbelieved and doubted now, as everything else is doubted,
but very few doubted their knowledge and power during their lifetime, for they
could always prove what they claimed, having command over those forces which
now command helpless mediums. They had their science and demonstrated
philosophy to help them to throw down ridiculous negations, while we
sentimental Spiritualists, rocking ourselves to sleep with our “Sweet
Bye-and-Bye,” are now unable to recognize a spurious phenomenon from a genuine
one, and are daily deceived by vile charlatans. Even though doubted then, as
Spiritualism is in our day, still these philosophers were held in awe and
reverence, even by those who did not implicitly believe in their Occult
potency, for they were giants of intellect. Profound knowledge, as well as
cultured intellectual powers, will always be respected and revered; but our
mediums and their adherents are laughed at and scorned, and we are all made to
suffer, because the phenomena are left to the whims and pranks of self-willed
and other mischievous spirits, and we are utterly powerless in controlling
them.
To doubt Magic is
to reject History itself, as well as the testimony of ocular witnesses thereof,
during a period embracing over 4,000 years. Beginning with Homer, Moses,
Hermes, Herodotus, Cicero, Plutarch,
59 ————————————————————THE SCIENCE OF MAGIC.
Pythagoras,
Apollonius of Tyana, Simon the Magician, Plato, Pausanias, Iamblichus, and
following this endless string of great men— historians and philosophers, who all
of them either believed in Magic or were magicians themselves—and ending with
our modern authors, such as W. Howitt, Ennemoser, G. des Mousseaux, Marquis de
Mirville and the late Eliphas Lévi who was a magician himself—among all of
these great names and authors, we find but the solitary Mr. Colby, editor of
The Banner of Light, who ignores that there ever was such a science as Magic.
He innocently believes the whole of the sacred army of Bible prophets,
commencing with Father Abraham, including Christ, to be merely mediums; in the
eyes of Mr. Colby they were all of them acting under control! Fancy Christ,
Moses, or an Apollonius of Tyana, controlled by an Indian guide! The venerable
editor ignores, perhaps, that spiritual mediums were better known in those days
to the ancients, than they are now to us, and he seems to be equally unaware of
the fact that the inspired sibyls, pythonesses, and other mediums were entirely
guided by their high priest and those who were initiated into the esoteric
theurgy and mysteries of the temples. Theurgy was Magic; as in modern times,
the sibyls and pythonesses were mediums; but their high priests were magicians.
All the secrets of their theology, which included Magic, or the art of invoking
ministering spirits, were in their hands. They possessed the science of
discerning spirits; a science which Mr. Colby does not possess at all—to his
great regret, no doubt. By this power they controlled the spirits at will,
allowing but the good ones to absorb their mediums. Such is the explanation of
Magic—the real, existing, While or Sacred Magic, which ought to be in the hands
of science now, and would be, if science had profited by the lessons which
Spiritualism has inductively taught for these last twenty-seven years.
That is the reason
why no trash was allowed to be given by unprogressed spirits in the days of
old. The oracles of the sibyls and inspired priestesses could never have
affirmed Athens to be a town in India, or jumped Mount Ararat from its native
place down to Egypt.
If the sceptical
writer of the editorial had, moreover, devoted less time to little prattling
Indian spirits and more to profitable lectures, he might have learned perhaps
at the same time that the ancients had their illegal mediums—I mean those who
belonged to no special temple—and thus the spirits controlling them, unchecked
by the expert hand of the magician, were left to themselves, and had all the
opportunity
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possible to perform
their capers on their helpless tools. Such mediums were generally considered
obsessed and possessed, which they were in fact, in other words, according to
the Bible phraseology, “they had seven devils in them.” Furthermore, these
mediums were ordered to be put to death, for the intolerant Moses the magician,
who was learned in the wisdom of Egypt, had said, “Thou shalt not suffer a
witch to live.” Alone the Egyptians and Greeks, even more humane and just than
Moses, took such into their temples, and, when found unfit for the sacred
duties of prophecy cured them in the same way as Jesus Christ cured Mary of
Magdala and many others, by “casting out the seven devils.” Either Mr. Colby
and Co. must completely deny the miracles of Christ, the Apostles, Prophets,
Thaumaturgists and Magicians, and so deny point-blank every bit of the sacred
and profane histories, or he must confess that there is a Power in this world
which can command spirits—at least the bad and unprogressed ones, the
elementary and Diakka. The pure ones, the disembodied, will never descend to
our sphere unless attracted by a current of powerful sympathy and love, or on
some useful mission.
Far from me the
thought of casting odium and ridicule on all mediums. I am myself a
Spiritualist, if, as says Colonel Olcott, a firm belief in our spirit’s
immortality and the knowledge of a constant possibility for us to communicate
with the spirits of our departed and loved ones, either through honest, pure
mediums, or by means of the Secret Science, constitutes a Spiritualist. And I
am not of those fanatical Spiritualists, to be found in every country, who
blindly accept the claims of every “spirit,” for I have seen too much of
various phenomena, undreamed of in America; I know that Magic does exist, and
10,000 editors of spiritual papers cannot change my belief in what I know.
There is a White and a Black Magic, and no one who has ever travelled in the
East can doubt it, if he has taken the trouble to investigate. My faith being
firm I am therefore ever ready to support and protect any honest medium—aye,
and even occasionally one who appears dishonest, for I know but too well what
helpless tools and victims such mediums are in the hands of unprogressed,
invisible beings. I am furthermore aware of the malice and wickedness of the
elementaries, and how far they can inspire not only a sensitive medium, but any
other person as well. Though I may be an “irresponsible,” despite the harm some
mediums do to earnest Spiritualists by their unfairness, one-sidedness, and
spiritual sentimentalism, I feel safe to say that
61 ————————————————————THE SCIENCE OP MAGIC.
generally I am
quick enough to detect whenever a medium is cheating under control, or cheating
consciously.
Thus Magic exists,
and has existed, ever since prehistoric ages. Beginning in history with the
Samothracian Mysteries, it followed its course uninterruptedly, and ended for a
time with the expiring theurgic rites and ceremonies of Christianized Greece;
then reappeared for a time again with the Neo-Platonic, Alexandrian school,
and, passing by initiation to sundry solitary students and philosophers, safely
crossed the mediæval ages, and notwithstanding the furious persecutions of the
Church, resumed its fame in the hands of such Adepts as Paracelsus and several
others, and finally died out in Europe with the Count St. Germain and
Cagliostro, to seek refuge from frozen-hearted scepticism in its native country
of the East.
In India, Magic has
never died out, and blossoms there as well as ever. Practised, as in ancient
Egypt, only within the secret enclosure of the temples, it was, and still is,
called the “Sacred Science.” For it is a science, based on the occult forces of
Nature; and not merely a blind belief in the poll-parrot talking of crafty
elementaries, ready to forcibly prevent real, disembodied spirits from
communicating with their loved ones whenever they can do so.
Some time since a
Mr. Mendenhall devoted several columns, in The Religio-Philosophical Journal,
to questioning, cross-examining, and criticizing the mysterious Brotherhood of
Luxor. He made a fruitless attempt at forcing the said Brotherhood to answer
him, and thus unveil the sphinx.
I can satisfy Mr.
Mendenhall. The Brotherhood of Luxor is one of the sections of the Grand Lodge
of which I am a member. If this gentleman entertains any doubt as to my
statement—which I have no doubt he will—he can, if he chooses, write to Lahore
for information. If, perchance, the seven of the committee were so rude as not
to answer him, and should refuse to give him the desired information, I can
then offer him a little business transaction. Mr. Mendenhall, as far as I
remember, has two wives in the spirit world. Both of these ladies materialize
at M. Mott’s, and often hold very long conversations with their husband, as the
latter told us several times and over his own signature; adding, moreover, that
he had no doubt whatever of the identity of the said spirits. If so, let one of
the departed ladies tell Mr. Mendenhall the name of that section of the Grand
Lodge I belong to. For real, genuine, disembodied spirits, if both are what
they claim
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to be, the matter
is more than easy; they have but to enquire of other spirits, look into my
thoughts, and so on; for a disembodied entity, an immortal spirit, it is the
easiest thing in the world to do. Then, if the gentleman I challenge, though I
am deprived of the pleasure of his acquaintance, tells me the true name of the
section—which name three gentlemen in New York, who are accepted neophytes of
our Lodge, know well—I pledge myself to give to Mr. Mendenhall the true
statement concerning the Brotherhood, which is not composed of spirits, as he
may think, but of living mortals, and I will, moreover, if he desires it, put
him in direct communication with the Lodge as I have done for others. Methinks,
Mr. Mendenhall will answer that no such name can be given correctly by the
spirits, for no such Lodge or Section either, exists at all, and thus close the
discussion.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
(From The Spiritual
Scientist.)
AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY
THE circumstances
attending the sudden death of M. Delessert, inspector of the Police de Surete
seem to have made such an impression upon the Parisian authorities that they
were recorded in unusual detail. Omitting all particulars except what are
necessary to explain matters, we produce here the undoubtedly strange history.
In the fall of 1861
there came to Paris a man who called himself Vic de Lassa, and was so inscribed
upon his passports. He came from Vienna, and said he was a Hungarian, who owned
estates on the borders of the Banat, not far from Zenta. He was a small man,
aged thirty-five, with pale and mysterious face, long blonde hair, a vague,
wandering blue eye, and a mouth of singular firmness. He dressed carelessly and
unaffectedly, and spoke and talked without much empressement. His companion,
presumably his wife, on the other hand, ten years younger than himself, was a
strikingly beautiful woman, of that dark, rich, velvety, luscious, pure
Hungarian type which is so nigh akin to the gipsy blood. At the theatres, on the
Bois, at the cafes, on the boulevards, and everywhere that idle Paris disports
itself, Madame Aimee de Lassa attracted great attention and made a sensation.
They lodged in
luxurious apartments on the Rue Richelieu, frequented the best places, received
good company, entertained handsomely, and acted in every way as if possessed of
considerable wealth. Lassa had always a good balance chez Schneider, Rater et
Cie, the Austrian bankers in Rue Rivoli, and wore diamonds of conspicuous
lustre.
How did it happen
then, that the Prefect of Police saw fit to suspect Monsieur and Madame de
Lassa, and detailed Paul Delessert, one of the most ruse inspectors of the
force, to “pipe” him? The fact is, the insignificant man with the splendid wife
was a very mysterious personage, and it is the habit of the police to imagine
that mystery always hides either the conspirator, the adventurer, or the
charlatan. The conclusion to which the Prefect had come in regard to M. de
Lassa was
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that he was an
adventurer and charlatan too. Certainly a successful one, then, for he was
singularly unobtrusive and had in no way trumpeted the wonders which it was his
mission to perform, yet in a few weeks after he had established himself in
Paris the salon of M. de Lassa was the rage, and the number of persons who paid
the fee of 100 francs for a single peep into his magic crystal, and a single
message by his spiritual telegraph, was really astonishing. The secret of this
was that M. de Lassa was a conjurer and deceiver, whose pretensions were
omniscient and whose predictions always came true.
Delessert did not
find it very difficult to get an introduction and admission to De Lassa’s
salon. The receptions occurred every other day— two hours in the forenoon,
three hours in the evening. It was evening when Inspector Delessert called in
his assumed character of M. Flabry, virtuoso in jewels and a convert to Spiritualism.
He found the handsome parlours brilliantly lighted, and a charming assemblage
gathered of well-pleased guests, who did not at all seem to have come to learn
their fortunes or fates, while contributing to the income of their host, but
rather to be there out of complaisance to his virtues and gifts.
Mme. de Lassa
performed upon the piano or conversed from group to group in a way that seemed
to be delightful, while M. de Lassa walked about or sat in his insignificant,
unconcerned way, saying a word now and then, but seeming to shun everything
that was conspicuous. Servants handed about refreshments, ices, cordials,
wines, etc. and Delessert could have fancied himself to have dropped in upon a
quite modest evening entertainment, altogether en regle, but for one or two
noticeable circumstances which his observant eyes quickly took in.
Except when their
host or hostess was within hearing the guests conversed together in low tones,
rather mysteriously, and with not quite so much laughter as is usual on such
occasions. At intervals a very tall and dignified footman would come to a
guest, and, with a profound bow, present him a card on a silver salver. The
guest would then go out, preceded by the solemn servant, but when he or she
returned to the salon—some did not return at all—they invariably wore a dazed
or puzzled look, were confused, astonished, frightened, or amused. All this was
so unmistakably genuine, and De Lassa and his wife seemed so unconcerned amidst
it all, not to say distinct from it all, that Delessert could not avoid being
forcibly struck and considerably puzzled.
Two or three little
incidents, which came under Delessert’s own
65 ————————————————————AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY.
immediate
observation, will suffice to make plain the character of the impressions made
upon those present. A couple of gentlemen, both young, both of good social
condition, and evidently very intimate friends, were conversing together and
tutoying one another at a great rate, when the dignified footman summoned
Alphonse. He laughed gaily, “Tarry a moment, cher Auguste,” said he, “and thou
shalt know all the particulars of this wonderful fortune!” “En bien!” A minute
had scarcely elapsed when Alphonse returned to the salon. His face was white
and bore an appearance of concentrated rage that was frightful to witness. He
came straight to Auguste, his eyes flashing, and bending his face toward his
friend, who changed colour and recoiled, he hissed out: “Monsieur Lefèbure,
vous êles Un láche ! ” Very well, Monsieur Meuner,” responded Auguste, in the
same low tone, “tomorrow morning at six o’clock!” “It is settled, false friend,
execrable traitor! A la mort!” rejoined Alphonse, walking off. “Cela va sans
dire!” muttered Auguste, going towards the hat-room.
A diplomatist of
distinction, representative at Paris of a neighbouring state, an elderly
gentleman of superb aplomb and most commanding appearance, was summoned to the
oracle by the bowing footman. After being absent about five minutes he
returned, and immediately made his way through the press to M. de Lassa, who
was standing not far from the fireplace, with his hands in his pockets and a
look of utmost indifference upon his face. Delessert standing near, watched the
interview with eager interest.
“I am exceedingly
sorry,” said General Von , “to have to absent myself so soon from your
interesting salon, M. de Lassa, but the result of my séance convinces me that
my dispatches have been tampered with.” “I am sorry,” responded M. de Lassa,
with an air of languid but courteous interest; “I hope you may be able to
discover which of your servants has been unfaithful.” “I am going to do that
now,” said the General, adding, in significant tones, “I shall see that both he
and his accomplices do not escape severe punishment.” “That is the only course
to pursue, Monsieur le Comte.” The ambassador stared, bowed, and took his leave
with a bewilderment in his face that was beyond the power of his tact to
control.
In the course of
the evening M. de Lassa went carelessly to the piano, and, after some indifferent
vague preluding, played a remarkably effective piece of music, in which the
turbulent life and buoyancy of bacchanalian strains melted gently, almost
imperceptibly away, into a
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sobbing wail of
regret, and languor, and weariness, and despair. It was beautifully rendered,
and made a great impression upon the guests, one of whom, a lady, cried, “How
lovely, how sad! Did you compose that yourself, M. de Lassa?” He looked towards
her absently for an instant, Then replied: “I? Oh, no! That is merely a
reminiscence, madame.” “Do you know who did compose it, M. de Lassa?” enquired
a virtuoso present. “I believe it was originally written by Ptolemy Auletes,
the father of Cleopatra,” said M. de Lassa, in his indifferent musing way; “but
not in its present form. It has been twice re-written to my knowledge; still,
the air is substantially the same.” “From whom did you get it, M. de Lassa, if
I may ask?” persisted the gentleman. “Certainly, certainly! The last time I
heard it played was by Sebastian Bach; but that was Palestrina’s—the
present—version. I think I prefer that of Guido of Arezzo—it is ruder, but has
more force. I got the air from Guido himself.” “You—from— Guido!” cried the
astonished gentleman. “Yes, monsieur,” answered De Lassa, rising from the piano
with his usual indifferent air. “Mon Dieu!” cried the virtuoso, putting his
hand to his head after the manner of Mr. Twemlow, “Mon Dieu! that was in Anno
Domni 1022.” “A little later than that—July, 1031. if I remember rightly,”
courteously corrected M. de Lassa.
At this moment the
tall footman bowed before M. Delessert, and presented the salver containing the
card. Delessert took it and read:
“On vous accorde
trente-cinq secondes, M. Flabry, tout au plus I” Delessert followed; the
footman opened the door of another room and bowed again, signifying that
Delessert was to enter. “Ask no questions,” he said briefly; “Sidi is mute.”
Delessert entered the room and the door closed behind him. It was a small room,
with a strong smell of frankincense pervading it; the walls were covered
completely with red hangings that concealed the windows, and the floor was
felted with a thick carpet. Opposite the door, at the upper end of the room
near the ceiling was the face of a large clock, under it, each lighted by tall
wax candles, were two small tables, containing, the one an apparatus very like
the common registering telegraph instrument, the other a crystal globe about
twenty inches in diameter, set upon an exquisitely wrought tripod of gold and
bronze intermingled. By the side of the door stood a man jet black in colour,
wearing a white turban and burnous, and having a sort of wand of silver in one
hand. With the other he took Delessert by the right arm above the elbow, and
led him quickly up the
67 ————————————————————AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY.
room. He pointed to
the clock, and it struck an alarum; he pointed to the crystal. Delessert bent
over, looked into it, and saw—a facsimile of his own sleeping-room, everything
photographed exactly. Sidi did not give him time to exclaim, but still holding
him by the arm, took him to the other table. The telegraph-like instrument
began to click click. Sidi opened the drawer, drew out a slip of paper, crammed
it into Delessert’s hand, and pointed to the clock, which struck again. The
thirty-five seconds were expired. Sidi, still retaining hold of Delessert’s
arm, pointed to the door and led him towards it. The door opened, Sidi pushed
him out, the door closed, the tall footman stood there bowing—the interview
with the oracle is over. Delessert glanced at the piece of paper in his hand.
It was a printed scrap, capital letters, and read simply: “To M. Paul
Delessert: The policeman is always welcome, the spy is always in danger!”
Delessert was
dumbfounded a moment to find his disguise detected, but the words of the tall
footman, “This way if you please, M. Flabry,” brought him to his senses. Setting
his lips, he returned to the salon, and without delay sought M. de Lassa. “Do
you know the contents of this?” asked he, showing the message. “I know
everything, M. Delessert,” answered De Lassa, in his careless way. “Then
perhaps you are aware that I mean to expose a charlatan, and unmask a
hypocrite, or perish in the attempt?” said Delessert. “Cela rn’est egal,
monsieur,” replied De Lassa. “You accept my challenge then?” “Oh! it is a
defiance, then?” replied De Lassa, letting his eye rest a moment upon Delessert,
“mais oui, je l’accepte!” And thereupon Delessert departed.
Delessert now set
to work, aided by all the forces the Prefect of Police could bring to bear, to
detect and expose this consummate sorcerer, whom the ruder processes of our
ancestors would easily have disposed of—by combustion. Persistent enquiry
satisfied Delessert that the man was neither a Hungarian nor was named De
Lassa; that no matter how far back his power of “reminiscence” might extend, in
his present and immediate form he had been born in this unregenerate world in
the toy-making city of Nuremburg; that he was noted in boyhood for his great
turn for ingenious manufactures, but was very wild, and a mauvais sujet. In his
sixteenth year he escaped to Geneva and apprenticed himself to a maker of
watches and instruments. Here he had been seen by the celebrated Robert Houdin,
the prestidigitateur. Houdin recognizing the lad’s talents, and being himself a
maker of ingenious automata, had taken him off to Paris and employed him in
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his own workshops,
as well as for an assistant in the public performances of his amusing and
curious diablerie. After staying with Houdin some years, Pflock Haslich (which
was De Lassa’s right name) had gone East in the suite of a Turkish Pasha, and
after many years’ roving, in lands where he could not be traced under a cloud
of pseudonyms, had finally turned up in Venice, and come thence to Paris.
Delessert next
turned his attention to Mme. de Lassa. It was more difficult to get a clue by
means of which to know her past life; but it was necessary in order to
understand enough about Haslich. At last, through an accident, it became
probable that Mme. Aimee was identical with a certain Mme. Schlaff, who had
been rather conspicuous among the demi-monde of Buda. Delessert posted off to
that ancient city, and thence went into the wilds of Transylvania to Mengyco.
On his return as soon as he reached the telegraph and civilization, he
telegraphed the Prefect from Kardszag: “Don't lose sight of my man, nor let him
leave Paris. I will run him in for you two days after I get back.”
It happened that on
the day of Delessert’s return to Paris the Prefect was absent, being with the
Emperor at Cherbourg. He came back on the fourth day, just twenty-four hours
after the announcement of Delessert’s death. That happened, as near as could be
gathered, in this wise: The night after Delessert’s return he was present at De
Lassa’s salon with a ticket of admittance to a séance. He was very completely
disguised as a decrepit old man, and fancied that it was impossible for any one
to detect him. Nevertheless, when he was taken into the room, and looked into
the crystal, he was utterly horror stricken to see there a picture of himself,
lying face down and senseless upon the side-walk of a street; and the message
he received read thus:
“What you have seen
will be, Delessert, in three days. Prepare!” The detective, unspeakably
shocked, retired from the house at once and sought his own lodgings.
In the morning he
came to the office in a state of extreme dejection. He was completely unnerved.
In relating to a brother inspector what had occurred, he said: “That man can do
what he promises, I am doomed!”
He said that he
thought he could make a complete case out against Haslich alias De Lassa, but
could not do so without seeing the Prefect and getting instructions. He would
tell nothing in regard to his discoveries in Buda and in Transylvania—said he
was not at liberty to do so—and repeatedly exclaimed: “Oh! if M. le Préfet were
only here!”
69
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He was told to go
to the Prefect at Cherbourg, but refused upon the ground that his presence was
needed in Paris. He time and again averred his conviction that he was a doomed
man, and showed himself both vacillating and irresolute in his conduct, and
extremely nervous. He was told that he was perfectly safe, since De Lassa and
all his household were under constant surveillance; to which he replied, “You
do not know the man.” An inspector was detailed to accompany Delessert, never
to lose sight of him night and day, and guard him carefully; and proper
precautions were taken in regard to his food and drink, while the guards
watching De Lassa were doubled.
On the morning of
the third day, Delessert, who had been staying chiefly indoors, avowed his
determination to go at once and telegraph to M. le Prefet to return
immediately. With this intention he and his brother officer started out. Just
as they got to the corner of the Rue de Lanery and the Boulevard, Delessert
stopped suddenly and put his hand to his forehead.
“My God!” he cried,
“the crystal! the picture!” and fell prone upon his face, insensible. He was
taken at once to a hospital, but only lingered a few hours, never regaining his
consciousness. Under express instruction from the authorities, a most careful,
minute, and thorough autopsy was made of Delessert’s body by several distinguished
surgeons, whose unanimous opinion was, that the cause of his death was
apoplexy, due to fatigue and nervous excitement.
As soon as
Delessert was sent to the hospital, his brother inspector hurried to the
Central Office, and De Lassa, together with his wife and everyone connected
with the establishment, were at once arrested. D Lassa smiled contemptuously as
they took him away. “I knew you were coming; I prepared for it; you will be
glad to release me again.”
It was quite true
that De Lassa had prepared for them. When the house was searched it was found
that every paper had been burned, the crystal globe was destroyed, and in the
room of the seances was a great heap of delicate machinery broken into
indistinguishable bits. “That cost me 200,000 francs,” said De Lassa, pointing
to the pile, “but it has been a good investment.” The walls and floors were
ripped out in several places, and the damage to the property was considerable.
In prison neither De Lassa nor his associates made any revelations. The notion
that they had something to do with Delessert’s death was quickly dispelled, in
a legal point of view, and all the party but De Lassa were released. He was
still detained in prison, upon one pretext
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or another, when
one morning he was found hanging by a silk sash to the cornice of the room
where he was confined—dead. The night before, it was afterwards discovered,
Madame de Lassa had eloped with a tall footman, taking the Nubian Sidi with
them. De Lassa’s secrets died with him.
—————
“It is an
interesting story, that article of yours in to-day’s Scientist. But is it a
record of facts, or a tissue of the imagination? If true, why not state the
source of it, in other words, specify your authority for it.”
The above is not
signed, but we would take the opportunity to say that the story, “An Unsolved
Mystery,” was published because we considered the main points of the
narrative—the prophecies, and the singular death of the officer—to be psychic
phenomena, that have been, and can be, again produced. Why quote “authorities”?
The Scriptures tell us of the death of Ananias, under the stern rebuke from
Peter; here we have a phenomenon of a similar nature. Ananias is supposed to
have suffered instant death from fear. Few can realize this power governed by
spiritual laws, but those who have trod the boundary line and know some few of
the things that can he done, will see no great mystery in this, nor in the
story published last week. We are not speaking in mystical tones. Ask the
powerful mesmerist if there is danger that the subject may pass out of his
control?—if he could will the spirit out, never to return? It is capable of
demonstration that the mesmerist can act on a subject at a distance of many
miles; and it is no less certain that the majority of mesmerists know little or
nothing of the laws that govern their powers.
It may be a
pleasant dream to attempt to conceive of the beauties of the spirit-world; but
the time can be spent more profitably in a study of the spirit itself, and it
is not necessary that the subject for study should be in the spirit-world.
SPIRITUALISM IN
RUSSIA
—————
To the Editor of “
The Spiritual Scientist.”
DEAR SIR,—In
advices just received from St. Petersburg I am requested to translate and
forward to The Scientist for publication the protest of the Hon. Alexander
Aksakoff, Imperial Counsellor of State, against the course of the professors of
the University respecting the Spiritualistic investigation. The document
appears, in Russian, in the Vedomostji, the official journal of St. Petersburg.
This generous,
high-minded, courageous gentleman has done the possible, and even the
impossible, in order to open the spiritual eyes of those incurable moles who
fear the daylight of truth as the burglar fears the policeman’s bull’s-eye.
The heartfelt
thanks and gratitude of every Spiritualist ought to be forwarded to this noble
defender of the cause, who regretted neither his time, trouble nor money to
help the propagation of the truth.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
New York, April
19th, 1876.*
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* See Appendix, “A.
Aksakoff’s Protest.”
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[From The Spiritual
Scientist, Jan. 6th, 1876.]
DEAR SIR,—For the
last three months one has hardly been able to open a number of The Banner or
the other papers, without finding one or more proofs of the fecundity of the
human imagination in the condition of hallucination. The Spiritualist camp is
in an uproar, and the clans are gathering to fight imaginary foes. The tocsin
is sounded; danger signals shoot, like flaming rockets, across the hitherto
serene sky, and warning cries are uttered by vigilant sentries posted at the
four corners of the “angel-girt world.” The reverberations of this din resound
even in the daily press. One would think that the Day of Judgment had come for
American Spiritualism.
Why all this disturbance?
Simply because two humble individuals have spoken a few wholesome truths. If
the grand beast of the Apocalypse with its seven heads and the word “Blasphemy”
written upon each, had appeared in heaven, there would hardly have been seen so
much commotion there, as this; and there seems to be a concerted effort to cast
out Col. Olcott and myself (coupled like a pair of Hermetic Siamese twins) as
ominous to the superstitious as a comet with a fiery tail, and the precursor of
war, plagues and other calamities. They seem to think that if they do not crush
us, we will destroy Spiritualism.
I have no time to
waste, and what I now write is not intended for the benefit of such persons as
these—whose soap-bubbles, however pretty, are sure to burst of themselves—but
to set myself right with many most estimable Spiritualists for whom I feel a
sincere regard.
If the spiritual
press of America were conducted upon a principle of doing even justice to all,
I would send your contemporaries copies of this letter, but their course in the
past has made me—whether rightly or not—feel as if no redress could be had
outside of your columns. I shall be only too glad if their treatment, in this
case, gives me cause to change my opinion that they, and their slandering theorists,
are inspired
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by the biblical
devils who left Mary Magdalene and returned to the land of the “Sweet
Bye-and-Bye.”
To begin, I wish to
unhook my name from that of Col. Olcott, if you please, and declare that, as he
is not responsible for my views or actions, neither am I for his. He is bold
enough and strong enough to defend himself under all circumstances, and has
never allowed his adversaries to strike without knocking out two teeth to their
one. If our views on Spiritualism are in some degree identical, and our work in
the Theosophical Society pursued in common, we are, notwithstanding, two very
distinct entities and mean to remain such. I highly esteem Col. Olcott, as
everyone does who knows him. He is a gentle man; but what is more in my eyes,
he is an honest and true man, and an unselfish Spiritualist, in the proper
sense of that word. If he now sees Spiritualism in another light than orthodox
Spiritualists would prefer, they themselves are only to blame. He strikes at
the rotten places of their philosophy, and they do all they can to cover up the
ulcers instead of trying to cure them. He is one of the truest and most
unselfish friends that the cause has to-day in America, and yet he is treated
with an intolerance that could hardly be expected of any body above the level
of the rabid Moodys and Sankeys. Surely, facts speak for themselves; and a
faith so pure, angelic and unadulterated as American Spiritualism is claimed to
be, can have nothing to fear from heresiarchs. A house built on the rock stands
unshaken by any storm. If the New Lutheran Church can prove all its “controls,
guides and visitors from behind the shining river” to be disembodied spirits,
why all this row? That’s just where the trouble lies; they cannot prove it.
They have tasted these fruits of Paradise, and while finding some of them sweet
and refreshing because gathered and brought by real angel friends, so many
others have proved sour and rotten at the core, that to escape an incurable
dyspepsia, many of the best and most sincere Spiritualists have left the
communion without asking for a letter of dismissal.
This is not
Spiritualism; it is, as I say, a New Lutheran Church, and really, though the
late oracle of The Banner of Light was evidently a pure and true woman—for the
breath of calumny, this raging demon of America, has never been able to soil
her reputation—and though certainly she was a wonderful medium, still I don’t
see why a Spiritualist should be ostracized, only because after having given up
St. Paul, he or she does not strictly adhere to the doctrines of St. Conant.
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The last number of
The Banner contained a letter from a Mr. Saxon, criticizing some expressions in
a recent letter of Col. Olcott to the New, York Sun, in defence of the Eddys.
The only part which concerned me is this:
Surely some
magician, with his or her Kabalistic “Presto! Change!” has worked sudden and
singular revolutions in the mind of this disciple of Occultism, this gentleman
who “is” and “is not” a Spiritualist.
As I am the only
Kabalist in America, I cannot be mistaken as to the author’s meaning; so I
cheerfully pick up the glove. While I am not responsible for the changes in the
barometer of Col. Olcott’s spirituality (which I notice usually presage a
storm), I am for the following facts: Since I left Chittenden, I have
constantly and fearlessly maintained against everyone, beginning with Dr.
Beard, that their apparitions are genuine and powerful. Whether they are
“spirits of hell or goblins damned” is a question quite separate from that of
their mediumship. Col. Olcott will not deny that when we met at Chittenden for
the first time, and afterwards—and that more than once—when he expressed
suspicions about the genuineness of Mayflower and George Dix, the spirits of
Horatio’s dark séances, I insisted that, so far as I could judge, they were
genuine phenomena. He will also no doubt admit, since he is an eminently
truthful man, that when the ungrateful behaviour of the Eddys—toward whom every
visitor at the homestead will testify that he was kinder than a brother—had
made him ready to express his indignation, I interfered on their behalf, and
begged that he would never confound mediums with other people as to their
responsibility. Mediums have tried to shake my opinions of the Eddy boys,
offering in two cases that I can recall to go to Chittenden with me and expose
the fraud. I acted the same with them that I did with the Colonel. Mediums have
tried likewise to convince me that Mr. Crookes’ Katie King was but Miss F.
Cooke walking about, while a wax bust, fabricated in her likeness and covered
with her clothes, lay in the cabinet representing her as entranced. Other
mediums, regarding me as a fanatical Spiritualist, who would even be ready to
connive at fraud rather than see the cause hurt by an exposure, have let, or
pretended to let, me into the secrets of the mediumship of their fellow
mediums, and sometimes incautiously into their own.
My experience shows
that the worst enemies of mediums are mediums. Not content with slandering each
other, they assail and. traduce their warmest and most unselfish friends.
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Whatever objection
anyone may have to me on account of country, religion, occult study, rudeness
of speech, cigarette-smoking, or any other peculiarity, my record in connection
with Spiritualism for long years does not show me as making money by it, or
gaining any other advantage, direct or indirect. On the contrary, those who
have met me in all parts of the world (which I have circumnavigated three
times), will testify that I have given thousands of dollars, imperilled my
life, defied the Catholic Church—where it required more courage to do so than
the Spiritualists seem to show about encountering elementaries—and in camp and
court, on the sea, in the desert, in civilized and savage countries, I have
been from first to last the friend and champion of mediums. I have done more. I
have often taken the last dollar out of my pocket, and even necessary clothes
off my back, to relieve their necessities.
And how do you
think I have been rewarded? By honours, emoluments, and social position? Have I
charged a fee for imparting to the public or individuals what little knowledge
I have gathered in my travels and studies? Let those who have patronized our
principal mediums answer.
I have been
slandered in the most shameful way, and the most unblushing lies circulated
about my character and antecedents by the very mediums whom I have been
defending at the risk of being taken for their confederate, when their tricks
have been detected. What has happened in American cities is no worse nor
different from what has befallen me in Europe, Asia and Africa. I have been
injured temporarily in the eyes of good and pure men and women by the libels of
mediums whom I never saw, and who never were in the same city with me at the
same time; of mediums who made me the heroine of shameful histories whose
action was alleged to have occurred when I was in another part of the world,
far away from the face of a white man. Ingratitude and injustice have been my
portion since I had first to do with spiritual mediums. I have met here with a
few exceptions, but very, very few.
Now, what do you
suppose has sustained me throughout? Do you imagine that I could not see the
disgusting frauds mixed up with the most divine genuine manifestations? Could
I, having nothing to gain in money, power or any other consideration, have been
content to pass through all these dangers, suffer all this abuse, and receive
all these injurious insults, if I saw nothing in Spiritualism but what these
critics
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of Col. Olcott and
myself can see? Would the prospect of an eternity, passed in the angel-girt
world, in company with unwashed Indian guides and military controls, with Aunt
Sallies and Prof. Websters, have been inducement enough? No; I would prefer
annihilation to such a prospect. It was because I knew that through the same
golden gates which swung open to admit the elementary and those unprogressed
human spirits who are worse, if anything, than they, have often passed the real
and purified forms of the departed and blessed ones. Because, knowing the
nature of these spirits and the laws of mediumistic control, I have never been
willing to hold my calumniators responsible for the great evil they did, when
they were often simply the unfortunate victims of obsession by unprogressed
spirits. Who can blame me for not wishing to associate with or receive
instruction from spirits who, if not far worse, were no better nor wiser than
I? Is a man entitled to respect and veneration simply because his body is
rotting under ground, like that of a dog? To me the grand object of my life was
attained and the immortality of our spirit demonstrated. Why should I turn
necromancer and evoke the dead, who could neither teach me nor make me better
than I was? It is a more dangerous thing to play with the mysteries of life and
death than most Spiritualists imagine.
Let them thank God
for the great proof of immortality afforded them in this century of unbelief
and materialism; and, if divine Providence has put them on the right path, let
them pursue it by all means, but not stop to pass their time in dangerous talk
indiscriminately with every one from the other side. The land of spirits, the
Summer Land, as they call it here, is a terra incognita; no believer will deny
it; it is vastly more unknown to every Spiritualist, as regards its various
inhabitants, than a trackless virgin forest of Central Africa. And who can
blame the pioneer settler if he hesitates to open his door to a knock, before
assuring himself whether the visitor be man or beast?
Thus, just because
of all that I have said above I proclaim myself a true Spiritualist, because my
belief is built upon a firm ground, and that no exposure of mediums, no social
scandal affecting them or others, no materialistic deductions of exact science,
or sneers and denunciations of scientists, can shake it. The truth is coming
slowly to light and I shall do my best to hasten its advent. I will breast the
current of popular prejudice and ignorance. I am prepared to endure
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slander, foul
insinuations and insult in the future as I have in the past. Already one
spiritual editor, to most effectually demonstrate his spirituality, has called
me a witch. I have survived, and hope to do so if two or two-score more should
do the same; but whether I ride the air to attend my Sabbath or not, one thing
is certain: I will not ruin myself to buy broomsticks upon which to chase after
every lie set afloat by editors or mediums.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
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—————
[From The Spiritual
Scientist.]
I BELIEVE Occultism
to be essentially a reincarnation of ancient paganism, a revivification of the
Pythagorean philosophy; not the senseless ceremonies and spiritless forms of
those ancient religions, but the Spirit of the Truth which animated those grand
old systems which held the world spell-bound in awe and reverence long after
the spirit had departed, and nothing was left but the dead, decaying body.
Occultism asserts
the eternal individuality of the soul, the imperishable force which is the
cause and sustaining power of all organization, that death is only the casting
off of a worn-out garment in order to procure a new and better one.
So death, so-called, can but the form deface,
The immortal soul flies out in empty space,
To seek her fortune in another place.
Occultism, in its
efforts to penetrate the arcana of dynamic forces and primordial power, sees in
all things a unity, an unbroken chain extending from the lowest organic form to
the highest, and concludes that this unity is based upon a uniformly ascending
scale of organic forms of being, the Jacob’s ladder of spiritual organic
experience, up which every soul must travel before it can again sing praises
before the face of its Father. It perceives a duality in all things, a physical
and spiritual nature, closely interwoven in each other’s embrace,
interdependent upon each other, and yet independent of each other. And as there
is in spirit-life a central individuality, the soul, so there is in the
physical, the atom, each eternal, unchangeable and self-existent. These
centres, physical and spiritual, are surrounded by their own respective
atmospheres, the intersphering of which results in aggregation and
organization. This idea is not limited to terrestrial life, but is extended to
worlds and systems of worlds.
Physical existence
is subservient to the spiritual, and all physical
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improvement and
progress are only the auxiliaries of spiritual progress, without which there
could be no physical progress. Physical organic progress is effected through
hereditary transmission; spiritual organic progress by transmigration.
Occultism has divided
spiritual progress into three divisions—the elementary, which corresponds with
the lower organizations; the astral, which relates to the human; and the
celestial, which is divine. “Elementary spirits,” whether they belong to
“earth, water, air or fire,” are spirits not yet human, but attracted to the
human by certain congenialities. As many physical diseases are due to the
presence of parasites, attracted or produced by uncleanness and other causes,
so parasitic spirits are attracted by immorality or spiritual uncleanness,
thereby inducing spiritual diseases and consequent physical ailments. They who
live on the animal plane must attract spirits of that plane, who seek for
borrowed embodiments where the most congeniality exists in the highest form.
Thus the ancient
doctrine of obsession challenges recognition, and the exorcism of devils is as
legitimate as the expelling of a tape-worm, or the curing of the itch. It was
also believed that these spiritual beings sustained their spiritual existence
by certain emanations from physical bodies, especially when newly slain; thus
in sacrificial offerings the priests received the physical part, and the Gods
the spiritual, they being content with a “sweet-smelling savour.” It was
further thought that wars were instigated by these demons, so that they might
feast on the slain.
But vegetable food
also held a place in spiritual estimation, for incense and fumigations were
powerful instruments in the hands of the expert magician.
Above the
elementary spheres were the seven planetary spheres, and as the elementary
spheres were the means of progress for the lower animals, so were the planetary
spheres the means of progress for spirits advanced from the elementary—for
human spirits. The human spirit at death went to its associative star, till
ready for a new incarnation, and its birth partook of the nature of the planet
whence it came, and whose rays illumined the ascendant—the central idea of
astrology. When the lessons of a planetary sphere were fully mastered, the spirit
rose to the next sphere to proceed as before. The character of these spheres
corresponded to the “seven ages of man.” But not always did the spirit return
to the astral spheres. Suicides; those from whom life had been
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suddenly taken
before fully ripe; those whose affections were inordinately attached to earthly
things, etc., were held to the earth till certain conditions were fulfilled,
and some whose lives had fitted them for such disposal were remanded to the
elementary spheres, to be incarnated as lower animals, corresponding to the
nature of their lives. Such were the perturbed spirits who sometimes disturbed the
peace of sensitive mortals in the days gone by—perhaps now.
Transcending the
planetary spheres were the three divine spheres where the process of apotheosis
took place, where the spirit progressed till it reached the fulness of the
Godhead bodily. From these spheres were appointed the Guardians of the inferior
spheres, the Messengers of God, ministering spirits, sent to minister to them
who shall receive the inheritance of salvation.
Such is a brief
outline of spiritual Occult philosophy; it may seem to be inconsistent with the
ideas of modern Spiritualism, yet even Spiritualism has not altogether lost
sight of the seven spheres and other peculiarities of the ancient
astro-spiritual faith; and as knowledge is acquired and experience gained, a
better understanding of both ancient and modern mysticism will bring them
nearer together and show a consistency and mutual agreement which has never
been disturbed—only obscured—by human ignorance and presumption.
But Occultism has a
physical aspect which I cannot afford to pass by. Man is a fourfold being.
Four things of man
there are: spirit, soul, ghost, flesh;
Four places these four keep and do possess.
The earth covers flesh, the ghost hovers o’er the grave,
Orcus hath the soul, the stars the spirit crave.
When the spirit
leaves the body, and is properly prepared for the stellar spheres, these are
retained in the mortal remains; and the shade, which is no part of the spirit
or the true man or woman, may still counterfeit them, make revelations of the
past, in fact reveal more of its sensual history, and prove sensual identity
better than the spirit itself could do, seeing it knows only spiritual things.
The sciomancy of the past bears the same relation to modern psychometry that
ancient Magic does to modern Spiritualism. Thus in haunted houses, in
graveyards and places where deeds of violence have occurred, sensitives see the
drama reacted which transpired long ago, the spirit being no accessory thereto.
The spirit cannot
even communicate unless through the interblend-
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ing of physical and
spiritual auræ and only by coming en rapport with physical things can it know
anything of them; and thus mediums are as necessary on the other side as on
this; through which mediums, Guardian Spirits, we may gain a nearer
apprehension of spiritual truths, if we live for them.
BUDDHA 0F
CALIFORNIA.*
—————
* We cannot say
positively that this is H. P. B. ‘s, but it is either written by her, or under
her inspiration.
A WARNING TO
MEDIUMS
—————
[From The Banner of
Light, May 13th1876.]
DEAR SIR,—I take
the earliest opportunity to warn mediums generally—but particularly American
mediums—that a plot against the cause has been hatched in St. Petersburg. The
particulars have just been received by tile from one of my foreign
correspondents, and may be relied upon as authentic.
It is now commonly
known that Prof. Wagner, the geologist, has boldly come out as a champion for
mediumistic phenomena. Since he witnessed the wonderful manifestations of
Bredif, the French medium, he has issued several pamphlets, reviewed at great
length in Col. Olcott’s People from the Other World, and excited and defied the
anger of all the scientific pyschophobists of the Imperial University. Fancy a
herd of mad bulls rushing at the red flag of a picador, and you will have some
idea of the effect of Wagner’s Olcott-pamphlet upon his colleagues.
Chief among them is
the chairman of the scientific Commission which has just exploded with a report
of what they did not see at séances never held! Goaded to fury by the defence
of Spiritualism, which they had intended to quietly butcher, this individual
suddenly took the determination to come to America, and is now probably on his
way. Like a Samson of science, he expects to tie our foxes of mediums together
by the tails, set fire to them, and turn them into the corn of those
Philistines, Wagner and Butlerow.
Let me give mediums
a bit of friendly caution. If this Russian Professor should turn up at a
séance, keep a sharp eye upon him, and let everyone do the same; give him no
private séances at which there is not present at least one truthful and
impartial Spiritualist. Some scientists are not to be trusted. My correspondent
writes that the Professor—
Goes to America to create a great scandal, burst up Spiritualism, and turn the
laugh on P. Wagner, Aksakoff and Butlerow.
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The plot is very
ingeniously contrived: he is coming here under the pretext of the Centennial,
and will attract as little attention as possible among the mediums.
But, Mr. Editor,
what if he should meet the fate of Hare and become a Spiritualist! What wailing
would there not be in the Society of Physical Sciences! I shudder at the
mortification which would await my poor countrymen.
But another
distinguished Russian scientist is also coming, for whom I bespeak a very
different reception. Prof. Kittara, the greatest technologist of Russia and a
member of the Emperor’s Privy Council, is really sent by the government to the
Centennial. He is deeply interested in Spiritualism, very anxious to
investigate it, and will bring the proper credentials from Mr. Aksakoff. The
latter gentleman writes me that every civility and attention should be shown
Prof. Kittara, as his report, if favourable, will have a tremendous influence
upon public opinion.
The unfairness of
the University Commission has, it seems, produced a reaction. I translate the following
from a paper which Mr. Aksakoff has sent me, the St. Petersburg Berjeveya
viedomostji (Exchange Reports):
We hear that the
Commission for the investigation of mediumism, which was formed by the Society
of Physical Sciences attached to the University, is preparing to issue a report
of its labours [? !]. It will appear as an appendix to the monthly periodical
of the Chemical and Physical Societies. Meanwhile another Commission is being
formed, but this time its members will not be supplied from the Physical
Science Society, but from the Medical Society. Nevertheless, several members of
the former will be invited to join, as well as the friends of mediumism, and
others who would be able to offer important suggestions pro or con. We hear
that the formation of this new Commission is warmly advocated, its necessity
having been shown in the breach of faith by the Physical Science Society, its
failure to hold the promised forty seances, its premature adoption of unfair
conclusions, and the strong prejudices of the members.
Let us hope that
this new organization may prove more honourable than its predecessor (peace to
its ashes!).
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
(NEW) YORK AGAINST
LANKESTER
A NEW WAR OF THE
ROSES.
[From The Banner of
Light, Oct. 24th, 1876]
DESPITE the constant
recurrence of new discoveries by modern men of science, an exaggerated respect
for authority and an established routine among the educated class retard the
progress of true knowledge. Facts which, if observed, tested, classified and
appreciated, would be of inestimable importance to science, are summarily cast
into the despised limbo of supernaturalism. To these conservatives the
experience of the past serves neither as an example nor a warning. The
overturning of a thousand cherished theories finds our modern philosopher as
unprepared for each new scientific revelation as though his predecessor had
been infallible from time immemorial.
The protoplasmist
should, at least, in modesty remember that his past is one vast cemetery of
dead theories; a desolate potter’s field wherein exploded hypotheses lie, in
ignoble oblivion, like so many executed malefactors, whose names cannot be
pronounced by the next of kin without a blush.
The nineteenth
century is essentially the age of demolition. True, science takes just pride in
many revolutionary discoveries and claims to have immortalized the epoch by
forcing from Dame Nature some of her most important secrets. But for every inch
she illumines of the narrow and circular path within whose limits she has
hitherto trodden, what unexplored boundless stretches have been left behind?
The worst is that science has not simply withheld her light from these regions
that seem dark (but are not), but her votaries try their best to quench the
lights of other people under the pretext that they are not authorities, and
their friendly beacons are but “will-o’-the-wisps.” Prejudice and preconceived
ideas have entered the public brain, and, cancer-like, are eating it to the
core. Spiritualism—or, if some for whom the word has become so unpopular prefer
it, the universe of
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spirit—is left to
fight out its battle with the world of matter, and the crisis is at hand.
Half-thinkers, and
aping, would-be philosophers—in short, that class which is unable to penetrate
events any deeper than their crust, and which measures every clay’s occurrences
by its present aspect, unmindful of the past and careless of the
future—heartily rejoice over the latest rebuff given to phenomenalism in the
Lankester-Donkin offensive and defensive alliance, and the pretended exposure
of Slade. In this hour of would—be Lancastrian triumph, a change should be made
in English heraldic crests. The Lancasters were always given to creating
dissensions and provoking strife among peaceable folk. From ancient York the
War of the Roses is now transferred to Middle sex, and Lankester (whose name is
a corruption), instead of uniting himself with the hereditary foe, has joined
his idols with those of Donkin (whose name is evidently also a corruption). As
the hero of the hour is not a knight, but a zoologist deeply versed in the
science to which lie devotes Ins talents, why not compliment his ally by
quartering the red rose of Lancaster with the downy thistle so delicately
appreciated by a certain prophetic quadruped, who seeks for it by the wayside?
Really, Mr. Editor, when Mr. Lankester tells us that all those who believe in
Dr. Slade’s phenomena ‘are lost to reason,” we must accord to biblical animals
a decided precedence over modern ones. The ass of Balaam had at least the
faculty of perceiving spirits, while some of those who bray in our academies
and hospitals show no evidence of its possession. Sad degeneration of species!
Such persons as
these bound all spiritual phenomena in Nature by the fortunes and mishaps of
mediums; each new favourite, they think, must of necessity pull down in his
fall an unscientific hypothetical “Unseen Universe,” as the tumbling red dragon
of the Apocalypse drew with his tail the third part of the stars of heaven.
Poor blind moles! They perceive not that by inveighing against the “craze” of
such phenomenalists as Wallace, Crookes, Wagner and Thury, they only help the
spread of true Spiritualism. We millions of lunatics really ought to address a
vote of thanks to the “dishevelled” Beards who make supererogatory efforts to
appear as stupid clodpoles to deceive the Eddys, and to Lankesters simulating
“astonishment and intense interest,” the better to cheat Dr. Shade. More than
any advocates of phenomenalism, they bring its marvels into public notice by
their pyrotechnic exposures.
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As one entrusted by
the Russian Committee with the delicate task of selecting a medium for the
coming St. Petersburg experiments, and as an officer of the Theosophical
Society, which put Dr. Slade’s powers to the test in a long series of seances,
I pronounce him not only a genuine medium, but one of the best and least
fraudulent mediums ever developed. From personal experience I can not only
testify to the genuineness of his slate-writing, but also to that of the
materializations which occur in his presence. A shawl thrown over a chair (which
I was invited to place wherever I chose) is all the cabinet he exacts, and his
apparitions immediately appear, and that in gas—light.
No one will charge
me with a superfluous confidence in the personality of material apparitions, or
a superabundance of love for them ; but honour and truth compel me to affirm
that those who appeared to me in Slade’s presence were real phantoms, and not
“made up” confederates or dolls. They were evanescent and filmy, and the only
ones I have seen in America which have reminded me of those that the Adepts of
India evoke. Like the latter, they formed and dissolved before my eyes, their
substance rising mist-like from the floor, and gradually condensing. Their eyes
moved and their lips smiled ; but as they stood near me their forms were so
transparent that through them I could see the objects in the room. These I call
genuine spiritual substances, whereas the opaque ones that I have seen else
where were nothing but animated forms of matter—whatever they be—with sweating
hands and a peculiar odour, which I am not called upon to define at this time.
Everyone knows that
Dr. Slade is not acquainted with foreign languages, and yet at our first
séance, three years ago, on the day after my arrival in New York, where no one
knew me, I received upon his slate a long communication in Russian. I had
purposely avoided giving either to Dr. Slade or his partner, Mr. Simmons, any
clue to my nationality, and while, from my accent, they would of course have
detected that I was not an American, they could not possibly have known from
what country I came. I fancy that if Dr. Lankester had allowed Slade to write
on both knees and both elbows successively or simultaneously, the poor man
would not have been able to turn out Russian messages by trick and device.
In reading the
accounts in the London papers, it has struck me as very remarkable that this
“vagrant” medium, after baffling such a host of savants, would have fallen so
easy a victim to the zoölogico-osteological
87 ——————————————————(NEW) YORK AGAINST LANKESTER.
brace of scientific
detectives. Fraud, that neither the “psychic” Sergeant Cox, nor the
“unconsciously cerebrating” Carpenter, nor the wise Wallace, nor the
experienced M.A. (Oxon.), nor the cautious Lord Rayleigh—who, mistrusting his
own acuteness, employed a professional juggler to attend the séance with
him—nor Dr. Carter Blake, nor a host of other competent observers could detect,
was seen by the eagle eyes of the Lankester-Donkin Gemini at a single glance.
There has been nothing like it since Beard, of electro-hay fever and Eddy fame,
denounced the faculty of Yale for a set of asses, because they would not accept
his divinely-inspired revelation of the secret of mind-reading, and pitied the
imbecility of that “amiable idiot,” Col. Olcott, for trusting his own
two—months’ observation of the Eddy phenomena in preference to the electric
doctor’s single séance of an hour.
I am an American
citizen in embryo, Mr. Editor, and I cannot hope that the English magistrates
of Bow Street will listen to a voice that comes from a city proverbially held
in small esteem by British scientists. When Prof. Tyndall asks Prof. Youmans if
the New York carpenters could make him a screen ten feet long for his Cooper
Institute lectures, and whether it would be necessary to send to Boston for a
cake of ice that he wished to use in the experiments; and when Huxley evinces
grateful surprise that a “foreigner” could express him self in your (our)
language in such a way as to be so readily intelligible, “to all appearance,”
by a New York audience, and that those clever chaps—the New York
reporters—could report him despite his accent, neither New York “spooks,” nor
I, can hope for a standing in a London court, when the defendant is prosecuted
by English scientists. But, fortunately for Dr. Slade, British tribunals are
not inspired by the Jesuits, and so Slade may escape the fate of Leymarie. He
certainly will, if he is allowed to summon to the witness-stand his Owasso and
other devoted “controls,” to write their testimony inside a double state,
furnished and held by the magistrate himself. This is Dr. Slade’s golden hour;
he will never have so good a chance to demonstrate the reality of phenomenal
manifestations, and make Spiritualism triumph over scepticism; and we, who know
the doctor’s wonderful powers, are confident that he can do it, if he is
assisted by those who in the past have accomplished so much through his
instrumentality.
H. P. BLAVATSKY,
Corresponding
Secretary of the Theosophical Society. New York, Oct. 8th, 1876.
HUXLEY AND SLADE
[ From The banner
of Light, Oct. 28th, 1876.]
As I see the issue
that has been raised by Dr. Hallock with Mr. Huxley, it suggests to me the
comparison of two men looking at the same distant object through a telescope.
The Doctor, having taken the usual precautions, brings the object within close
range where it can he studied at one’s leisure; but the naturalist, having
forgotten to remove the cap, sees only the reflection of his own image.
Though the
materialists may find it hard to answer even the brief criticisms of the
Doctor, yet it appears that Mr. Huxley’s New York lectures—as they present
themselves to me in their naked desolation— suggest one paramount idea which
Dr. Hallock has not touched upon. I need scarcely say to you, who must have
read the report of these would-be iconoclastic lectures, that this idea is one
of the “false pretences” of Modern Science. After all the flourish which
attended his coming, all the expectations that had been aroused, all the secret
apprehensions of the church and the anticipated triumph of the materialists,
what did he teach us that was really new or so extremely suggestive? Nothing,
positively nothing. Exclude a sight of his personality, the sound of his
well-trained voice, the reflection of his scientific glory, and the result may
be summed up thus: “Cr., Thomas H. Huxley, L1,000.”
Of him it may be
said, as it has been of other teachers before, that what he said that was new
was not true; and that which was true was not new.
Without going into
details, for the moment, it suffices to say that the materialistic theory of
evolution is far from being demonstrated, while the thought that Mr. Huxley
does not grasp—i.e., the double evolution of spirit and matter—is imparted
under the form of various legends in the oldest parts of the Rig Veda (the
Aitareya Brâhmana). Only these benighted Hindus, it seems, made the trifling
improvement over Modern
89
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Science, of hooking
a First Cause on to the further end of the chain of evolution.
In the Chaturhotri
Mantra (Book V of the Aitareya Brâhmana) the Goddess Eath (lyam), who is termed
the Queen of the Serpents (Sârpa), for she is the mother of everything that
moves (Sârpat), was in the beginning of time completely bald. She was nothing
but one round head, which was soft to the touch, i.e., “a gelatinous mass.”
Being disstressed at her baldness, she called for help to the great Vâyu, the
Lord of the airy regions; she prayed him to teach her the Mantra (invocation or
sacrificial prayer—a certain part of the Veda), which would confer on her the
magical power of creating things (generation). He complied, and then as soon as
the Mantra was pronounced by her “in the proper metre” she found herself
covered with hair (vegetation). She was now hard to the touch, for the Lord of
the air had breathed upon her—the globe had cooled. She had become of a
variegated or motley appearance, and suddenly acquired the power to produce out
of herself every animate and inanimate form, and to chance one form to another.
Therefore in like
manner [ the sacred book] the man who has such a knowledge [ the Mantras]
obtains the faculty of assuming any shape or form he likes.
It will scarcely be
said that this allegory is capable of more than one interpretation, viz., that
the ancient Hindus, many centuries before the Christian era, taught the
doctrine of evolution. Martin Haug, the Sanskrit scholar, asserts that the
Vedas were already in existence from 2,000 to 2,200 B.C.
Thus, while the
theory of evolution is nothing new, and may be considered a proven fact, the
new ideas forced upon the public by Mr. Huxley are only undemonstrated
hypotheses, and as such liable to be exploded the first fine day upon the
discovery of some new fact. We find no admission of his, however, in Mr.
Huxley’s communications to the public; but the unproved theories are enunciated
with as much boldness as though the were established scientific facts,
corroborated by unerring laws of Nature. Notwithstanding this the world is asked
to revere the great evolutionist, only because he stands under the shadow of a
great name.
What is this but
one of the many false pretences of the sciolists? And yet Huxley and his
admirers charge the believers in the evolution of spirit with the same crime of
false pretences, because, forsooth, our theories are as yet undemonstrated.
Those who believe in Slade’s
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spirits-are
“lost.to reason,” while those who can see embryonic man in Huxley’s “gelatinous
mass” are accepted as the progressive minds of the age. Slade is arraigned
before the magistrate for taking $5 from Lankester, while Huxley triumphantly
walks away with $5,0OO of American gold in his pockets, which was paid him for
imparting to us the mirific fact that man evolved from the hind toe of a
pedactyl horse!
Now, arguing from
the standpoint of strict justice, in what respect is a materialistic theorist any
better than a spiritualistic one? And in what degree is the evolution of
man—independent of divine and spiritual interference—better proven by the
toe-bone of an extinct horse, than the evolution and survival of the human
spirit by the writing upon a screwed-up slate by some unseen power or powers?
And yet again, the soulless Huxley sails away laden with flowers like a
fashionable corpse, conquering and to conquer in fresh fields of glory, while
the poor medium is hauled before a police magistrate as a “vagrant and a
swindler,” without proof enough to sustain the charge before an unprejudiced
tribunal.
There is good
authority for the statement that psychological science is a debatable land upon
which the modern physiologist hardly dares to venture. I deeply sympathize with
the embarrassed student of the physical side of Nature. We all can readily
understand how disagreeable it must be to a learned theorist, ever aspiring for
the elevation of his hobby to the dignity of an accepted scientific truth, constantly
to receive the lie direct from his remorseless and untiring antagonist—
psychology. To see his cherished materialistic theories become every day more
untenable, until they are reduced to the condition of mummies swathed in
shrouds, self-woven and inscribed with a farrago of pet sophistries, is indeed
hard. And in their self-satisfying logic, these sons of matter reject every
testimony but their own: the divine entity of the Socratic daimonion, the ghost
of Cæsar, and Cicero’s Divinum Quidam, they explain by epilepsy; and the
prophetic oracles of the Jewish Bath-Kol are set down as hereditary hysteria!
And now, supposing
the great protoplasmist to have proved to the general satisfaction that the
present horse is an effect of a gradual development from the Orophippus, or
four-toed horse of the Eocene formation, which, passing further through Miocene
and Pliocene periods, has become the modern honest Equus, does Huxley thereby
prove that man has also developed from a one-toed human being? For nothing short
of that could demonstrate his theory. To be consistent he must
91 ————————————————————HUXLEY AND SLADE.
show that while the
horse was losing at each successive period a toe, man has in reversed order
acquired an additional one at each new formation; and unless we are shown the
fossilized remains of man in a series of one-, two-, three- and four-toed
anthropoid ape-like beings antecedent to the present perfected Homo, what does
Huxley’s theory amount to? Nobody doubts that everything has evolved out of some
thing prior to itself. But, as it is, he leaves us hopelessly in doubt whether
it is man who is a hipparionic or equine evolution, or the antediluvian Equus
that evolved from the primitive genus Homo!
Thus to apply the
argument to Slade’s case we may say that, whether the messages on his slate
indicate an authorship among the returning spirits of antediluvian monkeys, or
the bravos and Lankestrian ancestors of our day, he is no more guilty of false
pretences than the $5,000 evolutionist. Hypothesis, whether of scientist or
medium, is no false pretence; but unsupported assertion is, when people are
charged money for it.
If, satisfied with
the osseous fragments of a Hellenized or Latinized skeleton, we admit that
there is a physical evolution, by what logic can we refuse to credit the
possibility of an evolution of spirit? That there are two sides to the
question, no one but an utter psychophobist will deny. It may be argued that
even if the Spiritualists have demonstrated their bare facts, their philosophy is
not complete, since it has missing links. But no more have the evolutionists.
They have fossil remains which prove that once upon a time the ancestors of the
modern horse were blessed with three and even four toes and fingers, the fourth
‘‘answering to the little finger of the human hand,” and that the Protohippus
rejoiced in ‘‘a fore-arm’’ ; Spiritualists in their turn exhibit entire hands,
arms, and even bodies in support of their theory that the dead still live and
revisit us. For my part I cannot see that the osteologists have the better of
them. Both follow the inductive or purely scientific method, proceeding from
particulars to universals; thus Cuvier, upon finding a small bone, traced
around it imaginary lines until he had built up from his prolific fancy a whole
mammoth. The data of scientists are no more certain than those of
Spiritualists; and while the former have but their modern discoveries upon
which to build their theories, Spiritualists may cite the evidence of a
succession of ages, which began long prior to the advent of Modern Science.
An inductive
hypothesis, we are told, is demonstrated when the facts are shown to be in
entire accordance with it. Thus, if Huxley possesses
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conclusive evidence
of the evolution of man in the genealogy of the horse, Spiritualists can
equally claim that proof of the evolution of spirit out of the body is
furnished in the materialized, more or less substantial, limbs that float in
the dark shadows of the cabinet, and often in full light—a phenomenon which has
been recognized and attested by numberless generations of wise men of every
country. As to the pretended superiority of modern over ancient science, we
have only the word of the former for it. This is also an hypothesis; better
evidence is required to prove the fact. We have but to turn to Wendell
Phillips’s lecture on the Lost Arts to have a certain right to doubt the
assurance of Modern Science.
Speaking of
evidence, it is strange what different and arbitrary values may be placed upon
the testimony of different men equally trustworthy and well-meaning. Says the
parent of protoplasm:
It is impossible
that one’s practical life should not be more or less influenced by the views
which he may hold as to what has been the past history of things. One of them
is human testimony in its various shapes—all testimony of eye-witnesses,
traditional testimony from the lips of those who have been eye-witnesses, and
the testimony of those who have put their impressions into writing or into
print.
On just such
testimony, amply furnished in the Bible (evidence which Mr. Huxley rejects),
and in many other less problematical authors than Moses, among whom may be
reckoned generations of great philosophers, theurgists, and laymen,
Spiritualists have a right to base their fundamental doctrines. Speaking
further of the broad distinction to be drawn between the different kinds of
evidence, some being less valuable than others, because given upon grounds not
clear, upon grounds illogically stated and upon such as do not bear thorough
and careful inspection, the same gelatinist remarks:
For example, if I
read in your history of Tennessee [Ramsays] that one hundred years ago this
country was peopled by wandering savages, my belief in this statement rests
upon the conviction that Mr. Ramsay was actuated by the same sort of motives
that men are now,... that he himself was, like ourselves, not inclined to make
false statements. . . . If you read Cæsar’s Commentaries, wherever he gives an
account of his battles with the Gauls, you place a certain amount of confidence
in his statements. You take his testimony upon this, you feel that Cæsar would
not have made these statements unless he had believed them to be true.
Profound
philosophy! precious thoughts! gems of condensed, gelatinous truth! long may it
stick to the American mind! Mr. Huxley ought to devote the rest of his days to
writing primers for the feeble minded adults of the United States. But why
select Cæsar as the type
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of the trustworthy
witness of ancient times? And if we must implicitly credit his reports of
battles, why not his profession of faith in augurs, diviners and
apparitions?—for in common with his wife, Calpurnia, he believed in them as
firmly as any modern Spiritualist in his mediums and phenomena. We also feel
that no more than Cæsar would such men as Cicero and Herodotus and Livy and a
host of others “have made these false statements,” or reported such things
“unless they believed them to be true.”
It has already been
shown that the doctrine of evolution, as a whole, was taught in the Rig Veda,
and I may also add that it can be found in the most ancient of the books of
Hermes. This is bad enough for the claim to originality set up by our modern
scientists, but what shall be said when we recall the fact that the very
pedactyl horse, the finding of whose footprints has so overjoyed Mr. Huxley,
was mentioned by ancient writers (Herodotus anti Pliny, if I mistake not), and
was once outrageously laughed at by the French Academicians? Let those who wish
to verify the fact read Salverti’s Philosophy of Occult Science, translated by
Todd Thompson.
Some day proofs as
conclusive will be discovered of the reliability of the ancient writers as to
their evidence on psychological matters. What Niebuhr, the German materialist,
did with Livy’s History, from which he eliminated every one of the multitude of
facts of phenomenal “Super naturalism,’’ scientists now seem to have tacitly
agreed to do with all the ancient, medæval and modern authors. What they
narrate, that can be used to bolster up the physical part of science, scientists
accept and sometimes coolly appropriate without credit; what supports the
Spiritualistic philosophy they incontinently reject as mythical and contrary to
the order of Nature. In such cases “evidence” and the “testimony of
eye-witnesses” count for nothing. They adopt the contrary course to Lord
Verulam, who, arguing on the properties of amulets and charms, remarks that:
We should not
reject all this kind, because it is not known how far those contributing to
superstition depend on natural causes.
There can be no
real enfranchisement of human thought nor expansion of scientific discovery
until the existence of spirit is recognized, and the double evolution accepted
as a fact. Until then, false theories will always find favour with those who,
having forsaken “the God of their fathers,” vainly strive to find substitutes
in nucleated masses of matter. And of all the sad things to be seen in this era
of “shams,”
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none is more
deplorable—though its futility is often ludicrous—than the conspiracy of
certain scientists to stamp out spirit by their one-sided theory of evolution,
and destroy Spiritualism by arraigning its mediums upon the charge of “false
pretences.”
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
CAN THE DOUBLE
MURDER?
—————
To the Editor of”
The Sun.”
SIR,—One morning in
1867 Eastern Europe was startled by news of the most horrifying description.
Michael Obrenovitch, reigning Prince of Serbia, his aunt, the Princess
Catherine, or Katinka, and her daughter had been murdered in broad daylight,
near Belgrade, in their own garden, assassin or assassins remaining unknown.
The Prince had received several bullet-shots and stabs, and his body was actually
butchered; the Princess was killed on the spot, her head smashed, and her young
daughter, though still alive, was not expected to survive. The circumstances
are too recent to have been forgotten, but in that part of the world, at the
time, the case created a delirium of excitement.
In the Austrian
dominions and in those tinder the doubtful protectorate of Turkey, from
Bucharest down to Trieste, no high family felt secure. In those half-Oriental
countries every Montecchi has its Capuletti, and it was rumoured that the
bloody deed was perpetrated by the Prince Kara-Gueorguevitch, or
“Tzerno-Gueorgey,” as he is usually called in those parts. Several persons
innocent of the act were, as is usual in such cases, imprisoned, and the real
murderers escaped justice. A young relative of the victim, greatly beloved by
his people, a mere child, taken for the purpose from a school in Paris, was
brought over in ceremony to Belgrade and proclaimed Hospodar of Serbia. In the
turmoil of political excitement the tragedy of Belgrade was for gotten by all
but an old Serbian matron who had been attached to the Obrenovitch family, and
who, like Rachel, would not be comforted for the death of her children. After
the proclamation of the young Obrenovitch, nephew of the murdered man, she had
sold out her property and disappeared; but not before taking a solemn vow on
the tombs of the victims to avenge their deaths.
The writer of this
truthful narrative had passed a few days at Belgrade, about three months before
the horrid deed was perpetrated,
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and knew the
Princess Katinka. She was a kind, gentle, and lazy creature at home; abroad she
seemed a Parisienne in manners and education. As nearly all the personages who
will figure in this true story are still living, it is but decent that I should
withhold their names, and give only initials.
The old Serbian
lady seldom left her house, going but to see the Princess occasionally.
Crouched on a pile of pillows and carpeting, clad in the picturesque national
dress, she looked like the Cumæan sibyl in her days of calm repose. Strange
stories were whispered about her Occult knowledge, and thrilling accounts
circulated some times among the guests assembled round the fireside of the
modest inn. Our fat landlord’s maiden aunt’s cousin had been troubled for some
time past by a wandering vampire, and had been bled nearly to death by the
nocturnal visitor, and while the efforts and exorcisms of the parish pope had
been of no avail, the victim was luckily delivered by Gospoja P—, who had put
to flight the disturbing ghost by merely shaking her fist at him, and shaming
him in his own language. It was in Belgrade that I learned for the first time
this highly-interesting fact in philology, namely, that spooks have a language
of their own. The old lady, whom I will call Gospoja P was generally attended
by another personage destined to be the principal actress in our tale of
horror. It was a young gipsy girl from some part of Roumania, about fourteen
years of age. Where she was born, and who she was, she seemed to know as little
as anyone else. I was told she had been brought one day by a party of strolling
gipsies, and left in the yard of the old lady, from which moment she became an
inmate of the house. She was nicknamed “the sleeping girl,” as she was said to
be gifted with the faculty of apparently dropping asleep wherever she stood,
and speaking her dreams aloud. The girl’s heathen name was Frosya.
About eighteen
months after the news of the murder had reached Italy, where I was at the tune,
I travelled over the Banat in a small waggon of my own, hiring a horse whenever
I needed one. I met on my way an old Frenchman, a scientist, travelling alone
after my own fashion, but with the difference that while he was a pedestrian, I
dominated the road from the eminence of a throne of dry hay in a jolting
waggon. I discovered him one fine morning slumbering in a wilderness of shrubs
and flowers, and had nearly passed over him, absorbed as I was in the
contemplation of the surrounding glorious scenery. The acquaintance was soon
made, no great ceremony of
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mutual introduction
being needed. I had heard his name mentioned in circles interested in
mesmerism, and knew him to be a powerful adept of the school of Dupotet.
“I have found,” he
remarked, in the course of the conversation after I had made him share my seat
of hay, “one of the most wonderful subjects in this lovely Thebaide. I have an
appointment to-night with the family. They are seeking to unravel the mystery
of a murder by means of the clairvoyance of the girl . . . she is wonderful!”
“Who is she?” I
asked.
“A Roumanian gipsy.
She was brought up, it appears, in the family of the Serbian reigning Prince,
who reigns no more, for he was very mysteriously mur— Halloo, take care!
Diable, you will upset us over the precipice!” he hurriedly exclaimed,
unceremoniously snatching from me the reins, and giving the horse a violent
pull.
“You do not mean
Prince Obrenovitch?” I asked aghast.
“Yes, I do; and him
precisely. To-night I have to be there, hoping to close a series of seances by
finally developing a most marvellous manifestation of the hidden power of the
human spirit; and you may come with me. I will introduce you; and besides, you
can help me as an interpreter, for they do not speak French.”
As I was pretty
sure that if the somnambule was Frosya, the rest of the family must be Gospoja
P—, I readily accepted. At sunset we were at the foot of the mountain, leading
to the old castle, as the Frenchman called the place. It fully deserved the
poetical name given it. There was a rough bench in the depths of one of the
shadowy retreats, and as we stopped at the entrance of this poetical place, and
the Frenchman was gallantly busying himself with my horse on the
suspicious-looking bridge which led across the water to the entrance gate, I
saw a tall figure slowly rise from the bench and come towards us.
It was my old
friend Gospoja P—, looking more pale and more mysterious than ever. She
exhibited no surprise at seeing me, but simply greeting me after the Serbian
fashion, with a triple kiss on both cheeks, she took hold of my hand and led me
straight to the nest of ivy. Half reclining on a small carpet spread on the
tall grass, with her back leaning against the wall, I recognized our Frosya.
She was dressed in
the national costume of the Wallachian women, a sort of gauze turban
intermingled with various gilt medals and bands on her head, white shirt with
opened sleeves, and petticoats of varie-
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gated colours. Her
face looked deadly pale, her eyes were closed, and her countenance presented
that stony, sphinx-like look which characterizes in such a peculiar way the
entranced clairvoyant somnambule. If it were not for the heaving motion of her
chest and bosom, ornamented by rows of medals and head necklaces which feebly
tinkled at ever breath, one might have thought her dead, so lifeless and
corpse-like was her face. The Frenchman informed me that he had sent her to
sleep just as we were approaching the house, and that she now was as he had
left her the previous night; he then began busying himself with the sujet, as
he called Frosva. Paying no further attention to us, he shook her by the hand,
and then making a few rapid passes stretched out her arm and stiffened it. The
arm, as rigid as iron, remained in that position. He then closed all her
fingers but one—the middle finger—which he caused to point at the evening star,
which twinkled in the deep blue sky. Then he turned round and went over from
right to left, throwing on some of his fluids here, again discharging them at
another place; busying himself with his invisible but potent fluids, like a
painter with his brush when giving the last touches to a picture.
The old lady, who
had silently watched him, with her chin in her hand the while, put her thin,
skeleton—looking hands on his arm and arrested it, as he was preparing himself
to begin the regular mesmeric passes.
‘‘Wait,” she
whispered, ‘‘till the star is set and the ninth hour completed. The Vourdalaki
are hovering round; they may spoil the influence.’’
“What does she
say?” enquired time mesmerizer, annoyed at her interference.
I explained to him
that the old lady feared the pernicious influences of the Vourdalaki.
“Vourdalaki! What’s
that—the Vourdalaki?” exclaimed the French man. “Let us be satisfied with
Christian spirits, if the honour us to-night with a visit, and lose no time for
the Vourdalaki.”
I glanced at the
Gospoja. She had become deathly pale and her brow was sternly knitted over her
flashing black eyes.
“Tell him not to
jest at this hour of the night!” she cried. “He does not know the country. Even
this holy church may fail to protect us once the Vourdalaki are roused. What’s
this ?“ pushing with her foot a bundle of herbs the botanizing mesmerizer had
laid near on the
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grass. She bent
over the collection and anxiously examined the contents of the bundle, after
which she flung the whole into the water.
‘‘It must not be
left here,’’ she firmly added; ‘‘these are the St. John’s plants, and they
might attract the wandering ones.’’
Meanwhile the night
had come, and the moon illuminated the land scape with a pale, ghostly light.
The nights in the Banat are nearly as beautiful as in the East, and the
Frenchman had to go on with his experiments in the open air, as the priest of
the church had prohibited such in the tower, which was used as the parsonage,
for fear of filling the holy precincts with the heretical devils of the
mesmerizer, which, the priest remarked, he would be unable to exorcise on
account of their being foreigners.
The old gentleman
had thrown off his travelling blouse, rolled tip his shirt sleeves, and now,
striking a theatrical attitude, began a regular process of mesmerization.
Under his quivering
fingers the odile fluid actually seemed to flash in the twilight. Frosya was
placed with her figure facing the moon, and every motion of the entranced girl
was discernible as in daylight. In a few minutes large drops of perspiration
appeared on her brow, and slowly rolled down her pale face, glittering in the
moonbeams. Then she moved uneasily about and began chanting a low melody, to
the words of which the Gospoja, anxiously bent over the unconscious girl, was
listening with avidity and trying to catch every syllable. With her thin finger
on her lips, her eyes nearly starting from their sockets, her frame motionless,
the old lady seemed herself transfixed into a statue of attention. The group
was a remarkable one, and I regretted that I was not a painter. What followed
was a scene worthy to figure in Macbeth. At one side she, the slender girl,
pale and corpse- like, writhing tinder the invisible fluid of him who for the
hour was her omnipotent master; at the other the old matron, who, burning with
her unquenched fire of revenge, stood waiting for the long-expected name of the
Prince’s murderer to be at last pronounced. The Frenchman himself seemed
transfigured, his grey hair standing on end; his bulky clumsy form seemed to
have grown in a few minutes. All theatrical pretence was now gone; there
remained but the mesmerizer, aware of his responsibility, unconscious himself
of the possible results, studying and anxiously expecting. Suddenly Frosya, as
if lifted by some super natural force, rose from her reclining posture and
stood erect before us,
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again motionless
and still, waiting for the magnetic fluid to direct her. The Frenchman,
silently taking the old lady’s hand, placed it in that of the somnambulist, and
ordered her to put herself en rapport with the Gospoja.
“What seest thou,
my daughter?” softly murmured the Serbian lady. “Can your spirit seek out the
murderers?”
“Search and
behold!” sternly commanded the mesmerizer, fixing his gaze upon the face of the
subject.
“I am on my way—I
go,” faintly whispered Frosya, her voice seeming not to come from herself, but
from the surrounding atmosphere.
At this moment
something so strange took place that I doubt my ability to describe it. A
luminous vapour appeared, closely surround ing the girl’s body. At first about
an inch in thickness, it gradually expanded, and, gathering itself, suddenly
seemed to break off from the body altogether and condense itself into a kind of
semi-solid vapour, which very soon assumed the likeness of the somnambule
herself. Flickering about the surface of the earth the form vacillated for two
or three seconds, then glided noiselessly toward the river. It disappeared like
a mist, dissolved in the moonbeams, which seemed to absorb it altogether.
I had followed the
scene with an intense attention. The mysterious operation, known in the East as
the evocation of the scin-lecca, was taking place before my own eyes. To doubt
was impossible, and Dupotet was right in saying that mesmerism is the conscious
Magic of the ancients, and Spiritualism the unconscious effect of the same
Magic upon certain organisms.
As soon as the
vaporous double had smoked itself through the pores of the girl, Gospoja had,
by a rapid motion of the hand which was left free, drawn from under her pelisse
something which looked to us suspiciously like a small stiletto, and placed it
as rapidly in the girl’s bosom. The action was so quick that the mesmerizer,
absorbed in his work, had not remarked it, as he afterwards told me. A few
minutes elapsed in a dead silence. We seemed a group of petrified persons.
Suddenly a thrilling and transpiercing cry burst from the entranced girl’s
lips, she bent forward, and snatching the stiletto from her bosom, plunged it
furiously round her, in the air, as if pursuing imaginary foes. Her mouth
foamed, and incoherent, wild exclamations broke from her lips, among which
discordant sounds I discerned several times two familiar Christian names of
men. The mesmerizer was so terrified
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that he lost all
control over himself, and instead of withdrawing the fluid he loaded the girl
with it still more.
“Take care,”
exclaimed I. “Stop! You will kill her, or she will kill you!”
But the Frenchman
had unwittingly raised subtle potencies of Nature over which he had no control.
Furiously turning round, the girl struck at him a blow which would have killed
him had he not avoided it by jumping aside, receiving but a severe scratch on
the right arm. The poor man was panic-stricken; climbing with an extraordinary
agility, for a man of his bulky form, on the wall over her, he fixed himself on
it astride, and gathering the remnants of his will power, sent in her direction
a series of passes. At the second, the girl dropped the weapon and remained
motionless.
“What are you
about?” hoarsely shouted the mesmerizer in French, seated like some monstrous
night-goblin on the wall. “Answer me, I command you!’’
“I did ... but what
she...whom you ordered me to obey commanded me to do,” answered the girl in
French, to my amazement.
“What did the old
witch command you?” irreverently asked he.
‘‘To find them how
murdered .. kill them. . . I did so . . . and they are no more . . . Avenged! .
. . Avenged! They are An exclamation of triumph, a loud shout of infernal joy,
rang loud in the air, and awakening the dogs of the neighbouring villages a
responsive howl of barking began from that moment, like a ceaseless echo of the
Gospoja’s cry:
“I am avenged! I
feel it; I know it. My warning heart tells me that the fiends are no more.” She
fell panting on the ground, dragging down, in her fall, the girl, who allowed
herself to be pulled down as if she were a bag of wool.
‘‘I hope my subject
did no further mischief to—night. She is a dangerous as well as a very
wonderful subject,” said the Frenchman.
We parted. Three
days after that I was at T—, and as I was sitting in the dining-room of a
restaurant, waiting for my lunch, I happened to pick up a newspaper, and the
first lines I read ran thus:
VIENNA, 186—. TWO
MYSTERIOUS DEATHS.
Last evening, at
9.45, as was about to retire, two of the gentlemen-in-wait ing suddenly
exhibited great terror, as though they had seen a dreadful apparition.
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They screamed,
staggered, and ran about the room, holding up their hands as if toward off the
blows of an unseen weapon. They paid no attention to the eager questions of the
prince and suite, but presently fell writhing upon the floor, and expired in
great agony. Their bodies exhibited no appearance of apoplexy, nor any external
marks of wounds, hot, wonderful to relate, there were numerous dark spots and
long marks upon the skin, as though they were stabs and slashes made without
puncturing the cuticle. The autopsy revealed the fact that beneath each of
these mysterious discolourations there was a deposit of coagulated blood. The
greatest excitement prevails, and the faculty are unable to solve the mystery.
HADJI MORA.
(H. P. BLAVATSKY.)
FAKIRS AND TABLES
—————
[ From the New York
Sun, April 1st,1877.]
HOWEVER ignorant I
may be of the laws of the solar system, I am at all events so firm a believer
in heliocentric journalism that I sub scribe some remarks for The Sun upon my
“iconoclasm.”
No doubt it is a
great honour for an unpretending foreigner to be thus crucified between the two
greatest celebrities of your chivalrous country—the truly good Deacon Richard
Smith, of the blue gauze trousers, and the nightingale of the willow and the
cypress, G. Washington Childs, A.M. But I am not a Hindu Fakir, and therefore
can not say that I enjoy crucifixion, especially when unmerited. I do not even
fancy being swung round the “tall tower” with the steel hooks of your satire
metaphorically thrust through my back. I have not invited the reporters to a
show. I have not sought notoriety. I have only taken up a quiet corner in your
free country, and, as a woman who has travelled much, shall try to tell a
Western public the strange things I have seen among Eastern peoples. If I could
have enjoyed this privilege at home I should not be here. Being here, I shall,
as your old English proverb expresses it, “Tell the truth and shame the
devil.’’
The World reporter
who visited me wrote an article which mingled his souvenirs of my stuffed apes
and my canaries, my tiger-heads and palms, with aerial music and the flitting
doppelgangers of Adepts. It was a very interesting article and was certainly
intended to be very impartial. If I appear in it to deny the immutability of
natural law, and inferentially to affirm the possibility of miracle, it is
either due to my faulty English or to the carelessness of the reader.
There are no such
uncompromising believers in the immutability and universality of the laws of
Nature as students of Occultism. Let us then, with your permission, leave the
shade of the great Newton to rest in peace. It is not the principle of the law
of gravitation, or the neces-
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sity of a central
force acting toward the sun, that is denied, but the assumption that, behind
the law which draws bodies toward the earth’s centre, and which is our most
familiar example of gravitation, there is no other law, equally immutable, that
under certain conditions appears to counteract the former.
If but once in a
hundred years a table or a Fakir is seen to rise in the air, without a visible
mechanical cause, then that rising is a manifestation of a natural law of which
our scientists are as yet ignorant. Christians believe in miracles; Occultists
credit them even less than pious scientists, Sir David Brewster, for instance.
Show an Occultist an Unfamiliar phenomenon, and he will never affirm a priori
that it is either a trick or a miracle. he will search for the cause in the
reason of causes.
There was an
anecdote about Babinet, the astronomer, current in Paris in 1854, when the
great war was raging between the Academy and the “waltzing tables.” This
sceptical man of science had proclaimed in the Revue des Deux Mondes (January,
1854, p. 414) that the levitation of furniture without contact “was simply as
impossible as perpetual motion.” A few days later, during an experimental
seance, a table was levitated without contact in his presence. The result was
that Babinet went straight to a dentist to have a molar tooth extracted, which
the iconoclastic table in its aerial flight had seriously damaged. But it was
too late to recall his article.
I suppose nine men
out of ten, including editors, would maintain that the undulatory theory of
light is one of the most firmly establislied. And yet if you will turn to page
22 of The New Chemistry, by Prof. Josiah P. Cooke, Jr., of Harvard University
(New York, 1876), you will find him saying:
I cannot agree with
those who regard the wave-theory of light as an established principle of
science. . . . It requires a combination of qualities in the ether of space
which I find it difficult to believe are actually realized.
What is this that
iconoclasm?
Let us bear in mind
that Newton himself accepted the corpuscular theory of Pythagoras and his
predecessors, from whom he learned it, and that it was only en desespoir de
cause that later scientists accepted the wave theory of Descartes and Huyghens.
Kepler maintained the magnetic nature of the sun. Leibnitz ascribed the
planetary motions to agitations of an ether. Borelli anticipated Newton in his
discovery, although he failed to demonstrate it as triumphantly. Huyghens and
105————————————————————FAKIRS AND TABLES.
Boyle, Horrocks and
Hooke, Halley and Wren, all had ideas of a central force acting toward the sun,
and of the true principle of diminution of action of the force in the ratio of
the inverse square of the distance. The last word has not yet been spoken with
respect to gravitation; its limitations can never be known until the nature of
the sun is better understood.
They are just
beginning to recognize—see Prof. Balfour Stewart’s lecture at Manchester,
entitled, The Sun and the Earth, and Prof. A. M. Mayer’s lecture, The Earth a
Great Magnet—the intimate connection between the sun’s spots and the position
of the heavenly bodies. The interplanetary magnetic attractions are but just
being demonstrated. Until gravitation is understood to be simply magnetic
attraction and repulsion, and the part played by magnetism itself in the
endless correlations of forces in the ether of space—that “hypothetical
medium,” as Webster terms it—is better grasped, I maintain that it is neither
fair nor wise to deny the levitation of either Fakir or table. Bodies
oppositely electrified attract each other; similarly electrified they repulse
each other. Admit, therefore, that any body having weight, whether man or
inanimate object, can by any cause whatever, external or internal, be given the
same polarity as the spot on which it stands, and what is to prevent its
rising?
Before charging me
with falsehood when I affirm that I have seen both men and objects levitated,
you must first dispose of the abundant testimony of persons far better known
than my humble self. Mr. Crookes, Prof. Thury of Geneva, Louis Jacolliot, your
own Dr. Gray and Dr. Warner, and hundreds of others, have, first and last,
certified the fact of levitation.
I am surprised to
find how little even the editors of your erudite contemporary, The World, are
acquainted with Oriental metaphysics in general, and the trousers of the Hindu
Fakirs in particular. It was bad enough to make those holy mendicants of the
religion of Brahmâ graduate from the Buddhist Lamaseries of Tibet; but it is
unpardonable to make them wear baggy breeches in the exercise of their
religious functions.
This is as bad as
if a Hindu journalist had represented the Rev. Mr. Beecher entering his pulpit
in the scant costume of the Fakir—the dhoti, a cloth about the loins, “only
that and nothing more.” To account, therefore, for the oft-witnessed, open-air
levitations of tile Swamis and Gurus upon the theory of an iron frame concealed
beneath
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the clothing, is as
reasonable as Monsieur Babinet’s explanation of the table-tipping and tapping
as unconscious ventriloquism.
You may object to
the act of disembowelling, which I am compelled to affirm I have seen
performed. It is as you say, “remarkable,” but still not miraculous. Your
suggestion that Dr. Hammond should go and see it is a good one. Science would
be the gainer, and your humble correspondent be justified. Are you, however, in
a position to guarantee that he would furnish the world of sceptics with an
example of “veracious reporting,” if his observation should tend to overthrow
the pet theories of what we loosely call science?
Yours very
respectfully,
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
New York, March
28th, 1877.
A PROTEST
[From the New York
World April 6th, 1877.]
THERE was a time
when the geocentric theory was universally accepted by Christian nations, and
if you and I had then been carrying on our little philological and
psychological controversy, I should have bowed in humility to the dictum of an
authority so particularly at home in “the Mysticism of the Orient” But despite
all modifications of our astronomical system, I am no heliolater, though I do
subscribe for The Sun as well as The World. I feel no more bound to “cajole” or
conciliate the one than to suffer my feeble taper to be extinguished by the
draught made by the other in its diurnal rush through journalistic space.
As near as I can
judge from your writing there is this difference between us, that I write from
personal experience, and you upon information and belief My authorities are my
eyes and ears; yours, obsolete works of reference and the pernicious advice of a
spontaneously generated Lampsakano who learned his Mysticism from the detached
head of one Dummkopf. (See The Sun of March 25th My assertions may be
corroborated by any traveller, as they have been by the first authorities.
Elphinstone’s Kingdom of Kabul was published sixty-two years ago (1815), his
History of India thirty-six years ago. If the latter is the “standard
text-book” for British civil servants, it certainly is not so for native
Hindus, who perhaps know as much of their Philosophy and Religion as he. In
fact, a pretty wide reading of European “authorities” has given me a very poor
opinion of them, since no two agree. Sir William Jones himself, whose
shoe-strings few Orientalists are worthy to untie, made very grave mistakes,
which are now being corrected by Max Muller and others. He knew nothing of the
Vedas (see Max Muller’s Chips, vol. i. p. 183), and even expressed his belief
that Buddha was the same as the Teutonic deity Woden or Odin, and
Shâkya—another name of Buddha—the same as Shishak, a king of
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Egypt! Why,
therefore, could not Elphinstone make a mess of such subtle religious
distinctions as the innumerable sects of Hindu Mystics existing at present?
I am charged with
such ignorance that I imagine the Fakirs to be holy mendicants of the religion
of Brahma,” while you say they are not of the religion of Brahma at all, but
Mohammedans.
Does this precious
piece of information also come from Elphinstone? Then I give you a Roland for
your Oliver. I refer you to James Mill’s History of British India, vol. . i-283
(London: 1858). You say:
Those seeking
ready-made information can find our statements corroborated in any
encyclopædia.
Perhaps you refer
to Appleton’s? Very well. In the article on James Mill (vol. ii. p. 501), you
will find it saying that his India
Was the first
complete work on the subject. It was without a rival as a source of
information, and the justice of its views appeared in the subsequent measures
for the government of that country.
Now, Mill says that
the
Fakirs are a sect
of Brâhmanism; and that their penances are prescribed by the Laws of Manu.
Will your
Lamp-sickener, or whatever the English of that Greek may be, say that Manu was
a Mohammedan? And yet this would be no worse than your clothing the Fakirs, who
belong, as a rule, to the Brâhman pagodas, in yellow—the colour exclusively
worn by Buddhist lamas—and breeches—which form part of the costume of the
Mohammedan dervishes. Perhaps it is a natural mistake for your Lampsakanoi, who
rely upon Elphinstone for their facts and have not visited India, to confound
the Persian dervishes with the Hindu Fakirs. But “while the lamp holds out to
burn” read Louis Jacolliot’s Bible in India, just out, and learn from a man who
has passed twenty years in India, that your correspondent is neither a fool nor
a liar.
You charge me with
saying that a Fakir is a “worshipper of God.” I say I did not, as the
expression I used, “Fakir is a loose word,” well proves. It was a natural
mistake of the reporter, who did not employ stenography at our interview. I
said, “A Svamis one who devotes himself entirely to the service of God.”
All Svamis of the
Nir-Narrain sects are Fakirs, but all Fakirs are not necessarily Svamis. I
refer you to Coleman’s Mythology of the Hindus (p. 244.), and to The Asiatic
Journal. Coleman says precisely what Louis Jacolliot says, and both corroborate
me. You very oblig-
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ingly give me a
lesson in Hindustâni and Devanâgari, and teach me the etymology of “Guru,”
“Fakir,” “Gossain,” etc. For answer I refer you to John Shakespear’s large
Hindustani-English Dictionary. I may know less English than your Lampsakanoi,
but I do know of Hindustâni and Sanskrit more than can be learned on Park Row.
As I have said in
another communication, I did not invite the visits of reporters, nor seek the
notoriety which has suddenly been thrust upon me. If I reply to your criticisms—rhetorically
brilliant, but wholly unwarranted by the facts—it is because I value your good
opinion (without caring to cajole you), and at the same time cannot sit quiet
and be made to appear alike devoid of experience, knowledge and truthfulness.
Respectfully, but
still rebelliously, yours,
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
Monday, April 2nd,
1877.
THE FATE OF THE
OCCULTIST
[From the New York
World, May 6th, 1877.]
FROM the first
month of my arrival in America I began, for reasons mysterious, but perhaps
intelligible, to provoke hatred among those who pretended to be on good terms
with Me, if not the best of friends. Slanderous reports, vile insinuations and
innuendoes have rained about me. For more than two years I have kept silent,
although the least of the offences attributed to me were calculated to excite
the loathing of a person of My disposition. I have rid myself of a number of
these retailers of slander, but finding that I was actually suffering in the
estimation of friends whose good opinion I valued, I adopted a policy of
seclusion. For two years my world has been in my apartments, and for an average
of at least seventeen hours a day I have sat at my desk, with my books and
manuscripts as my companions. During this time many highly-valued
acquaintanceships have been formed with ladies and gentlemen who have sought me
out, without expecting me to return their visits.
I am an old woman,
and I feel the need of fresh air as much as any one, but my disgust for the
lying, slanderous world that one finds out side of “heathen” uncivilized
countries has been such that in seven months I believe I have been out but
three times. But no retreat is secure against the anonymous slanderer, who uses
the United States mail. Letters have been received by my trusted friends containing
the foulest aspersions upon myself. At various times I have been charged with:
(1) drunkenness; (2) forgery; (3) being a Russian spy; (4) with being an
anti-Russian spy; (5) with being no Russian at all, but a French adventuress;
(6) with having been in jail for theft; (7) with being the mistress of a Polish
count in Union Square; (8) with murdering seven husbands; (9) with bigamy; (10)
with being tile mistress of Col. Olcott, (11) also of an acrobat. Other things
might be mentioned, but decency forbids.
111———————————————————THE FATE OF’ THE OCCULTIST.
Since the arrival
of Wong Chin Foo the game has recomrnenced with double activity. We have
received anonymous letters and others, and newspaper slips, telling infamous
stories about him. On his part, he has received communications about us, one of
which I beg you to insert.
May 4th..
Does the disciple
of Buddha know the character of the people with whom he is at present residing?
The surroundings of a teacher of morality and religion should be moral. Are his
so? On the contrary, they are people of very doubtful reputation, as he can
ascertain by applying at the nearest police-station.
A FRIEND.
Of Wong Chin Foo’s
merits or shortcomings I know nothing, except that since his arrival his
conversation and behaviour have impressed me very favourably. He appears to be
a very earnest and enthusiastic student. However, he is a man, and is able to
take care of himself, although, like me, a foreigner. But I wish to say for
myself just this:
that I defy any person in America to come forward and prove a single charge
against my honour. I invite everyone possessed of such proof as will vindicate
them in a court of justice to publish it over their own signatures in the
newspapers. I will furnish to anyone a list of my several residences, and
contribute towards paying detectives to trace my every step. But I hereby give
notice that if any more unverifiable slanders can be traced to responsible
sources, I will invoke the protection of the law, which, it is the theory of your
national Constitution, was made for heathen as well as Christian denizens.
Respectfully,
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
New York, May 5th
1877
BUDDHISM IN
AMERICA.
[From the New York
Sun, May 13th, 1877.]
As, in your leading
article of May 6th, I am at one moment given credit for knowing something about
the religion of the Brâhmans and Buddhists, and, anon, of being a pretender of
the class of Jacolliot, and even his plagiarist, you will not wonder at my
again knocking at your doors for hospitality. This time I write over my own
signature, and am responsible, as I am not under other circumstances.
No wonder that the
“learned friend” at your elbow was reminded “of the utterances of one Louis
Jacolliot.”
The paragraphs in
the very able account of your representative’s interview, which relate to
“Adhima and Heva” and “Jezeus Christna,” were translated bodily, in his
presence, from the French edition of the Bible in India. They were read,
moreover, from the chapter entitled, “Bagaveda”—instead of “Bhagavat,” as you
put it, kindly correcting me. In so doing, in my humble opinion, he is right,
and the others are wrong, were it but for the reason that the Hindus themselves
so pronounce it—at least those of southern India, who speak either the Tamil
language or other dialects. Since we seek in vain among Sanskrit philologists
for any two who agree as to the spelling or meaning of important Hindu words,
and scarcely two as to the orthography of this very title, I respectfully
submit that neither “the French fraud” nor I are chargeable with any grave
offence in the premises.
For instance, Prof.
Whitney, your greatest American Orientalist, and one of the most eminent
living, spells it Bagavata; while his equally great opponent, Max Muller,
prefers Bagavadgitâ, and half a dozen others spell it in as many different
ways. Naturally each scholar, in rendering the Indian words into his own
vernacular, follows the national rule of pronunciation; and so, you will see,
that Prof. Muller in writing the syllable ad with an a does precisely what
Jacolliot does in spelling it ed, the French e having the same sound as the
113————————————————————BUDDHISM IN AMERICA.
English a before a
consonant. The same holds good with the name of the Hindu Saviour, which by
different authorities is spelt Krishna, Crisna, Khristna and Krisna;
everything, in short, but the right way, Christna, Perhaps you may say that
this is there hypothesis. But since every Indianist follows his own fancy in
his phonetic transcriptions, I do not know why I may not exercise my best
judgment, especially as I can give good reasons to support it.
You affirm that
there “never was a Hindu reformer named Jezeus Christna”; and, although I
confined my affirmation of his existence to the authority of Jacolliot at the
interview in question, I now assert on my own responsibility that there was,
and is, a personage of that name recognized and worshipped in India, and that
he is not Jesus Christ. Christna is a Brâhmanical deity, and, besides by the
Brâhmans, is recognized by several sects of the Jains. When Jacolliot says
“Jezeus Christna,” he only shows a little clumsiness in phonetic rendering, and
is nearer right than many of his critics. I have been at the festivals of
Janmotsar, in commemoration of the birth of Christna (which is their Christmas)
and have heard thousands of voices shouting: “Jas-i Christna!
Jasas-wi-Christna!” Translated they are: Jas-i, renowned, famous, and Jasas-wi,
celebrated, or divinely-renowned, powerful; and Christna, sacred. To avoid
being again contradicted, I refer the reader to any Hindustâni dictionary. All
the Brâhmans with whom I have talked on the subject spoke of Christna either as
Jas-i-Christna, or Jadar Christna, or again used the term, Yadur-pati, Lord of
Yâdavas, descendant of Yadu, one of the many titles of Christna in India. You
see, therefore, that it is but a question of spelling.
That Christna is
preferable to Krishna can be clearly shown under the rules laid down by Burnouf
and others upon the authority of the pandits. True, the initial of the name in
the Sanskrit is generally written k; but the Sanskrit k is strongly aspirated;
it is a guttural expiration, whose only representation is the Greek chi. In
English, therefore, the k instead of having the sound of k as in king would be
even more aspirated than the h in heaven. As in English the Greek word is
written Christos in preference to H’ristos, which would be nearer the mark, so
with the Hindu deity; his name under the same rule should be written Christna,
notwithstanding the possible unwelcomeness of the resemblance.
M. Taxtor de
Ravisi, a French Catholic Orientalist, and for ten years Governor of Karikal
(India), Jacolliot’s bitterest opponent in religious
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conclusions, fully
appreciates the situation. He would have the name spelt Krishna, because (1)
most of the statues of this God are black, and Krishna means black; and (2)
because the real name of Christna “was Kaneya, or Caneya.” Very well; but black
is Krishna. And if not only Jacolliot, but the Brâhnians themselves are not to
be allowed to know as much as their European critics, we will call in the aid
of Volney and other Orientalists, who show that the Hinds deity’s name is
formed from the radical Chris, meaning sacred, as Jacolliot shows it. Moreover,
for the Brâhmans to call their God the “black one would be unnatural and
absurd; while to style him the sacred, or pure essence, would be perfectly
appropriate to their notions. As to the name being Caneya, M. Taxtor de Ravisi,
in suggesting it, completes his own discomfiture. In escaping Scylla he falls
into Charybdis. I suppose no one will deny that the Sanskrit Kanyâ means
Virgin, for even in modern Hindustâni the Zodiacal sign of Virgo is called
Kaniya. Christna is styled Kâneya, as having been born of a Virgin. Begging
pardon, then, of the “learned friend” at your elbow, I reaffirm that if there
“never was a Hindu reformer named Jezeus Christna,” there was a Hindu Saviour,
who is worshipped unto this day as Jasi Christna, or, if it better accords with
his pious preferences, Jas-i-Kristna.
When the 84,000
volumes of the Dharma Khanda, or sacred books of the Buddhists, and the
thousands upon thousands of ollæ of Vaidic and Brâhmanical literature, now
known by their titles only to European scholars, or even a tithe of those
actually in their possession are translated, and comprehended, and agreed upon,
I will be happy to measure swords again with the solar pandit who has prompted
your severe reflections upon your humble subscriber
Though, in common
with various authorities, you stigmatize Jacolliot as a “French fraud,” I must
really do him the justice to say that his Catholic opponent, De Ravisi, said of
his Bible in India, in a report made at the request of the Sociéte Académique
de St. Quentin, that it is written
With good faith, of
absorbing interest, a learned work on known facts and with familiar arguments.
Ten years’
residence and studies in India were surely enough to fit him to give an
opinion. Unfortunately, however, in America it is but too easy to gain the
reputation of “a fraud” in much less time.
Respectfully,
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
RUSSIAN ATROCITIES
[From the New York
World, Aug. 13th, 1877.]
THE Sublime Porte
has had the sublime effrontery to ask the American people to execrate Russian
barbarity. It appeals for sympathy on behalf of helpless Turkish subjects at
the seat of war. With the memories of Bulgaria and Servia still fresh, this
seems the climax of daring hypocrisy. Barely a few months ago the reports of
Mr. Schuyler and other impartial observers of the atrocities of Bashi Bazouks
sent a thrill of horror through the world. Perpetrated under official sanction,
they aroused the indignation of all who had hearts to feel. In to-day’s paper I
read another account of pretended Russian cruelties, and your able and just
editorial comments upon the same. Permit one who is, perhaps, in a better
position than any other private person here to know what is taking place at the
front, to inform you of certain facts derived from authentic sources. Besides
receiving daily papers from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tiflis and Odessa, I have
an uncle, a cousin and a nephew on active service, and every steamer brings me
accounts of military improvements from eye-witnesses. My cousin and nephew have
taken part in all bloody engagements in Turkish Armenia up to the present time,
and were at the siege and capture of Ardahan. Newspapers may suppress, colour
or exaggerate facts; the private letters of brave soldiers to their families
rarely do.
Let me say, then,
that during this campaign the Turkish troops have been guilty of such fiendish
acts as to make me pray that my relatives may be killed rather than fall into
their hands. In a letter from the Danube, corroborated by several
correspondents of German and Austrian papers, the writer says:
On June 20th we
entered Kozlovetz, a Bulgarian town of about two hundred houses, which lies
three or four hours distant from Sistova. The sight which met our eyes made the
blood of every Russian soldier run cold, hardened though he is to such scenes.
On the principal street of the deserted town were placed in rows 140 beheaded
bodies of men, women, and children. The heads of these unfortu-
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nates were
tastefully piled in a pyramid in the middle of the street. Among the smoking
ruins of every house we found half-burned corpses, fearfully mutilated. We
caught a Turkish soldier, and to our questions he reluctantly confessed that
their chiefs had given orders not to leave a Christian place, however small,
before burning it and putting to death every man, woman, and child.
On the first day
that the Danube was crossed some foreign correspondents, among them that of the
Cologne Gazette, saw several bodies of Russian soldiers whose noses, ears,
hands, etc., had been cut off, while the genital organs had been stuffed into
the mouths of the corpses. Later, three bodies of Christian women were found—a
mother and two daughters—whose condition makes one almost drop the pen in
horror at the thought. Entirely nude, split open from below to the navel, their
heads cut off; the wrists of each corpse were tied together with strips of skin
and flesh flayed from the shoulder down; and the corpses of the three martyrs
were similarly bound to each other by long ribbons of flesh dissected from
their thighs.
A correspondent
writes from Sistova:
The Emperor
continues his daily visits to the hospitals and passes whole hours with the
wounded. A few (lays ago His Majesty, accompanied by Colonel Wellesley, the
British military attache, visited two unfortunate Bulgarians who died on the
night following. The skull of one of them was split open both laterally and
vertically, by two sword-cuts, an eye was torn out, and he was otherwise
mutilated. He explained, as well as he could, that several Turks seeing him,
demanded his money. As he had none, four of the party held him fast while the
fifth, brandishing his sword, and repeating all the time, “There, you Christian
dog, there’s your cross for you!” first split his skull from the forehead to
the back of the head, and then crosswise from ear to ear. While the Emperor was
listening to these details the greatest agony was depicted upon his face.
Taking Colonel Wellesley by the arm, and pointing to the Bulgarian, he said to
him in French: “See the work of your prolégés’” The British officer blushed and
was much confused.
The special
correspondent of the London Standard, describing his audience with the Grand
Duke Nicholas, Commander-in-Chief, on July 7th, says that the Grand Duke
communicated to him the most horrifying details about the cruelties committed
at Dobroudga. A Christian whose hands were tied with strips of his own skin cut
from the length of both his arms, and his tongue cut down from the root, was
laid at the feet of the Emperor and died there before the eyes of the Czar and
the British agent, the same Colonel Wellesley, who was in attendance. Turning
to the latter, His Majesty, with a stern expression, asked him to inform his
Government of what he had just seen for himself. Says the correspondent:
117————————————————————RUSSIAN ATROCITIES.
From the beginning
of the war I have heard of quite a number of such cases, but never witnessed
one myself: After the personal assurances given to me by the Grand Duke, it is
no longer possible to doubt that the Turkish officers are unable to control
their irregular troops.
The correspondent
of The Northern Messenger had gone the rounds of the hospitals to question the
wounded soldiers. Four of them, belonging to the Second Battalion of Minsk
Rifles, testified with the most solemn asseverations that they had seen the
Turks approach the wounded, rob them, mutilate their bodies in the most cruel
way, finish them with the bayonet. They themselves had avoided this fate only
by feigning death. It is a common thing for wounded Turks to allure Russian soldiers
and members of the sanitary corps to their assistance, and, as they bend over
them, to kill with a revolver or dagger those who would relieve them. A case
like this occurred under the eye of one of my correspondents in Turkish
Armenia, and was in all the Russian papers. A sergeant’s assistant (a sanitar)
was despatched under such circumstances; thereupon a soldier standing by killed
the assassin.
My cousin, Major
Alexander U. White—of the Sixteenth Nijegorodsk Dragoons, one of the most
gallant soldiers in the army of Loris Melikof and who has just been decorated
by the Grand Duke, under the authority of the Emperor, with a golden sword
inscribed, “For Bravery”—says that it is becoming positively dangerous to
relieve a wounded Turk. The people who robbed and killed the wounded in the
hospital at Ardahan upon the entry of the Russian troops were the Karapapahs,
Mussulmans and the supposed allies of the Turks. During the siege they
prudently awaited the issue from a safe distance. As soon as the Russians
conquered, the Karapapahs flew like so many tigers into the town, slaying the
wounded Turks, robbing the dead, pillaging houses, bringing the horses and
mules of the fleeing enemy into the Russian camp, and swearing allegiance to
the Commander-in-Chief. The Cossacks had all the trouble in the world to
prevent their new allies from continuing the greatest excesses. To charge,
therefore, upon the Russians the atrocities of these cowardly jackals (a
nomadic tribe of brigands) is an impudent lie of Mukhtar Pasha, whose
falsifications have become so notorious that some Parisian papers have
nicknamed him “Blaguer Pasha.” His despatches are only matched in mendacity by
those of the Spanish commanders in Cuba.
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The stupidity of
charging such excesses upon the Russian army becomes apparent when we remember
that the policy of the Government from the first has been to pay liberally for
supplies, and win the goodwill of the people of the invaded provinces by
kindness. So marked and successful has this policy proved in General Loris
Melikof’s field of operations, that the anti-Russian papers of England, Austria
and other countries have denounced it as Russian “craft.” With the Danubian
forces is the Emperor in person, liberator of millions of serfs, and the
mildest and justest sovereign who has ever occupied the throne of any country.
As he won the love of his whole people and the adoration of his army by his
sense of justice and benevolent regard, I ask you if he is likely to
countenance any cruel excesses? While the cowardly Abdul-Hamid hides in the
alcoves of his harem, and of the imperial princes none have taken the field,
the Czar follows his army, step by step, submits to comparatively severe and
unaccustomed hardships, and exposes his health and life against all the
rernonstrances and prayers of Prince Gortschakof. His four sons are all in
active service, and the son of the Grand Duke Nicholas was decorated at the
crossing of the Danube for personal courage, having exposed his life for hours
under a shower of bullets.
I only ask the
American people to do justice to their long-tried and unfaltering friends, the
Russians. However politicians may have planned, the Russian people have entered
this war as a holy crusade to rescue millions of helpless Slavonians—their
brothers—of the Danube from Turkish cruelty. The people have dragged the
Government to the field. Russia is surrounded by false neutrals, who but watch
the opportunity to fly at her throat, and, shameful fact, the blessing of the
Pope rests upon the Moslem standards, and his curse against his fellow
Christians has been read in all the Catholic churches. For my part, I care a
great deal less even than my countrymen for his blessings or curses, for
besides other reasons I regard this war not as one of Christian against Moslem,
but as one of humanity and civilization against barbarism. This is the view of
the Catholic Czecks of Bohemia. So great was their indignation at what they
rightly considered the dishonour of the Roman Catholic Church that on July
4th—anniversary of the martyrdom of John Huss—notwithstanding the efforts of
the police, they repaired in multitudes to the heights of Smichovo, Beraun and
other hills around Prague, and burnt at the stake the portraits and wax
effigies of the Pope and the Prince Archbishop
119————————————————————RUSSIAN ATROCITIES.
Schwartzenberg, and
the papal discourse against the Russian Emperor and army, singing the while
Slavonian national songs, and shouting, “Down with the Pope! Death to the
Ultramontanes! Hurrah for the Czar-Liberator! “—all of which shows that there
are good Catholics among the Slavonians, at least, who rightly hold in higher
estimation the principles of national solidarity than foolish dogmas of the
Vatican, even though backed by pretended infallibility.
Respectfully,
August 9th H. P.
BLAVATSKY.
WASHING THE
DISCIPLES’ FEET
[From the New York
Sun, August 16th, 1877.]
AT the ceremony of
“feet-washing” which occurred at Limwood Camp-ground, August 8th, and is
described in The Sun of to-day, Elder Jones, of Mechanicsburg, Pa., professed
to give the history of this ancient custom. The report says:
He claimed that its
origin did not date anterior to the coming of Christ; neither was the matter of
cleanliness to be thought of in this connection. Its observance was due
exclusively to the fact that it was a scriptural injunction; it originated in
Christ’s example, and it devolved upon his hearers to follow this example.
Numerous scriptural passages were quoted in support of this argument.
The reverend
gentleman is in error. The ceremony was first performed by the Hindu Christna
(or Krishna) who washed the feet of his Brâhmans as an example of humility,
many thousand years anterior to the Christian era. Chapter and verse will be
given, if required, from the Brâhmanical books. Meanwhile, the reader is
referred to the Rev. John P. Lundy’s Monumental christianity, p. 154.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
TRICKERY OR MAGIC?
—————
[From The
Religio-Philosophical Journal, Dec. 22nd, 1877.]
A wise saying is
that which affirms that he who seeks to prove too much, in the end proves
nothing. Prof. W. B. Carpenter, F.R.S. (and otherwise alphabetically adorned),
furnishes a conspicuous example in his strife with men better than himself. His
assaults accumulate bitterness with every new periodical he makes his organ,
and in proportion with the increase of his abuse his arguments lose force and
cogency. And, forsooth, he nevertheless lectures his antagonists for their lack
of “calm discussion,” as though he were not the very type of controversial
nitro-glycerine! Rushing at them with his proofs, which are “incontrovertible”
only in his own estimation, he commits himself more than once. By one of such
committals I mean to profit to-day, by citing some-curious experiences of my
own.
My object in
writing the present is far from that of taking any part in this onslaught upon
reputations. Messrs. Wallace and Crookes are well able to take care of
themselves. Each has contributed in his own specialty towards real progress in
useful knowledge more than Dr. Carpenter in his. Both have been honoured for
valuable original researches and discoveries, while their accuser has been
often charged with being no better than a very clever compiler of other men’s
ideas. After reading the able rejoinders of the “defendants” and the scathing
review of the mace-swinging Prof. Buchanan, every one, except his friends, the
psychophobists, can see that Dr. Carpenter is completely floored. He is as dead
as the traditional door nail.
In the December
supplement of The Popular Science Monthly, I find, (p.116) the interesting
admission that a poor Hindu juggler can perform a feat that quite takes the
great Professor’ breath away! In comparison, the mediumistic phenomena of Miss
Nichol (Mrs. Guppy) are of no account. Says Dr. Carpenter:
The celebrated
“tree-trick,” which most people who have been long in India have seen, as
described by several of our most distinguished civilians and scientific
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-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
A MODERN PANARION.
officers, is simply
the greatest marvel I ever heard of. That a mango-tree should first shoot up to
a height of six inches, from a grass-plot to which the conjurers had no
previous access, beneath an inverted cylindrical basket, whose emptiness has
been previously demonstrated, and that this tree should appear to grow in the
course of half an hour from six inches to six feet, under a succession of
taller and yet taller baskets, beats Miss Nichol.
Well, I should
think it did. At any rate, it beats anything that any F.R.S. can show by
daylight or dark, in the Royal Institution or else where. Would not one think
that such a phenomenon so attested, and occurring under circumstances that
preclude trickery, would provoke scientific investigation? If not, what would?
But observe the knot hole through which an F.R.S. can creep out. “Does Mr.
Wallace,” ironically asks the Professor,
Attribute this to a
spiritual agency? or, like the world in general [of course meaning the world
that science created and Carpenter energizes] and the performers of the
tree-trick in particular, does he regard it as a piece of clever jugglery?
Leaving Mr.
Wallace, if he survives this Jovian thunder-bolt, to answer for himself, I have
to say for the “performers” that they would respond with an emphatic “No” to
both interrogatories. The Hindu jugglers neither claim for their performance a
“spiritual agency,” nor admit it to be a “trick of clever jugglery.” The ground
they take is that the tricks are produced by certain powers inherent in man him
self, which may he used for a good or bad purpose. And the ground that I,
humbly following after those whose opinion is based on really exact
psychological experiments and knowledge, take, is, that neither Dr. Carpenter
nor his body-guard of scientists, though their titles stream after their names
like the tail after a kite, have as yet the slightest conception of these
powers. To acquire even a superficial knowledge of them, they must change their
scientific and philosophical methods. Following after Wallace and Crookes, they
must begin with the A B C of Spiritualism, which—meaning to be very
scornful—Dr. Carpenter terms “the centre of enlightenment and progress.” They
must take their lessons not alone from the true but as well from spurious
phenomena, from what his (Carpenter’s) chief authority, the “arch-priest of the
new religion,” properly classifies as “Delusions, Absurdities and Trickeries.”
After wading through all this, as every intelligent investigator has had to do,
he may get some glimpses of truth. It is as useful to learn what the phenomena
are not, as to find out what they are.
123————————————————————TRICKERY OR MAGIC?
Dr. Carpenter has
two patent keys warranted to unlock every secret door of the mediumistic
cabinet. They are labelled “expectancy” and “prepossession.” Most scientists
have some pick-lock like this. But to the “tree-trick” they scarcely apply; for
neither his “distinguished civilians” nor “scientific officers” could have
expected to see a stark- naked Hindu on a strange glass-plot, in full daylight,
make a mango-tree grow six feet from the seed in half an hour, their
“prepossessions” would be all against it. It cannot be a “spiritual agency”; it
must be “jugglery.” Now Maskelyne and Cooke, two clever English jugglers, have
been keeping the mouths and eyes of all London wide open with their exposures
of Spiritualism. They are admired by all the scientists, and at Slade’s trial
figured as expert witnesses for the prosecution. They are at Dr. Carpenter’s
elbow. Why does he not call them to explain this clever jugglery, and make
Messrs. Wallace and Crookes blush with shame at their own idiocy? All the
tricks of the trade are familiar to them; where can science find better allies?
But we must insist upon identical conditions. The “Tree-Trick” must not be per
formed by gas-light on the platform of any Egyptian Hall, nor with the
performers in full evening dress. It must be in broad daylight, on a strange
grass-plot to which the conjurers had no previous access. There must he no
machinery, no confederates, white cravats and swallow-tail coats must be laid
aside, and the English champions appear in the primitive apparel of Adam and
Eve—a tight-fitting “coat of skin,” and with the single addition of a dhoti, or
a breech cloth seven inches wide. The Hindus do all this, and we only ask fair
play. If they raise a mango-sapling under these circumstances, Dr. Carpenter
will he at perfect liberty to beat therewith the last remnant of brains out of
the head of any “crazy Spiritualist” he may encounter. But until then, the less
he says about Hindus jugglery the better for his scientific reputation.
It is not to be
denied that in India, China and elsewhere in the East there are veritable
jugglers who exhibit tricks. Equally true is it that some of these performances
surpass any with which Western people are acquainted. But these are neither
Fakirs nor the performers of the “mango-tree” marvel, as described by Dr.
Carpenter. Even this is sometimes imitated both by Indian and European adepts
in sleight of-hand, but under totally different conditions. Modestly following
in the rear of the “distinguished civilians” and “scientific officers,” I will
now narrate something which I have seen with my own eyes.
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-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
A MODERN PANARION.
While at Cawnpur,
en route to Benares, the holy city, a lady, my travelling companion, was robbed
of the entire contents of a small trunk. Jewelry, dresses, and even her
note-book, containing a diary which she had been carefully compiling for over
three months, had mysteriously disappeared, without the lock of the valise
having been disturbed. Several hours, perhaps a night and a day had passed
since the robbery, as we had started at daybreak to explore some neighbouring
ruins, still freshly allied with the Nana Sahib’s reprisals on the English. My
companion’s first thought was to call upon the local police; mine for the help
of some native gossain (a holy man supposed to be informed of everything) or at
least a jadugar, or conjurer. But the ideas of civilization prevailed, and a
whole week was wasted in fruitless visits to the chabutara (police-house), and
interviews with the kotwal, its chief. In despair, my expedient was at last
resorted to, and a gossain procured. We occupied a small bungalow at the
extreme end of one of the suburbs, on the right bank of the Ganges, and from
the verandah a full view of the river was had, which at that place was very
narrow.
Our experiment was
made on that verandah in the presence of the family of the landlord—a
half-caste Portuguese from the south—my friend and myself and two
freshly-imported Frenchmen, who laughed outrageously at our superstition. Time,
three o’clock in the afternoon. The heat was suffocating, but notwithstanding,
the holy man—a coffee coloured, living skeleton—demanded that the motion of the
pankah (hanging fan worked by a cord) should be stopped. He gave no reason, but
it was because the agitation of the air interferes with all delicate magnetic
experiments. We had all heard of the “rolling pot” as an agency for the
detection of theft in India—a common iron pot being made, under the influence
of a Hindu conjurer, to roll of its own impulse, without any hands touching it,
to the very spot where the stolen goods are concealed. The gossain proceeded
otherwise. He first of all demanded some article that had been latest in
contact with the contents of the valise; a pair of gloves was handed him. He
pressed them between his thin palms, and, rolling them over and over again,
then dropped them on the floor and proceeded to turn himself slowly around,
with arms outstretched and fingers expanded, as though he were seeking the
direction in which the property lay. Suddenly he stopped with a jerk, sank
gradually to the floor and remained motionless, sitting cross-legged and with
his arms still outstretched in the
125————————————————————TRICKERY OR MAGIC?
same direction, as
though plunged in a cataleptic trance. This lasted for over an hour, which in
that suffocating atmosphere was to us one long torture. Suddenly the landlord
sprang from his seat to the balustrade, and began intently looking towards the
river, in which direction our eyes also turned. Coming from whence, or how, we
could not tell, but out there, over the water, and near its surface, was a dark
object approaching. What it was we could not make out; but the mass seemed
impelled by some interior force to revolve, at first slowly, but then faster
and faster as it drew near. It was as though supported on an invisible
pavement, and its course was in a direct line as the bee flies. It reached the
bank, disappeared again among the high vegetation, and anon, rebounding with
force as it leaped over the low garden wall, flew rather than rolled on to the
verandah and dropped with a heavy thud under the extended palms of the gossain.
A violent, convulsive tremor shook the frame of the old man, as with a deep
sigh he opened his half-closed eyes. All were astonished, but the French men
stared at the bundle with an expression of idiotic terror in their eyes. Rising
from the ground the holy man opened the tarred canvas envelope, and within were
found all the stolen articles down to the least thing. Without a word or
waiting for thanks, he salaamed low to the company and disappeared through the
doorway, before we recovered from our surprise. We had to run after him a long
way before we could press upon him a dozen rupees, which blessings he received
in his wooden bowl.
This may appear a
very surprising and incredible story to Europeans and Americans who have never
been in India. But we have Dr. Carpenter’s authority for it, that even his
“distinguished civilian” friends and “scientific officers,” who are as little
likely to sniff out anything mystical there with their aristocratic noses as
Dr. Carpenter to see it with his telescopic, microscopic, double-magnifying
scientific eyes in England, have witnessed the mango “tree-trick,” which is
still more wonderful. If the latter is “clever jugglery” the other must be, too.
Will the white-cravated and swallow-tailed gentlemen of the Egyptian Hall,
please show the Royal Society how either is done?
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
THE JEWS IN RUSSIA
[From the New York
World, Sept. 25th, 1877.]
IT is to be
regretted that your incandescent contemporary, The Sun, should have no better
sources of information. It stated on Saturday last that
In Russia the
persecution of the Israelites is continued, with nearly all its ancient
cruelty. They are not permitted to reside in many of the greatest cities. Kief
and Novgorod as well as Moscow are forbidden to them, and even in the rural
districts they are burdened with multiform exactions.
This is the reverse
of correct, as is also the further statement that
They have been
robbed and oppressed in Bulgaria by the Russians.
The murdering and
plundering at the seat of war, it is now pretty well settled, has been done by
the Turks exclusively, and, notwithstanding that the English and other
Turkophile organs have diligently cast the blame upon the Russians, the plot f
the Ottoman Government, thanks to the honest old German Emperor, is now
discovered. The Turks are convicted of systematic lying, and nearly every
country, including England herself, has sent a protest to the Sublime Porte
against atrocities. As to the condition of Israelites in Russia, it has
immensely improved since the ascension of Alexander II to the throne of his
father. For more than ten years they have been placed on jury duty, admitted to
the bar, and otherwise accorded civil rights and privileges. If social
disabilities still linger, we are scarcely the ones to chide, in view of our
Saratoga and Long Branch customs, and the recent little unpleasantness between
Mr. Hilton and the descendants of the “chosen people.”
If your neighbour
would take the trouble to ask any traveller or Russian Israelite now in
America, it would learn that Kief, as well as other “greatest cities” are full
of Jews; that in fact there are more Jews than Gentiles in the first-named of
these cities. Pretty much all trade is in their hands, and they furnish even
all the olive-oil that is perma-
127————————————————————THE JEWS IN RUSSIA.
nently burnt at the
rakka (shrines) of the 700 orthodox saints whose beatified mummies fill up the
catacombs of Kief, and the wax for the candles on all the altars. It is again
the Jews who keep the dram-shops, or Kabak, where the faithful congregate after
service to give a last fillip to their devotional ardour. It is barely four
months since the chief Rabbi of Moscow published in the official Viedomosty an
earnest address to his co-religionists throughout the empire to remind them
that they were Russians by nativity, and called upon them to display their
patriotism in subscriptions for the wounded, prayers in the synagogues for the
success of the Russian arms, and in all other practical ways. In 1870, during
the emeut in Odessa, which was caused by some Jewish children throwing dirt
into the church on Easter night, and which lasted more than a week, the Russian
soldiers shot and bayoneted twelve Christian Russians and not a single Jew;
while—and I speak as an eye-witness—over two hundred rioters were publicly
whipped by order of the Governor-General, Kotzebue, of whom none were
Israelites. That there is a hatred between them and the more fanatical
Christians is true, but the Russian Government can be no more blamed for this
than the British and American Governments because Orangemen and Catholics
mutually hate, beat, and occasionally kill each other.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
New York, Sept.
24th 1877.
H. P. BLAVATSKY’S
MASONIC
PATENT
[From The Franklin
Register, Feb. 8th, 1878.]
[ EDITORIAL.— are
gratified to be able to present to the readers of The Register this week, the
following highly-characteristic letter, prepared expressly for our paper by
Madame Helen P. Blavatsky, the authoress of Isis Unveiled. In this letter the
lady defends the validity of her diploma as a Mason, reference to which was had
in our issue of January 8th. The immediate cause of the letter from Madame B.
was the multiplication of attacks upon her claim to that distinguished honour
both before and since the publication mentioned.
The field is open
for a rejoinder; and we trust that a champion will appear, to defend that which
she so vigorously and bravely assails.
That the subject-matter
in controversy may be seen at a glance by those who may not be regular readers
of our paper, we again print the text of her diploma.
To the Glory of the
Sublime Architect of the Universe.
Ancient and
Primitive Rite of Masonry, derived through the Charter of the
Sovereign Sanctuary
of America, from the Grand Council of the
Grand Lodge of
France.
Salutation on all
points of the Triangle.
Respect to the
Order.
Peace, Tolerance,
Truth.
To all Illustrious
and Enlightened Masons throughout the world—union, prosperity,
friendship,
fraternity.
We, the The
Sovereign Grand Master General, and we, the Sovereign Grand Conservators,
thirty-third and last degree of the Sovereign Sanctuary for England, Wales,
etc., decorated with the Grand Star of Sirius, etc., Grand Commanders of the
Three Legions of the Knights of Masonry, by virtue of the high authority with
which we are invested, have declared and proclaimed, and by these presents do
declare and proclaim our illustrious and enlightened Brother, H. P. Blavatsky,
to be an Apprentice, Companion, Perfect Mistress, Sublime Elect
129———————————————H. P. BLAVATSKY’S MASONIC PATENT.
Scotch Lady, Grand
Elect, Chevaliere de Rose Croix, Adonaite Mistress, Perfect Venerable Mistress,
and a crowned Princess of Rite of Adoption.
Given under our
hands and the seals of the Sovereign Sanctuary for England and Wales, sitting
in the Valley of London, this 24th day of November, 1877, year of true light
ooo,ooo,ooo.
JOHN YARKER,
thirty-third degree, Sovereign Grand Master.
M. CASPARI,
thirty-third degree, Grand chancellor.
A. D. LOEWENSRARK,
thirty-third degree, Grand Secretary.]
—————
To the Editor of “
The Frankin Register.”
I am obliged to
correct Certain errors in your highly complimentary editorial in The Register
of January 18th. You say that I have taken “the regular degrees in Masonic
Lodges” and attained high dignity in the order, and further add:
Upon Madame B. has
recently been conferred the diploma of the thirty-third Masonic Degree, from
the oldest Masonic body in the world.
If you will kindly
refer to my Isis Unveiled (vol. ii. p. 394), YOU will find me saying:
We are neither
under promise, obligation, nor oath, and therefore violate no
confidence,—reference being made to Western Masonry, to the criticism of which
the chapter is devoted; and full assurance is given that I have never taken
“the regular degrees” in any Western Masonic Lodge. Of course, therefore,
having taken no such degrees, I am not a thirty-third degree Mason. In a
private note, also in your most recent editorial, you state that you find
yourself taken to task by various Masons, among them one who has taken
thirty-three degrees—which include the “Ineffable”—for what you said about me.
My Masonic experience—if you will so term membership in several Eastern Masonic
Fraternities and Esoteric Brotherhoods—is confined to the Orient. But,
nevertheless, this neither prevents my knowing, in common with all Eastern
“Masons,” everything connected with Western Masonry (including the numberless
humbugs that have been imposed upon the Craft during the last half century)
nor, since the receipt of the diploma from the “Sovereign Grand Master,” of
which you publish the text, my being entitled to call myself a Mason. Claiming
nothing, therefore, in Western Masonry but what is expressed in the above
diploma, you will perceive that your Masonic mentors must transfer their
quarrel to John Yarker, jun., P.M., P.Mk., M.Pz., P.G.C., and M.W.S.K.T. and
R.C., K.T., P.K.H., and K.A.R.S., P.M.W., P.S.G.C. and P.S.,
130———————————————————
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
A MODERN PANARION.
Dai AD., A. and P.
Rite, to the man, in short, who is recognized in England and Wales and the
whole world, as a member of the Masonic Archæological Institute; as Honorary
Fellow of the London Literary Union; of Lodge No. 227, Dublin; of the Bristol
College of Rosicrucians; who is Past Grand Mareschal of the Temple; member of
the Royal Grand Council of the Antient Rites time immemorial; keeper of the
Ancient Royal Secrets, Grand Commander of Mizraim, Ark Mariners, Red Cross
Constantine, Babylon and Palestine, R. Grand Superintendent for Lancashire,
Sovereign Grand Conservator of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry,
thirty-third and last degree, etc., from whom the Patent issued.
Your “Ineffable”
friend must have cultivated his spiritual perceptions to small purpose in the
investigation and contemplation of the “Ineffable Name,” from the fourth to the
fourteenth degrees of that gilded humbug, the A. and A. Rite, if he could say
that there is,
No authority for a
derivation through the charter of the Sovereign Sanctuary of America, to issue
this patent.
He lives in a
veritable Crystal Palace of Masonic glass, and must look out for falling
stones. Brother Yarker says, in his Notes on the
Modern
Rosicrucianism and the various Rites and Degrees (p. 149), that the Grand
Orient, derived from the Craft Grand Lodge of England, in 1725, works and recognizes
the following Rites, appointing representatives with chapters in America and
elsewhere: 1. French Rite; 2. Rite of Heredom; 3. A. and A. Rite; 4. Rite of
Kilwinning; 5. Philosophical Rite; 6. Rite du Régime rectif; 7. Rite of
Memphis; 8. Rite of Mizraim. All under a grand college of Rites.
The A. and P. Rite
was originally chartered in America, November 9th 1856, with David McChellan as
G. M. [ Kenneth Mackenzie’s Royal Masonic Cyclopædia p. 43], and in 1862
submitted entirely to the Grand Orient of France. In 1862, the Grand Orient
vised and sealed the American Patent of Seymour as G. M., and mutual
representatives were appointed, down to 1866, when the relations of the G. 0.
with America were ruptured, and the American Sovereign Sanctuary took up its
position, “in the bosom” of the Ancient Cernear Council, of the “Scottish Rite”
of thirty-three degrees, as John Yarker says, in the above quoted work. In 1872
a Sovereign Sanctuary of the Rite was established in England, by the American
Grand Body, with John Yarker as Grand Master. Down to the present time the
legality of Seymour’s Sanctuary has never been disputed by the Grand Orient of
France, and reference to it is found in Marconis de Nègre’s books.
131——————————————————H. P. BLAVATSKY’S MASONIC PATENT.
It sounds very
grand, no doubt, to be a thirty-second degreeist, and an “Ineffable” one into
the bargain; but read what Robert B. Folger, M.D., Past Master thirty-third,
says himself in his Ancient’ and Accepted Scottish Rite in Thirty-three
Degrees:
With reference to
the other degrees, . . . (with the exception of the thirty third, which was
manufactured in Charleston) they were all in the possession of the G. 0.
before, but were termed ... obsolete.
And further: he
asks:
Who were the
persons that formed this Supreme Council of the thirty-third degree? And where
did they get that degree, or the power to confer it?
Their patents have
never been produced, nor has any evidence ever yet been given that they came in
possession of the thirty-third degree in a regular and lawful manner (pp. 92,
95, 96).
That an American
Rite, thus spuriously organized, declines to acknowledge the Patent of an
English Sovereign Sanctuary, duly recognized by the Grand Orient of France,
does not at all invalidate my claim to Masonic honours. As well might
Protestants refuse to call the Dominicans Christians, because they—the
Protestants—broke away from the Catholic Church and set up for themselves, as
for A. and A. Masons of America to deny the validity of a Patent from an
English A. and P. Rite body. Though I have nothing to do with American modern
Masonry, and do not expect to have, yet, feeling highly honoured by the
distinction conferred upon me by Brother Yarker, I mean to stand for my
chartered rights, and to recognize no other authority than that of the high
Masons of England, who have been pleased to send me this unsolicited and
unexpected testimonial of their approval of my humble labours.
Of a piece with the
above is the ignorant rudeness of certain critics who pronounce Cagliostro an
“impostor” and his desire of engrafting Eastern Philosophy upon Western Masonry
“charlatanism.” Without such a union Western Masonry is a corpse without a
soul. As Yarker observes, in his Notes on the Mysteries of Antiquity:
As the Masonic
fraternity is now governed, the Craft is becoming a storehouse of paltry
Masonic emperors and other charlatans, who swindle their brothers, and feather
their nests out of the aristocratic pretensions which they have tacked on to
our institutions—ad captanduin vulgus.
Respectfully,
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
VIEWS OF THE
THEOSOPHISTS
[From the London
Spiritualist.]
PERMIT a humble
Theosophist to appear for the first time in your columns, to say a few words in
defence of our beliefs. I see in your issue of December 21St ultimo, one of
your correspondents, Mr. J. Croucher, makes the following very bold assertions:
Had the
Theosophists thoroughly comprehended the nature of the soul and spirit, and its
relation to the body, they would have known that if the soul once leaves, it
leaves for ever.
This is so
ambiguous that, unless he uses the term “soul” to designate only the vital
principle, I can only suppose that he falls into the common error of calling
the astral body, spirit, and the immortal essence, “soul.” We Theosophists, as
Col. Olcott has told you, do vice versa.
Besides the
unwarranted imputation on us of ignorance, Mr. Croucher has an idea (peculiar
to himself) that the problem which has heretofore taxed the powers of the
metaphysicians in all ages has been solved in our own. It is hardly to be
supposed that Theosophists or any others “thoroughly” comprehend the nature of
the soul and spirit, and their relation to the body. Such an achievement is for
Omniscience, and we Theosophists treading the path worn by the footsteps of the
old Sages in the moving sands of exoteric philosophy, can only hope to
approximate to the absolute truth. It is really more than doubtful whether Mr.
Croucher can do better, even though an “inspirational medium,’’ and experienced
‘‘through constant sittings with one of the best trance mediums” in your
country. I may well leave to time and Spiritual Philosophy to entirely
vindicate us in the far here after. When any Œdipus of this or the next century
shall have solved this eternal enigma of the Sphinx—man, every modern dogma,
not excepting some pets of the Spiritualists, will be swept away, as the Theban
monster, according to the legend, leaped from his promontory into the sea, and
was seen no more.
133———————————————————VIEWS OF THE THEOSOPHISTS.
As early as
February 8th, 1876, your learned correspondent, “M.A. Oxon.,” took occasion, in
an article entitled “Soul and Spirit,” to point out the frequent confusion of
the terms by other writers. As things are no better now, I will take the
opportunity to show how surely Mr. Croucher, and many other Spiritualists of
whom he may be taken as the spokesman, misapprehend Col. Olcott’s meaning and
the views of the New York Theosophists. Col. Olcott neither affirmed nor dreamed
of implying that the immortal spirit leaves the body to produce the medial
displays. And yet Mr. Croucher evidently thinks he did, for the word “spirit”
to him means the inner, astral man, or double. Here is what Col. Olcott did
say, double commas and all:
That mediumistic
physical phenomena are not produced by pure spirits, but by “souls” embodied or
disembodied, and usually with the help of Elementals.
Any intelligent
reader must perceive that, in placing the word “souls” in quotation marks, the
writer indicated that he was using it in a sense not his own. As a Theosophist,
he would more properly and philosophically have said for himself “astral
spirits” or “astral men,” or doubles. Hence, the criticism is wholly without
even a foundation of plausibility. I wonder that a man could be found who, on
so frail a basis, would have attempted so sweeping a denunciation. As it is,
our President only propounded the trine of man, like the ancient and Oriental
Philosophers and their worthy imitator Paul, who held that the physical
corporeity, the flesh and blood, was permeated and so kept alive by the Psuche,
the soul or astral body. This doctrine, that man is trine—spirit or Nous, soul
and body—was taught by the Apostle of the Gentiles more broadly and clearly
than it has been by any of his Christian successors (see i Thess., V. 23). But
having evidently forgotten or neglected to “thoroughly” study the
transcendental opinions of the ancient Philosophers and the Christian Apostle
upon the subject, Mr. Croucher views the soul (Psuche) as spirit (Nous) and
vice versa.
The Buddhists, who
separate the three entities in man (though viewing them as one when on the path
to Nirvana), yet divide the soul into several parts, and have names for each of
these and their functions. Thus confusion is unknown among them. The old Greeks
did likewise, holding that Psuche was bios, or physical life, and it was
thumos, or passional nature, the animals being accorded but the lower faculty
of the soul instinct. The soul or Psuche is itself a combination, consensus or
unity of the bios, or physical vitality, the epithumia or concupiscible nature,
and the phrén, mens or mind. Perhaps the animus
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ought to be
included. It is constituted of ethereal substance, which pervades the whole
universe, and is derived wholly from the soul of the world—Anima Mundi or the
Buddhist Svabhâvat—which is not spirit; though intangible and impalpable, it is
yet, by comparison with spirit or pure abstraction, objective matter. By its
complex nature, the soul may descend and ally itself so closely to the
corporeal nature as to exclude a higher life from exerting any moral influence
upon it. On the other hand, it can so closely attach itself to the Nous or
spirit, as to share its potency, in which case its vehicle, physical man, will
appear as a God even during his terrestrial life. Unless such union of soul and
spirit does occur, either during this life or after physical death, the
individual man is not immortal as an entity. The Psuche is sooner or later
disintegrated. Though the man may have gained “the whole world,” he has lost
his “soul.” Paul, when teaching the anastasis, or continuation of individual
spiritual life after death, set forth that there was a physical body which was
raised in incorruptible substance.
The spiritual body
is most assuredly not one of the bodies, or visible or tangible larvre, which
form in circle-rooms, and are so improperly termed “materialized spirits.” When
once the metanoia,, the full developing of spiritual life, has lifted the
spiritual body out of the psychical (the disembodied, corruptible, astral man,
what Col. Olcott calls “soul”), it becomes, in strict ratio with its progress,
more and more an abstraction for the corporeal senses. It can influence,
inspire, and even communicate with men subjectively; it can make itself felt,
and even, in those rare instances when the clairvoyant is perfectly pure and
perfectly lucid, be seen by the inner eye (which is the eye of the purified
Psuche—soul). But how can it ever manifest objectively?
It will be seen,
then, that to apply the term “spirit” to the materialized eldola of your
“form-manifestations” is grossly improper, and something ought to be done to
change the practice, since scholars have begun to discuss the subject. At best,
when not what the Greeks termed phantasma, they are but phasma or apparitions.
In scholars,
speculators, and especially in our modern savants, the psychical principle is
more or less pervaded by the corporeal, and “the things of the spirit are
foolishness and impossible to be known” (i Cor., ii. 14). Plato was then right,
in his way, in despising land measuring, geometry and arithmetic, for all these
overlooked all high ideas. Plutarch taught that at death Proserpine separated
the body
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and the soul
entirely, after which the latter became a free and independent demon (daimon).
Afterward the good underwent a second dissolution: Demeter divided the Psuche
from the Nous or Pneuma. The former was dissolved after a time into ethereal
particles—hence the inevitable dissolution and subsequent annihilation of the
man who at death is purely psychical; the latter, the Nous, ascended to its
higher divine power and became gradually a pure, divine spirit. Kapila, in
common with all Eastern Philosophers, despised the purely psychical nature. It
is this agglomeration of the grosser particles of the soul, the mesmeric
exhalations of human nature imbued with all its terrestrial desires and
propensities, its vices, imperfections and weakness, forming the astral body,
which can become objective under certain circumstances, which the Buddhists
call the Skandhas (the groups), and Col. Olcott has for convenience termed the
“soul.” The Buddhists and Brâhmans teach that the man’s individuality is not
secured until he has passed through and become disembarrassed of the last of
these groups, the final vestige of earthly taint. Hence their doctrine of
metempsychosis, so ridiculed and so utterly misunderstood by our greatest
Orientalists.
Even the physicists
teach us that the particles composing physical man are, by evolution, reworked
by nature into every variety of inferior physical form. Why, then, are the
Buddhists unphilosophical or even unscientific, in affirming that the
semi-material Skandhas of the astral man (his very ego, up to the point of
final purification) are appropriated to the evolution of minor astral forms
(which, of course, enter into the purely physical bodies of animals) as fast as
he throws them off in his progress toward Nirvana? Therefore, we may correctly
say, that so long as the disembodied man is throwing off a single particle of
these Skandhas, a portion of him is being reincarnated in the bodies of plants
and animals. And if he, the disembodied astral man, be so material that
“Demeter” cannot find even one spark of the Pneuma to carry up to the “divine
power,” then the individual, so to speak, is dissolved, piece by piece, into
the crucible of evolution, or, as the Hindus allegorically illustrate it, he
passes thousands of years in the bodies of impure animals. Here we see how
completely the ancient Greek and Hindu Philosophers, the modern Oriental
schools, and the Theosophists, are ranged on one side, in perfect accord, and
the bright array of “inspirational mediums” and “spirit guides” stand in
perfect discord on the other. Though no two of the latter, unfortunately,
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agree as to what is
and what is not truth, yet they do agree with unanimitv to antagonize whatever
of the teachings of the Philosophers we may repeat.
Let it not be
inferred, though, from this, that I, or any other real Theosophist, undervalue
true spiritual phenomena or philosophy, or that we do not believe in the
communication between mortals and pure Spirits, any less than we do in
communication between bad men and bad Spirits, or even of good men with bad
Spirits under bad conditions. Occultism is the essence of Spiritualism, while
modern or popular Spiritualism I cannot better characterize than as adulterated
unconscious Magic. We go so far as to say that all the great and noble
characters, all the grand geniuses, the poets, painters, sculptors, musicians,
all who have worked at any time for the realization of their highest ideal,
irrespective of selfish ends—have been spiritually inspired; not mediums, as
many Spiritualists call them—passive tools in the hands of controlling
guides—but incarnate, illuminated souls, working consciously in collaboration
with the pure disembodied human and new-embodied high Planetary Spirits, for the
elevation and spiri-tualization of mankind. We believe that everything in
material life is most intimately associated with spiritual agencies. As regards
physical phenomena and mediumship, we believe that it is only when the passive
medium has given place, or rather grown into, the conscious mediator, that he
discerns between Spirits good and bad. And we do believe, and know also, that
while the incarnate man (though the highest Adept) cannot vie in potency with
the pure disembodied Spirits, who, freed of all their Skandhas, have become
subjective to the physical senses, yet he can perfectly equal, and can far
surpass in the way of phenomena, mental or physical, the average “Spirit” of
modern mediumship. Believing this, you will perceive that we are better
Spiritualists, in the true acceptation of the word, than so-called
Spiritualists, who, instead of showing the reverence we do to true
Spirits—Gods—debase the name of Spirit by applying it to the impure, or at
best, imperfect beings who produce the majority of the phenomena.
The two objections
urged by Mr. Croucher against the claim of the Theosophists, that a child is
but a duality at birth, “and perhaps until the sixth or seventh year,” and that
some depraved persons are annihilated at some time after death, are (1) the
mediums have described to him his three children “who passed away at the
respective ages of two,
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four, and six
years”; and (2) that he has known persons who were “very depraved” on earth
come back. He says:
These statements
have been afterwards confirmed by glorious beings who came after, and who have
proved by their mastery of the laws which are governing the universe, that they
are worthy of being believed.
I am really happy
to hear that Mr. Croucher is competent to sit in judgment upon these “glorious
beings,” and give them the palm over Kapila, Manu, Plato, and even Paul. It is
worth something, after all, to be an “inspirational medium.” We have no such
“glorious beings” in the Theosophical Society to learn from; but it is evident
that while Mr. Croucher sees and judges things through his emotional nature,
the Philosophers whom we study took nothing from any “glorious being” that did
not perfectly accord with the universal harmony, justice, and equilibrium of
the manifested plan of the Universe. The Hermetic axiom, “as below, so above,”
is the only rule of evidence accepted by the Theosophists. Believing in a
spiritual and invisible Universe, we cannot conceive of it in any other way
than as completely dovetailing and corresponding with the material, objective
Universe; for logic and observation alike teach us that the latter is the
outcome and visible manifestation of the former, and that the laws governing
both are immutable.
In this letter of
Dec. 7th Colonel Olcott very appropriately illustrates his subject of potential
immortality by citing the admitted physical law of the survival of the fittest.
The rule applies to the greatest as to the smallest things, to the planet
equally with the plant. It applies to man. And the imperfectly developed
man-child can no more exist under the conditions prepared for the perfected
types of its species, than can an imperfect plant or animal. In infantile life
the higher faculties are not developed, but, as everyone knows, are only in the
germ, or rudimentary. The babe is an animal, however “angelic” he may, and
naturally enough ought to, appear to his parents. Be it ever so beautifully
modelled, the infant body is but the jewel-casket preparing for the jewel. It
is bestial, selfish, and, as a babe, nothing more. Little of even the soul,
Psuche, can be perceived except so far as vitality is concerned; hunger,
terror, pain and pleasure appear to be the principal of its conceptions. A
kitten is its superior in everything but possibilities. The grey neurine of the
brain is equally unformed. After a time mental qualities begin to appear, but
they relate chiefly to external matters. The cultivation of the mind of the
child by teachers
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can only affect
this part of the nature—what Paul calls natural or physical, and James and Jude
sensual or psychical. Hence the words of Jude, “psychical, having not the
spirit,” and of Paul:
The psychical man
receiveth not the things of the spirit, for to him they are foolishness; the
spiritual man discerneth.
It is only the man
of full age, with his faculties disciplined to discern good and evil, whom we
can denominate spiritual, noetic, intuitive. Children developed in such
respects would be precocious, abnormal abortions.
Why, then, should a
child who has never lived other than an animal life; who never discerned right
from wrong; who never cared whether he lived or died—since he could not
understand either of life or death—become individually immortal? Man’s cycle is
not complete until he has passed through the earth-life. No one stage of
probation and experience can be skipped over. He must he a man before he can
become a Spirit. A dead child is a failure of nature—he must live again; and
the same Psuche reenters the physical plane through another birth. Such cases,
together with those of congenital idiots, are, as stated in Isis Unveiled, the
only instances of human reincarnation. If every child-duality were to be
immortal, why deny a like individual immortality to the duality of the animal?
Those who believe in the trinity of man know the babe to be but a duality—body
and soul—and the individuality which resides only in the psychical is, as we
have seen proved by the Philosophers, perishable. The completed trinity only
survives. Trinity, I say, for at death the astral form becomes the outward
body, and inside a still finer one evolves, which takes the place of the Psuche
on earth, and the whole is more or less overshadowed by the Nous. Space
prevented Col. Olcott from developing the doctrine more fully, or he would have
added that not even all of the Elementaries (human) are annihilated. There is
still a chance for some. By a supreme struggle these may retain their third and
higher principle, and so, though slowly and painfully, yet ascend sphere after
sphere, casting off at each transition the previous heavier garment, and
clothing themselves in more radiant spiritual envelopes, until, rid of every
finite particle, the trinity merges into the final Nirvana, and becomes a
unity—a God.
A volume would
scarce suffice to enumerate all the varieties of Ele-
—————
* [Note that ‘reincarnation” is here used as a term applying only to the
Psuche. This does not reincarnate, it has always been taught, except in the
instances given.—Ens.]
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mentaries and
Elementals; the former being so called by some Kabalists (Henry Kunrath, for
instance) to indicate their entanglement in the terrestrial elements which hold
them captive, and the latter designated by that name to avoid confusion, and
equally applying to those which go to form the astral body of the infant and to
the stationary Nature Spirits proper. Eliphas Levi, however, indifferently
calls them all “Elementary” and “souls.” I repeat again, it is but the wholly
psychical disembodied astral man which ultimately disappears as an individual
entity. As to the component parts of his Psuche, they are as indestructible as
the atoms of any other body composed of matter.
The man must indeed
be a true animal who has not, after death, a spark of the divine Ruach or Nous
left in him to allow him a chance of self-salvation. Yet there are such
lamentable exceptions, not alone among the depraved, but also among those who,
during life, by stifling every idea of an after existence, have killed in
themselves the last desire to achieve immortality. It is the will of man, his
all-potent will, that weaves his destiny, and if a man is determined in the
notion that death means annihilation, he will find it so. It is among our
commonest experiences that the determination of physical life or death depends
upon the will. Some people snatch themselves by force of determination from the
very jaws of death, while others succumb to insignificant maladies. What man
does with his body he can do with his disembodied Psuche.
Nothing in this
militates against the images of Mr. Croucher’s children being seen in the
Astral Light by the medium, either as actually left by the children themselves,
or as imagined by the father to look when grown. The impression in the latter
case would be but a phasma, while in the former it is a phantasma, or the
apparition of the indestructible impress of what once really was.
In days of old the
“mediators” of humanity were men like Christna, Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Paul,
Apollonius of Tyana, Plotinus, Porphyry, and the like of them. They were
Adepts, Philosophers—men who, by struggling their whole lives in purity, study,
and self-sacrifice, through trials, privations and self-discipline, attained
divine illumination and seemingly superhuman powers. They could not only
produce all the phenomena seen in our times, but regarded it as a sacred duty
to cast out “evil spirits,” or demons, from the unfortunates who were
obsessed—in other words, to rid the medium of their days of the “Elementaries.”
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But in our time of
improved psychology every hysterical sensitive looms into a seer, and behold!
there are mediums by the thousand! Without any previous study, self-denial, or
the least limitation of their physical nature, they assume, in the capacity of
mouthpieces of unidentified and unidentifiable intelligences, to outrival
Socrates in wisdom, Paul in eloquence, and Tertullian himself in fiery and
authoritative dogmatism. The Theosophists are the last to assume infallibility
for themselves, or recognize it in others; as they judge others, so they are
willing to be judged.
In the name, then,
of logic and common sense, before bandying epithets, let us submit our
difference to the arbitrament of reason. Let us compare all things, and,
putting aside emotionalism and prejudice as unworthy of the logician and the
experimentalist, hold fast only to that which passes the ordeal of ultimate analysis.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
New York, Jan. 14th
1878.
A SOCIETY WITHOUT A
DOGMA
—————
[From the London
Spiritualist Feb. 8th, 1878.]
TIMES have greatly
changed since the winter of 1875-6, when the establishment of the Theosophical
Society caused the grand army of American Spiritualists to wave banners, clang
steel, and set up a great shouting. How well we all remember the putting forth
of “Danger Signals,” the oracular warnings and denunciations of numberless
mediums! How fresh in memory the threats of “angel-friends” to Dr. Gardiner, of
Boston that they would kill Colonel Olcott if he dared call them “Elementaries”
in the lectures he was about delivering! The worst of the storm has passed. The
hail of imprecations no longer batters around our devoted heads; it is raining
now, and we can almost see the rainbow of promised peace spanning the sky.
Beyond doubt, much
of this subsidence of the disturbed elements is due to our armed neutrality.
But still I judge that the gradual spread of a desire to learn something more
as to the cause of the phenomena must be taken into account. And yet the time
has not quite come when the lion (Spiritualism) and the lamb (Theosophy) are
ready to lie down together—unless the lamb is willing to lie inside the lion.
While we held our tongues we were asked to speak, and when we spoke—or rather
our President spoke—the hue and cry was raised once more. Though the pop-gun
fusillade and the dropping shots of musketry have mostly ceased, the defiles of
your spiritual Balkans are defended by your heaviest Krupp guns. If the fire
were directed only against Colonel Olcott there would be no occasion for me to
bring up the reserves. But fragments from both of the bombs which your able
gunner, and our mutual friend, ‘‘M.A. Oxon.’’ has exploded, in his two letters
‘of January 4th and 11th have given me contusions. Under the velvet paw of his
rhetoric I have felt the scratch of challenge.
At the very
beginning of what must be a long struggle, it is imperatively demanded that the
Theosophical position shall be unequivo-
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cally defined. In
the last of the above two communications, it is stated that Colonel Olcott
transmits “the teaching of the learned author of Isis Unveiled”—the “master key
to all problems.” (?)
Who has ever
claimed that the book was that, or anything like it? Not the author, certainly.
The title? A misnomer for which the publisher is unpremeditatedly responsible,
and, if I am not mistaken, “MA. Oxon.” knows it. My title was The Veil of Isis,
and that head line runs through the entire first volume. Not until that volume
was stereotyped did anyone recollect that a book of the same name was before
the public. Then, as a derniere ressource, the publisher selected the present
title.
“If he [Olcott] be
not the rose, at any rate he has lived near it,” says your learned
correspondent. Had I seen this sentence apart from the context, I would never
have imagined that the unattractive old party, superficially known as H. P.
Blavatsky, was designated under this poetical Persian simile. If he had
compared me to a bramble- bush, I might have complimented him upon his artistic
realism. He says:
Colonel Olcott of
himself would command attention; he commands it still more on account of the
store of knowledge to which he has had access.
True, he has had
such access, but by no means is it confined to my humble self. Though I may
have taught him a few of the things that I had learned in other countries (and
corroborated the theory in every case by practical illustration), yet a far
abler teacher than I could not in three brief years have given him more than
the alphabet of what there is to learn, before a man can become wise in
spiritual and psycho physiological things. The very limitations of modern
languages prevent any rapid communication of ideas about Eastern Philosophy. I
defy the great Max Muller himself to translate Kapila’s Sutras so as to give
their real meaning. We have seen what the best European authorities can do with
the Hindu metaphysics; and what a mess they have made of it, to be sure! The
Colonel corresponds directly with Hindu scholars, and has from them a good deal
more than he can get from so clumsy a preceptor as myself.
Our friend, “M.A.
Oxon.,” says that Colonel Olcott “comes forward to enlighten us’’—than which
scarce anything could be more inaccurate. He neither comes forward, nor
pretends to enlighten anyone. The public wanted to know the views of the
Theosophists, and our President attempted to give, as succinctly as possible in
the limits of a
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SOCIETY WITHOUT A DOGMA.
single article,
some little glimpse of so much of the truth as he had learned. That the result
would not be wholly satisfactory was inevitable. Volumes would not suffice to
answer all the questions naturally presenting themselves to an enquiring mind;
a library of quartos would barely obliterate the prejudices of those who ride
at the anchor of centuries of metaphysical and theological
misconceptions—perhaps even errors. But, though our President is not guilty of
the conceit of “pretending to enlighten” Spiritualists, I think he has
certainly thrown out some hints worthy of the thoughtful consideration of the
unprejudiced.
I am sorry that
“M.A. Oxon.” is not content with mere suggestions. Nothing but the whole naked
truth will satisfy him. We must “square” our theories with his facts, we must
lay our theory down “on exact lines of demonstration.” We are asked:
Where are the
seers? What are their records? And, far more important, how do they verify them
to Us?
I answer: Seers are
where “Schools of the Prophets” are still extant, and they have their records
with them. Though Spiritualists are not able to go in search of them, yet the
Philosophy they teach commends itself to logic, and, its principles are
mathematically demonstrable. If this be not so, let it be shown.
But, in their turn,
Theosophists may ask, and do ask.: Where are the proofs that the medial
phenomena are exclusively attributable to the agency of departed “Spirits”? Who
are the “Seers” among mediums blessed with an infallible lucidity? What “tests”
are given that admit of no alternative explanation? Though Swedenborg was one
of the greatest of Seers, and churches are erected in his name, yet except to
his adherents what proof is there that the “Spirits” objective to his
vision—including Paul—promenading in hats, were anything but the creatures of
his imagination? Are the spiritual potentialities of the living man so well
comprehended that mediums can tell when their own agency ceases, and that of
outside influence begins? No; but for all answer to our suggestions that the
subject is open to debate, “M.A. Oxon.” shudderingly charges us with attempting
to upset what he designates as “a cardinal dogma of our faith,” i.e., the faith
of the Spiritualists. Dogma? Faith? These are the right and left pillars of
every soul crushing Theology. Theosophists have no dogmas, exact no blind
faith. Theosophists are ever ready to abandon every idea that is
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proved erroneous
upon strictly logical deductions; let Spiritualists do the same. Dogmas are the
toys that amuse, and can satisfy but, unreasoning children. They are the
offspring of human speculation and prejudiced fancy. In the eye of true
Philosophy it seems an insult to common sense, that we should break loose from
the idols and dogmas of either Christian or heathen exoteric faith to catch up
those of a church of Spiritualism. Spiritualism must either be a true
Philosophy, amenable to the test of the recognized criterion of logic, or be
set up in its niche beside the broken idols of hundreds of antecedent Christian
sects.
Realizing, as they
do, the boundlessness of the absolute truth, Theosophists repudiate all claim
to infallibility. The most cherished preconceptions, the most “pious hope,” the
strongest “ master passion,” they sweep aside like dust from their path, when
their error is pointed out. Their highest hope is to approximate to the truth;
that they have succeeded in going a few steps beyond the Spiritualists, they think
proved in their conviction that they know nothing in comparison with what is to
be learned; in their sacrifice of every pet theory and prompting of
emotionalism at the shrine of fact; and in their absolute and unqualified
repudiation of everything that smacks of “dogma.”
With great
rhetorical elaboration “M.A. Oxon.” paints the result of the supersedure of
spiritualistic by Theosophic ideas. In brief, he shows Spiritualism a lifeless
corpse:
A body from which
the soul has been wrenched, and for which most men will care nothing.
We submit that the
reverse is true. Spiritualists wrench the soul from true Spiritualism by their
degradation of Spirit. Of the in they make the finite; of the divine subjective
they make the human and limited objective. Are Theosophists Materialists? Do
not their hearts warm with the same “pure and holy love” for their “loved ones”
as those of Spiritualists? Have not many of us sought long years “through the
gate of mediumship to have access to the world of Spirit”—and vainly sought?
The comfort and assurance modern Spiritualism could not give us we found in
Theosophy. As a result we believe far more firmly than many Spiritualists—for
our belief is based on knowledge—in the communion of our beloved ones with us;
but not as materialized Spirits with beating hearts and sweating brows.
Holding such views
as we do as to logic and fact, you perceive that when a Spiritualist pronounces
to us the words dogma and fact, debate
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is impossible, for
there is no common ground upon which we can meet. We decline to break our heads
against shadows. If fact and logic were given the consideration they should
have, there would be no more temples in this world for exoteric worship,
whether Christian or heathen, and the method of the Theosophists would be
welcomed as the only one insuring action and progress—a progress that cannot be
arrested, since each advance shows yet greater advances to be made.
As to our producing
our “Seers” and “their records”—one word. In The Spiritulist of Jan. 11th, I
find Dr. Peebles saying that in due time he
Will publish such
facts about the Dravida Brâhmans as I am [he is] permitted. I say permitted,
because some of these occurred under the promise and seal of secrecy.
If even the casual
wayfarer is put under an obligation of secrecy before he is shown some of the
less important psycho-physiological phenomena, is it not barely possible that
the Brotherhood to which some Theosophists belong has also doctrines, records,
and phenomena, that cannot be revealed to the profane and the indifferent,
without any imputation lying against their reality and authoritativeness? This,
at least, I believe, “M.A. Oxon.” knows. As we do not offensively obtrude
ourselves upon an unwilling public, but only answer under compulsion, we can
hardly be denounced as contumacious if we produce to a promiscuous public
neither our “Seers” nor “their records.” When Mohammed is ready to go to the
mountain, it will be found standing in its place.
And that no one
that makes this search may suppose that we Theosophists send him to a place
where there are no pitfalls for the unwary, I quote from the famous commentary
on the Bhagavad Gita of our brother Hurrychund Chintamon, the unqualified
admission that,
In Hindustau, as in
England, there are doctrines for the learned, and dogmas for the unlearned;
strong meat for men, and milk for babes; facts for the few, and fictions for
the many; realities for the wise, and romances for the simple; esoteric truth
for the philosopher, and exoteric fable for the fool.
Like the Philosophy
taught by this author in the work in question, the object of the Theosophical
Society “is the cleansing of spiritual truth.”
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
New York, Jan.
20th, 1877.
ELEMENTARIES
—————
[From The
Religio-Philosophical Journal, Nov. 17th, 1877.]
I PERCEIVE that of
late the ostracized subject of the Kabalistic “Elementaries” is beginning to
appear in the orthodox spiritualistic papers pretty often. No wonder;
Spiritualism and its Philosophy are progressing, and they will progress despite
the opposition of some very learned ignoramuses, who imagine the Cosmos rotates
within the academic brain. But if a new term is once admitted for discussion,
the least we can do is to first clearly ascertain what that term means. We
students of the Oriental Philosophy count it a clear gain that spiritualistic
journals on both sides of the Atlantic are beginning to discuss the subject of
sub-human and earth-bound beings, even though they ridicule the idea. But do
those who ridicule know what they are talking about, having never studied the
Kabalistic writers? It is evident to me that they are confounding the
“Elementaries”—disembodied, vicious, and earth-bound, yet human Spirits—with
the “Elementals,” or Nature Spirits.
With your
permission, then, I will answer an article by Dr. Woldrich which appeared in
your Journal of the 2th inst., and to which the author gives the title of
“Elementaries.” I freely admit that, owing to my imperfect knowledge of English
at the time I first wrote upon the Elementaries, I may have myself contributed
to the present confusion, and thus brought upon my doomed head the wrath of
Spiritualists, mediums, and their “guides” into the bargain. But now I will
attempt to make my meaning clear. Eliphas Levi applies the term “Elementary”
equally to earth-bound human Spirits and to the creatures of the elements. This
carelessness on his part is due to the fact that as the human Elementaries are
considered by the Kabalists as having irretrievably lost every chance of
immortality, they therefore, after a certain period of time, become no better
than the “Elementals,” who never had any souls at all. To disentangle the
subject, I have, in my
147———————————————————————ELEMENTARIES.
Isis Unveiled, shown
that the former should, alone, be called “Elementaries” and the latter
“Elementals” (vol. i. p. xxx. “Before the Veil”).
Dr. Woldrich, in
imitation of Herbert Spencer, attempts to explain the existence of a popular
belief in Nature Spirits, demons and mythological deities, as the effect of an
imagination untutored by Science, and wrought upon by misunderstood natural
phenomena. He attributes the legendary Sylphs, Undines, Salamanders and
Gnomes—four great families, which include numberless sub-divisions—to mere
fancy; going however to the extreme of affirming that by long practice one can
acquire
That power which
disembodied spirits have of materializing apparitions by the will.
Granted that
“disembodied Spirits” have sometimes that power; but if disembodied why not
embodied Spirits also, i.e., a yet living person who has become an Adept in
Occultism through study? According to Dr. Woldrich’s theory, an embodied Spirit
or Magician can create only subjectively, or to quote his words:
He is in the habit
of summoning, that is, bringing up to his imagination, his familiar spirits,
which, having responded to his will, he considers as real existences.
I will not stop to
enquire for the proofs of this assertion, for it would only lead to an endless
discussion. If many thousands of Spiritualists in Europe and America have seen
materialized objective forms which assure them they were the Spirits of once
living persons, millions of Eastern people throughout the past ages have seen
the Hierophants of the Temples, and even now see them in India, without being
in the least mediums, also evoking objective and tangible forms, which display
no pretensions to being the souls of disembodied men. But I will only remark
that, though subjective and invisible to others, as Dr. Woldrich tells us,
these forms are palpable, hence objective to the clairvoyant; no scientist has
yet mastered the mysteries of even the physical sciences sufficiently to enable
him to contradict, with anything like plausible or incontrovertible proofs, the
assumption that because the clairvoyant sees a form remaining subjective to
others, this form is nevertheless neither a “hallucination” nor a fiction of
the imagination. Were the persons present endowed with the same clairvoyant
faculty, they would every one of them see this creature of “hallucination” as
well; hence there would be sufficient proof that it had an objective existence.
And this is how the experiments are conducted in certain psychological training
schools, as I call such establishments in the East. One clair-
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A MODERN PANARION.
voyant is never
trusted. The person may be honest, truthful, and have the greatest desire to learn
only that which is real, and yet mix the truth unconsciously and accept an
Elemental for a disembodied Spirit, and vice versa. For instance, what
guarantee can Dr. Woldrich give us that “Hoki” and “Thalla,” the guides of Miss
May Shaw, were not simply creatures produced by the power of the imagination?
This gentleman may have the word of his clairvoyant for this; he may implicitly
and very deservedly trust her honesty when in her normal state; but the fact
alone that a medium is a passive and docile instrument in the hands of some
invisible and mysterious powers, ought to make her irresponsible in the eves of
every serious investigator. It is the Spirit, or these invisible powers, he has
to test, not the clairvoyant; and what proof has he of their trustworthiness
that he should think himself warranted in coming out as the opponent of a
Philosophy based on thousands of years of practical experience, the iconoclast
of experiments performed by whole generations of learned Egyptians,
Hierophants, Gurus, Brâhmans, Adepts of the Sanctuaries, and a whole host of
more or less learned Kabalists, who were all trained Seers? Such an accusation,
moreover, is dangerous ground for the Spiritualists them selves. Admit once
that a Magician creates his forms only in fancy, and as a result of
hallucination, and what becomes of all the guides, spirit friends and the tutti
quanti from the sweet “Summer Land,” crowding around the trance mediums and
Seers? Why these would-be disembodied entities are to be considered more identified
with humanity than the Elementals, or as Dr. Woldrich terms them,
“Elementaries,” of the Magician, is something which would scarcely bear
investigation.
From the standpoint
of certain Buddhist Schools, your correspondent may be right. Their Philosophy
teaches that even our visible Universe assumed an objective form as a result of
the fancy followed by the volition or the will of the Unknown and Supreme
Adept, differing, however, from Christian theology, inasmuch as they teach that
instead of calling out our Universe from nothingness, He had to exercise His
will upon preexisting Matter, eternal and indestructible as to invisible
Substance, though temporary and ever-changing as to forms. Some higher and
still more subtle metaphysical Schools of Nepaul even go so far as to affirm—on
very reasonable grounds, too—that this preexisting and self-existent Substance
or Matter (Svabhâvat) is itself without any other creator or ruler; when in the
state of activity it is Pravritti, a universal creating principle; when latent
and passive they
149———————————————————————ELEMENTARIES.
call this force
Nirvritti. As for something eternal and infinite, for that which had neither
beginning nor end there can be neither past nor future, but everything that was
and will be, Is; therefore there never was an action or even thought, however
simple, that is not impressed in imperishable records on this Substance, called
by the Buddhists Svabhâvat, by the Kabalists Astral Light. As in a faithful
mirror, this Light reflects every image, and no human imagination could see any
thing outside that which exists impressed somewhere on the eternal Substance.
To imagine that a human brain can conceive of anything that was never conceived
of before by the “universal brain,” is a fallacy and a conceited presumption.
At best, the former can catch now and then stray glimpses of the “Eternal
Thought” after this has assumed some objective form, either in the world of the
invisible, or visible, Universe. Hence the unanimous testimony of trained Seers
goes to prove that there are such creatures as the Elementals; and that though
the Elementaries have been at some time human Spirits, they, having lost every
connection with the purer immortal world, must be recognized by some special
term which would draw a distinct line of demarcation between them and the true
and genuine disembodied souls, winch have henceforth to remain immortal. To the
Kabalists and the Adepts, especially in India, the difference between the two
is all-important, and their tutored minds will never allow them to mistake the
one for the other; to the untutored medium they are all one.
Spiritualists have
never accepted the suggestion and sound advice of certain of their seers and
mediums. They have regarded Dr. Peebles’ “Gadarenes” with indifference; they
have shrugged their shoulders at the “Rosicrucian” fantasies of P. B. Randolph,
and his Ravalette has made none of them the wiser; they have frowned and
grumbled at A. Jackson Davis’ “Diakka”; and finally, lifting high the banner,
have declared a murderous war of extermination against the Theosophists and
Kabalists. What are now the results?
A series of
exposures of fraudulent mediums that have brought mortification to their
endorsers and dishonour upon the cause; identification by genuine seers and
mediums of pretended Spirit-forms that were afterwards found to be mere
personations by lying cheats, go to prove that in such instances at least,
outside of clear cases of confederacy, the identifications were due to illusion
on the part of the said seers; spirit-babes discovered to be battered masks and
bundles of rags; obsessed mediums driven by their guides to drunkenness and
immor-
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A MODERN PANARION.
ality of conduct;
the practices of free-love endorsed and even prompted by alleged immortal
Spirits; sensitive believers forced to the commission of murder, suicide,
forgery, embezzlement and other crimes; the over-credulous led to waste their
substance in foolish investments and the search after hidden treasures; mediums
fostering ruinous speculations in stocks; free-loveites parted from their wives
in search of other female affinities; two continents flooded with the vilest
slanders, spoken and sometimes printed by mediums against other mediums; incubi
and succubi entertained as returning angel-husbands or wives; mountebanks and
jugglers protected by scientists and the clergy, and gathering large audiences
to witness imitations of the phenomena of cabinets, the reality of which
genuine mediums themselves and Spirits are powerless to vindicate by giving the
necessary test conditions; seances still held in Stygian darkness, where even
genuine phenomena can readily be mistaken for the false, and false for the
real; mediums left helpless by their angel guides, tried, convicted, and sent
to prison, and no attempt made to save them from their fate by those who, if
they are Spirits having the power of controlling mortal affairs, ought to have
enlisted the sympathy of the heavenly hosts on behalf of their mediums in the
face of such crying injustice; other faithful spiritualistic lecturers and
mediums broken down in health and left unsupported by those calling themselves
their patrons and protectors—such are some of the features of the present
situation; the black spots of what ought to become the grandest and noblest of
all religious Philosophies freely thrown by the unbelievers and Materialists
into the teeth of every Spiritualist. No intelligent person of the latter class
need go outside of his own personal experience to find examples like the above.
Spiritualism has not progressed and is not progressing and will not progress,
until its facts are viewed in the light of the Oriental Philosophy.
Thus, Mr. Editor,
your esteemed correspondent, Dr. Woldrich, may be found guilty of an erroneous
proposition. In the concluding sentence of his article he says:
I know not whether
I have succeeded in proving the Elementary a myth, but at least I hope that I
have thrown some more light upon the subject to some of the readers of the
journal.
To this I would
answer: (1) He has not proved at all the “Elementary a myth,” since the
Elementaries are, with a few exceptions, the earth-bound guides and Spirits in
which he believes, together with every other Spiritualist. (2) Instead of
throwing light upon the subject,
151——————————————————————ELEMENTARIES.
the Doctor has but
darkened it the more. (3) Such explanations and careless exposures do the
greatest harm to the future of Spiritualism, and greatly serve to retard its
progress by teaching its adherents that they have nothing more to learn.
Sincerely hoping
that I have not trespassed too much on the columns of your esteemed journal,
allow me to sign myself, dear sir,
Yours respectfully,
H. P. BLAVATSKY,
Corresponding
Secretary of the Theosophical Society.
New York.
KABALISTIC VIEWS OF
“SPIRITS”
[From The
Religio-Philosophical Journal, Jan. 26th, 1578.]
I MUST beg you to
again allow me a little space for the further elucidation of a very important
question—that of the “Elementals” and the “Elementaries.” It is a misfortune
that our European languages do not contain a nomenclature expressive of the
various grades and conditions of spiritual beings. But surely I cannot be
blamed for either the above linguistic deficiency, or because some people do
not choose, or are unable, to understand my meaning! I cannot too often repeat
that in this matter I claim no originality. My teachings are but the substance
of what many Kabalists have said before me, which to-day I mean to prove, with
your kind permission.
I am accused (1) of
“turning somersaults” and jumping from one idea to another. The defendant
pleads—not guilty. (2) Of coining not only words but Philosophies out of the
depths of my consciousness. Defendant enters the same plea. (3) Of having
repeatedly asserted that “intelligent Spirits other than those who have passed
through an earth experience in a human body were concerned in the manifestations
known as the phenomena of Spiritualism.” True, and defendant repeats the
assertion. (4) Of having advanced, in my bold and unwarranted theories, “beyond
the great Eliphas Levi himself.” Indeed? Were I to go even as far as he (see
his Science des Esprits), I would deny that a single so-called spiritual
manifestation is more than hallucination, produced by soulless Elementals, whom
he calls “Elementaries” (see Ritual de la Haute Magic).
I am asked: “What
proof is there of the existence of the Elementals?” In my turn I will enquire:
“‘What proof is there of ‘diakkas,’ ‘guides,’ ‘bands’ and ‘controls’ ?“ And yet
these terms are all current among Spiritualists. The unanimous testimony of
innumerable observers and competent experimenters furnishes the proof. If
Spiritualists cannot, or will not, go to those countries where they are living
153———————————————————KABALISTIC VIEWS OF “SPIRITS.”
and these proofs
are accessible, they, at least, have no right to give the lie direct to those
who have seen both the Adepts and the proofs. My witnesses are living men
teaching and exemplifying the Philosophy of hoary ages; theirs, these very
“guides” and “controls,” who up to the present time are at best hypothetical,
and whose assertions have been repeatedly found, by Spiritualists themselves,
contradictory and false.
If my present
critics insist that since the discussion of this matter began, a disembodied
soul has never been described as an “Elementary,” I merely point to the number
of the London Spiritualist for Feb. 8th, 1876, published nearly two years ago,
in which a correspondent, who has certainly studied the Occult Sciences, says :
Is it not probable
that some of the elementary spirits of an evil type are those spirit-bodies,
which, only recently disembodied, are on the eve of an eternal dissolution, and
which continue their temporary existence only by vampirizing those still in the
flesh? They had existence; they never attained to being.
Note two things:
that human Elementaries are recognized as existing, apart from the Gnomes,
Sylphs, Undines and Salamanders beings purely elemental; and that annihilation
of the soul is regarded as potential.
Says Paracelsns, in
his Philosophia Sagax:
The current of
Astral Light with its peculiar inhabitants, Gnomes, Svlphs, etc., is
transformed into human light at the moment of the conception. and it becomes
the first envelope of the soul—its grosser portion; combined with the most
subtle fluids, it forms the sidereal [astral, or ethereal] phantom—the inner
man.
And Eliphas Levi :
The Astral Light is
saturated with elementary souls which it discharges in the incessant generation
of beings ...At the birth of a child they influence the four temperaments of
the latter: the element of the Gnomes predominates in melanchol persons; of the
Salamanders in the sanguine; of the Undines in the phlegmatic; of the Sylphs in
the giddy and bilious.... These are the spirits which we designate under the
tern of occult elements (Rituel de la Haute Magic, vol. ii. chapter on the
‘‘Conjnration of the Four Classes of Elementary”).
‘‘Yes, yes,’’ he
remarks (op. cit., vol. i. p. 164):
These spirits of
the elements do exist. Same wandering in their spheres, others trying to
incarnate themselves, others, again, already incarnated, and living on earth. These
are vicious and imperfect men.
Note that we have
here described to us more or less “intelligent Spirits, other than those who
have passed through an earth experience in a human body.’’ If not intelligent,
they would not know how to make the attempt to incarnate themselves. Vicious
Elementals, or
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A MODERN PANARION.
Elementaries, are
attracted to vicious parents; they bask in their atmosphere, and are thus
afforded the chance, by the vices of the parents, to perpetuate in the child
the paternal wickedness. The unintellectual “Elementals” are drawn in
unconsciously to themselves, and, in the order of Nature, as component parts of
the grosser astral body or soul, determine the temperament. They can as little
resist as the animalcules can avoid entering into our bodies in the water we
swallow. Of a third class, out of hundreds that the Eastern Philosophers and
Kabalists are acquainted with, Eliphas I discussing spiritistic phenomena,
says:
They are neither
the souls of the damned nor guilty; the elementary spirits are like children,
curious and harmless, and torment people in proportion as attention is paid to
them.
These he regards as
the sole agents in all the meaningless and useless physical phenomena at
seances. Such phenomena will be produced unless they be dominated “by wills
more powerful than their own.” Such a will may be that of a living Adept, or,
as there are none such at Western spiritual seances, these ready agents are at
the disposal of every strong, vicious, earth-bound, human Elementary who has
been attracted to the place. By such they can be used in combination with the
astral emanations of the circle and medium, as stuff out of which to make
materialized Spirits.
So little does Levi
concede the possibility of Spirit-return in objective form that he says:
The good deceased
come back in our dreams; the state of mediumism is an extension of dream, it is
somnambulism in all its variety and ecstasies. Fathom the phenomenon of sleep
and you will understand the phenomena of the spirits.
And again
According to one of
the great dogmas of the Kabalah, the soul despoils itself in order to ascend,
and thus would have to re-clothe itself in matter to descend. There is but one
way for a spirit already liberated to manifest himself objectively on earth; he
must get back into his body and resurrect. This is quite another thing from
hiding under a table or a hat. Necromancy, or the evocation of materialized
spirits, is horrible. It constitutes a crime against Nature. We have admitted
in our former works the possibility of vampirism, and even undertaken to
explain it. The phenomena now actually occurring in America and Europe
unquestionably belong to this fearful malady. The mediums do not, it is true,
eat the flesh of corpses [like one Sergeant Bertrand]; but they breathe in
throughout their whole nervous organism the phosphoric emanations of putrefied
corpses, or spectral light. They are not vampires, but they evoke vampires; for
this reason, they are nearly all debilitated and sick (Science des Esprits.
p.258).
155———————————————————KABALISTIC VIEWS OF “SPIRITS.”
Henry Kunrath was a
most learned Kabalist, and the greatest anthority among mediæval Occultists. He
gives, in one of the clavicles of his Amphitheatrum Sapientiæ Æternæ,
illustrative engravings of the four great classes of elementary Spirits, as
they presented them selves during an evocation of ceremonial Magic, before the
eyes of the Magus, when, after passing the threshold, he lifted the “Veil of
Isis.” In describing them, Kunrath corroborates Eliphas Levi. He tells us they
are disembodied, vicious men, who have parted with their divine Spirits and
become Elementaries. They are so termed, because attracted by the earthly
atmosphere and surrounded by the earth’s elements. Here Kunrath applies the
term “Elementary” to doomed human souls, While Levi uses it, as we have seen,
to designate another class of the same great family—Gnomes, Sylphs, Undines,
etc.—sub-human entities.
I have before me a
manuscript, intended originally for publication, but withheld for various
reasons. The author signs himself “Zeus,” and is a Kabalist of more than
twenty-five years’ standing. This experienced Occultist, a zealous devotee of
Kunrath, expounding the doctrine of the latter, also says that the Kabalists
divided the Spirits of the elements into four classes, corresponding to the
four temperaments in man.
It is charged against
me as a heinous offence that I aver that some men lose their souls and are
annihilated. But this last-named authority, “Zeus,” is equally culpable, for he
says:
They [ the
Kabalists] taught that mail’s spirit descended from the great ocean of spirit,
and is, therefore, per se, pure and divine, but its soul or capsule, through
the [allegorical] fall of Adam, became contaminated with the world of darkness,
or the world of Satan [evil] of which it must be purified, before it could
ascend again to celestial happiness. Suppose a drop of water enclosed within a
capsule remains whole, the drop of water remains isolated; break the envelope,
and the drop becomes a part of the ocean, its individual existence has ceased.
So it is with the spirit. So long as its ray is enclosed in its plastic
mediator or soul, it has an individual existence. Destroy this capsule, the
astral man then becomes an Elementary; this destruction may occur from the
consequences of sin, in the most depraved and vicious, and the spirit returns
back to its original abode—the individualization of man has ceased. . . . This
militates with the idea of progression that Spiritualists generally entertain.
If they understood the Law of harmony, they would see their error. It is only
by this Law that individual life can be sustained; and the farther we deviate
from harmony the more difficult it is to regain it.
To return to Levi,
he remarks (La Haute Magie, vol. i. p. 319):
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A MODERN PANARION.
When we die, our
interior light [the soul] ascends agreeably to the attraction of its star [the
spirit], but it must first of all get rid of the coils of the serpent [earthly
evil—sin], that is to say, of the unpurified Astral Light which surrounds and
holds it captive, unless, by the force of Will, it frees and elevates itself.
This immersion of the living soul in the dead light [the emanations of
everything that is evil, which pollute the earth’s magnetic atmosphere, as the
exhalation of a swamp does the air] is a dreadful torture; the soul freezes and
burns therein at the same time.
The Kabalists
represent Adam as the Tree of Life, of which the trunk is Humanity; the various
races, the branches; and individual men, the leaves. Every leaf has its
individual life, and is fed by the one sap; but it can live only through the
branch, as the branch itself draws its life through the trunk. Says the
Kabalah:
The wicked are the
dead leaves and the dead bark of the tree. They fall, die, are corrupted and
changed into manure, which returns to the tree through the root.
My friend, Miss
Emily Kislingbury, of London, secretary of the British National Association of
Spiritualists, who is honoured, trusted and beloved by all who know her, sends
me a spirit-communication obtained, in April, 1877, through a young lady, who
is one of the purest and most truthful of her sex. The following extracts are
singularly a propos to the subject under discussion.
Friend, you are
right. Keep our Spiritualism pure and high, for there are those who would abase
its uses. But it is because they know not the power of Spiritualism. It is
true, in a sense, that the spirit can overcome the flesh, but there are those
to whom the fleshly life is dearer than the life of the spirit; they tread on
dangerous ground. For the flesh may so outgrow the spirit, as to withdraw from
it all spirituality, and man becomes as a beast of the field, with no saving
power left. These are they whom the church has termed “reprobate,” eternally
lost, but they suffer not, as the church has taught, in conscious hells. They
merely die, and are not; their light goes out, and has no conscious being.
[Question]: But is this not annihilation? [Answer]: It amounts to annihilation;
they lose their individual entities, and return to the great reservoir of
spirit—unconscious spirit.
Finally, I am
asked: “Who are the trained Seers?” They are those, I answer, who have been
trained from their childhood, in the Pagodas, to use their spiritual sight;
those whose accumulated testimony has not varied for thousands of years as to
the fundamental facts of Eastern Philosophy; the testimony of each generation
corroborating that of each preceding one. Are these to be trusted more, or less,
than the communications of “bands”—each of whom contradicts the other as
completely as the various religious sects, which are ready to cut each other’s
throats—and of mediums, even the best of whom are
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ignorant of their
own nature, and unsubjected to the wise direction and restraint of an Adept in
Psychological Science?
No comprehensive
idea of Nature can be obtained except by apply ing the Law of Harmony and
analogy in the spiritual as well as in the physical world. “As above, so
below,” is the old Hermetic axiom. If Spiritualists would apply this to the
subject of their own researches they would see the philosophical necessity of
there being in the world of Spirit, as was the world of Matter, a law of the
survival of the fittest.
Respectfully,
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
THE KNOUT
AS WIELDED BY THE
GREAT RUSSIAN THEOSOPHIST.
MR. COLEMAN’S FIRST
APPEARANCE.
[From The
Religio-Philosophical Journal, March 16th, 1878]
I HAVE read some of
the assaults upon Colonel Olcott and myself that have appeared in the Journal.
Some have amused me, others I have passed by unread; but I was quite unprepared
for the good fortune that lay in store for me in embryo in the paper of Feb.
6th. The “Protest” of Mr.W. Emmette Coleman, entitled “Sclavonic Theosophy v.
American Spiritualism” is the musky rose in an odoriferous bouquet. Its pungent
fragrance would make the nose of a sensitive bleed, whose olfactory nerves
would withstand the perfume of a garden full of the Malayan flower-queen—the
tuberose; and yet, my tough, pug, Mongolian nose, which has smelt carrion in
all parts of the world, proved itself equal even to this emergency.
“From the sublime
to the ridiculous,” says the French proverb, “there is but a single step.” From
sparkling wit to dull absurdity there is no more. An attack, to be effective,
must have an antagonist to strike, for to kick against something that exists
only in one’s imagination, wrenches man or beast. Don Quixote fighting the “air
drawn” foes in his windmill, stands for ever the laughing-stock of all
generations, and the type of a certain class of disputants, whom, for the
moment, Mr. Coleman represents.
The pretext for two
columns of abuse—suggesting, I am sorry to say, parallel sewers—is that Miss
Emily Kislingbury, in an address before the B.N.A. of Spiritualists, mentioned
Colonel Olcott’s name in connection with a leadership of Spiritualism. I have
the report of her remarks before me, and find that she neither proposed Colonel
Olcott to American Spiritualists as a leader, nor said that he had wanted
“leadership,” desired it now, or could ever be persuaded to take it. Says Mr.
Coleman:
159——————————————————————THE KNOUT.
It is seriously
proposed by your transatlantic sister, Miss Kislingburv . . . that American
Spiritualists should select as their guardian guide . Col. H. S. Olcott!!
If anyone is
entitled to this wealth of exclamation points it is Miss Kislingbury, for the
charge against her from beginning to end is simply an unmitigated falsehood.
Miss Kislingbury merely expressed the personal opinion that a certain
gentleman, for whom she had a deserved friendship, would have been capable, at
one time, of acting as a leader. This was her private opinion, to which she had
as good a right as either of her defamers—who in a cowardly way try to use Col.
Olcott and myself as sticks with which to break her head—have to their
opinions. It may or may not have been warranted by the facts— that is
immaterial. The main point is, that Miss Kislingbury has not said one word that
gives the slightest pretext for Mr. Coleman’s attacking her on this question of
leadership. And yet, I am not surprised at his course, for this brave,
noble-hearted, truthful and spotless lady occupies too impregnable a position
to be assailed, except indirectly. Someone had to pay for her plain speaking
about American Spiritualism. What better scapegoat than Olcott and Blavatsky,
the twin “theosophical Gorgons”!
What a hullabaloo
is raised, to be sure, about Spiritualists declining to follow our
“leadership.” In my “Buddhistico-Tartaric” ignorance I have always supposed
that something must be offered before it can either be indignantly spurned or
even respectfully declined. Have we offered to lead Spiritualists by the nose
or by other portions of their anatomy? Have we ever proclaimed ourselves as
“teachers,” or set ourselves up as infallible “guides”? Let the hundreds of
unanswered letters that we have received from Spiritualists be our witness. Let
us even include two letters from Mr. W. Emmette Coleman, from Leaven worth,
Kansas, calling attention to his published articles of Jan. 13th, 20th, 27th,
and Feb. 3rd (four papers), inviting controversy. He says in his communication
of Jan. 23rd, 1877, to Col. Olcott, ‘‘I am in search of Truth”; therefore he
has not all the truth. He asks Col. Olcott to answer certain “interrogatories”;
therefore our opinions are admitted to have some weight. He says:
This address [the
one he wants us to read and express our opinion upon] was delivered some time
since; if of more recent date I [he] might modify somewhat.
Now Col. Olcott’s
People from The 0ther World was published Jan., 1875; Mr. Coleman’s letter to
the Colonel was written in Jan., 1877; and
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his present
“Protest” to the Journal appeared Feb., 1878. It puzzles me to know how a man
“in search of Truth” could lower himself so far as to hunt for it in the coat-pockets
of an author whose work is
Clearly
demonstrative of the utterly unscientific character of his researches, full of
exaggerations, inaccuracies, marvellous statements recorded at second-hand
without the slightest confirmation, lackadaisical sentimentalities, egotistical
rhodomontades, and grammatical inelegancies and solecisms.
To go to a man for
“Truth” who is characterized by The most fervid imagination and brilliant
powers of invention,—according to Mr. Emmette Coleman—shows Mr. Coleman in a
sorry light indeed! His only excuse can be that in January, 1877, when he
invited Col. Olcott to discuss with him—despite the fact that the Theosophical
Society had been established in 1875, and all our “heresies” were already in
print—his estimation of Col. Olcott’s intellectual powers was different from
what it is now, and that Mr. Coleman’s “address” has been left two years unread
and unnoticed. Does this look like our offering ourselves as “leaders”? We
address the great body of intelligent American Spiritualists. They have as much
a right to their opinions as we to ours; they have no more right than we to
falsely state the positions of their antagonists. But their would-be champion,
Mr. Coleman, for the sake of having an excuse to abuse me, pretends to quote
(see column 2, paragraph 1) from something I have published, a whole sentence
that I defy him to prove I ever made use of. This is downright literary fraud
and dishonesty. A man who is in “search of Truth” does not usually employ a
falsehood as a weapon.
Good friends, whose
enquiries we have occasionally, but rarely, answered, bear us witness that we
have always disclaimed anything like “leadership”; that we have invariably
referred you to the same standard authors whom we have read, the same old
Philosophers we have studied. We call on you to testify that we have repudiated
dogmas and dogmatists, whether living men or disembodied Spirits. As opposed to
Materialists, Theosophists are Spiritualists, but it would be as absurd for us
to claim the leadership of Spiritualism as for a Protestant priest to speak for
the Romish Church, or a Romish Cardinal to lead the great body of Protestants,
though both claim to be Christians! Recrimination seems to be the life and soul
of American journalism, but I really thought that a spiritualistic organ had
more congenial matter for its columns than such materialistic abuse as the
present “Fort Leavenworth” criticism!
161———————————————————————THE KNOUT.
One chief aim of
the writer seems to be to abuse Isis Unveiled. My publisher will doubtless feel
under great obligations for giving it such a notoriety just now, when the
fourth edition is ready to go to press. That the fossilized reviewers of The
Tribune and Popular Science Monthly—both admitted advocates of materialistic Science
and unsparingly contemptuous denouncers of Spiritualism—should, without either
of them having read my book, brand it as spiritualistic moon shine, was
perfectly natural. I should have thought that I had written my first volume,
holding up Modern Science to public contempt for its unfair treatment of
psychological phenomena, to small purpose, if they had complimented me. Nor was
I at all surprised that the critic of the New York Sun permitted himself the
coarse language of a partizan and betrayed his ignorance of the contents of my
book by terming me a “Spiritualist.” But I am sorry that a critic like Mr.
Coleman, who professes to speak for the Spiritualists and against the
Materialists, should range himself by the side of the flunkeys of the latter, when
at least twenty of the first critics of Europe and America, not Spiritualists
but well-read scholars, have praised it even more unstintedly than he has
bespattered it. If such men as the author of The Great Dionysiak Myth and
Poseidon—writing a private letter to a fellow arch and scholar, which he
thought I would never see—says the design of my book is “simply colossal,” and
that the book “is really a marvellous production” and has his “entire
concurrence” in its views about:
(1) the wisdom of
the ancient Sages; (2) the folly of the merely material Philosopher (the
Emmette Colemans, Huxleys and Tyndalls);
(3) the doctrine of
Nirvana; (4) archaic monotheism, etc.; and when the London Public Opinion calls
it “one of the most extraordinary works of the nineteenth century” in an
elaborate criticism; and when Alfred R. Wallace says:
I am amazed at the
vast amount of erudition displayed in the chapters, and the great interest of
the topics on which they treat; your book will open up to many Spiritualists a
whole world of new ideas, and cannot fail to be of the greatest value in the
enquiry which is now being so earnestly carried on,
—Mr. Coleman really appears in the sorry light of one who abuses for the mere
sake of abusing.
What a curious
psychological power I must have All the Journal writers, from the talented
editor down to Mr. Coleman, pretend to account for the blind devotion of Col.
Olcott to Theosophy, the over-partial panegyric of Miss Kislingbury, the
friendly recantation of
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Dr. G. Bloede, and
the surprisingly vigorous defence of myself by Mr. C. Sotheran, and other
recent events, on the ground of my having psychologized them all into the
passive servitude of hoodwinked dupes! I can only say that such Psychology is
next door to miracle. That I could influence men and women of such acknowledged
independence of character and intellectual capacity, would be at least more
than any of your lecturing mesmerizers or “spirit-controls” have been able to
accomplish. Do you not see, my noble enemies, the logical consequences of such
a doctrine? Admit that I can do that, and you admit the reality of Magic, and
my powers as an Adept. I never claimed that Magic was anything but Psychology
practically applied. That one of your mesmerizers can make a cabbage appear a
rose is only a lower form of the power you all endow me with. You give an old
woman—whether forty, fifty, sixty or ninety years old (some swear I am the
latter, some the former), it matters not; an old woman whose
“Kalmuco-Buddhistico-Tartaric” features, even in youth, never made her appear
pretty; a woman whose ungainly garb, uncouth manners and masculine habits are
enough to frighten any bustled and corseted fine lady of fashionable society
out of her wits—you give her such powers of fascination as to draw fine ladies
and gentlemen, scholars and artists, doctors and clergymen, to her house by
scores, to not only talk Philosophy with her, not merely to stare at her as
though she were a monkey in red flannel breeches, as some of them do, but to
honour her in many cases with their fast and sincere friendship and grateful
kindness! Psychology! If that is the name you give it, then, although I have
never offered myself as a teacher, you had better come, my friends, and be
taught at once the “trick” (gratis—for, unlike other psychologizers, I never
yet took money for teaching any thing to anybody), so that hereafter you may
not be deceived into recognizing as—what Mr. Coleman so graphically calls—”the
sainted dead of earth,” those pimple-nosed and garlic-breathing beings who
climb ladders through trap-doors, and carry tow wigs and battered masks in the
penetralia of their underclothing.
H. P. BLAVATSKY,
—“the
masculine-feminine Sclavonic Theosoph from Crim-Tartary”—a title which does
more credit to Mr. Coleman’s vituperative ingenuity than to his literary
accomplishments.
INDIAN METAPHYSICS
[From the London
Spiritualist, March 22nd, 1877.]
Two peas in the
same pod are the traditional symbol of mutual resemblance, and the
time-honoured simile forced itself upon me when I read the twin letters of our
two masked assailants in your paper of Feb. 22nd. In substance they are so identical
that one would suppose the same person had written them simultaneously with his
two hands, as Paul Morphy will play you two games of chess, or Kossuth dictate
two letters at once. The only difference between these two letters— lying
beside each other on the same page, like two babes in one crib—is, that “M.A.
Cantab’s” is brief and courteous, while “Scrutator’s” is prolix and uncivil.
By a strange
coincidence both these sharp-shooters fire from behind their secure ramparts a
shot at a certain “learned Occultist” over the head of Mr. C. C. Massey, who
quoted some of that personage’s views, in a letter published May 10th, 1876.
Whether in irony or otherwise, they hurl the views of this “learned Occultist”
at the heads of Col. Olcott and myself, as though they were missiles that would
floor us completely. Now the “learned Occultist” in question is not a whit
more, or less, learned than your humble servant, for the very simple reason
that we are identical. The extracts published by Mr. Massey, by permission,
were contained in a letter from myself to him. More over it is now before me,
and, save one misprint of no consequence, I do not find in it a word that I
would wish changed. What is said there I repeat now over my signature—the
theories of 1876 do not contradict those of 1878 in any respect, as I shall
endeavour to prove, after pointing out to the impartial reader the quaking
ground upon which our two critics stand. Their arguments against Theosophy—
certainly “Scrutator’s”—are like a verdant moss, which displays a velvety
carpet of green without roots and with a deep bog below.
When a person
enters on a controversy over a fictitious signature, he
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should be doubly
cautious, if he would avoid the accusation of abusing the opportunity of the
mask to insult his opponents with impunity. Who or what is “Scrutator”? A
clergyman, a medium, a lawyer, a philosopher, a physician (certainly not a
metaphysician), or what? Quien sabe? He seems to partake of the flavour of all,
and yet to grace none. Though his arguments are all interwoven with sentences
quoted from our letters, yet in no case does he criticize merely what is written
by us, but what he thinks we may have meant, or what the sentences might imply.
Drawing his deductions, then, from what existed only in the depths of his own
consciousness, he invents phrases, and forces constructions, upon which he
proceeds to pour out his wrath. Without meaning to be in the least
personal—for, though propagating “absurdities with the “utmost effrontery,” I
should feel sorry and ashamed to be as impertinent with “Scrutator” as he is
with us—yet, hereafter, when I see a dog chasing the shadow of his own tail, I
will think of his letter.
In my doubts as to
what this assailant might be, I invoked the help of Webster to give me a
possible clue in the pseudonym. “Scrutator,” says the great lexicographer, is
“one who scrutinizes,” and “scrutiny” he derives from the Latin scrutari, “to
search even to the rags”; which scrutari itself he traces back to a Greek root,
meaning “trash, trumpery.” In this ultimate analysis, therefore, we must regard
the nom de plume, while very applicable to his letter of February 22nd, as very
unfortunate for himself; for, at best, it makes him a sort of literary
chiffonnier, probing in the dust-heap of the language for bits of hard
adjectives to fling at us. I repeat that, when an anonymous critic accuses two
persons of “slanderous imputations” (the mere reflex of his own imagination),
and of “unfathomable absurdities,” he ought, at least, to make sure (1) that he
has thoroughly grasped what he is pleased to call the “teachings” of his
adversaries; and (2) that his own philosophy is infallible. I may add,
furthermore, that when that critic permits himself to call the views of other
people—not yet half digested by himself—”unfathomable absurdities,” he ought to
be mighty careful about introducing as arguments into the discussion sectarian
absurdities far more “unfathomable” and which have nothing to do with either
Science or Philosophy.
I suppose [gravely
argues “Scrutator”] a babe’s brain is soft and a quite unfit tool for
intelligence, otherwise Jesus could not have lost His intelligence when He took
upon Himself the body and the brain of a babe [!!?]
165————————————————————INDIAN METAPHYSICS.
The very opposite
of Oliver Johnson evidently, this Jesus-babe of “Scrutator’s.”
Such an argument
might come with a certain force in a discussion between two conflicting
dogmatic sects, but if picked “even to rags” it seems but “utmost
effrontery”—to use “Scrutator’s” own complimentary expression—to employ it in a
philosophical debate, as if it were either a scientific or historically proved
fact! If I refused, at the very start, to argue with our friend “M.A. Oxon.,” a
man whom I esteem and respect as I do few in this world, only because he put
forward a “cardinal dogma,” I shall certainly lose no time in debating
Theosophy with a tattering Christian, whose scrutinizing faculties have not
helped him beyond the acceptance of the latest of the world’s Avatâras, in all
its unphilosophical dead-letter meaning, without even suspecting its symbolical
significance. To parade in a would-be philosophical debate the exploded dogmas
of any Church, is most ineffectual, and shows, at best, a great poverty of
resource. Why does not “Scrutator” address hiss refined abuse, ex cathedra, to
the Royal Society, whose Fellows doom to annihilation every human being,
Theosophist or Spiritualist, pure or impure?
With crushing irony
he speaks of us as “our teachers.” Now I remember having distinctly stated in a
previous letter that we have not offered ourselves as teachers, but, on the
contrary, decline any such office—whatever may be the superlative panegyric of
my esteemed friend, Mr. 0. Sullivan, who not only sees in me “a Buddhist
priestess” (!), but, without a shadow of warrant of fact, credits me with the
foundation of the Theosophical Society and its Branches! Had Colonel Olcott
been half as “psychologized” by me as a certain American Spiritualist paper
will have it, he would have followed my advice and refused to make public our
“views,” even though so much and so often importuned in different quarters.
With characteristic stubbornness, however, he had his own way, and now reaps
the consequence of having thrown his bomb into a hornet’s nest. Instead of
being afforded opportunity for a calm debate, we get but abuse, pure and
simple—the only weapon of partisans. Well, let us make the best of it, and join
our opponents in picking the question “to rags.” Mr. C. C. Massey comes in for
his share, too, and though fit to be a leader himself, is given by “Scrutator”
a chief!
Neither of our
critics seems to understand our views (or his own) so little as “Scrutator.” He
misapprehends the meaning of Elementary,
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and makes a sad
mess of Spirit and Matter. Hear him say that Elementary
Is a new-fangled
and ill-defined term . . not yet two years old.
This sentence alone
proves that he forces himself into the discussion, without any comprehension of
the subject at issue. Evidently, he has neither read the mediæval nor modern
Kabalists. Henry Kunrath is as unfamiliar to him as the Abbe Constant. Let him
go to the British Museum, and ask for the Amphitheatrum Sapientiæ Æternæ
Kunrath. He will find in it illustrative engravings of the four great classes
of elementary Spirits, as seen during an evocation of ceremonial Magic by the
Magus who lifts the Veil of Isis. The author explains that these are
disembodied vicious men, who have parted with their divine Spirits, and become
as beasts. After reading this volume, “Scrutator” may profitably consult
Eliphas Levi whom he will find using the words “Elementary Spirits” throughout
his Dogmae et Rituel de la Haute Magie, in both senses in which we have
employed it. This is especially the case where (vol. i. p. 262, seq.) he speaks
of the evocation of Apollonius of Tyana by himself. Quoting from the greatest
Kabalistic authorities, he says:
When a man has
lived well, the astral cadaver evaporates like a pure incense, as it mounts
towards the higher regions; but if a man has lived in crime, his astral
cadaver, which holds him prisoner, seeks again the objects of his passions and
desires to resume its earthly life. It torments the dreams of young girls,
bathes in the vapour of spilt blood, and wallows about the places where the
pleasures of his life flitted by; it watches without ceasing over the treasures
which it possessed and buried; it wastes itself in painful efforts to make for
itself material organs [materialize itself] and live again. But the astral
elements attract and absorb it; its memory is gradually lost, its intelligence
weakens, all its being dissolves.
The unhappy wretch
loses thus in succession all the organs which served its sinful appetites. Then
it [this astral body, this “soul,” this all that is left of the once living
man] dies a second time and for ever, for it then loses its personality and its
memory. Souls which are destined to live, but which are not yet entirely
purified, remain for a longer or shorter time captive in the astral cadaver,
where they are refined by the odic light, which seeks to assimilate them to
itself and dissolve. It is to rid themselves of this cadaver that suffering
souls sometimes enter the bodies of living persons, and remain there for a time
in a state which the Kabalists call embryonic [embryonnal]. These are the
aerial phantasmas evoked by necromancy [ I may add, the “materialized Spirits”
evoked by the unconscious necromancy of incautious mediums, in cases where the
forms are not transformations of their own doubles]; these are larvæ,
substances dead or dying with which one places himself en rapport.
167————————————————————INDIAN METAPHYSICS.
Further, Levi says
(op. cit., p. 164):
The astral light is
saturated with elementary souls. . . Yes, yes, these spirits of the elements do
exist. Some wandering in their spheres, others trying to incarnate themselves,
others, again already incarnated and living on earth; these are vicious and
imperfect men.
And in the face of
this testimony—which he can find in the British Museum, two steps from the
office of The Spiritualist (!)—that since the Middle Ages the Kabalists have
been writing about the Elementaries, and their potential annihilation,
“Scrutator” permits himself to arraign Theosophists for their “effrontery” in
foisting upon Spiritualists a “new-fangled and ill-defined term” which is “not
yet two years old”!
In truth, we may
say that the idea is older than Christianity, for it is found in the ancient
Kabalistic books of the Jews. In the olden time they defined three kinds of
“souls”—the daughters of Adam, the daughters of the angels and those of sin;
and in the book of The Revolution of the Souls three kinds of “Spirits” (as
distinct from material bodies) are shown—the captive, the wandering and the
free Spirits. If “Scrutator” were acquainted with the literature of Kabalism,
he would know that the term Elementary applies not only to one principle or
constituent part, to an elementary primary substance, but also embodies the
idea which we express by the term elemental—that which pertains to the four
elements of the material world, the first principles or primary ingredients.
The word “elemental” as defined by Webster, was not current at the time of
Kunrath, but the idea was perfectly understood. The distinction has been made,
and the term adopted by Theosophists for the sake of avoiding confusion. The
thanks we get are that we are charged with propounding, in 1878, a different
theory of the “Elementaries” from that of 1876!
Does anything
herein stated either as from ourselves, or Kunrath, or Levi contradict the
statement of the ‘‘learned Occultist’’ that:
Each atom, no
matter where found, is imbued with that vital principle called spirit each
grain of sand, equally with each minutest atom of the human body, has its
inherent latent spark of the divine light?
Italicizing some
words of the above, but omitting to emphasize the one important word of the
sentence, i.e., “latent,” which contains the key to the whole mystery, our
critic mars the sense. In the grain of sand, and each atom of the human
material body, the Spirit is latent, not active; hence being but a correlation
of the highest light, some-
169————————————————————INDIAN METAPHYSICS.
defined a
materialized Spirit as “frozen whiskey,” was right in his way. A Copious
vocabulary, indeed, that has but one term for God and for alcohol! With all
their libraries of metaphysics, European nations have not even gone to the
trouble of inventing appropriate words to elucidate metaphysical ideas. If they
had, perhaps one book in every thousand would have sufficed to really instruct
the public, instead of there being the present confusion of words, obscuring
intelligence, and utterly hampering the Orientalist, who would expound his
Philosophy in English. Whereas, in the latter language, I find but one word to
express, perhaps, twenty different ideas, in the Eastern tongues, especially
Sanskrit, there are twenty words or more to render one idea in its various
shades of meaning.
We are accused of
propagating ideas that would surprise the “average” Buddhist. Granted, and I
will liberally add that the average Brâhmanist might be equally astonished. We
never said that we were either Buddhists or Brâhmanists in the sense of their
popular exoteric Theologies. Buddha, sitting on his Lotus, or Brahmâ, with any
number of teratological arms, appeals to us as little as the Catholic Madonna
or the Christian personal God, which stare at us from cathedral walls and
ceilings. But neither Buddha nor Brahmâ represents to His respective
worshippers the same ideas as these Catholic icons which we regard as
blasphemous. In this particular who dares say that Christendom with its
civilization has outgrown the fetichism of Fijians? When we see Christians and
Spiritualists speaking so flippantly and confidently about God and the
“materialization of Spirit,” we wish they might be made to share a little in
the reverential ideas of the old Aryas.
We do not write for
“average” Buddhists, or average people of any sort. But I am quite willing to
match any tolerably educated Buddhist or Brâhman against the best
metaphysicians of Europe, to compare views on God and on man’s immortality.
The ultimate
abstract definition of this—call it God, Force, Principle, as you will—will
ever remain a mystery to Humanity, though it attain to its highest intellectual
development. The anthropomorphic ideas of Spiritualists concerning Spirit are a
direct consequence of the anthropomorphic conceptions of Christians as to the
Deity. So directly is the one the outflow of the other, that “Scrutator’s”
handiest argument against the duality of a child and potential immortality is
to cite
Jesus who increased
in wisdom as His brain increased.
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Christians call God
an Infinite Being, and then endow Him with every finite attribute, such as
love, anger, benevolence, mercy! They call Him all-merciful, and preach
damnation for three-fourths of Humanity in every church, all-just, and the sins
of this brief span of life may not be expiated by even an eternity of conscious
agony. Now, by some miracle of oversight, among thousands of mistranslations in
the “Holy” Writ, the word “destruction,” the synonym of annihilation, was
rendered correctly in King James’s version, and no dictionary can make it read
either damnation or eternal torment. Though the Church consistently put down
the “destructionists,” yet the impartial will scarcely deny that they come
nearer than their persecutors to believing what Jesus taught, and what is
consistent with justice, in teaching the final annihilation of the wicked.
To conclude, then,
we believe that there is but one undefinable Principle in the whole Universe,
which being utterly incomprehensible by our finite intellects, we prefer rather
to leave undebated than to blaspheme Its majesty with our anthropomorphic
speculations. We believe that all else which has being, whether material or
spiritual, and all that may have existence, actually, or potentially in our
idealism, emanates from this Principle. That everything is a correlation in one
shape or another of this Will and Force; and hence, judging of the unseen by
the visible, we base our speculations upon the teachings of the generations of
Sages who preceded Christianity, fortified by our own reason.
I have already
illustrated the incapacity of some of our critics to separate abstract ideas
from complex objects, by instancing the grain of sand and the nail-paring. They
refuse to comprehend that a philosophical doctrine can teach that an atom
imbued with divine light, or a portion of the great Spirit, in its latent stage
of correlation, may, not withstanding its reciprocal or corresponding
similarity and relations to the one indivisible whole, be yet utterly deficient
in self-consciousness. That it is only when this atom, magnetically drawn to
its fellow-atoms, which had served in a previous state to form with it some
lower complex object, is transformed at last, after endless cycles of
evolution, into man—the apex of perfected being, intellectually and physically,
on our planet—in conjunction with them it becomes, as a whole, a living soul,
and reaches the state of intellectual self-consciousness.
A stone becomes a
plant, a plant an animal, an animal a man, and man a Spirit, say the Kabalists.
And here again, is the wretched necessity of trans-
171————————————————————INDIAN METAPHYSICS.
lating by the word
“Spirit” an expression which means a celestial, or rather ethereal, transparent
man. But if man is the crown of evolution on earth, what is he in the
initiatory stages of the next existence, that man who, at his best—even when he
is pretended to have served as a habitation for the Christian God, Jesus—is
said by Paul to have been “made a little lower than the angels”? But now we
have every astral spook transformed into an “angel”! I cannot believe that the
scholars who write for your paper—and there are some of great intelligence and
erudition who think for themselves, and whom exact science has taught that ex
nihilo nihil fit who know that every atom of man’s body has been evolving by
imperceptible gradations, from lower into higher forms, through the
cycles—accept the unscientific and illogical doctrine that the simple
unshelling of an astral man transforms him into a celestial Spirit and “angel”
guide.
In Theosophical
opinion a Spirit is a Ray, a fraction of the Whole; and the Whole being
Omniscient and Infinite, Its fraction must partake, in degree, of the same
abstract attributes. Man’s “Spirit” must become the drop of the Ocean, called
“Ishvara-Bhâva”—the “I am one body, together with the universe itself” (I am in
my Father, and my Father is in me), instead of remaining but the “Jiva-Bhâva
the body only. He must feel himself not only a part of the Creator, Preserver
and Destroyer, but of the Soul of the Three, the Parabrahman, Who is above
these and is the vitalizing, energizing and ever-presiding Spirit. He must fully
realize the sense of the word “Sahajanund,” that state of perfect bliss in
Nirvana, which can only exist for the It, which has become coexistent with the
“formless and actionless present time.” This is the state called “Vartamâna,”
or the “ever still present,” in which there is neither past nor future, but one
infinite eternity of present. Which of the controlling “spirits,” materialized
or invisible, have shown any signs that they belong to the kind of real Spirits
known as the “Sons of Eternity”? Has the highest of them been able to tell even
as much as our own Divine Nous can whisper to us in moments when there comes
the flash of sudden prevision? Honest communicating “intelligences” often
answer to many questions: “We do not know; this has not been revealed to us.”
This very admission proves that, while in many cases on their way to knowledge
and perfection, yet they are but embryonic, undeveloped “Spirits”; they are
inferior even to some living Yogis who, through abstract meditation, have
united themselves with their personal individual Brahman, their Atman, and
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hence have overcome
the “Agnyânam,” or lack of that knowledge as to the intrinsic value of one’s
“self,” the Ego or self-being, so recommended by Socrates and the Delphic
commandment.
London has been
often visited by highly intellectual, educated Hindus. I have not heard of any
one professing a belief in “materialized Spirits”
—as Spirits. When
not tainted with Materialism, through demoralizing association with Europeans.
and when free from superstitious sectarianism, how would one of them, versed in
the Vedânta, regard these apparitions of the circle? The chances are that,
after going the rounds of the mediums, he would say: “Some of these may be
survivals of disembodied men’s intelligences, but they are no more spiritual
than the average man. They lack the knowledge of ‘Dryananta,’ and evidently
find themselves in a chronic state of ‘Mâyâ,’ i.e., possessed of the idea that
‘they are that which they are not.’ The ‘Vartamâna’ has no significance for
them, as they are cognizant but of the ‘Vishania’ [that which, like the
concrete numbers in mixed mathematics, applies to that which can be numbered].
Like simple, ignorant mortals, they regard the shadow of things as the reality,
and vice versa, mixing up the true light of the ‘Vyatireka’ with the false
light or deceitful appearance—the ‘Anvaya.’ . . . In what respect, then, are
they higher than the average mortal? No; they are not spirits, not ‘Devas,’
they are astral ‘Dasyoos.’
Of course all this
will appear to “Scrutator” “unfathomable absurdities,” for unfortunately, few
metaphysicians shower down from Western skies. Therefore, so long as our
English opponents will remain in their semi-Christian ideas, and not only
ignore the old Philosophy, but the very terms it employs to render abstract
ideas; so long as we are forced to transmit these ideas in a general way—particularly
as it is impracticable without the invention of special words—it will be
unprofitable to push discussion to any great lengths. We would only make
ourselves obnoxious to the general reader, and receive from other anonymous
writers such unconvincing compliments as “Scrutator” has favoured us with.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
New York, March
7th, 1877.
“H. M.” AND THE
TODAS
—————
[From the London
Spiritualist.]
I HAVE read the
communication of “H. M.” in your paper of the 8th inst. I would not have mentioned
the “Todas” at all in my book, if I had not read a very elaborate octavo work
in 271 pp., by William S. Marshall, Lieut.-Col. of Her Majesty’s Bengal Staff
Corps, entitled:
A Phrenologist
among the Todas, copiously illustrated with photographs of the squalid and
filthy beings to whom “H. M.” refers. Though written by a staff officer,
assisted “by the Rev. Friedrich Metz, of the Basle Missionary Society, who had
spent upwards of twenty years of labour” among them, “the only European able to
speak the obscure Toda tongue,” the book is so full of
misrepresentations—though both writers appear to be sincere— that I wrote what
I did.
What I said I knew
to be true, and I do not retract a single word. If neither “H. M.” nor
Lieut.-Col. Marshall, nor the Rev. Mr. Metz have penetrated the secret that
lies behind the dirty huts of the aborigines they have seen, that is their
misfortune, not my fault.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
New York, March
18th, 1878.
THE TODAS
—————
[From the London
Spiritualist.]
FOR my answer to
the sneer of your correspondent “H. M.” about my opinion of the Todas a few
lines sufficed. I only cared to say that what I have written in Isis Unveiled
was written after reading Col. Marshall’s A Phrenologist among the Todas, and
in consequence of what, whether justly or not, I believe to be the erroneous
statements of that author. Writing about Oriental psychology, its phenomena and
practitioners, as I did, I should have been ludicrously wanting in common sense
if I had not anticipated such denials and contradictions as those of “H. M.”
from every side. How would it profit the seeker after this Occult knowledge to
face danger, privations, and obstacles of every kind to gain it, if, after
attaining his end, he should not have facts to relate of which the profane were
ignorant? A pretty set of critics are the ordinary travellers or observers,
even though what Dr. Carpenter euphemistically calls a “scientific officer,” or
“distinguished civilian,” when, confessedly, every European unfurnished with
some mystical passport is debarred from entering any orthodox Brâhman’s house
or the inner precincts of a pagoda. How we poor Theosophists should tremble
before the scorn of those modern Daniels when the cleverest of them has never
been able to explain the commonest “tricks” of Hindu jugglers, to say nothing
of the phenomena of the Fakirs! These very savants answer the testimony of
Spiritualists with an equally lofty scorn, and resent as a personal affront the
invitation to even attend a seance.
I should therefore
have let the “Todas” question pass, but for the letter of “Late Madras C. S.”
in your paper of the 15thI feel bound to answer it, for the writer plainly
makes me out to be a liar. He threatens me, moreover, with the thunderbolts
that a certain other officer has concealed in his library closet.
It is quite
remarkable how a man who resorts to an alias sometimes forgets that he is a
gentleman. Perhaps such is the custom in your
175———————————————————————THE
TODAS.
civilized England,
where manners and education are said to be carried to a superlative elegance;
but not so in poor, barbarous Russia, which a good portion of your countrymen
are just now trying to strangle (if they can). In my country of Tartaric
Cossacks and Kalmucks, a man who sets out to insult another does not usually
hide himself behind a shield. I am sorry to have to say this much, but you have
allowed me, without the least provocation and upon several occasions, to be
unstintedly reviled by correspondents, and I am sure that you are too much of a
man of honour to refuse me the benefit of an answer. “Late Madras, C. S.” sides
with Mrs. Showers in the insinuation that I never was in India at all. This
reminds me of a calumny of last year, originating with “spirits” speaking
through a celebrated medium at Boston, and finding credit in many quarters.
It was, that I was
not a Russian, did not even speak that language, but was merely a French
adventuress. So much for the infallibility of some of the sweet “angels.”
Surely, I will neither go to the trouble of exhibiting to any of my masked
detractors, of this or the other world, my passports vise’s by the Russian
embassies half a dozen times on my way to India and back. Nor will I demean
myself by showing the stamped envelopes of letters received by me in different
parts of India.
Such an accusation
makes me simply laugh, for my word is, surely, as good as that of anybody else.
I will only say that more’s the pity that an English officer, who was “fifteen
years in the district,” knows less of the Todas than I, who, he pretends, never
was in India at all. He calls Gopuram a “tower” of the pagoda. Why not the roof
or any thing else as well? Gopuram is the sacred pylon, the pyramidal gate way
by which the pagoda is entered; and yet I have repeatedly heard the people of
southern India call the pagoda itself a Gopuram. It may be a careless mode of
expression employed among the vulgar; but when we come to consult the authority
of the best Indian lexicographers we find it accepted. In John Shakespear’s
Hindustáni English Dictionary (edition of 1849, p. 1727) the word Gopuram is
rendered as “an idol temple of the Hindus.” Has “Late Madras C. S.” or any of
his friends, ever climbed up into the interior, so as to know who or what is
concealed there? If not, then perhaps his fling at me was a trifle premature. I
am sorry to have shocked the sensitiveness of such a philological purist, but
really I do not see why, when speaking of the temples of the Todas—whether they
exist or not—even a Brâhman Guru might not say that they had their Gopurams?
Perhaps
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he, or some other
brilliant authority in Sanskrit and other Indian languages, will favour us with
the etymology of the word? Does the first syllable, go or gu, relate to the
roundness of these “towers” as my critic calls them (for the word go does mean
something round) or to gop, a cowherd, which gave its name to a Hindu caste and
was one of the names of Krishna, Go-pal meaning the cowherd? Let these critics
carefully read Col. Marshall’s work and see whether the pastoral tribe, whom he
saw so much, and discovered so little about, whose worship (exoteric, of
course) is all embraced in the care of the sacred cows and buffaloes, the
distribution of the “divine fluid”—milk, and whose seeming adoration, as the
missionaries tell us, is so great for their buffaloes that they call them the
“gift of God,” could not be said to have their Gopurams, though the latter were
but a cattle-pen, a tirieri, the maund, in short, into which the phrenological
explorer crawled alone by night with infinite pains and—neither saw nor found
anything. And because he found nothing he concludes they have no religion, no
idea of God, no worship. About as reasonable an inference as Dr. W. B.
Carpenter might come to if he had crawled into Mrs. Showers’ séance— room some
night when all the “angels” and their guests had fled, and straightway reported
that among Spiritualists there are neither mediums nor phenomena.
Col. Marshall I
find far less dogmatic than his admirers. Such cautious phrases as “I believe,”
“I could not ascertain,” “I believe it to be true,” and the like, show his
desire to find out the truth, but scarcely prove conclusively that he has found
it. At best it only comes to this, that Col. Marshall believes one thing to be
true, and I look upon it differently. He credits his friend the missionary, and
I believe my friend the Brâhman, who told me what I have written. Besides, I
explicitly state in my book (see Isis, vol. ii. pp. 614, 615):
As soon as their
[the Todas’] solitude was profaned by the avalanche of civilization . . the
Todas began moving away to other parts as unknown and more inaccessible than
the Neilgherri hills had formerly been.
The Todas,
therefore, of whom my Brâhman friend spoke, and whom Capt. W. L. D. O’Grady,
late manager of the Madras Branch Bank at Ootacamund, tells me he has seen
specimens of, are not the degenerate remnants of the tribe whose phrenological
bumps were measured by Col. Marshall. And yet, even what the latter writes of
these, I from personal knowledge affirm to be in many particulars inaccurate. I
may be regarded by my critics as over-credulous, but this is surely no
177———————————————————————THE TODAS.
reason why I should
be treated as a liar whether by late or living Madras authorities of the C. S.
Neither Capt. O’Grady, who was born at Madras and was for a time stationed on
the Neilgherri hills, nor I, recognized the individuals photographed in Col.
Marshall’s book as Todas. Those we saw wore their dark brown hair very long,
and were much fairer than the Badagas, or any other Hindus in neither of which particulars
do they resemble Col. Marshall’s types. “H. M.” says:
The Todas are
brown, coffee-coloured, like most other natives.
But turning to
Appleton’s Cyclopædia (vol. xii. p. 173), we read:
These people are of
a light complexion, have strongly-marked Jewish features, and have been
supposed by many to be one of the lost tribes.
“H. M.” assures us
that the places inhabited by the Todas are not infested by venomous serpents or
tigers; but the same Cyclopædia remarks that:
The mountains are
swarming with wild animals of all descriptions, among which elephants and
tigers are numerous.
But the “Late”
(defunct?—is your correspondent a disembodied angel?) “Madras C. S.” attains to
the sublimity of the ridiculous when, with biting irony in winding up, he says:
All good spirits,
of whatever degree, astral or elementary, . . . prevent his [Capt. R. F.
Burton’s] ever meeting with Isis—rough might be the unveiling
Surely unless that
military Nemesis should tax the hospitality of some American newspaper,
conducted by politicians, he could never be rougher than this Madras Grandison.
And then, the idea of suggesting that, after having contradicted and made sport
of the greatest authorities of Europe and America, to begin with Max Muller and
end with the Positivists, in both my volumes, I should be appalled by Captain
Burton, or the whole lot of captains in Her Majesty’s service—though each
carried an Armstrong gun on his shoulder and a mitrailleuse in his pocket—is
positively superb! Let them reserve their threats and terrors for my Christian
countrymen.
Any moderately
equipped sciolist (and the more empty-headed, the easier) might tear Isis to
shreds, in the estimation of the vulgar, with his sophisms and presumably
authoritative analysis; but would that prove him to be right, and me wrong? Let
all the records of medial phenomena, rejected, falsified, slandered and
ridiculed, and of mediums terrorized, for thirty years past, answer for me. I,
at least, am not of the kind to be bullied into silence by such tactics, as “Late
Madras”
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A MODERN PANARION.
may in time
discover; nor will he ever find me skulking behind a nom de plume when I have
insults to offer. I always have had, as I now have, and trust ever to retain,
the courage of my opinions, however unpopular or erroneous they may be
considered; and there are not showers enough in Great Britain to quench the
ardour with which I stand by my convictions.
There is but one
way to account for the tempest which, for four months, has raged in The
Spiritualist against Col. Olcott and myself, and that is expressed in the
familiar French proverb—” Quand on veut tuer son chien, on dit qu’il est
enrage".
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
New York, March
24th 1878.
THE AHKOOND OF SWAT
THE FOUNDER OF MANY
MYSTICAL SOCIETIES.
—————
[From the New York
Echo, 1878.]
OF the many
remarkable characters of this century, Ghafur was one of the most conspicuous.
If there be truth
in the Eastern doctrine that souls, powerful whether for good or bad, who had
not time in one existence to work out their plans, are reincarnated, the
fierceness of their yearnings to continue on earth thrusting them back into the
current of their attractions, then Ghafur was a rebirth of that Felice Peretti,
who is known in history as Pope Sixtus V., of crafty and odious memory. Both
were born in the lowest class of society, being ignorant peasant boys and
beginning life as herdsmen. Both reached the apex of power through craft and
stealth and by imposing upon the superstitions of the masses. Sixtus, author of
mystical books and himself a practitioner of the forbidden sciences to satisfy
his lust for power and ensure impunity, became Inquisitor-General. Made Pope,
he hurled his anathemas alike against Elizabeth of England, the King of
Navarre, and other important personages. Abdul Ghafur, endowed with an iron
will, had educated himself without colleges or professors except through
association with the “wise men” of Khuttuk. He was as well versed in the Arabic
and Persian literature of alchemy and astronomy as Sixtus was in Aristotle, and
like him knew how to fabricate mesmerized talismans and amulets containing
either life or death for those to whom they were presented. Each held millions
of devotees under the subjection of their psycho logical influence, though both
were more dreaded than beloved.
Ghafur had been a
warrior and an ambitious leader of fanatics, but becoming a dervish and finally
a pope, so to say, his blessing or curse made him as effectually the master of
the Ameers and other Mussulmans as Sixtus was of the Catholic potentates of
Europe.
Only the salient
features of his career are known to Christendom.
180————————————————————A M0DERN PANARION.
Watched, as he may
have been, his private life, ambitions, aspirations for temporal as well as
religious power, are almost a sealed book. But the one certain thing is, that
he was the founder and chief of nearly every secret society worth speaking of
among Mussulmans, and the dominant spirit in all the rest. His apparent
antagonism to the Wahabees was but a mask, and the murderous hand that struck
Lord Mayo was certainly guided by the old Abdul. The Biktashee Dervishes* and
the howling, dancing, and other Moslem religious mendicants recognize his
supremacy as far above that of the Sheik-ul-Islam of the faithful. Hardly a
political order of any importance issued from Constantinople or
Teheran—heretics though the Persians are—without his having a finger in the pie
directly or indirectly. As fanatical as Sixtus, but more cunning yet, if
possible, instead of giving direct orders for the extermination of the
Huguenots of Islam, the Wahabees, he directed his curses and pointed his finger
only at those among them whom he found in his way, keeping on the best, though
secret, terms with the rest.
The title of
Nasr-ed-Din (defender of the faith) he impartially applied to both the Sultan
and the Shah, though one is a Sunnite and the other a Shiah. He sweetened the
stronger religious intolerance of the Osman dynasty by adding to the old title
of Nasr-ed-Din those of Saif-ed-Din (scimitar of faith) and Emir-el-Mumminiah
(prince of the faithful). Every Emir-el-Sourey, or leader of the sacred caravan
of pilgrims to Mekka, brought or sent messages to, and received advice and
instructions from, Abdul, the latter in the shape of mysterious oracles, for
which was left the full equivalent in money, presents and other offerings, as
the Catholic pilgrims have recently done at Rome.
In 1847-8 the
Prince Mirza, uncle of the young Shah and ex-governor of a great province in
Persia, appeared in Tiflis, seeking Russian protection at the hands of Prince
Woronzof, Viceroy of the Caucasus. Having helped himself to the crown jewels
and ready money in the treasury, he had run away from the jurisdiction of his
loving nephew, who was anxious to put out his eyes. Popular rumour asserted
that his reason for what he had done was that the great dervish, Ahkoond, had
thrice appeared to him in dreams, prompting him to take what he had and share
his booty with the protectors of the faith of his principal wife (he brought
twelve with him to Tiflis), a native of Cabul. The
—————
* To this day, no
Biktashee would be recognized as Such unless he could claim possession of a
certain medal with the seal of this high-pontiff” of all the Dervishes, whether
they belong to one sect or the other.
181———————————————————THE AHKOOND OF SWAT.
secret, though,
perhaps, indirect influence he exercised on the Begum of Bhopal, during the
Sepoy rebellion of 1857, was a mystery only to the English, whom the old
schemer knew so well how to hoodwink. During his long career of Macchiavellism,
friendly with the British, and yet striking them constantly in secret;
venerated as a new prophet by millions of orthodox, as well as heretic
Mussulmans; managing to preserve his influence over friend and foe, the old
“Teacher” had one enemy whom he feared, for he knew that no amount of craft
would ever win it over to his side. This enemy was the once mighty nation of
the Sikhs, ex-sovereign rulers of the Punjab and masters of the Peshawur
Valley. Reduced from their high estate, this warrior people are now under the
rule of a single Mahârâjah—Puttiala—who is him self the helpless vassal of the
British. From the beginning the Ahkoond had continually encountered the Sikhs
in his path. Scarce would he feel himself conqueror over one obstacle, before
his hereditary enemy would appear between him and the realization of his hopes.
If the Sikhs remained faithful to the British in 1857, it was not through
hearty loyalty or political convictions, so much as through sheer opposition to
the Mohammedans, whom they knew to be secretly prompted by the Ahkoond.
Since the days of
the great Nanak, of the Kshattriya caste, founder of the Sikh Brotherhood in
the second half of the fifteenth century, these brave and warlike tribes have
ever been the thorn in the side of the Mogul dynasty, the terror of the Moslems
of India. Originating, as we may say, in a religious Brotherhood, whose object
was to make away alike with Islamism, Brâhmanism, and other isms, including
later Christianity, this sect evolved a pure monotheism in the abstract idea of
an ever unknown Principle, and elaborated it into the doctrine of the “Brotherhood
of Man.” In their view, we have but one Father- Mother Principle, with “neither
form, shape, nor colour,” and we ought all to be, if we are not, brothers
irrespective of distinctions of race or colour. The sacerdotal Brâhman,
fanatical in his observance of dead-letter forms, thus became in the opinion of
the Sikh as much the enemy of truth as the Mussulman wallowing in a sensual
heaven with his houris, the joss-worshipping Buddhist grinding out prayers at
his wheel, or yet the Roman Catholic adoring his jewelled Madonnas, whose
complexion the priests change from white to brown and black to suit climates
and prejudices. Later on, Arjuna, son of Ramdas, the fourth in the succession
after Nanak, gathering together the doctrines
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of the founder and
his son Angad, brought out a sacred volume, called Adi-garunth, and largely
supplemented it with selections from forty- five Sutras of the Jains. While
adopting equally the religious figures of the Vedas and Koran, after sifting
them and explaining their symbolism, the Adi-garuizlh yet presents a greater
similarity of ideas respecting the most elaborate metaphysical conceptions with
those of the Jain school of Gurus. The notions of Astrology, or the influence
of the starry spheres upon ourselves, were evidently adopted from that most
prominent school of antiquity. This will be readily ascertained by comparing
the commentaries of Abhayadeva Sun upon the original forty-five Sfttras in the
Magadhi or Balabasha languages* with the Adigarunik. An old Jain Guru, who is
said to have drawn the horoscope of Runjeet Singh, at the time of his greatest
power, had foretold the downfall of the kingdom of Lahore. It was the learned
Arjuna who retired into Amritsir, changed the sect into a politico- religious
community, and instituted within the same another and more esoteric body of
Gurus, scholars and metaphysicians, of which he became sole chief. He died in
prison, under torture, by the order of Aurungzebe, into whose hands he had
fallen, at the beginning of the seventeenth century. His son Govinda, a Guru
(religious teacher) of great renown, vowed revenge against the race of his father’s
murderers, and after various changes of fortune the Afghans were finally driven
from the Punjab by the Sikhs in 1764. This triumph only made their hatred more
bitter still, and from that moment until the death of Runjeet Singh, in 1839,
we find them constantly aiming their blows at the Moslems. Mahâ Singh, the
father of Runjeet, had set off the Sikhs into twelve mizals or divisions, each
having its own chief (Sirdar), whose secret Council of State consisted of
learned Gurus. Among these were Masters in spiritual Science, and they might,
if they had had a mind, have exhibited as astonishing “miracles” and divine
legerdemain as the old Mussulman Ahkoond. He knew it well, and for this reason
dreaded them even more than he hated them for his defeat and that of his Ameer
by Runjeet Singh.
One highly dramatic
incident in the life of the “Pope of Sydoo” is the following well-authenticated
case, which was much commented upon in his part of India about twenty years
ago. One day, in 1858,
—————
* This valuable
work is now being republished by Ookerdhabhoy Shewgee, and has been received by
the Theosophical Society from the Editor through the President of the Bombay
branch. When finished it will be the first edition of the Jain Bible,
Sudra-Sangraha or Vihiva Punnutti Sudra in existence, as all their sacred books
are kept in secret by the Jains.
183———————————————————THE AHKOOND OF SWAT.
when the Ahkoond,
squatting on his carpet, was distributing amulets, blessings and prophecies
among his pious congregation of pilgrims, a tall Hindu who had silently
approached and mingled in the crowd without having been noticed, suddenly
addressed him thus: “Tell me, prophet, thou who prophesiest so well for others,
whether thou knowest what will be thine own fate, and that of the ‘Defender of
the Faith,’ thy Sultan of Stamboul, twenty years hence?”
The old Ghafur,
overcome with violent surprise, stared at his interlocutor, but no answer came.
In recognizing the Sikh he seemed to have lost all power of speech, and the
crowd was under a spell.
“If not,” continued
the intruder, “then I will tell thee. Twenty years more and your ‘Prince of the
Faithful’ will fall by the hand of an assassin of his own house. Two old men,
one the Dalai Lama of the Christians, the other the great prophet of the
Moslems—thyself— will be simultaneously crushed under the heel of death. Then,
the first hour will strike of the downfall of those twin foes of truth—
Christianity and Islam. The first, as the more powerful, will survive the
second, but both will soon crumble into fragmentary sects, which will mutually
exterminate each other’s faith. See, thy followers are powerless, and I might
kill thee now, but thou art in the hands of Destiny, and that knows its own
hour.”
Before a hand could
be lifted the speaker had disappeared. This incident of itself sufficiently
proves that the Sikhs might have assassinated Abdul Ghafur at any time had they
chosen so to do. And it may be that The Mayfair Gazette which in June, 1877,
prophetically observed that the rival pontiffs of Rome and Swat might die
simultaneously, had heard from some “old Indian” this story, which the writer
also heard from an informant at Lahore.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
THE ARYA SAMAJ
CHRISTENDOM sends
its missionaries to Heathendom at an expense of millions drained from the
pockets of would-be pious folks, who court respectability. Thousands of
homeless and penniless old men, women and children are allowed to starve for
lack of funds, for the sake, perhaps, of one converted “heathen.” All the spare
money of the charitable is absorbed by these dead-head travelling agents of the
Christian Church. What is the result? Visit the prison cells of so-called
Christian lands, crammed with delinquents who have been led on to felony by the
weary path of starvation, and you will have the answer.
Read in the daily
papers the numerous accounts of executions, and you will find that modern
Christianity offers, perhaps unintentionally but none the less surely, a
premium for murder and other heinous crimes. Is anyone prepared to deny the
assertion? Remember that, while many a respectable unbeliever dies in his bed
with the comfortable assurance from his next of kin, and good friends in
general, that he is going to hell, the red-handed criminal has but to believe
at his eleventh hour that the blood of the Saviour can and will save him, to
receive the guarantee of his spiritual adviser that he will find himself when
launched into eternity in the bosom of Christ, in heaven, and playing upon the
traditional harp. Why, then, should any Christian deny himself the pleasure and
profit of robbing, or even murdering, his richer neighbour? And such a doctrine
is being promulgated among the heathen at the cost of an annual expenditure of
millions.
But, in her eternal
wisdom, Nature provides antidotes against moral as well as against mineral and
vegetable poisons. There are people who do not content themselves with
preaching grandiloquent discourses; they act. If such books as Higgins’
Anacalypsis, and that extraordinary work of an anonymous English author—a
bishop, it is whispered—entitled Supernatural Religion, cannot awaken
responsive
185————————————————————THE
ARYA SAMAJ.
echoes among the
ignorant masses, other means can be, and are resorted to—means more effectual
and which will bring fruit in the future, if hitherto prevented by the crushing
hand of ecclesiastical and monarchical despotism. Those whom the written proofs
of the fictitious character of biblical authority cannot reach, may be saved by
the spoken word. And this work of disseminating the truth among the more
ignorant classes is being ardently prosecuted by an army of devoted scholars
and teachers, simultaneously in India and America.
The Theosophical
Society has been of late so much spoken about; such idle tales have been
circulated about it—its members being sworn to secrecy and hitherto unable,
even if willing, to proclaim the truth about it—that the public may be
gratified to know, at least, about one portion of its work. It is now in
organized affiliation with the Arya Samâj of India, its Western representative,
and, so to say, under the order of its chiefs. A younger Society than the
Brâhmo Samaj it was instituted to save the Hindu from exoteric idolatries,
Brâhmanism and Christian missionaries.
The purely Theistic
movement connected with the Brâhmo Samâj had its origin in the same idea. It
began early in the present century, but spasmodically and with interruption,
and only took concrete shape under the leadership of Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen
in 1858. Rammo bun Roy, who may be termed the combined Fénelon and Thomas Paine
of Hindustan, was its parent, his first church having been organized shortly
before his death in 1833. One of the greatest and most acute of controversial
writers that our century has produced, his works ought to be translated and
circulated in every civilized land. At his death, the work of the Brâhmo Samâj
was interrupted. As Miss Collett says, in her Brahmo Year Book for 1878, it was
only in October, 1839, that Debendra Nath Tagore founded the Tattvabodhini
Sabhâ (or Society for the Knowledge of Truth), which lasted for twenty years,
and did much to arouse the energies and form the principles of the young church
of the Brahmo Samaj. But exoteric or open religion as it is now, it must have
been conducted at first much on the principles of the secret societies, as we
are informed that Keshub Chunder Sen, a resident of Calcutta and a pupil of the
Presidency College, who had long before quitted the orthodox Brâhmanical Church
and was searching for a purely Theistic religion, “had never heard of the
Brâhmo Samâj before 1858” (see The Theistic Annual, 1878, p. 45).
Since then the
Brâhmo Samâj, which he then joined, has flourished
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and become more
popular every day. We now find it with Samâjes established in many provinces
and cities. At least, we learn that in May, 1877, fifty Samâjes have notified
their adhesion to the Society and eight of them have appointed their
representatives. Native missionaries of the Theistic religion oppose the
Christian missionaries and the orthodox Brâhmans, and the work is going on
livelily. So much for the Brâhmo movement.
And now, with
regard to the Arya Samâj, The Indian Tribune uses the following language in
speaking of its founder:
The first quarter
of the sixteenth century was no more an age of reformation in Europe than the
one we now live in is, at this moment, in India. from amongst its own “Benedictines,”
Swami Dyanand Saraswati has arisen, who, unlike other reformers, does not wish
to set up a new religion of his own, but asks his country men to go back to the
pristine purity and Theism of their Vedic religion. After preaching his views
in Bombay, Poona, Calcutta, and the N. -W. Provinces, he came to the Punjab
last year, and here it is that he found the most congenial soil.
It was in the land
of the five rivers, on the banks of the Indus, that the Vedas were first
compiled. It was the Punjah that gave birth to a Nanak. And it is the Punjab
that is making such efforts for a revival of Vedic learning and its doctrines.
And wherever Swami Dyanand goes, his splendid physique, his manly bearing,
eloquence and his incisive logic tear down all opposition. People rise up and
say: We shall remain no longer in this state for ourselves, we have bad enough
of a crafty priesthood and a demoralizing idolatry, and we shall tolerate them
no longer. We shall wipe off the ugliness of ages, and try to shine forth in
the original radiance and effulgence of our Aryan ancestors.
The Svami is a most
highly honoured Fellow of the Theosophical Society, takes a deep interest in
its proceedings, and The Indian Spectator of Bombay, April 14th, 1878, spoke by
the book when it said that the work of Pundit Dyanand “bears intimate relation
to the work of the Theosophical Society.”
While the members
of the Brâhmo Samaj may be designated as the Lutheran Protestants of orthodox
Brâhmanism, the disciples of the Svami Dyanand should be compared to those
learned mystics, the Gnostics, who had the key to those earlier writings which,
later, were worked over into the Christian gospels and various patristic
literature. As the above-named pre-Christian sects understood the true esoteric
meaning of the Chrestos allegory, which is now materialized into the Jesus of
flesh, so the disciples of the learned and holy Svami are taught to
discriminate between the written form and the spirit of the word preached in
the Vedas. And this is the principal point of difference between the Arya Samâj
and the Brâhmos who, as it would seem, believe
187———————————————————THE ARYA SAMAJ
in a personal God
and repudiate the Vedas, while the Aryas see an everlasting Principle, an
impersonal Cause in the great “Soul of the universe” rather than a personal
being, and accept the Vedas as supreme authority, though not of divine origin.
But we may better quote in elucidation of the subject what the President of the
Bombay Arya Samâj, also a Fellow of the Theosophical Society, Mr. Hurrychund
Chintamon, says in a recent letter to our Society:
Pundit Dyanand
maintains that as it is now universally acknowledged that the Vedas are the
oldest books of antiquity, if they contain the truth and nothing but the truth
in all unmutilated state, and nothing new can be found in other works of later
date, why should we not accept the Vedas as a guide for Humanity? . . A
revealed book or revelation is understood to mean one of two things, Viz.: (1)
a book already written by some invisible hand and thrown into the world; or (2)
a work written by one or more men while they were in their highest state of
mental lucidity, acquired by profound meditation upon the problems of who man
is, whence he came, whither he must go, and by what means he may emancipate
himself from worldly delusions and sufferings. The latter hypothesis may be
regarded as the more rational and correct.
Our Brother
Hurrychund here describes those superior men whom we know as Adepts. He adds:
The ancient
inhabitants of a place near Thibet, and adjoining a lake called Mansovara, were
first called Deveneggury (Devanâgari) or godlike people. Their written
characters were also called Deveneggury or Balbadha letters. A portion of them
migrated to the North and settled there, and afterwards spread towards the
South, while others went to the West. All these emigrants styled themselves
Aryans, or noble, pure, and good men, as they considered that a pure gift had
been made to humanity from the “Pure Alone.” These lofty souls were the authors
of the Vedas.
What more
reasonable than the claim that such Scriptures, emanating from such authors,
should contain, for those who are able to penetrate the meaning that lies half
concealed under the dead letter, all the wisdom which it is allowed to men to
acquire on earth? The Chiefs of the Arya Samâj discredit “miracles,”
discountenance superstition and all violation of natural law, and teach the
purest form of Vaidic Philosophy. Such are the allies of the Theosophical
Society. They have said to us: “Let us work together for the good of mankind,”
and we will.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
PARTING WORDS
—————
[From The
Religio-Philosophical Journal, July 6th, 1878.]
So far as I can at
present foresee, this will be the last time I shall ask you to print anything
over my, to many Spiritualists, loathed signature, as I intend to start for
India very soon. But I have once more to correct inaccurate statements. If I
had had my choice, I would have preferred almost any other person than my very
esteemed friend Dr. Bloede, to have last words with. Once an antagonist, a
bitter and unjust one to me, as he himself admits, he has since made all the
amends I could have asked of a scholar and a gentleman, and now, as all who
read your valuable paper see, he does me the honour to call me friend. Honest
in intent he always is, I am sure, but still a little prejudiced. Who of us but
is so, more or less? Duty, therefore, compels me to correct the erroneous
impression which his letter on “Secret Societies” (Journal of June 15th) is
calculated to give about the Theosophical Society. How many “Fellows” we have,
how the Society is flourishing, what are its operations or how conducted, no
one knows or can know, save the presidents of its various branches and their
secretaries. Therefore, Dr. G. Bloede, in saying that it has “failed in America
and will fail in Europe,” speaks of that of which neither he nor any other
outsider has knowledge. If the Society’s only object were the study of the
phenomena called Spiritual, his strictures would be perfectly warranted; for it
is not secrecy but privacy and exclusiveness that are demanded in the
management of circles and mediums. It would have been absurd to make a secret
society expressly for that purpose. At its beginning the Theosophical Society
was started for that sole study, and therefore was, as you all know, open to
any respectable person who wished to join it. We discussed “spiritual” topics
freely, and were willing to impart to the public the results of all our
experiments, and whatever some of us might have learned of the subject in the
course of long studies. How our views and philosophy
189————————————————————PARTING WORDS.
were received—no
need to recall the old story again. The storm has already subsided; and the
total of “Billingsgate” poured upon our devoted heads is preserved in three
gigantic scrap-books whose contents I mean to immortalize some day. When
through the writing and noble efforts of the Journal and other spiritual papers
the secret of these varied and vexing phenomena, indiscriminately called
spiritual, will be snatched at last, when the faithful of the orthodox church
of Spiritualism will be forced to give up—partially at least—their many bigoted
and preconceived notions, then the time will have come again for Theosophists
to claim a hearing. Till then, its members retire from the arena of discussion
and devote their whole leisure to the fulfilment of other and more important
objects of the Society.
You perceive, then,
that it is only when experience showed the necessity for its work to be
enlarged, and its objects became various, that the T. S. thought fit to protect
itself by secrecy. Since then, none but perjured witnesses, and we know of
none, can have told about what we were doing, except as permitted by official
sanction and announced from time to time. One of such objects of our Society we
are willing to publicly announce.
It is universally
known that this most important object is to antagonize Christianity* and
especially Jesuitism. One of our most esteemed and valued members, once an
ardent Spiritualist, but who must for the present be nameless, has but recently
fallen a victim to the snares of this hateful body.
The nefarious
designs of Jesuitism are plotted in secret and carried out through secret
agencies. What more reasonable and lawful, there fore, than that those who wish
to fight it should keep their own secret, likewise, as to their agencies and
plans? We have among us persons in high position—political, military, financial
and social—who regard Christianity as the greatest evil to humanity, and are
willing to help pull it down. But for them to be able to do much and well, they
must do it anonymously. The Church—”triple-headed snake” as a well known writer
calls it—can no longer burn its enemies, but it can blast their social
influence; can no longer roast their bodies, but can ruin their fortunes. We
have no right to give our enemy, the Church, the names of our “Fellows,” who
are not ripe for martyrdom, and so we
—————
* [In later days H.
P. B. took great pains to explain that the ‘christianity’ which she so
vigorously attacked, was all ecclesiastical system of dogmas to which she
subsequently gave the name ‘‘churchianity,’’ and not the spiritual and moral
teachings of Jesus.—Ens.]
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keep them secret.
If we have an agent to send to India or to Japan, or China, or any other heathen
country, to do something or confer with somebody in connection with the
Society’s general plans against missionaries, it would be foolish, nay,
criminal, to expose our agent to imprisonment under some malicious pretext, if
not death, and even the latter is possible in the far-away East, and our scheme
is liable to miscarry by announcing it to the dishonourable company of Jesus.
So, sir, to sum up
in a word, Dr. Bloede has made a great mistake in supposing the Theosophical
Society a “failure” in this or any other country. Where the Society counted
three years ago its members by the dozen, it now counts them by the hundred and
thousand. And so far from its threatening in any respect the stability of
society or the advancement of spiritual knowledge, the Theosophical institution
which now bears the name of the “Theosophical Society of the Arya Samâj of
India” (being regularly chartered by and affiliated with that great body in the
land of the Aryas) will be found some day, by the Spiritualists and all others
who claim the right of thinking for them selves, to have been the true friend
of intellectual and spiritual liberty—if not in America, at least in France and
other countries, where an infernal priesthood thrusts innocent Spiritualists
into prison by the help of a subservient judiciary and the use of perjured
testimony. Its name will be respected as a pioneer of free thought and an
uncompromising enemy of priestly and monkish fraud and despotism.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
New York, June
17th, 1878.
“NOT A CHRISTIAN”
—————
[From the Indian
Spectator.]
BEFORE entering
upon the main question that compels me to ask you kindly to accord me space in
your esteemed paper, will you inform me as to the nature of that newly-horn
infant prodigy which calls itself The Bombay Review? Is it a bigoted, sectarian
organ of the Christians, or an impartial journal, fair to all, and unprejudiced
as every respectable paper styling itself “Review” ought to be, especially in a
place like Bombay, where such a diversity of religious opinions is to be found?
The two paragraphs in the number of February 22nd, which so honour the
Theosophical Society by a double notice of its American members, would force me
to incline toward the former opinion. Both the editorial which attacks my
esteemed friend, Miss Bates, and the apocalyptic vision of the modern Ezekiel,
alias “Anthroposophist,” who shoots his rather blunt arrows at Col. Olcott,
require an answer, if it were but to show the advisability of using sharper
darts against Theosophists. Leaving the seer to his prophetic dream of
langoutis and cow-dung, I will simply review the editorial of this Review which
tries to be at the same time satirical and severe and succeeds only in being
nonsensical. Quoting from another paper a sentence relating to Miss Bates,
which describes her as “not a Christian,” it remarks in that bitter and selfish
spirit of arrogance and would-be superiority, which so characterizes Christian
sectarianism:
The public might
have been spared the sight of the italicized personal explanation.
What “public” may I
ask? The majority of the intelligent and reading public—especially of native
papers—in Bombay as throughout India is, we believe, composed of
non-Christians—of Parsis, Hindus, etc. And this public instead of resenting
such “wanton aggressiveness,” as the writer pleases to call it, call but
rejoice to find at least one European lady, who, at the same time that she is
not a Christian,
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is quite ready, as
a Theosophist, to call any respectable “heathen” her brother, and regard him
with at least as much sympathy as she does a Christian. But this unfortunate
thrust at Theosophy is explained by what follows:
In the young lady’s
own interest the insult ought not to have been flung into the teeth of the
Christian public.
Without taking into
consideration the old and wise axiom, that honesty is the best policy, we can
only regret for our Christian opponents that they should so soon “unveil” their
cunning policy. While in the eyes of every honest “heathen” Theosophist, there
can be no higher recommendation for a person than to have the reputation of
being truthful even at the expense of his or her “interest,” our Christian
Review unwittingly exposes the concealed rope of the mission machinery, by
admitting that it is in the interest of every person here, at least—to appear a
Christian or a possible convert, if he is not one de facto. We feel really very,
very grateful to the Review for such a timely and generous confession. The
writer’s defence of the “public” for which it speaks as one having authority is
no less vague and unsatisfactory, as we all know that among the 240,000,000 of
native population in India, Christians count but as a drop in an ocean. Or is
it possible that no other public but the Christian is held worthy of the name
or even of consideration? Had converted Brâhmans arrived here instead of
Theosophists, and one of these announced his profession of faith by italicizing
the words, not a heathen, we doubt whether the fear of hurting the feelings of
many millions of Hindus would have ever entered the mind of our caustic
paragraphist!
Nor do we find the
sentence, “India owes too much to Christianity,” anything but arrogant and
presumptuous talk. India owes much and everything to the British Government,
which protects its heathen subjects equally with those of English birth, and
would no more allow the one class to insult the other than it would revive the
Inquisition. India owes to Great Britain its educational system, its slow but
sure progress, and its security from the aggression of other nations; to
Christianity it owes nothing. And yet perhaps I am mistaken, and ought to have
made one exception. India owes to Christianity its mutiny of 1857, which threw
it back for a century. This we assert on the authority of general opinion and
of Sir John Kay, who declares, in his Sepoy War, that the mutiny resulted from
the intolerance of the crusading missions and the silly talk of the Friend of
India.
195————————————————————“NOT A CHRISTIAN”!
I have done; adding
but one more word of advice to the Review. In the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, when the latest international revision of the Bible—that
infallible and revealed Word of God !—reveals 64,000 mistranslations and other
mistakes, it is not the Theosophists—a large number of whose members are
English patriots and men of learning—but rather the Christians who ought to
beware of “wanton aggressiveness” against people of other creeds. Their
boomerangs may fly back from some unexpected parabola and hit the throwers.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
Bombay, Feb. 25th,
1879.
THE RETORT
COURTEOUS
[From the Indian
Spectator.]
THERE is a story
current among the Yankees of a small school boy, who, having been thrashed by a
bigger fellow and being unable to hit him back, consoled himself by making
faces at his enemy’s sister. Such is the position of my opponent of the
world-famed Bombay Review. Realizing the impossibility of injuring the
Theosophical Society, he “makes faces” at its Corresponding Secretary, flinging
at her personal abuse.
Unfortunately for
my masked enemies and fortunately for myself, I have five years’ experience in
fighting American newspapers, any one of which, notwithstanding the
grandiloquent style of the “Anthroposophists,” “B.’s” and “Onesimuses” is any
day more than a match in humour, and especially in wit, for a swarm of such
pseudonymous wasps as work on the Review. If I go to the trouble of noticing
their last Saturday’s curry of weak arguments and impertinent personalities at
all, it is simply with the object of proving once more that it requires more
wit than seems to be at their command to compel my silence. Abuse is no
argument; moreover, if applied indiscriminately it may prove dangerous
sometimes.
Hence, I intend
noticing but one particular point. As to their conceit, it is very delightful
to behold! What a benevolent tone of patronage combined with modesty is theirs!
How refreshing in hot weather to hear them saying of oneself:
We have been more
charitable to her than she seems subsequently to deserve [!!].
Could dictatorial
magnanimity be carried further? And this dithyrambic, which forces one’s
recognition of the worth of the mighty ones “of broad and catholic views,” who
control the fates of The Bombay Review, and have done in various ways so much
“for the races of India” ! One might fancy he heard the “spirits” of Lord Mayo
and Sir William Jones themselves blowing through the pipes of this earth
shaking organ.
197————————————————————THE
RETORT COURTEOUS.
Has it acquired its
reverberant diapason from the patronage of all the native princes whose favours
it so eagerly sought a while ago?
I have neither
leisure nor desire to banter penny-a-line wit with such gold-medal experts,
especially when I honestly write above my own signature and they hide
themselves behind secure pseudonyms. Therefore, I will leave their claptrap
about “weeds and Madame Sophy” to be digested by themselves, and notice but the
insinuation about “Russian spies.” I agree with the Review editor when he says
that it is the business of Sir Richard Temple and Sir Frank Souter to take care
of such “spies.” And I will further add that it is these two gentlemen alone
who have the right or the authority to denounce such people.
No other person,
were he even the noblest of the lords instead of an anonymous writer, can or
will be allowed to throw out such a malicious and mischievous hint about a
woman and a citizen of the United States. He who does it risks being brought to
the bar of that most just of all tribunals—a British Court. And if either of my
ambuscaders wishes to test the question, pray let him put his calumny in some
tangible shape. Such a vile innuendo—even when shaped into the sham-denial of a
bazaar rumour, becomes something more serious than whole folios of the
“flapdoodle” (the stuff—as sailors say—upon which fools are fed) which the
Review’s Christian Shâstris serve up against Theosophy and Theosophists. In the
interest of that youthful and boisterous paper itself, we hope that henceforth
it will get its information from a more reliable source than the Bombay market
places.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
Bombay, March 14th,
1879.
“SCRUTATOR” AGAIN
[Probably from the
London Spiritualist.]
IF my memory has
not altogether evaporated under the combined influences of this blazing Indian
sun and the frequent misconstructions of your correspondents, there occurred,
in March, 1878, an epistolary skirmish between one who prudently conceals his
face behind the two masks of “Scrutator” and “M.A. Cantab.,” and your humble
servant. He again attacks me in the character of my London Nemesis. Again he
lets fly a Parthian shaft from behind the fence of one of his pseudonyms. Again
he has found a mare’s nest in my garden—a chronological, instead of a
metaphysical one this time. He is exercised about my age, as though the value
of my statements would be in the least affected by either rejuvenating me to
infancy, or ageing me into a double centenarian. He has read in the Revue
Spirite for October last a sentence in which, discussing this very point, I say
that I have not passed thirty years in India. And that:
C’est justement mon
age—quoique fort respectable tel qu’il est—qui s’oppose violemmeet a cette chronologie,
etc.
I reproduce the
sentence exactly as it appears, with the sole exception of restoring the period
after “l’Inde” in the place of the comma, which is simply a typographical
mistake. The capital C which immediately follows would have conveyed to anyone
except a “Scrutator” my exact meaning, viz., that my age itself, however
respectable, is opposed to the idea that I had passed thirty years in India.
I do hope that my
ever-masked assailant will devote some leisure to the study of French as well
as of punctuation before he attacks again.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
Bombay, Feb., 1879.
MAGIC
—————
[From The Deccan
Star, March 30th, 1879.]
IN The Indian
Tribune of March 15th appears a letter upon the relations of the Theosophical
Society with the Arya Samâj. The writer seems neither an enemy of our cause,
nor hostile to the Society; therefore I will try in a gentle spirit to correct
certain misapprehensions under which he labours.
As he signs himself
“A Member,” he must, therefore, be regarded by us as a Brother. And yet he
seems moved by an unwarranted fear to a hasty repudiation of too close a
connection between our Society and his Samâj, lest the fair name of the latter
be compromised before the public by some strange notions of ours. He says:
I have been
surprised to hear that the Society embraces people who believe in magic. Should
this, however, be the belief of the Theosophical Society, I could only assure
your readers that the Arya Samâj is not in common with them in this respect.
Only as far as Vedic learning and Vedic philosophy is concerned, their objects
may be said to be similar.
It is these very
points I now mean to answer.
The gist of the
whole question is as to the correct definition of the word “Magic,” and
understanding of what Vaidic “learning and philosophy” are. If by Magic is
meant the popular superstitious belief in sorcery, witchcraft and ghosts in
general; if it involves the admission that supernatural feats may be performed;
if it requires faith in miracles—that is to say, phenomena outside natural law;
then, on behalf of every Theosophist, whether a sceptic yet unconverted, a
believer in and student of phenomena pure and simple, or even a modern
Spiritualist so-called—i.e., one who believes mediumistic phenomena to be
necessarily caused by returning human Spirits—we emphatically repudiate the
accusation.
We did not see The
Civil and Military Gazette, which seems so well acquainted with our doctrines;
but if it meant to accuse any Theo-
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sophists of any
such belief, then, like many other Gazettes and Reviews, it talked of that
which it knew nothing about.
Our Society
believes in no miracle, diabolical or human, nor in any-thing which eludes the
grasp of either philosophical and logical induction, or the syllogistic method
of deduction. But if the corrupted and comparatively modern term of “Magic” is
understood to mean the higher study and knowledge of Nature and deep research
into her hidden powers—those Occult and mysterious laws which constitute the
ultimate essence of every element—whether with the ancients we recognize but
four or five, or with the moderns over sixty; or, again, if by Magic is meant
that ancient study within the sanctuaries, known as the “worship of the Light,”
or divine and spiritual wisdom—as distinct from the worship of darkness or
ignorance—which led the initiated High-priests of antiquity among the Aryans,
Chaldæans, Medes and Egyptians to be called Maha, Magi or Maginsi, and by the
Zoroastrians Meghistam (from the root Meh’ah, great, learned, wise)—then, we
Theosophists “plead guilty.”
We do study that
“Science of sciences,” extolled by the Eclectics and Platonists of the
Alexandrian Schools, and practised by the Theurgists and the Mystics of every
age. If Magic gradually fell into disrepute, it was not because of its
intrinsic worthlessness, but through misconception and ignorance of its
primitive meaning, and especially the cunning policy of Christian theologians,
who feared lest many of the phenomena produced by and through natural (though
Occult) law should give the direct lie to, and thus cheapen, ‘‘Divine biblical
miracle,” and so forced the people to attribute every manifestation that they
could not comprehend or explain to the direct agency of a personal devil. As
well accuse the renowned Magi of old of having had no better knowledge of
divine truth and the hidden powers and possibilities of physical law than their
successors, the uneducated Parsi Mobeds, or the Hindu Mahârâjahs of that
shameless sect known as the Vallabhâchâryas, both of whom yet derive their
appellation from the Persian word Mog or Mag, and the Sanskrit Mahâ. More than
one glorious truth has thus tumbled down through human ignorance from the
sublime unto the ridiculous.
Plato, and even the
sceptical Lucian, both recognized the high wisdom and profound learning of the
Magi; and Cicero, speaking of those who inhabited Persia in his times, calls
them “ sapientium et doctorum genus majorum.” And if so, we must evidently
believe that
201———————————————————————MAGIC.
these Magi or
“magicians” were not such as London sees at a shilling a seat—nor yet certain
fraudulent spiritual mediums. The Science of such Theurgists and Philosophers
as Pythagoras, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Bruno, Paracelsus, and a host of
other great men, has now fallen into disrepute. But had our Brother
Theosophist, Thomas Alva Edison. the inventor of the telephone and the
phonograph, lived in the days of Galileo, he would have surely expiated on the
rack or at the stake his sin of having found the means to fix on a soft surface
of metal, and preserve for long years, the sounds of the human voice, for his
talent would have been pronounced the gift of hell. And yet, such an abuse of
brute power to suppress truth would not have changed a scientific discovery
into a foolish and disreputable superstition.
But our friend “A
Member,” consenting to descend to our level in one point at least, admits
himself that in ‘‘Vedic learning and philosophy” the Arya Samâj and the
Theosophical Society are upon a common ground. Then, I have something to appeal
to as an authority which will be better still than the so-much-derided Magic,
Theurgy and Alchemy. It is the Vedas themselves, for “Magic” is brought into
every line of the sacred books of the Aryans. Magic is indispensable for the
comprehension of either of the six great schools of Aryan philosophy. And it is
precisely to understand them, and thus enable our selves to bring to light the
hidden summum bonum of that mother of all Eastern Philosophies known as the
Vedas, and the later Brâhmanical literature, that we study it. Neglect this
study, and we, in common with all Europe, would have to set Max Muller’s
interpretations of the Vedas far above those of Svami Dyanand Sarasvati, as
given in his Veda .Bhashya. And we would have to let the Anglo-German
Sanskritist go uncontradicted, when he says that with the exception of the Rik,
none other of the four sacred books is deserving of the name of Veda,
especially the Atharva Veda, which is absurd, magical nonsense, composed of
sacrificial formulas, charms and incantations see his Lecture on the Vedas).
This is, therefore, why, disregarding every misconception, we humbly beg to be
allowed to follow the analytical method of such students and practitioners of
“Magic” as Kapila— mentioned in the Shvetashvatara Upanishad as
The Rishi nourished with knowledge by the God himself—
Patanjali, the great authority of the Yoga, Shankarâchârya of theurgic memory,
and even Zoroaster, who certainly learned his wisdom from the initiated
Brâhmans of Aryavarta. And we do not see why, for
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that, we should be
held up to the world’s scorn, as either superstitious fools or hallucinated
enthusiasts, by our own brother of the Arya Samâj. I will say more. While the
latter is, perhaps, in common with other “members” of the same Samâj, unable
and perfectly Helpless to defend Svami Dyanand against the sophistry of such
partial scoffers as a certain Pandit Mahesa Chandra Nyayaratna, of Calcutta,
who would have us believe the Veda Bhashya a futile attempt at interpretation;
we, Theosophists, do not shrink from assuming the burden. When the Svami
affirms that Agni and Ishvara are identical, the Calcutta Pandit calls it
“stuff.” To him Agni means the coarse, visible fire, with which one melts his
ghee and cooks his rice cakes. Apparently he does not know, as he might, if he
had studied “Magic”— that is to say, had familiarized himself with the views
about the divine Fire or Light, “whose external body is Flame,” held by the
mediæval Rosicrucians (the Fire-Philosophers) and all their initiated
predecessors and successors—that the Vedic Agni is in fact and deed Ishvara and
nothing else. The Svami makes no mistake when he says:
For Agni is all the
deities and Vishnu is all the deities. For these two [divine] bodies, Agni and
Vishnu, are the two ends of the sacrifice.
At one end of the
ladder which stretches from heaven to earth is Ishvara—Spirit, Supreme Being,
subjective, invisible and incomprehensible; at the other his visible
manifestation, “sacrificial fire.”
So well has this
been comprehended by every religious Philosophy of antiquity that the
enlightened Parsi worships not gross flame, but the divine Spirit within, of
which it is the visible type; and even in the Jewish Bible there is the
unapproachable Jehovah and his down-rushing fire which consumes the wood upon
the altar and licks up the water in the trench about it ( I Kings, xviii. 38).
There is also the visible manifestation of God in the burning bush of Moses,
and the Holy Ghost, in the Gospels of the Christians, descending like tongues
of flame upon the heads of the assembled disciples on the day of Pentecost.
There is not an Esoteric Philosophy or rather Theosophy, which did not
apprehend this deep spiritual idea, and each and all are traceable to the
Vaidic sacred books. Says the author of The Rosicrucians in his chapter on “The
Nature of Fire,” and quoting R. Fludd, the mediæval Theosophist and Alchemist:
Wonder no longer
then, if, in the religions of the Aryans, Medes and Zoroastrians, rejected so
long as an idolatry, the ancient Persians and their masters, the Magi,
concluding that they saw ‘‘All” in this supernaturally magnificent Element
203————————————————————————MAGIC.
[fire] fell down
and worshipped it; making of it the visible representation of the truest, but
yet, in man’s speculations, in his philosophies, nay, in his commonest reason,
impossible God; God being everywhere and in us, and indeed us, in the
God-lighted man, and impossible to be contemplated or known outside, being All.
This is the
teaching of the mediæval Fire-Philosophers known as the Brothers of the
Rosie-Cross, such as Paracelsus, Kunrath, Van Helmont, and that of all the
Illuminati and Alchemists who succeeded these, and who claimed to have
discovered the eternal Fire, or to have “found out God in the Immortal
Light”—that light whose radiance shone through the Yogis. The same author
remarks of them:
Already, in their
determined climbing unto the heights of thought, had these Titans of mind
achieved, past the cosmical through the shadowy borders of the Real and Unreal,
into Magic. For is Magic wholly false?
—he goes on to ask.
No; certainly not, when by Magic is understood the higher study of divine, and
yet not supernatural law, though the latter be, as yet, undiscovered by exact
and materialistic phenomena, such as those which are believed in by nearly
twenty millions of well- educated, often highly enlightened and learned persons
in Europe and America. These are as real, and as well authenticated by the
testimony of thousands of unimpeached witnesses, and as scientifically and
mathematically proved as the latest discoveries of our Brother T. A. Edison. If
the term “fool” is applicable to such men of Science and giants of intellect of
the two hemispheres, as W. Crookes, F.R.S., Alfred Russel Wallace, the greatest
Naturalist of Europe and a successful rival of Darwin, and as Flammarion, the
French Astronomer, Member of the Academy of Sciences of France, and Professor
Zöllner, the celebrated Leipzig Astronomer and Physicist, and Professor Hare,
the great Chemist of America, and many another no less eminent Scientist,
unquestioned authorities upon any other question but the so-called spiritual
phenomena, and all firm Spiritualists themselves, often converted only after
years of careful investigation—then, indeed, we Theosophists would not find
ourselves in bad company, and would deem it an honour to be called “fools” were
we even firm orthodox Spiritualists ourselves—i.e., believers in perambulating
ghosts and materialized bhuts—which we are not. But we are believers in the
phenomena of the Spiritualists (even if we do doubt their “spirits”), for we
happen to know them to be actual facts. It is one thing to reject unproved
theory, and quite another to battle against well-established facts. Everyone
has a right to doubt, until further and stronger
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evidence, whether
these modern phenomena which are inundating the Western countries, are all
produced by disembodied “spirits”—for it happens to be hitherto a mere
speculative doctrine raised up by enthusiasts; but no one is authorized—unless
he can bring to contradict the fact, something better and weightier than the
mere negations of sceptics—to deny that such phenomena do occur. If we
Theosophists (and a very small minority of us), disclaim the agency of
“spirits” in such manifestations, it is because we can prove in most instances
to the Spiritualists, that many of their phenomena, whether of physical or
psychological nature, can be reproduced by some of our Adepts at will, and
without any aid of “spirits” or resort to either divine or diabolical miracle,
but simply by developing the Occult powers of the man’s Inner Self and studying
the mysteries of Nature. That European and American sceptics should deny such
interference by Spirits, and, as a consequence discredit the phenomena
themselves, is no cause for wonder. Scarcely liberated from the clutches of the
Church, whose terrible policy, barely a century ago, was to torture and put to
death every person who either doubted biblical “divine” miracle, or endorsed
one which theology declared diabolical, it is but the natural force of reaction
which makes them revel in their new-found liberty of thought and action. One
who denies the Supreme and the existence of his own Soul, is not likely to
believe in either Spirits or phenomena, without abundant proof. But that
Eastern people, Hindus especially, of any sect, should disbelieve, is indeed an
anomaly, considering that they all are taught the transmigration of Souls, and
spiritual as well as physical evolution. The sixteenth chapter of the
Mahabhárata, Harivansha Parva, is full of spiritual phenomena and the raising
of Spirits. And if, ashamed of the now termed “superstitions” of their
forefathers, young India turns, sunflower-like, but to the great luminaries of
the West, this is what one of the most renowned men of Science of England, A.
R. Wallace—a Fellow of the Royal as well as a member of the Theosophical
Society—says of the phenomena in his Contributions to the Theory of Natural
Selection, and On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, thus confirming the belief
of old India:
Up to the time when
I first became acquainted with the facts of Spiritualism, I was a confirmed
philosophical sceptic. I was so thorough and confirmed a Materialist, that I
could not at that time find a place in my mind for the conception of spiritual
existence, or for any other genesis in the universe than matter and force.
Facts, however, “are stubborn things.”
205———————————————————————MAGIC.
Having explained
how he came to become a Spiritualist, he considers the spiritual theory and
shows its compatibility with natural selection. Having, he says:
Been led, by a
strict induction from facts, to a belief—firstly, in the existence of a number
of preter-human intelligences of various grades; and secondly, that some of
these intelligences, although usually invisible and intangible to us, can and
do act on matter, and do influence our minds—I am surely following a strictly
logical and scientific course, in seeing how far this doctrine will enable us
to account for some of those residual phenomena which Natural Selection alone
will not explain. In the tenth chapter of my Contributions to the Theory of
Natural Selection I have pointed out what I consider to be some of these
residual phenomena; and I have suggested that they may be due to the action of
some of the various intelligences above referred to. I maintained, and still
maintain, that this view is one which is logically tenable, and is in no way
inconsistent with a thorough acceptance of the grand doctrine of evolution
through Natural Selection.
Would not one think
he hears in the above the voices of Manu, Kapila and many other Philosophers of
old India, in their teachings about the creation, evolution and growth of our
planet and its living world of animal as well as human species? Does the great
modern Scientist speak less of “Spirits” and spiritual beings than Manu, the
antediluvian scientist and prehistoric legislator? Let young and sceptical
India read and compare the old Aryan ideas with those of modern Mystics,
Theosophists, Spiritualists, and a few great Scientists, and then laugh at the
superstitious theories of both.
For four years we
have been fighting out our great battle against tremendous odds. We have been
abused and called traitors by the Spiritualists, for believing in other beings
in the invisible world besides their departed Spirits; we were cursed and
sentenced to eternal damnation, with free passports to hell, by the Christians
and their clergy; ridiculed by sceptics, looked upon as audacious lunatics by
society, and tabooed by the conservative press. We thought we had drunk to the
dregs the bitter cup of gall. We had hoped that at least in India, the country
par excellence of psychological and metaphysical Science, we would find firm
ground for our weary feet. But lo! here comes a brother of ours who, without
even taking the trouble to ascertain whether or not the rumours about us are
true, in case we do believe in either Magic or Spiritualism— Well! We impose
impose ourselves upon no one. For more than four years we lived and waxed in
power if not in wisdom—which latter our humble deputation of Theosophists was
sent to search for here, so that we might impart ‘‘Vaidic learning and
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philosophy” to the
millions of famished souls in the West, who are familiar with phenomena, but
wrongly suffer themselves to be misled through their mistaken notions about
ghosts and bhuts. But if we are to be repulsed at the outset by any
considerable party of Arya Samâjists, who share the views of “A Member,” then
will the Theosophical Society, with its 45,000 or so of Western Spiritualists,
have to become again a distinct and independent body, and do as well as it can
without a single “member” to enlighten it on the absurdity of Spiritualism and
Magic.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
Bombay, March,
1879.
A REPUBLICAN
CITIZEN
—————
[From The Banner of
Light, May 13th 1879, but addressed to the Editor of
The Bombay
Gazette.]
ON the very day of
my return from a month’s travel, I am shown by the American Consul two
paragraphs, viz., one in your paper of the 10th inst., which mentions me as the
“Russian ‘Baroness,’” and one in The Times of India of the 8th, whose author
had tried hard to be witty but only succeeded in being impertinent and
calumnious. In this last paragraph I am referred to as a woman who called
herself a “Russian Princess.”
With the original
and selected matter in your contemporary you, of course, have nothing to do. If
the editor can find “amusing” such slanderous tomfooleries as the extract in
question from The Colonial Gazette and Star of India, and risk a suit for libel
for circulating defamations of a respectable scientific Society, and vilifying
its honoured President by calling him a “secret detective”—an outrageous lie,
by the way—that is not your affair. My present business is to take the Gazette
to task for thrusting upon my unwilling Republican head the baronial coronet.
Know, please, once for all, that I am neither “Countess,” “Princess,” nor even
a modest “Baroness”—whatever I may have been before last July. At that time I
became a plain citizen of the United States of America. I value that title far
more than any that could be conferred on me by King or Emperor. Being this, I
could be nothing else, if I wished; for, as everyone knows, had I been even a
princess of the royal blood before, once that my oath of allegi- ance was
pronounced, I forfeited every claim to titles of nobility. Apart from this
notorious fact, my experience of things in general, and peacocks’ feathers in
particular, has led me to acquire a positive contempt for titles; since it
appears that, outside the boundaries of their own fatherlands, Russian princes,
Polish counts, Italian marquises and German barons, are far more plentiful
inside than outside the police
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precincts. Permit
me further to state—if only for the edification of The Times of India and a
brood of snarling little papers searching around after the garbage of
journalism—that I have never styled myself aught but what I can prove myself to
be, namely, an honest woman, now a citizen of America, my adopted country, and
the only land of true freedom in the whole world.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
Bombay, May 12th.
THE THEOSOPHISTS
AND THEIR
OPPONENTS
—————
[From The Amrita
Bazar Patrika, June 13th, 1879.]
I PRAY you to give
me, in your Calcutta paper, space enough to reply to the mendacious comments of
one of our religious neighbours upon the Theosophical Society. The Indian
Christian Herald, in the number of April 4th (which unhappily has just now reached
my eye), with a generosity peculiar to religious papers, filled two pages with
pious abuse of our Society as a body. I gather from it, moreover, that The
Friend of India had previously gone out of its way to vilify the Society, since
the former paper observes that:
The Theosophical
Society has merited the epithets employed about it by The Friend of India.
To my everlasting
confusion be it said, that I am guilty of the crime of not only never reading,
but also of never having so much as laid my eyes upon that last named veteran
organ. Nor can any of our Theosophists be charged with abusing the precious
privilege of reading the missionary journals, a considerable time having
elapsed since each of us was weaned, and relinquished milk-and-water pap. Not
that we shirk the somniferous task under the spur of necessity. Were not the
proof of our present writing itself sufficient, I need only cite the case of
the Bombay missionary organ, The Dnyanodaya, which, on the 17th ult.,
infamously libelled us, and on the 25th was forced by Colonel Olcott’s
solicitor, Mr. Turner, to write an ample apology, in order to avoid a criminal
prosecution for defamation of character. We regret now to see that while the
truly good and pious writer of the Herald was able to rise to the level of
Billingsgate, he would not (or dared not?) climb to the height of actionable
slander. Truly prudence is a great virtue!
Confronted, as we
all have so often been, with the intolerant bigotry
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—religious “zeal”
they call it—and puerile anathemas of the clerical “followers of the meek and
lowly Jesus,” no Theosophist is surprised to find the peas from the
herald-shooter rattling against his armour. It adds to the clatter, but no one
is mortally hurt. And, after all, how natural that the poor fellows who try to
administer spiritual food to the benighted heathen—much after the fashion of
the Strasburg goose-fatteners, who thrust balls of meal down the throats of the
captive birds, unmasticated, to swell their livers—should shake at the
intrusion of Europeans who are ready to analyze for the heathen these
scripture-balls they are asked to grease with blind faith and swallow without
chewing! People like us, who would have the effrontery to claim for the
“heathen” the same right to analyze the Bible as the Christian clergy claim to
analyze and even to revile the sacred Scriptures of other people, must of
course be put down. And the very Christian Herald tries his hand. It says:
Let us without any
bias or prejudice reflect ... about the Theosophical Society such a mortal
degradation of persons [ Buddhist, Aryan, Jain, Parsi Hebrew and Mussulman
Theosophists, included?] who can see nothing good in the Bible . . [and who]
ought to remember that the Bible! is not only a blessed book, but our book [!]
The latter piece of
presumptuous conceit cannot be allowed to pass unnoticed. Before I answer the
preceding invectives I mean to demand a clear definition of this last sentence,
“our Book.” Whose Book? The Herald’s? “Our” must mean that; for the seven thick
volumes of the Speaker’s Commentary on the Old Testament *show that the
possessive pronoun and the singular noun in question can no longer be used by
Christians when speaking of the Bible. So numerous and glaring have been the
mistakes and mistranslations detected by the forty divines of the Anglican
Church, during their seven years’ revision of the Old Testament, that the
London Quarterly Review (No. 294, April, 1879), the organ of the most extreme
orthodoxy, is driven in despair to say:
The time has
certainly passed when the whole Bible could be practically esteemed a single
book, miraculously communicated in successive portions from heaven, put into
writing no doubt by human hands, but at the dictation of the divine spirit.
So we see beyond
question that if it is anybody’s “Book” it must be The Indian Christian
Herald’s; for, in fact, its editors add:
—————
* The Bible,
according to the authorized version (AD.1611), with an explanatory and critical
commentary and a revision of the translation, by bishops and other clergy of
the Anglican Church. Edited by F.C. Cook, MA., Canon of Exeter, Preacher at
Lincohn’s Inn, Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. Vols. i.-vi. The Old
Testament. London, 1871-1876.
211———————————————THE
THEOSOPHISTS AND THEIR OPPONENTS.
We feel it to be no
more a collection of books, but the book.
But here is another
bitter pill for your contemporary. It says in a pious gush:
The words which had
come from the prophets of the despised Israel have been the life-blood of the
world’s devotion.
But the inexorable
quarterly reviewer, after reluctantly abandoning to the analytical scalpels of
Canon Cook and Bishop Harold Browne the Mosaic miracles—whose supernatural
character is no longer affirmed, but they are allowed to be “natural
phenomena”—turns to the pretended Old Testament prophecies of Christ, and sadly
says:
In the poetical
[psalms and songs] and the prophetical books especially the number of
corrections is enormous.
And he shows how
the commentators upon Isaiah and the other so-called prophets have reluctantly
admitted that the time-worn verses which have been made to serve as predictive
of Christ have in truth no such meaning. He says:
It requires an
effort to break the association, and to realize how much less they [the
prophecies] must have meant at first to the writers themselves. But it is just
this that the critical expositor is bound to do . . . for this some courage is
required, for the result is apt to seem like a disenchantment for the worse, a
descent to an inferior level, a profanation of the paradise in which ardent
souls have found spiritual sustenance and delight.
(Such “souls” as
the Herald editor’s?) What wonder, then, that the explosion of these seven
theological torpedoes—as the seven volumes of the Speaker’s Commentary may
truly be called—should force the reviewer into saying:
To us, we confess,
every attempt to place the older Scriptures on the same supreme pinnacle on
which the New Testament of later Revelation stands, is doomed to failure.
The Herald is
welcome to what is left of its “Book.”
How childishly
absurd it was then of the Herald to make a whole Society the scapegoat for the
sins of one individual! It is now universally known that the Society comprises
fellows of many nationalities and many different religious faiths, and that its
Council is made up of the representatives of these faiths; yet the Herald
endorses the false hood that the Society’s principles are “a strange compound
of Paganism and Atheism,” and its creed “a creed as comprehensive as it is
incomprehensible.” What other answer does this calumny require than the fact
that our President has publicly declared that it had “no
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creed to offer for
the world’s acceptance,”* and that in art. viii of the Society’s Rules,
appended to the printed Address, in an enumeration of the plans of the Society,
the first paragraph says that it aims:
To keep alive in
man his belief that he has a soul, and the Universe a God.
If this is a
‘‘compound of Paganism and Atheism,’’ then let the Heralad make the most of it.
But the Society is
not the real offender; the clerical stones are thrown into my garden. The
Herald’s quotation of an expression used by me, in commenting upon a passage of
Sir John Kay’s Sepoy War making The Friend of India and Co. primarily
responsible for that bloody tragedy, shows the whole animus. It was I who said
(see Indian Spectator, March 2nd) that:
India owes
everything to the British Government and not to Christianity
—i.e., to
missionaries. I may have lost my “senses outright,” as The Indian Christian
Herald politely remarks, but I think have enough left to see through the inane
sophistries which they make do duty for arguments.
We have only to say
to the Herald the following: (1) It is just because we do live in ‘‘an age of
enlightenment and progress,’’ in which there is (or should be) room for every
form of belief, that such Augustinian trades as the Herald’s are out of place.
(2) We have not a Mortal hatred for Christianity and its Divine Founder,—for
the tendency of the Society is to emancipate its fellows from all hatred or
preference for any one exoteric form of religion—i.e., with more of the human
than divine element in it—over another (see rules) neither can we hate a
“Founder” whom the majority of us do not believe to have ever existed. (3) To
“retain” a “reverence for the Bible” one must at some time have had it, and if
our own investigations had not long since convinced us that the Bible was no more
the “Word of God” than half a dozen other holy hooks, the present conclusions
of the Anglican divines—at least as far as the Old Testament is concerned—would
have removed the last vestige of doubt upon that point. And besides sundry
American clergymen and bishops we have among our Fellows a vicar of the Church
of England, who is one of its most learned antiquarians. (4) The assertion that
the
Pure monotheism of
the Vedas is a pure myth
—————
* The Theosophical
Society and its Aim. Address delivered by Colonel H. S. Olcott, at the Framji
Cowasji Hall, Bombay, March 23rd 1879.
213———————————————THE THEOSOPHISTS AND THEIR OPPONENTS.
is a pure
falsehood, beside being an insult to Max Muller and other Western Orientalists,
who have proved the fact; to say nothing of that great Aryan scholar, preacher
and reformer, Svami Dyanand Sarasvati.
“Degraded humanity”
that we are, there must he indeed “some thing radically wrong and corrupt” in
our “moral nature,” for, we confess to joy at seeing our Society constantly growing
from accessions of some of the most influential laymen of different countries.
And it moreover delights us to think that when we reach the bottom of the
ditch, we will have as bedfellows half the Christian clergy, if the Speaker’s
commentary makes as sad havoc with the divinity of the New Testament as it has
with that of the Old. Our Indian Christian Pecksniff in righteous indignation
exclaims:
How they managed to
sink so low in the scale of moral and spiritual being must be a sadly
interesting study for metaphysicians.
Sad, indeed; but
sadder still to reflect that unless the editors of The Indian Christian Herald
are protected by post-mortem fire-insurance policies, they are in danger
themselves of eternal torment.
Whosoever shall say
to his brother, Thou fool, shall be in danger of Hell fire,
says Lord Jesus,
“the Desire of nations,” in Matthew, v. 22, unless—dreadful thought!—this verse
should be also found a mistranslation.
H. P. BLAVATSKY,
Corresponding
Secretary of the Theosophical Society.
[N.B.—We insert the
above letter with great reluctance. The subject matter of the letter is not fit
for our columns, and we have no sympathy with those who attack the religions
creed of other men. The matter of fact is, a Calcutta paper attacks a body of
men, and the latter are thrown at a great disadvantage if they are not allowed
an opportunity by another paper of replying to the attack. It is from that
feeling alone that we have given place to the above letter.—ED. A. B. Patrika.]
ECHOES FROM INDIA.
WHAT IS HINDU
SPIRITUALISM?
—————
[ From The Banner
of Light, Oct. 18th, 1879.]
PHENOMENA in
India—beside the undoubted interest they offer in themselves, and apart from
their great variety and in most instances utter dissimilarity from those we are
accustomed to hear of in Europe and America—possess another feature which makes
them worthy of the most serious attention of the investigator of Psychology.
Whether Eastern
phenomena are to be accounted for by the immediate interference and help of the
spirits of the departed, or attributed to some other and hitherto unknown
cause, is a question which, for the present, we will leave aside. It can he
discussed, with some degree of confidence, only after many instances have been
carefully noted and submitted, in all their truthful and unexaggerated details,
to an impartial and unprejudiced public. One thing I beg to reaffirm, and this
is, that instead of exacting the usual “conditions” of darkness, harmonious
circles, and nevertheless leaving the witnesses uncertain as to the expected
results, Indian phenomena, if we except the independent apparitions of bhuts
(ghosts of the dead), are never sporadic and spontaneous, but seem to depend
entirely upon the will of the operator, whether he be a holy Hindu Yogi, a
Mussulman Sâdhu, Fakir, or yet a juggling Jaddugar (sorcerer).
In this connection
I mean to present numerous examples of what I here say; for whether we read of
the seemingly supernatural feats produced by the Rishis, the Aryan patriarchs
of archaic antiquity, or by Achâryas of the Paurânic days, or hear of them from
popular traditions, or again see them repeated in our modern times, we always
find such phenomena to be of the most varied character. Besides covering the
whole range of those known to us through modern mediumistic agency, as well as
repeating the mediæval pranks of the nuns of London and other historical
possedees in cases of bhut obsession, we often recognize
215————————————————————ECHOES FROM INDIA.
in them the exact
counterparts—as once upon a time they must have been the originals—of biblical
miracles. With the exception of two—those over which the world of piety goes
most into raptures while glorifying the Lord, and the world of scepticism grins
most sardonically—to wit, the anti-heliocentric crime performed by Joshua, and
Jonah’s unpleasant excursion into the slimy cavern of the whale’s belly—we have
to record as occasionally taking place in India, nearly every one of the feats
which are said to have so distinguished Moses and other “friends of God.”
But alas for those
venerable jugglers of Judæa! And alas for those pious souls who have hitherto
exalted these alleged prophets of the forthcoming Christ to such a towering
eminence! The idols have just been all but knocked off their pedestals by the
parricidal hands of the forty divines of the Anglican Church, who now are known
to have sorely disparaged the Jewish Scriptures. The despairing cry raised by
the reviewer of the just issued Commentary on the “Holy” Bible, in the most
extreme organ of orthodoxy (the London Quarterly Review for April, 1879), is
only matched by his meek submission to the inevitable. The fact I am alluding
to is one already known to you, for I speak of the decision and final
conclusive opinions upon the worth of the Bible by the conclave of learned
bishops who have been engaged for the last dozen years on a thorough revision
of the Old Testament. The results of this labour of love may he summarized
thus:
1. The shrinkage of
the Mosaic and other “miracles” into mere natural phenomena. (See decisions of
Canon Cook, the Queen’s Chaplain, and Bishop Harold Browne.)
2. The rejection of
most of the alleged prophecies of Christ as such; the said prophecies now
turning out to have related simply to contemporaneous events in Jewish national
history.
3. Resolutions to
place no more the Old Testament on the same eminence as the Gospels, as it
would inevitably lead to the disparagement of the new one.
4. The sad
confession that the Mosaic Books do not contain one word about a future life
and the just complaint that:
Moses under divine
direction [?] should have abstained from any recognition of man’s destiny
beyond the grave, while the belief was prominent in all the religions around
Israel.
This is:
confessed to be one
of those enigmas which are the trial of our faith.
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And it is the
“trial” of our American missionaries here also. Educated natives all read the
English papers and magazines, and it now becomes harder than ever to convince
these “heathen” matriculates of the ‘‘sublime truths” of Christianity. But this
by way of a small parenthesis; for I mention these newly evolved facts only as
having an important bearing upon Spiritualism in general, and its phenomena
especially. Spiritualists have always taken such pains to identify their
manifestations with the Bible miracles, that such a decision, coming from
witnesses certainly more prejudiced in favour of than opposed to “miracles” and
divine supernal phenomena, is rather a new and unexpected difficulty in our
way. Let us hope that in view of these new religious developments, our esteemed
friend Dr. Peebles, before committing himself too far to the establishment of
“independent Christian churches,” will wait for further ecclesiastical
verdicts, and see how the iconoclastic verdicts, and how the iconoclastic
English divines will overhaul the phenomena of the New Testament. Maybe, if
their consistency does not evaporate, they will have to attribute all the
miracles worked by Jesus also to “natural phenomena”! Very happily for
Spiritualists, and for Theosophists likewise, the phenomena of the nineteenth
century cannot be as easily disposed of as those of the Bible. We have had to
take the latter for nearly two thousand years on mere blind faith, though but
too often they transcended every possible law of nature; while quite the
reverse is our own case, and we can offer facts.
But to return. If
manifestations of an Occult nature of the most various character may be said to
abound in India, on the other hand, the frequent statements of Dr. Peebles to
the effect that this country is full of native Spiritualists, are—how shall I
say it?—a little too hasty and exaggerated. Disputing this point in the London
Spiritualist of Jan. 8th, 1878, with a Madras gentleman, now residing in New
York, he maintained his position in the following words:
I have met not only
Sinhalese and Chinese Spiritualists, but hundreds of Hindu Spiritualists,
gifted with the powers of conscious mediumship. And yet Mr. W. L. D. O’Grady,
of New York, informs the readers of The Spiritualist (see issue Nov. 23rd) that
there are No Hindu Spiritualists. These are ins words: “No Hindu is a
Spiritualist.”
And as an offset to
this assertion, Dr. Peebles quotes from the letter of an esteemed Hindu
gentleman, Mr. Peary Chand Mittra, of Calcutta, a few words to the effect that
he blesses God that his “inner vision is being more and more developed” and
that he talks “with spirits.” We
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all know that Mr.
Mittra is a Spiritualist, but what does it prove? Would Dr. Peebles be
justified in stating that because H. P. Blavatsky and half a dozen other
Russians have become Buddhists and Vedântists, Russia is full of Buddhists and
Vedântists? There may be in India a few Spiritualists among the educated
reading classes, scattered far and wide over the country, but I seriously doubt
whether our esteemed opponent could easily find a dozen of such among this
population numbering 240,000,000. There are solitary exceptions, which only go
to strengthen a rule, as everyone knows.
Owing to the rapid
spread of spiritualistic doctrines the world over, and to my having left India
several years before, at the time I was in America I abstained from
contradicting in print the great spiritualistic “pilgrim” and philosopher,
surprising as such statements seemed to me, who thought myself pretty well
acquainted with this country. India, unprogressive as it is, I thought might
have changed, and I was not sure of my facts. But now that I have returned for
the fourth time to this country, and have had over five months’ residence in
it, after a careful investigation into the phenomena and especially into the
opinions held by the people on this subject, and seven weeks of travelling all
over the country, mainly for the purpose of seeing and investigating every kind
of manifestations, I must be allowed to know what I am talking about, as I speak
by the book. Mr. O’Grady was right. No “Hindu is a Spiritualist” in the sense
we all understand the term. And I am now ready to prove, if need be, by dozens
of letters from the most trustworthy natives who are educated by Brâhmans, and
know the religious and superstitious views of their countrymen better than any
one of us, that whatever else Hindus may be termed it is not Spiritualists.
“What constitutes a Spiritualist?” very pertinently enquires, in a London
spiritual organ, a correspondent with “a passion for definition” (see
Spiritualist, June 13th 1879). He asks:
Is Mr. Crookes a
Spiritualist, who, like my humble self, does not believe in spirits of the dead
as agents in the phenomena?
He then brings
forward several definitions, From the most latitudinarian to the most
restricted definitions.
Let us see to which
of these ‘‘definitions’’ the ‘‘Spiritualism’’ of the Hindus—I will not say of
the mass, but even of a majority—would answer. Since Mr. Peebles—during his two
short visits to India and while on his way from Madras, crossing the continent
in its diameter from Calcutta to Bombay—could meet ‘‘ hundreds of
Spiritualists,”
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then these must
indeed form, if not the majority, at least a considerable percentage of the
240,000,000 of India. I will now quote the definitions from the letter of the
enquirer who signs himself “A Spiritualist” (?), and add my own remarks
thereupon
A—Everyone is a
Spiritualist who believes in the immortalitv of the soul.
I guess not;
otherwise the whole of Christian Europe and America would be Spiritualists ;
nor does this definition A answer to the religious views of the Hindus of any sect,
for while the ignorant masses believe in and aspire to Moksha, i.e., literal
absorption of the spirit of man in that of Brahman, or loss of individual
immortality, as means of avoiding the punishment and horrors of transmigration,
the Philosophers, Adepts, and learned Yogis, such as our venerated master,
Svami Dyanand Sarasvati, the great Hindu reformer, Sanskrit scholar, and
supreme chief of the Vaidic Section of the Eastern division of the Theosophical
Society, explain the future state of man’s Spirit, its progress and evolution,
in terms diametrically opposite to the views of the Spiritualists. These views,
if agreeable, I will give in some future letter.
B.—Anyone who
believes that the continued conscious existence of deceased persons has been
demonstrated by communication is a Spiritualist.
A Hindu whether an
erudite scholar and Philosopher or an ignorant idolater, does not believe in
‘‘continued conscious existence,’’ though the former assigns for the holy,
sinless soul, which has reached Svarga (heaven) and Moksha, a period of many
millions and quadrillions of years, extending from one Pralaya* to the next.
The Hindu believes in cyclic transmigration of the soul, during which there
must be periods when the soul loses its recollections as well as the
consciousness of its individuality; since, if it were otherwise, every person
would distinctly remember all his previous existences, which is not the case.
Hindu Philosophers are likewise consistent with logic. They at least will not
allow an endless eternity of either reward or punishment for a few dozens of
years of earthly life, whether this life be wholly blameless or yet wholly
sinful.
C.—Anyone is a
Spiritualist who believes in airy of the alleged objective phenomena, whatever
theory he may favour about them, or even if he have none at all.
—————
* For the meaning
of the word Pralaya see vol. ii. of Isis Unveiled. I am happy to say that not
withstanding the satirical criticisms upon its Vaidic and Buddhistic portions
by some American would—be’’ Orientalists, Svami Dyanand and the Rev. Sumangala
of Ceylon, respectively the representatives of Vaidic and Buddhistic
scholarship and literature in India—the first the best Sanskrit, and the other
the most eminent Pali scholar—both expressed their entire satisfaction with the
correctness of my esoteric explanations of their respective religions. Isis
Unveiled is now being translated into Marathi and Hindi in India, and into Pâli
in Ceylon.
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Such are
“phenomenalists,” not Spiritualists, and in this sense the definition answers
to Hindu beliefs. All of them, even those who, aping the modern school of
Atheism, declare themselves Materialists, are yet phenomenalists in their
hearts, if one only sounds them.
D and E.—Does not
allow of Spiritualism without spirits, but the spirits need not be human.
At this rate
Theosophists and Occultists generally may also be called Spiritualists, though
the latter regard them as enemies; and in this sense only all Hindus are
Spiritualists, though their ideas about human Spirits are diametrically opposed
to those of the “Spiritualists.” They regard bhuts are the Spirits of those who
died with unsatisfied desires, and who on account of their sins and earthly
attractions, are earth-bound and kept back from Svarga (the “Elementaries” of
the Theosophists)—as having become wicked devils, liable to be annihilated any
day under the potent curses of much-sought-for and appreciated mediums.* The
Hindu regards as the greatest curse a person can be afflicted with, possession
and obsession by a bhut and the most loving couples often part if the wife is
attacked by the bhut of a relative, who, it seems, seldom or never attacks any
but women.
F.—Considers that
no one has a right to call himself a Spiritualist who has any new-fangled
notions about ‘‘Elementaries,’’ spirit of the medium, and so forth; or does not
believe that departed human spirits, high and low, account for all the
phenomena of every description.
This one is the
most proper and correct of all the above given “definitions,” ‘from the
standpoint of orthodox Spiritualism, and settles our dispute with Dr. Peebles.
No Hindu were it even possible to bring him to regard bhuts as low, suffering
Spirits on their way to progress and final pardon (?), could, even if he would,
account for all the phenomena on this true spiritualistic theory. His religious
and philosophical traditions are all opposed to such a limited idea. A Hindu
is, first of all, a born metaphysician and logician. If he believes at all, and
in whatever he believes, he will admit of no special laws called into existence
for men of this planet alone, but will apply these laws throughout the
universe; for he is a Pantheist before being anything else, and notwithstanding
his possible adherence to some special sect. Thus Mr. Peebles has well defined
the situation himself, in the following happy paradox, in his Spiritualist
letter above quoted, and in which he says:
—————
[Evidently the word
“medium” is here used for “exorcist.’’—EDS.]
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Some of the best
mediums that it has been my good fortune to know, I met in Ceylon and India.
And these were not mediums; for, indeed, they held converse with the Pays and
Pesatsays, having their habitations in the air, the water, the fire, in rocks
and trees, in the clouds, the rain, the dew, in mines and caverns!
Thus these
“mediums” who were not mediums, were no more Spiritualists than they were
mediums, and—the house (Dr. Peebles’ house) is divided against itself and must
fall. So far we agree, and I will now proceed further on with my proofs.
As I mentioned
before, Colonel Olcott and myself, accompanied by a Hindu gentleman, Mr.
Mulji-Taker-Sing, a member of our Council, started on our seven weeks’ journey
early in April. Our object was twofold: (1) to pay a visit to and remain for
some time with our ally and teacher, Svami Dyanand, with whom we had corresponded
so long from America, and thus consolidate the alliance of our Society with the
Arya Samajes of India (of which there are now over fifty); and (2) to see as
much of the phenomena as we possibly could; and, through the help of our
Svami—a Yogi himself and an Initiate into the mysteries of the Vidya (or Secret
Science)—to settle certain vexed questions as to the agencies and powers at
work, at first hand. Certainly no one could find a better opportunity to do so
than we had. There we were, on friendly relations of master and pupils with
Pandit Dyanand, the most learned man in India, a Brâhman of high caste, and one
who had for seven long years undergone the usual and dreary probations of
Yogism in a mountainous and wild region, in solitude, in a state of complete
nudity and constant battle with elements and wild beasts—the battle of the
divine human Spirit and the imperial will of man against gross blind matter in
the shape of tigers, leopards, rhinoceroses and bears, without noting venomous
snakes and scorpions. The inhabitants of the village nearest to that mountain
are there to certify that sometimes for weeks no one would venture to take a
little food—a handful of rice—to our Svami; and yet, whenever they came, they
always found him in the same posture and on the same spot—an open, sandy
hillock, surrounded by thick jungle full of beasts of prey—and apparently as
well without food and water for whole weeks, as if he were made of stone
instead of human flesh and bones.* He has explained to us this mysterious
secret which enables man to suffer and
—————
* Yogis and ascetics are not the only examples of such protracted fastings; for
if those call be doubted, and sometimes utterly rejected by sceptical Science
as void of any conclusive proof—for the phenomenon takes place in remote and
inaccessible places—we have many of the Jains, inhabitants of populated towns,
to bring forward as exemplars of the same. Many of them fast, abstaining even
from one drop of water, for forty days at a time—and survive always.
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conquer at last the
most cruel privations, which permits him to go without food or drink for days
and weeks; to become utterly insensible to the extremes of either heat or cold;
and finally, to live for days out side instead of within his body
During this voyage
we visited the very cradle of Indian Mysticism, the hot-bed of ascetics, where
the remembrance of the wondrous phenomena performed by the Rishis of old is now
as fresh as it ever was during those days when the School of Patanjali—the
reputed founder of Yogism—was filled, and where his Yog-Sânkhya is still
studied with as much fervour, if not with the same powers of comprehension. To
Upper India and the North-Western Provinces we went; to Allahabad and Cawnpore,
with the shores of their sacred Ganga (Ganges) all studded with devotees;
whither the latter, when disgusted with life, proceed to pass the remainder of
their clays in meditation and seclusion, and become Sannyâsis, Gossains,
Sadhus. Thence to Agra, with its Taj Mâhal, “the poem in marble,” as Bishop
Heber happily called it, and the tomb of its founder, the great Emperor Adept,
Akbar, at Secundra; to Agra, with its temples crowded with Shakti-worshippers,
and to that spot, famous in the history of Indian Occultism, where the Jumna
mixes its blue waters with the patriarchal Ganges, and which is chosen by the
Shâktas (worshippers of the female power) for the performance of their pujâs.
during winch ceremonies the famous black crystals or mirrors mentioned by P. B.
Randolph are fabricated by the hands of young virgins. From there, again, to
Saharampore and Meerut, the birthplace of the mutiny of 1857. During our
sojourn at the former town, it happened to be the central railway point to
which, on their return from the Hardwâr pilgrimage, flocked nearly twenty-five
thousand Sannyâsis and Gossains, to numbers of whom Col. Olcott put close
interrogatories, and with whom he conversed for hours. Then to Râjputana, the
land inhabited by the bravest of all races in India, as well as the most
mystically inclined—the Solar Race, whose Râjahs trace descent from the sun
itself. We penetrated as far as Jeypore, the Paris, and at the same time the
Rome of the Râjput land. We searched through plains and mountains, and all along
the sacred groves covered with pagodas and devotees, among whom we found some
very holy men, endowed with genuine wondrous powers, but the majority were
unmitigated frauds. And we got into the favour of more than one Brâhman,
guardian and keeper of his God’s secrets and the mysteries of his temple; but
got no more evi-
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dence out of these
“hereditary dead beats,” as Col. Olcott graphically dubbed them, than out of
the Sannyâsis and exorcizers of evil spirits, as to the similarity of their
views with those of the Spiritualists. Neither have we ever failed, whenever
coming across any educated Hindu, to pump him as to the ideas and views of his
countrymen about phenomena in general, and Spiritualism especially. And to all
our questions, who it was in the case of holy Yogis, endowed “with miraculouns
powers,” that produced the manifestations, the astonished answer was invariably
the same: “He [ Yogi] himself having become one with Brahm, produces them,” and
more than once our interlocutors got thoroughly disgusted and extremely
offended at Col. Olcott’s irreverent question, whether the bhuts might not have
been at work helping the Thaumaturgist. For nearly two months uninterruptedly
our premises at Bombay—garden, verandahs and halls—were crammed from early
morning till late at night with native visitors of the most various sects,
races and religious opinions, averaging from twenty to a hundred and more a
day, coming to see us with the object of exchanging views upon metaphysical
questions, and to discuss the relative worth of Eastern and Western
Philosophies—Occult Sciences and Mysticism included. During our journey we had
to receive our brothers of the Arya Samâjes, which sent their deputations
wherever we went to welcome us, and wherever there was a Samâj established.
Thus we became intimate with the previous views of hundreds and thousands of
the followers of Svami Dyanand, every one of whom had been converted by him
from one idolatrous sect or another. Many of these were educated men, and as
thoroughly versed in Vaidic Philosophy as in the tenets of the sect from which
they had separated. Our chances, then, of getting acquainted with Hindu views,
Philosophies and traditions, were greater than those of any previous European
traveller; nay, greater even than those of any officials who had resided for
years in India, but who, neither belonging to the Hindu faith nor on such friendly
terms with them as ourselves, were neither trusted by the natives, nor regarded
as and called by them “brothers” as we are.
It is, then, after
constant researches and cross-questioning, extending over a period of several
months, that we have come to the following conclusions, which are those of Mr.
O’Grady: No Hindu is a Spiritualist; and, with the exception of extremely rare
instances, none of them have ever heard of Spiritualism or its movements in
Europe,
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least of all in
America—with which country many of them are as little acquainted as with the
North Pole. It is but now, when Svami Dvanand, in his learned researches, has
found out that America must have been known to the early Aryans—as Arjuna, one
of the five Pândavas, the friend and disciple of Christna, is shown in Paurânic
history to have gone to Pâtâl(a) in search of a wife, and married in that
country Ulupi, the widow daughter of Nâga, the king of Pâtâl(a), an antipodal
country answering perfectly in its description to America, and unknown in those
early days to any but the Aryans—that an interest for this country is being
felt among the members of the Samâjes. But, as we explained the origin,
development and doctrines of the Spiritual Philosophy to our friends, and
especially the modus operandi of the mediums—i.e., the communion of the Spirits
of the departed with living men and women, whose organisms the former use as
modes of communication—the horror of our listeners was unequalled and
undisguised in each case. ‘‘Communion with bhuts! ‘‘ they exclaimed.
‘‘Communion with souls that have become wicked demons, to whom we are ready to
offer sacrifices in food and drink to pacify them and make them leave us quiet,
but who never come but to disturb the peace of families; whose presence is a
pollution! What pleasure or comfort can the Bellate [White foreigners find in
communicating with them?” Thus, I repeat most emphatically that not only are
there, so to say, no Spiritualists in India, as we understand the term, but I
affirm and declare that the very suggestion of our so-called ‘‘Spirit
intercourse’’ is obnoxious to most of them—that is to say, to the oldest people
in the world, people who have known all about the phenomena for thousands upon
thousands of years. Is this fact nothing to us, who have just begun to see the
wonders of medium-ship? Ought we to estimate our cleverness at so high a figure
as to make us refuse to take instruction from these Orientals, who have seen
their holy men—nay, even their Gods and demons and the Spirits of the
elements—performing ‘‘miracles’’ since the remotest antiquity? Have we so
perfected a Philosophy of our own that we can compare it with that of India,
which explains every mystery, and triumphantly demonstrates the nature of every
phenomenon? It would he worth our while, believe me, to ask Hindu help, if it
were but to prove, better than we can now, to the Materialists and sceptical
Science, that, what ever may be the true theory as to the agencies, the
phenomena, whether biblical or Vaidic, Christian or heathen, are in the natural
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order of this
world, and have a first claim to scientific investigation. Let us first prove
the existence of the Sphinx to the profane, and after wards we may try to
unriddle its mysteries. Spiritualists will always have time enough to refute
“antiquated doctrines” of old. Truth is eternal, and however long trampled down
will always come out the brighter in the expiring twilight of superstition. But
in one sense we are perfectly warranted in applying the name of Spiritualists
to the Hindu Opposed as they are to physical phenomena as produced by the bhuts
or unsatisfied souls of the departed, and to the possession by them of
mediumistic persons, they still accept with joy those consoling evidences of
the continued interest in themselves of a departed father or mother. In the
subjective phenomena of dreams, in visions of clairvoyance or trance, brought
on by the powers of holy men, they welcome the Spirits of their beloved ones,
and often receive from them important directions and advice.
If agreeable to
your readers I will devote a series of letters to the phenomena taking place in
India, explaining them as I proceed. I sincerely hope that the old experience
of American Spiritualists, massing in threatening force against iconoclastic
Theosophists and their “superannuated” ideas will not be repeated; for my offer
is perfectly impartial and friendly. It is with no desire to either teach new
doctrines or carry on an unwelcome Hindu propaganda that I make it; but simply
to supply material for comparison and study to the Spiritualists who think.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
Bombay, July, 1879.
MISSIONARIES
MILITANT
[Probably from the
Allahabad Pioneer; 1880.]
WE have just read
the two dreary columns in The Pioneer of March 15th, “The Theosophists in
Council,” by Mr. T. G. Scott. The Council of the Society having nothing more to
say to the reverend polemic, who, in rejoinder to a brief card, treats the
world to two columns of what Coleridge would call “a juggle of sophistry,” I,
myself, would ask you to favour me with a brief space.
A few points of Mr.
Scott’s most glaring misconceptions (?) about our Society may be noticed. We
are said to have declared, at New York, that the Theosophical Society was
hostile to the “Christian Church”; while at Mayo Hall, Allahabad, our President
affirmed that his Society was not organized to fight “Christianity.” This is
assumed to be a contradiction and a “change of base.” Now if there were enough
“Christianity” in the “Christian Church” to be spoken of the gentleman’s point
might be deemed well taken. But, in my humble opinion, this is not at all the
case. Hence—though not at all hostile to “Christianity,” i.e., the ethics
alleged to have been preached by Jesus of Nazareth—I, in common with many
Theosophists, am very much so to the so-called “Church of Christ.”
Collectively, this Church includes three great rival religions and some
hundreds of minor sects, for the most part bitterly recriminative and mutually
far more hostile to each other than we are to all. To accuse, therefore, the
Theosophists—who may dislike the Methodist, Presbyterian, Jesuit, Baptist, or
any other alleged “Christian” sect—of bitter hatred of “Christianity” in the
abstract, is like accusing one of hating light because he opposes the use of
either or all of the man new-fangled inventions of kerosene lamps, which, under
the pretext of preserving the light, injure it! The Christianity of Jesus,
dragged by its numberless sects around the arena of our century, appears like
that car in the Slavonian fable (a version of one by Æsop) to which were
harnessed all manner of creeping,
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swimming, and
flying things. Each of these, following its own instinct, attempted to draw the
car after its own fashion. Result: between the birds, animals, reptiles and
fishes, the unfortunate vehicle was torn into fragments.
The reverend
missionaries are hard to please in this country. When left unnoticed, they
complain of the Theosophists ignoring the brave “six hundred”; and when we do
notice them—which, indeed, happens only under compulsion—they begin abusing us
in the most un-Christian and often, I am sorry to say, ungentlemanly way.
Thus, for instance,
we had to call the strong hand of the law to our help in the case of The
Dnyanodaya, a diminutive and sorry but quite a fighting little missionary
weekly of Bombay, which called our Society names, and had to apologize in print
for it. Now comes The Bengal Magazine of January; its Editor—by the by, a
Christian reverend, but nevertheless very rude Bâbu—is advised to look out and
consult the law, before he charges Colonel Olcott or anyone else with
“hocus-pocus tricks’’ again; as the ‘‘gushing Colonel’’ may prove as little
gushing and as active in his case as he was in that of the abusive little
Dnyânodaya. And now Mr. T. G. Scott calls an article on “Missions in India”
(Theosophist, January) a
Bold, but
exceedingly ignorant attempt at making it appear that missions are a failure in
India.
Ignorant as we
newcomers maybe about Indian missionary questions, I must remind Mr. Scott that
the person whom he stigmatizes with ignorance is a lady who has passed many
years in India and has had ample opportunities for observation. Most military
or civil employees of experience in India whom I have met take the same view of
the matter that she does. I cannot imagine why Darwin and Tyndall should have
been selected by Mr. Scott, out of the thousands of scientific and educated men
now pulling Christianity to pieces, as “noisy characters”; nor why he should
cite, in an issue created by modern biblical research, Newton, Kepler,
Herschell or anyone else who lived before the recent advances of Science in
this direction, and in days when, to deny not merely Christianity, but some
minor dogma of the State religion was equivalent to self-condemnation to an
auto da-fe As for the Christianity of Max Muller, Dr. Carpenter (a prince among
Materialists) and the late Louis Agassiz, the less said the better. Might not
his long string of high-sounding names have been profitably enlarged by the
addition of those of the late Viscount Amberley and
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Lord Queensborough,
of the “Church” of Moncure Conway, in which is preached the great Religion of
Humanity from every “religion” and church?
Science is our
guide, and truth is the spirit that we worship, says the noble Lord
Queensborough in his letter recently published in The Statesman! Mr. Scott
assures his readers that:
Never since the Apostles has it [Christanity] been so vigorous as now, the
tendency is anything else than to infidelity and atheism.
But Lord
Queensborough, in his letter to “E. C. H.” challenges the latter, and with him
the whole world of Christians in these remarkable words:
Call us atheists
and infidels if you will; . . . and I maintain, and will maintain, that the
time has arrived for us to proclaim ourselves and to claim to be respected, as
other religious bodies are; but as we never shall he, unless we stand forward
and openly declare what our religion is . . . I am only acting as the
mouthpiece of thousands, perhaps millions, with whom I have faith in common.
Churches of our
religion already exist. I will name one in London, always as full as it can hold
on Sundays—South Place Chapel, Finsbury, where Mr. Moncure Conway lectures.
Moncure Conway, I
will remind Mr. Scott, instead of the Bible and Christianity preaches every
Sunday from The Sacred Anthology, extracts from the Vedas, the Buddhist Sutras,
the Koran, and so on. Many of his parishioners are fellows of the Theosophical
Society. And now it is my turn to ask, “How does this tally with the utterances
of” Mr. Scott, the missionary? Equally ill-timed was Mr. Scott’s quotation from
the New Testament of the passage:
Jesus said, Other
sheep I have, not of this fold.
For in the very
mouth of Jesus are put also the words:
He that believeth
and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned (Mark
xvi. 16).
To this Mr. Scott
may, perhaps, repeat what he says in his two column letter:
The whole question
of the nature and extent of future punishment is a matter of interpretation.
Exactly. So we,
Theosophists and other heathen and “infidels,” who live in a century of free
thought and in a country of religious freedom, avail ourselves of it.
And now all his
points being answered, the reverend gentleman is
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at liberty to
ventilate his ideas and pour his wrath upon the Theosophists wherever he likes.
Yet, unless he can get his satisfaction from following the good example of
other missionaries, and indulge in monologues of abuse, he can reckon but
little upon us to answer him. It takes two for a dialogue; and whether as a
Society or as individuals, we decline any further controversy on the subject
with one who gives so few facts and so many words.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
THE HISTORY OF A
“BOOK”
—————
[From the Allahahad
Pioneer, March 12th, 1880.]
As the indications
in the press all point towards a Russian reign of terror, either before or at
the death of the Czar—most probably the former—a bird’s-eye view of the
constitution of Russian society will enable us to better understand events as
they transpire.
Three distinct
elements compose what is now known as the Russian aristocracy. These may be
broadly said to represent the primitive Slavonian, the primitive Tartar, and
composite Russianized immigrants from other countries, and subjects of
conquered states, such as the Baltic provinces. The flower of the haute
noblesse, those whose hereditary descent places them beyond challenge in the
very first rank, are the Rurikovilch, or descendants of the Grand Duke Rurik and
[the ruling families of the aforetime separate principalities of Novgorod,
Pskof, etc., which were welded together into the Muscovite empire. Such are the
Princes Bariatinskv, Dolgorouki, Shonysky (now extinct, we believe),
Tscherbatow, Ouroussov, Viazemsky, etc. Moscow has been the centre of the
greater part of this princely class since the days of Catherine the Great; and
though, in most cases, ruined in fortune, they are yet as proud and exclusive
as the blue-blooded French families of the Quartier St. Germain. The names of
some of the highest of these are virtually unknown outside of the limits of the
empire, for, dissatisfied with the reforms of Peter and Catherine, and unable
to make as fine a figure at the court as those whom they delighted to call parvenus,
it has been their proud boast that they have never served in any subordinate
capacity, and have not been brought in contact with Western Europe and its
politics. Living only upon their remembrances, they have made a class apart and
dwell on a sort of high social table-land, whence they look down upon commoner
mortals. Many of the old families are extinct, and many of those that remain
entirely reduced to genteel poverty.
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Rurik, as is well
known, was not a Slav by birth, but a Varyago-Roos, though his nationality, as
well as that of his people who came with him to Russia, is very much questioned
unto this day, having been a matter of scientific dispute for several years
between the two well-known professors of St. Petersburg, Kostornarof and
Pogodine— the latter now dead. Implored by the Slays to come and reign over
their country, Rurik is reported to have been addressed by the delegates in
these ominous words: “Come with us, great prince for vast is our mother land;
but there is little order in it”—words which their descendants might well
report with as much, if not more, propriety now as then. Accepting the invitation,
Rurik came in A.D. 861 to Novgorod, with his two brothers, and laid the
foundation of Russian nationality. The “Rurikovitch,” then, are the descendants
of this prince, his two brothers and his son, Igor, the line running through a
long succession of princes and chiefs of principalities. The reigning house of
Rurik became extinct at the death of Fredor, the son of Ivan the Terrible.
After a period of anarchy, the Romanoffs, a family of petty nobles, came into
power. But, as this was only in 1613, it was not without reason that the Prince
P. Dolgorouki, a modern historian of Catherine II (a book prohibited in
Russia), when smarting under the sense of a personal wrong, taunted the present
Emperor with the remark:
Alexander II must
not forget that it is little more than two centuries since the Romanoffs held
the stirrups of the Princes Dolgorouki.
And this, despite
the marriage of Mary, Princess Dolgorouki, with Michael Romanoff after he
became Czar.
The Tartar princely
families descend from the Tartar Khans and Magnates of the “Zolotaya Orda”
(Golden Orda) of Kazan, who so long held Russia in subjection, but who were
made tributary by Ivan III, father of Ivan the Terrible, in 1523-1530. Of the
families of this blood which survive, the Princes Dondoukof, whose head was
formerly Governor-General of Kiew, and more recently served in Bulgaria in a
similar capacity, may be mentioned. These are, more or less, looked down upon
by the “Rurikovitch,” as well as by old Lithuanian and Polish princely
families, who hate the Russian descendants of Rurik, as these hate their Roman
Catholic rivals. Then comes in the third element, the old Livonian and
Esthonian Barons and Counts, the Kourland nobles and freiherrs, who boast of
descending from the first Crusaders and look down upon the Slav aristocracy;
and various
231———————————————————THE HISTORY OF A “BOOK.”
foreign families
invited into the country by successive sovereigns, a Western element engrafted
upon the Russian stock. The names of the latter immigrés have been Russianized
in some cases beyond recognition; as, for instance, the English Hamiltons, who
have now become the “Khomoutoff!”
We have not the
data which would enable us to give the numerical strength of either of the
above classes; but an enumeration, made in the year 1842, showed a total of
551,970 noblemen of hereditary, and 257,346 of personal rank. This comprised
all in the empire of different degrees of noble ranks, including the princely
families and the under-stratum of nobility. There is an untitled nobility, the
descendants of the old Boyars of Russia, often prouder of their family record
than those who are known as princes. The Demidoff family, for instance, and the
Narishkine, though frequently offered the ranks of prince and count, have always
haughtily rejected the honour, maintaining that the Czar could make a prince
any day, but never a Demidoff or a Narishkine.
Peter the Great,
having abolished the princely privileges of the Boyars, and made the offices of
the empire accessible to all, created the Tchin, or a caste of municipal
employes and government officials, divided into fourteen classes, the first
eight of which confer hereditary nobility upon the person holding one of them,
and the six latter give but a personal nobility to the incumbent, and do not
transmit gentility to the children. Office does not increase the nobility of
incumbents already noble, but does lift the ignoble into a higher social rank
(Tchinovnik, government employe was for years a term of scorn in the mouths of
the nobles). It is only since Alexander came to the throne that all old edict
was done away with, which deprived of noble rank and reduced to the peasantry
any family which, for three successive generations, had not taken service under
the government. Those were called Odnodvorizi, and among them some of the
oldest families found themselves included in 1845, when the Emperor Nicholas
ordered the examination of the titles of nobles. The nice distinctions among
the above fourteen classes are as puzzling to a foreigner as the relative
precedence of the various buttons of Chinese Mandarins, or the tails of the
Pachas.
Besides these
conflicting elements of high and low nobility, the direct descendants of the
Boyars of old—the Slavonian peers in the palmy days of Russia, divided into
petty sovereignties, who chose for
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themselves the
prince they wanted to serve and left him at will, who were vassals, not
subjects, had their own military retinue, and without whose approval no
grand-ducal “ukasè” could be of any avail—and the ennobled Tchinovniks, sons of
priests and petty traders, there are yet to be considered 79,000,000 of other people.
These may be divided into the millions of liberated serfs (22,000,000), of
crown peasants (16,000,000), who inhabit cities, preferring various trades and
menial service to agriculture. The rest comprises (1) the Meshichanis, or petty
bourgeois, one step higher than the peasant; (2) the enormous body of merchants
and traders divided into three guilds; (3). the hereditary citizens, who have
nothing to do with nobility; (4) the black clergy or the monks and nuns; and
the secular clergy, or married priests—a caste apart and hereditary; and (5)
the military class.
We will not include
in our classification the 3,000,000 of Mohammedans, the 2,000,000 of Jews, the
250,000 Buddhists, the pagan Izors, the Savakots, and the Karels, who seem
perfectly well satisfied with the Russian rule, thoroughly tolerant to their
various worships.* These, with the exception of the higher educated Jews and
some fanatical Mohammedans, care little as to the hand that rules them. But we
will remind the reader of the fact that there are over one hundred different
nations and tribes, who speak more than forty different languages, and are
scattered over an area of 8,331,884 English square miles;† that the population
of all Russia, European and Asiatic, is not above ten to the square mile; that
the railroads are very few and easily controlled, and other means of transport
scanty. How far it would be possible to effect a complete revolution throughout
the Russian Empire, may well be a subject of conjecture. With so little to bind
the many nationalities into one movement, it would seem to a foreigner an
undertaking so hopeless as to discourage even an Internationalist or a
Nihilist. Add to this the unquestionable devotion of the liberated serfs and
peasantry to the Czar, in whom they see alike the benefactor of the oppressed,
the vicegerent of God, and the head of their Church, and the case seems yet
more problematical. At the same time, we must not forget the lessons of
history, which has more than once shown us
—————
* By the last
statistics, the Mohammedans have 4,189 mosques and 7,940 mutfis and mulahs in
the Empire of Russia the Buddhists 389 places of worship and 4,400 priests; the
Jews 445 synagogues and 4,935 rabbis, etc.
† According to the
calculation made in 1856 by G. Schweitzer, Director of the Observatory of
Moscow.
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how the very
vastness of an empire and the lack of a common unity among its subjects have
proved at some supreme crisis the most potent elements of its downfall.
St. Petersburg is,
in reality, the aristocratic Parc aux Cerfs, a place of shameless profligacy
and riotous excesses, with so little that is national in it that its very name
is German. It is the natural port of entry for all the continental vices, as
well as for the loose ideas about morality, religion and social duty, which are
becoming so widely prevalent. The corrupting influence that Paris has upon
France, St. Petersburg has upon Russia. An influential Russian magazine,
Rousskeye Rye gave us only the other day the following picture of St.
Petersburg society:
Russian society
slumbers, or rather it feels heavy and somnolent. it lazily nods, only now and
then opening its lifeless eyes, as might one who, after a heavy dinner, forced
to sit in an unnatural position, cannot resist a lethargic drowsiness, and
feels that he must either unbutton his uniform and draw a full breath, or—
suffocate. But the dinner is an official one, and his body pinched in a state
uniform too tight for him. The man is overcome with an irresistible somnolence
; he feels the blood rushing to his head, his legs tremble and his hand
mechanically fumbles the button of the uniform to get one gasp of breath that
would interrupt the unendurable torture. Such is the present condition of our
society.
But while it is
nodding under its threatened apoplexy, from a surfeit of indigestible food,
those carnivorous jackals, who are always ready to eat and drink, and can
digest whatever they pick up, do not sleep. The violation of the seventh
commandment, intellectually as well as physically, having debased body, mind
and soul is nestling in the very heart of the public. Adulterers of body, and
of thought, and of knowledge and science, adulterers of labour—reign in our
midst, are creeping out from every side as the representatives of society and
the public, boasting of their brazen hardihood, successful wherever they go,
having flung away’ all shame cast aside every’ concern to at least conceal the
nakedness of their deeds, even from the eyes of those from whom they’ squeeze
all that can be squeezed only from such a fool as—man. Government and treasury’
pilferers’, embezzlers of public and private properties; blacklegs and
swindlers subsidized by numberless bubble companies, by stock companies and
fraudulent enterprises; thimble-riggers and violators of women and children
whom they’ debauch and ruin; contractors, money-lenders, bribed judges and
venal counsel, bucket-shop keepers and sharpers of all nationalities, ever)’
religion, every social class. This is our modern social force. Like beasts of
prey, hunting in packs, this force, gloating over its quarry, satiating itself,
noisily crunching its restless, tireless jaws, imposing itself upon everyone,
dares to offer itself as the patron of everything”—science ,literature, arts,
and even thought itself. There it is, the kingdom of this world, flesh of the
flesh, blood of the blood, made in the image of the animal from which the first
germ of man evolved.
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Such are the social
ethics of our contemporary Russia, on Russian testimony. If so, then it must
have reached that culminating point from which it must either fall into the
mire of dissolution, like old Rome, or gravitate towards regeneration through
all the horrors and chaos of a “Reign of Terror.” The press teems with guarded
complaints of “prostration of forces” among its representatives, the chronic
signs of fast-impending social dissolution, and the profound apathy into which
the whole Russian people seem to have fallen. The only beings full of life and
activity, amid this lethargy of satiety, seem to be the omnipresent and
ever-invisible Nihilists. Clearly there must be a change.
From all this
social rottenness, the black fungus of Nihilism has sprung. Its hot-bed has
been preparing for years, by the gradual sapping of moral tone and self-respect
and the debauchery of the higher class, who always give the impulse to those
below them for good or evil. All that lacked was the occasion and the man.
Under the passport system of Nicholas, the chances for becoming polluted by
Paris life were confined to a mere handful of rich nobles, whom the caprice of
the Czar allowed to travel. Even they, the privileged of favour and fortune,
had to apply for permission six months in advance, and pay a thousand roubles
for their passport, with a heavy fine for each day in excess of the time
granted, and the prospect of confiscation of their entire property should their
foreign stay exceed three years. But under Alexander everything was changed;
the emancipation of the serfs was followed by numberless reforms—the unmuzzling
of the press, trial by jury, equalizing the rights of citizenship, free
passports, etc. Though good in themselves, these reforms came with such a rush
upon a people unaccustomed to the least of these privileges, as to throw them
into a high fever. The patient, escaping from his strait-jacket, ran wildly
about the streets. Then came the Polish Revolution of 1863, in which a number
of Russian students participated. Reaction followed and repressive measures
were reädopted one by one; but it was too late. The caged animal had tasted
liberty, though ever so brief, and thence forth could not be docile as before.
Where there had been one Russian traveller to Paris, Vienna and Berlin under
the old reign, now there were thousands and tens of thousands; and just so many
more agencies were at work to import fashionable vice and scientific
scepticism. The names of John Stuart Mill, Darwin, and Buchner, were upon the
lip of every beardless boy and heedless girl at the universities and colleges.
235———————————————————THE HISTORY OF A “BOOK.”
The former were
preaching Nihilism, the latter Women’s Rights and Free Love. The one let their
hair grow like moujiks, and donned the red national shirt and kaflan of the
peasantry; the other clipped their hair short and affected blue spectacles.
Trades Unions, infected with the notions of the International, sprang up like
mushrooms; and demagogues ranted to social clubs upon the conflict between
labour and capital. The cauldron began to seethe. At last the man came.
The history of
Nihilism can be summed up in two words. For their name they are indebted to the
great novelist Tourguenief, who created Bazarof, and stamped the type with the
name of Nihilist. Little did the famous author of Fathers and Sons imagine at
that time into what national degeneration his hero would lead the Russian
people twenty-five years later. Only “Bazarof”—in whom the novelist painted
with satirical fidelity the characteristics of certain “Bohemian” negationists,
then just glimmering on the horizon of student life—had little in common,
except the name and materialistic tendency, with the masked Revolutionists and
Terrorists of today. Shallow, bilious, and nervous, this studiosus medicine is
simply an unquiet spirit of sweeping negation; of that sad, yet scientific
scepticism reigning now supreme in the ranks of the highest intellect; a spirit
of Materialism, sincerely believed in, and as honestly preached; the outcome of
long reflections over the rotten remnants of man and frog in the dissecting
room, where the dead man suggested to his mind no more than the dead frog.
Outside of animal life everything to him is nihil; “a thistle,” growing out of
a lump of mud, is all that man can look forward to after death. And thus this
type—Bazarof—was caught up as their highest ideal by the university students.
The “Sons” began destroying what the “Fathers” had built. . . . And now
Tourguenief is forced to taste of the bitter fruits of the tree of his
planting. Like the creator of Frankenstein, who could not control the
mechanical monster that his ingenuity had constructed out of the putrefactions
of the churchyard, he now finds his “type”—which was from the first hateful and
terrible to him—grown into the ranting spectre of the Nihilist delirium, the
red-handed Socialist. The press, at the initiative of the Moshovskye
Vyedomosty—a centenarian paper—takes up the question and openly accuses the
most brilliant literary talent of Russia, one whose sympathies are, and always
have been, on the side of the “Fathers,” with having been the first to plant
the poisonous weed.
Owing to the
peculiar transitional state of Russian society between
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1850 and 1860, the
name was hailed and adopted, and the Nihilists began springing up at every
side. They captured the national literature, and their new doctrines were fast
disseminated throughout the whole empire. And now Nihilism has grown into a
power—an imperium in imperio: It is no more with Nihilism with which Russia
struggles, but with the terrible consequences of the ideas of 1850. Fathers and
Sons must henceforth occupy a prominent place, not only in literature, as quite
above the ordinary level of authorship, but also as the creator of a new page
in Russian political history, the end of which no man can foretell.
A FRENCH VIEW OF
WOMEN’S
RIGHTS
[Probably from the
Allahabad Pioneer.]
WITH a little book
entitled Les Femmes qui Tuent et Les Femmes qui Votent, Alexandre Dumas, fils,
has just entered the arena of social and political reform. The novelist, who
began by picking up his Beatrices and Lauras in the social gutter, the author
of La Dame aux Camelias and La Dame aux Perles, is regarded in France as the
finest known analyst of the female heart. He now comes out in a new light; as a
defender of Woman’s Rights in general, and of those women especially whom
English people generally talk about as little as possible. If this gifted son
of a still more gifted father never sank before to the miry depths of that
modern French realistic school now in such vogue, the school headed by the
author of L’Assommoir and Nana and so fitly nicknamed L’Ecole Ordurialiste it
is because he is a born poet, and follows the paths traced out for him by the
Marquis de Sade, rather than those of Zola. He is too refined to be the rival
of writers like those who call themselves auteurs-naturalisles and
romanciers-experimentalistes, who use their pen as the student in surgery his
scalpel, plunging it into the depths of all the social cancers they can find.
Until now he
idealized and beautified vice. In the work under review, he defends not only
its right to exist under certain conditions, but claims for it a recognized
place in the broad sunlight of social and political life.
His brochure of 216
pages, which has lately been published in the shape of a letter to J. Claretie,
is now having an immense success. By the end of September, hardly a week after
its appearance, it had already reached its sixth edition. It treats of two
great social difficulties—the question of divorce, and the right of women to
participate in elections. Dumas begins by assuming the defence of the several
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women who have
recently played an important part in murder cases, in which their victims were
their husbands and lovers.
All these women, he
says, are the embodiment of the idea which for some time past has been
fermenting in the world. It is that of the entire disenthralment of the woman
from her old condition of slavery, created for her by the Bible, and enforced
by tyrannical society. All these murders and this public vice, as we as the
increasing mental labour of women, M. Dumas takes to be so many signs of one
and the same aspiration—that of mastering man, getting the best of him, and
competing with him in everything. What men will not give them willingly, women
of a certain class endeavour to obtain by cunning. As a result of such a
policy, he says, we see “those young ladies” acquiring an enormous influence
over men in all social affairs and even in politics. Having amassed large
fortunes, when older they appear as lady-patronesses of girls’ schools and of
charitable institutions, and take a part in provincial administration. Their
past is lost sight of; they succeed in establishing, so to say, an imperium in
imperio, where they enforce their own laws, and manage to have them respected.
This state of things is attributed by Dumas directly to the restriction of
Woman’s Rights, to the state of legal slavery women have been subjected to for
centuries, and especially to the marriage and anti-divorce laws. Answering the
favourite objection of those who oppose divorce on the ground that its
establishment would promote too much freedom in love, the author of Le
Demi-Monde bravely pushes forward his last batteries and throws off the mask.
Why not promote
such freedom? What appears a danger to some, a dishonour and shame to others,
Will become an
independent and recognized profession in life—une carrière à part—a fact, a
world of its own, with which all the other corporations and classes of society
will have to reckon. It will not be long before everyone will have ceased to
protest against its right to an independent and legal existence. Very shortly
it will form itself into an integral, compact body; and the time will come
when, between this world and the others, relations will be established as
friendly as between two equally powerful and recognized empires.
With every year
women free themselves more and more from empty formalism, and M. Dumas hopes
there will never again be a reaction. If a woman is unable to give up the idea
of love altogether, let her prefer unions binding neither party to anything,
and let her be guided in this only by her own free will and honesty. Of course
it is rather to
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review an important
current of feeling in an important community than to discuss au fond the
delicate questions with which M. Dumas deals, that we are taking notice of his
book. We may thus leave the reader to his own reflections on this proposed
reform, as also in reference to most of the points raised.
A certain Hubertine
Auclaire, in France, has lately refused to pay her taxes on the plea that
political rights belonging to man are denied to her as a woman; and Dumas, with
this incident as a text, devotes the last part of this brochure to a defence of
Woman’s Rights, as eloquent, impressive and original as other portions which
will less bear discussion. He writes:
In 1847 political
reformers thought it necessary to lower the electoral franchise and distribute
the right of vote according to capacity.
That is, to limit
it to intelligent men. The government refused, and this led to the Revolution
of 1848. Scared, it gave the people the right of universal suffrage, extending
the right to all, whether capable or incapable, provided the voters were only
men. At present this right holds good, and nothing can abolish it. But women
come, in their turn, and ask: “How about us? We claim the same privileges.”
What [asks Dumas]
can be more natural, reasonable and just? There is no reason why woman should
not have equal rights with man. What difference do you find between the two
which warrants your refusing her such a privilege? None at all. Sex? her sex
has no more to do with it than the sex of man. As to all other dissimilarities
between us, they go far more to her credit than to ours. If one argues that Woman
is by nature a weaker creature than man, and that it is his duty to take care
of and defend her, we will answer that hitherto we have, it seems, so badly
defended her that she had to pick up a revolver and take that defence into her
own hands; and to remain consequent with ourselves we have to enter the verdict
of “Not guilty” whenever she is caught in that act of self-defence.
To the plea that
woman is intellectually weaker than man, and is shown to be so by sacred
writings, the author sets off against the biblical Adam and Eve, Jacolliot’s
translation of the Hindu legend in his Bible dans l’Inde, and contends that it
was man, not woman, who became the first sinner and was turned out of Paradise.
If man is endowed with stronger muscles, woman’s nerves surpass his in capacity
for endurance. The biggest brain ever found—in weight and size—is now proved to
have belonged to a woman. It weighed 2,200 grammes—400 more than that of
Cuvier. But brain has nothing to do with the electoral question. To drop a
ballot into the urn no one is required to have invented powder, or to be able
to lift 500 kilogrammes.
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Dumas has an answer
for every objection. Are illustrious women exceptions? He cites a brilliant
array of great female names, and contends that the sex in which such exceptions
are to be met has acquired a legal right to take part in the nomination of the
village maires and municipal officers. The sex which claims a Blanche de
Castille, an Elizabeth of England, another of Hungary, a Catherine II and a
Maria Theresa, has won every right.
If so many women
were found good enough to reign and govern nations, they surely must have been
fit to vote. To the remark that women can neither go to war nor defend their
country, the reader is reminded of such names as Joan of Arc, and the three
other Joans, of Flanders, of Blois, and Joan Hachette. It was in memory of the
brilliant defence and salvation of her native town, Beauvais, by the latter
Joan, at the head of all the women of that city, besieged by Charles le
Témeraire that Louis XI decreed that henceforth and for ever the place of
honour in all the national and public processions should belong to women. Had
woman no other rights in France, the fact alone that she was called upon to
sacrifice1,800,000 of her sons to Napoleon the Great, ought to ensure to her
every right. The example of Hubertine Auclaire will be soon followed by every
woman in France. Law was ever unjust to woman; and instead of protecting her,
it seeks but to strengthen her chains. In case of crimes committed, does law
ever think of bringing forward as an extenuating circumstance, her weakness? On
the contrary, it always takes advantage of it. The illegitimate child is given
by it the right to find out who its mother was, but not its father. The husband
can go anywhere, do whatever he pleases, abandon his family, change his
citizenship, and even emigrate, without the consent or even knowledge of his
wife.
She can do nothing
of the kind. In case of a suspicion of her faith, he can deprive her of her
marriage portion; and in case of guilt may even kill her. It is his right.
Debarred from the benefits of a divorce, she has to suffer all, and finds no
redress. She is fined, judged, sentenced, imprisoned, put to death, and suffers
all the penalties of law just as much and under the same circumstances as he
does, but no magistrate has ever thought of saying yet:
“Poor weak little
creature Let us forgive her, for she is irresponsible, and so much lower than
man
The whole eloquent,
if sometimes rhapsodical plea in favour of women’s suffrage is concluded with
the following suggestions:
241——————————————————A FRENCH VIEW OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS.
First, the
situation will appear absurd; but gradually people will become accustomed to
the idea, and soon every protest will die out. No doubt at first the idea of
woman in this new role will have to become the subject of bitter criticism and satire.
Ladies will be accused of ordering their hats a
a l'urne, their bodices au suffrage universel, and their skirts au scrutin
secret. But what then ? After having served for a time as an object of
amazement, then become a fashion and habit, the new system will be finally
looked upon as a duty. At all events it has now become a claimed right. A few
grandes dames in cities, some wealthy female landowners in provincial
districts, and leaseholders in villages, will set the example, and it will be
soon followed by the rest of the female population.
The book winds up
with this question and answer:
I may, perhaps, be
asked by some pious and disciplined lady, some fervent believer in time idea
that humanity can only he rescued from perdition by codes and gospels, by the
Roman law and Roman Church: ‘‘Pray, tell me, sir, where are we driving to with
all these ideas ?“ “He, madame! ... we go where we were going to from the
first, to that which must be, that is, the inevitable. We move slowly onward,
because we call spare time, having some millions of years yet before us, and
because we have to leave some work to do for those who are following us. For
the present we are occupied in enfranchising women; when this is done we will
try to enfranchise God. And as soon as full harmony will have been established
between these three eternal principles—God, man and woman—our way will appear
to us less dark before us, and we will journey on the quicker.”
Certainly the
advocates of Woman’s Rights in England have never yet approached their subject
from this point of view. Is the new method of attack likely to prove more
effective than the familiar declamation of the British platform, or the earnest
prosing of our own great woman’s champion, John Stuart Mill? This remains to be
seen; but certainly for the most part the English ladies who fight this battle
will be puzzled how to accept an ally whose sympathy is due to principles so
frightfully indecorous as those of our present author.
H. P. Blavatsky.
OCCULT PHENOMENA
—————
[From the Bombay
Gazette Oct. 29th, 1880.]
IN the issue of the
19th instant of your worthy contemporary, I find over two columns devoted to
the doubtful glorification, but mostly to the abuse, of my humble
individuality. There is a long confidential letter from Colonel Olcott to an
officer of our Society, obtained surreptitiously by somebody, and marked
“private”—a word showing in itself that the document was never meant for the
public eye—and an editorial, principally filled with cheap abuse, and venomous,
though common-place, suggestions. The latter was to be expected, but I would
like information upon the following points: (1) How did the editor come into
possession of a document stolen from the desk of the President of the Bombay
Branch of the Theosophical Society? and (2) having got it, what right had he to
publish it at all, without first obtaining consent from the writer or
addressee—a consent which he could never have obtained? and (3) how is such an
action to be characterized? If the law affords no redress for a wrong like this
I am content, at least, to abide the verdict of every well-bred man or woman
who shall read the letter and comments thereon. This private letter having been
written about, but not by me, I abandon this special question to be settled between
the offended and the offender, and touch but upon the one which concerns me
directly.
I have lived long
enough in this world of incessant strife, in which the “survival of the
fittest” seems to mean the triumph of the most unprincipled, to have learned
that when I have once allowed my name to appear in the light of a benevolent
genius, for the production of “cups,” “saucers” and “brooches,” I must bear the
penalty; especially when the people are so foolish as to take the word “Magic”
either in its popular superstitious sense—that of the work of the devil—or in
that of jugglery. Therefore and precisely because I am an “elderly lady from
Russia via America,” the latter country of unlimited freedom
243———————————————————OCCULT PHENOMENA
—especially in
newspaper personal abuse—has toughened me to the extent of being indifferent as
to the sneering and jeering of news papers upon questions they do not
understand at all; provided they are witty and remain within the limits of
propriety and do no harm but to myself. Being neither a professional medium nor
a professional anything, and making my experiments in “Occult phenomena” only
in the presence of a few friends—rarely before anyone who is not a member of
our Society—I have a right to claim from the public a little more fairness and
politeness than are usually accorded to paid jugglers and even alleged
Thaumaturgists. And if my friends will insist upon publishing about “Occult
phenomena” taking place in their presence, they should at least preface their
narratives with the following warning: Pukka Theosophy believes in no miracle,
whether divine or devilish; recognizes nothing as supernatural; believes only
in facts and Science; studies the laws of Nature, both Occult and patent; and
gives attention particularly to the former, just because exact Science will
have nothing to do with them.
Such laws are those
of Magnetism in all its branches, Mesmerism, Psychology, etc. More than once in
the history of its past has Science been made the victim of its own delusions
as to its professed infallibility; and the time must come when the perfection
of Asiatic Psychology and its knowledge of the forces of the invisible world
will be recognized, as were the circulation of the blood, electricity, and so
forth, after the first sneers and lampoons died away. The “silly attempts to
hoodwink individuals” will then be viewed as honest attempts at proving to this
generation of Spiritualists and believers in past ‘‘miracle—mongers,” that
there is naught miraculous in this world of Matter and Spirit, of visible
results and invisible causes; naught—but the great wickedness of a world of
Christians and Pagans, alike ridiculously superstitious in one direction, that
of their respective religions, and malicious whenever a purely disinterested
and philanthropic effort is made to open their eyes to the truth. I beg leave
to further remark that personally I never bragged of anything I might have
done, nor do I offer any explanation of the phenomena, except to utterly
disclaim the possession of any miraculous or supernatural powers, or the
performing of anything by jugglery—i.e., with the usual help of confederates
and machinery. That’s all. And surely, if there is anything like a sense of
justice left in society, I am amenable to neither statutory nor social laws for
gratifying the interest of members
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of our Society, and
the wishes of my personal friends, by exhibiting to them in privacy various
phenomena, in which I believe far more firmly than any of them, since I know
the laws by which they are produced, and am ready to stand any amount of
personal newspaper abuse when ever these results are told to the public. The
“official circles at Simla” was an incorrect and foolish phrase to use. I never
produced anything in the ‘‘official circles’’ ; but I certainly hope to have
impressed a few persons belonging to such “official circles” with the sense
that I was neither an impostor nor a “hood of official personages,” for whom,
moreover, so long as I live up to the law of the country, and respect it
(especially considering my natural democratic feelings, strengthened by my
American naturalization), I am not bound to have any more respect than each of
them personally deserves in his individual capacity. I must add, for the
personal gratification of the Editor of your contemporary, and in the hope that
this will soothe his irate feelings, that of the five eye-witnesses to the
“cup” production, three (two of these of the “official circle”) utterly
disbelieve the genuineness of the phenomenon, though I would be pleased to know
how, with all their scepticism, they would be able to account for it. I do not
imitate the indiscretion of the Editor and mention names, but leave the public
to draw such inferences as they please.
I am a private
individual, and no one has a right to call upon me to rise and explain.
Therefore, by causing Colonel Olcott’s stolen letter to be followed by a
paragraph entitled “The way they treat ‘occult phenomena’ in England,” giving
an account of the arrest of Miss Houghton, a medium who obtained money under
false pretences, the Editor, by the implied innuendo which likens my case to
hers, became guilty of one more unprovoked and ungentlemanly insult towards me,
who obtain neither money nor favours of any sort for my ‘‘phenomena,” and lays
himself open to very hard reprisals. The only benefit I have ever derived from
my experiments, when made public, is newspaper abuse and more or less
unfavourable comments upon my unfortunate self all over the country. This,
unless my convictions were strong indeed, would amount to obtaining
Billingsgate and martyrdom under false pretences, and begging a reputation for
insanity. The game would hardly be worth the candle, I think.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
Amritzur, Oct. 25th
1880.
HINDU WIDOW-
MARRAGE
—————
[The following is a
copy of a letter received by Dewan Bahadar Ragunath Row from Madame Blavatsky.]
MY DEAR SIR,—I have
not made a study of Hindu law, but I do know something of the principles of
Hindu religions, or rather ethics, and of those of its glorious Founders. I
regard the former as almost the embodiment of justice, and the latter as ideals
of spiritual perfectibility. When then anyone points out to me in the existing
canon any text, line or word that violates one’s sense of perfect justice, I
instinctively know it must be a later perversion of the original Smriti. In my
judgment, the Hindus are now patiently enduring many outrageous wrongs that
were cunningly introduced into the canon, as opportunity offered, by selfish
and unscrupulous priests for their personal benefit, as occurred in the case of
Suttee, the burning of widows. The marriage laws are another example. To marry
a child, without her knowledge or consent to enter the married state, and then
to doom her to the awful, because unnatural, fate of enforced celibacy if the
boy-child to whom she was betrothed should die (and one half of the human race
do die before coming of age), is something actually brutal, devilish. It is the
quintessence of injustice and cruelty, and I would sooner doubt the stars of
heaven than believe that any one of those star-bright human souls called Rishis
had ever consented to such a base and idiotic cruelty. If a female has entered
the marital relation, she should, in my opinion, remain a chaste widow if her
husband should die. But if a betrothed boy—husband of a non-consenting and
irresponsible child-wife should die, or if, upon coming to age, either of them
should be averse from matrimony, and prefer to take tip the religious life, to
devote themselves to charitable occupations, to study, or for other good
reasons wish to remain celibate, then they ought to be allowed to do so. We
personally know of several cases where the males or females are so bent upon
becoming Chelâs that they prefer death
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rather than to
enter or continue in—as the cases severally may be— the married state. My
woman’s instinct always told me that for such there was comfort and protection
in the Hindus law of the Rishis, which was based upon their spiritual
perceptions, hence upon the perfect law of harmony and justice which pervades
all nature. And now, upon reading your excellent pamphlet, I perceive that my
instincts had not deceived me.
Wishing every
possible success to your noble and highly philanthropical enterprise, believe
me, dear sir, with respect,
Yours fraternally,
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
Mylapore, June 3rd,
1882.
“OPPRESSED
WIDOWHOOD” IN
AMERICA
—————
[From The
Philosophic Enquirer ; July 15 1883.]
HAVING read an
article signed with the above pseudonym in The Philosophic Enquirer of July
1st, in which the hapless condition of the Hindu widow is so sincerely
bewailed, the idea struck me that it may not be uninteresting to your readers,
the opponents as well as the supporters of child-marriage and widow-marriage,
to learn that the sacerdotal caste of India is not a solitary exception in the
cruel treatment of those unfortunates whom fate has deprived of their husbands.
Those who look upon the re-marriage of their bereaved females with horror, as
well as those who may yet be secretly sighing for Suttee, will find worthy
sympathizers among the savage and fierce tribe of the Talkotins of Oregon
(America). Says Ross Cox in his Adventures on the Columbia River:
The ceremonies
attending the dead are very singular and quite peculiar to this tribe. During
the nine days the corpse is laid out the widow of the deceased is obliged to
sleep alongside it from sunset to sunrise; and from this custom there is on
relaxation even during the hottest days of summer [ the ceremony of cremation
is being performed, and the doctor (or ‘‘medicine man “) is trying for the last
time his skill upon the corpse, and using useless incantations to bring hint
back to life,] the widow must lie on the pile, add after the fire is applied to
it she cannot stir until the doctor orders her to be removed, which, however,
is never done until her body is completely covered with blisters.
After being placed
on her legs she is obliged to pass her hands gently through the flames and
collect some of the liquid fat which issues front the corpse, with which she is
permitted [?] to wet her face and body! When the friends of the deceased
observe the sinews of the legs and arms beginning to contract they compel the
unfortunate widow to go again on the pile, and by dint of hard pressing to
straighten those members.
If during her
husband’s lifetime she has been known to have omitted administering to him
savoury food, or neglected his clothing, etc., she is now made to suffer
severely for such lapses of duty by his relations, who frequently fling her On
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the funeral pile,
from which she is dragged by her friends, and thus between alternate scorching
and cooling she is dragged backwards and forwards until she falls into a state
of insensibility.
After which she is
saved and allowed to go.
But if the widow
was faithful, respectful and a good wife, then:
After the process
of burning the corpse has terminated, the widow collects the larger bones,
which she rolls up in an envelope of birch bark, and which she is obliged for
some years afterwards to carry on her back. She is now considered and treated
as a slave [as in India]; all the laborious duties of cooking, collecting fuel,
etc., devolve on her. She must obey the orders of all the women and even of the
village children, and the slightest mistake or disobedience subjects her to the
infliction of a heavy punishment. The wretched widow, to avoid this complicated
cruelty, often commits suicide. Should she, however, linger on for three or
four years, the friends of her husband agree to relieve her from her painful
mourning. This is a ceremony of much consequence. . . . Invitations are sent to
the inhabitants of the various friendly villages, and when the feast commences
presents are distributed to each visitor. The object of their meeting is then
explained, and the woman is brought forward, still carrying on her back the
bones of her late husband, which are now removed and placed in a carved box,
which is nailed to a post twelve feet high.
Her conduct as a
faithful widow is next highly eulogized, and the ceremony of her manumission is
completed by one man powdering on her head the down of birds and another
pouring on it the contents of a bladder of oil! She is then at liberty to marry
again or lead a life of single blessedness; but few of them, I believe, wish to
encounter the risk attending a second widowhood.
H. P. B.
“ESOTERIC BUDDHISM”
AND ITS
CRITIC
—————
[From Light, 1883.]
Bottom.— me play
the lion. . . . I will roar, that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me. .
. . I will make the Duke say,...” Let him roar, let him roar again.” ...
Masters, you ought to consider with yourselves; to bring in—God shield us!—a
lion among ladies, is a most dreadful thing; for, there is not a more fearful
wild-fowl than your lion living; and we ought to look to it.
Nay, you must name
his name, and half his face must be seen through the lion’s neck; and he
himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect:
“Ladies,” or “fair
ladies [or Theosophists] I would wish you,” or “I would request you,” or “I
would entreat you,” not to fear, not to tremble If you think I come hither as a
lion, . . . no, I am no such thing: I am a man . . . and there indeed let him
name his name.—Midsummer Night’s Dream.
IN Light of July
21st in the “Correspondence,” appears a letter signed “G. W., M.D.” Most transparent
initials these, which “name the name” at once, and show the writer’s face
“through the lion’s neck.” The communication consists of just fifty-eight
paragraphs, containing an equal number of sneering, rancorous, vulgar, personal
flings, the whole distributed over three and a half columns. It pretends to
criticize, while only misquoting and misinterpreting Eastern Esotericism. Its
author would create a laugh at the expense of Mr. Sinnett’s book, and succeeds
in showing us what a harmless creature is the “lion,” “wild-fowl” though he may
be; and where he would make a show of wit, the letter is only—nasty.
I should not
address your public, even in my private capacity, but that the feelings of many
hundreds of my Asiatic brothers have been outraged by this, to them, ribald
attack upon what they hold sacred. For them, and at their instance, I protest.
It might be regarded as beneath contempt had it come from an outsider upon whom
rested no obligation to uphold the dignity of the Theosophical Society; in such
case it would have passed for a clumsy attempt to injure an unpalatable cause:
that of Esoteric Buddhism. But when it is a wide-open secret
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that the letter
came from a member of about five years’ standing, and one who, upon the
protogenesis of the “British Theosophical Society” as the “London Lodge of the
Theosophical Society,” retained membership, the case has quite another aspect.
The cutting insult having been inflicted publicly and without antecedent
warning, it appears necessary to enquire as to the occult motive.
I shall not stop to
remark upon the wild resume which, professedly “a criticism from a European and
arithmetical standpoint,” passed muster with you. Nor shall I lose time over
the harmless flings at “incorrigible Buddhists and other lunatics,” beyond
remarking àpro of “moon” and “dust-bins” that the former seems to have found a
good symbol of herself as a “dust-bin” in the heads of those whose perceptive
faculties seem so dusty as to prevent the entrance of a single ray of Occult
light. Briefly then, since the year 1879 when we came to India, the author of
the letter in question has made attempts to put himself into communication with
the “Brothers.” Besides trying to enter into correspondence with Colonel
Olcott’s Guru, he sent twice, through myself letters addressed to the Mahâtmâs.
Being, as it appears, full of one-sided prejudiced questions, suggesting to
Buddhist Philosophers the immense superiority of his own “Esoteric”
Christianity over the system of the Lord Buddha, which is characterized as
fruitful of selfishness, human blindness, misanthropy and spiritual death, they
were returned by the addressees for our edification and to show us why they
would not notice them. Whoever has read a novelette contributed by this same
gentleman to The Psychological Review and entitled “The Man from the East” will
readily infer what must have been his attitude towards the “Himalayan” and
Tibetan Mystics. A Scotch doctor, the hero, meets at a place in Syria, in an
Occult Brother hood, a Christian convert from this “Himalayan heathen
Brotherhood,” who—a Hindu against his late Adept Masters the self-same libels as
are now repeated in the letter under notice.
—————
* The shot at
Theosophy being badly aimed, flew wide of the mark; but still, like Richard
III, “G. W., M.D.” resolved, as it appears, to keep up the gunnery— The
mythical hero of the story would seem to have met at Paris with a certain
pseudo-Brâhman, a convert to Roman Catholicism, who is giving himself out as an
ex-Chela—his statements and all corroborative ones to the contrary
notwithstanding; he may have misled, if not the mythical Scotch doctor, at least
the actual “M.D.’’ of London. And, by the way, our French Fellows may as well
know, that unless this pretender ceases his bogus revelations as to the
phenomenal powers of our Mahatmas being “of the devil” a certain native
gentleman who has known this convert of the Jesuits from childhood, will expose
him most fully—H. P. B.
251—————————————————“ESOTERIC BUDDHISM” AND ITS CRITIC.
If not to fight
with foreign enemies,
Yet to beat down these rebels here at home.
The three indignant
answers called out by “G. W., M.D.,” having emanated from an English lady and
two genuine English gentlemen, are, in my humble opinion, too dignified and
mild for the present case. So brutal an attack demanded something stronger than
well-bred protests; and at the risk of being taken by “G. W., M.D.” as the
reverse of well-bred, I shall use plain words about this whilom friend, but now
traitor—I hope to show the term is not too harsh. As an ardent Theosophist, the
grateful loyal friend of the author denounced—who deserves and has the regard
of Mahâtmâ Koot-Hoomi—and as the humble pupil of Those to whom I owe my life
and the future of my soul, I shall speak. While I have breath, I shall never
allow to pass unnoticed such ugly manifestations of religious intolerance, nay,
bigotry, and personal rancour resulting from envy, in a member of our Society.
Before closing, I
must notice one specially glaring fact. Touched evidently to the quick by Mr.
Sinnett’s very proper refusal to let one so inimical see the “Divine Face”
(yes, truly Divine, though not so much so as the original) of the Mahâtmâ, “G.
W., M.D.” with a sneer of equivocal propriety, calls it a mistake. He says:
For just as some
second-class saints have been made by gazing on halfpenny prints of the Mother
of God, so who can say that if my good friend had permitted my sceptical eyes
to look on the Divine face of Koot-Hoomi I might not forthwith have been
converted into an Esoteric Buddhist?
Impossible; an
Esoteric Buddhist never broke his pledged word; and one who upon entering the
Society gave his solemn word of honour, in the presence of witnesses, that he
would.
Defend the
interests of the Society and the honour of a brother Theosophist, when unjustly
assailed, even at the peril of my [his] own life,
and then could
write such a letter, would never be accepted in that capacity. One who unjustly
assails the honour of hundreds of his Asiatic brothers, slanders their religion
and wounds their most sacred feelings, may be a very esoteric Christian, but
certainly is a disloyal Theosophist. My perceptions of what constitutes a man
of honour may be very faulty, but I confess that I could not imagine such a one
making public caricatures upon confessedly “private instructions.” (See second
column, paragraph 14 of his letter.) Private instructions of this sort, given
at confidential private meetings of the Society in
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advance of their
publication, are exactly what the entering member’s word of honour’’ pledges
him not to reveal.
The broken faith
made thee prey for worms;
What canst thou swear by now?
Your correspondent
deprecates
At the outset this
Oriental practice of secrecy; [he knows] that secrecy and cunning are ever twin
sisters, [and it appears to him childish and effeminate [to pretend] by secret
Words and signs to enshrine great truths behind a veil, which is only useful as
a concealment of ignorance and nakedness.
Indeed: so he is
not an “Esoteric Christian” after all, else I have misread the Bible. For what
I find there in various passages, of which I cite but one, shows me that he is
as disloyal to his own Master and Ideal Christ, as he is to Theosophy:
And he said unto
them [his own disciples], Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the
kingdom of God; but unto them that are without [the ‘‘G.W., M.D.’s’’ of the
day] all these things are done in parables: that seeing they may see and not
perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they
should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. ( iv. 11, 12.)
Shall we
characterize this also as “childish and effeminate,” say that the twins sisters
‘‘secrecy and cunning” lurk behind this veil, and that in this instance, as
usual, it was “only useful as a concealment of ignorance and nakedness”? The
grandeur of Esoteric Buddhism is that it hides what it does from the vulgar,
not “lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins forgiven them,” or
as they would say, “cheat their Karma”—but lest by learning prematurely that
which can safely be trusted only to those who have proved their unselfishness
and self—abnegation, even the wicked, the sinners should be hurt.
And now, may the
hope of Bottom be realized, and some London Duke say to this harmless lion:
“Let him roar, let him roar again.”
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
Nilgherry Hills,
Aug. 23rd, 1883.
MR. A. LILLIE’S
DELUSIONS
—————
[From Light, 1884.]
I WRITE to rectify
the many mistakes—if they are, indeed, only “mistakes”—in Mr. Lillie’s last
letter that appeared in Light of August 2nd, in answer to the Observations on
his pamphlet by the President of the London Lodge.
I. This letter, in
which the author of Buddha and Early Buddhism proposed to Consider briefly some
of the notable omissions made in the “Observations,’
begins with two
most notable assertions concerning myself, which are entirely false, and which
the author had not the slightest right to make. He says:
For fourteen years
(1860 to 1874) Madame Blavatsky was all avowed Spiritualist, controlled by a
spirit called “John King” ... she attended many seances.
But this would
hardly prove anyone to be a Spiritualist, and, more over, all these assertions
are entirely false. I say the word and under line it, for the facts in them are
distorted, and made to fit a preconceived and very erroneous notion, started
first by the Spiritualists, whose interest it is to advocate “spirits” pure and
simple, and to kill, if they can, which is rather doubtful, belief in the
wisdom, if not in the very existence, of our revered Masters.
Though I do not at
all feel bound to unbosom my private life to Mr. Arthur Lillie, nor do I
recognize in him the right of demanding it, yet out of respect to a few
Spiritualists whom I esteem and honour, I would set them right once for all on
the subject. As that period of my life (1873-1879) in America, with all its
spiritual transactions, will be given very soon in a new book called Madame
Blavatsky, published by friends, and one which I trust will settle, once and
for ever, the many wild and unfounded stories told of me, I will briefly state
only the following.
The unwarranted
assumption mentioned above is very loosely based
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on one single
document, namely, Colonel Olcott’s People from the other World. As this book
was written partly before, and partly after, my first acquaintance with Colonel
Olcott, and as he was a Spiritualist, which he has never denied, I am not
responsible for his views of me and my “power” at that time. He wrote what he
then thought the whole truth, honestly and sincerely; and as I had a determined
object in view, I did not seek to disabuse him too rudely of his dreams. It was
only after the formation of the Theosophical Society in 1875, that he learned
the whole truth. I defy anyone, after that period, to find one word from his
pen that would corroborate his early views on the nature of my supposed
“mediumship.” But even then, when writing of me in his book, he states
distinctly the following:
Her mediumship is
totally different from that of any other person I ever met, for instead of
being controlled by spirits to do their will, it is she who seems to control
them to do her bidding.
Strange
“mediumship,” one that resembled in no way any that even Colonel Olcott—a
Spiritualist of thirty years’ standing—had ever met with! But when Colonel
Olcott says in his book (p. 453) that instead of being controlled by, it is I
who control the so-called spirits, he is yet made to say by Mr. Lillie, who
refers the public to Colonel Olcott’s book, that is I who was controlled! Is
this a misstatement and a misquotation, I ask, or is it not?
Again, it is stated
by Mr. Lillie that I conversed with this “spirit” (John King) during fourteen
years, “constantly in India and else where.” To begin with, I here assert that
I had never heard the name of “John King” before 1873. True it is, I had told
Colonel Olcott and many others that the form of a man, with a dark pale face,
black beard, and white flowing garments and fettah, that some of them had met
about the house and my rooms, was that of a “John King.” I had given him that
name for reasons that will be fully explained very soon, and I laughed heartily
at the easy way the astral body of a living man could be mistaken for, and
accepted as, a spirit. And I had told them that I had known that “John” since
1860; for it was the form of an Eastern Adept, who has since gone for his final
initiation, passing through and visiting us in his living body on his way, at
Bombay. Whether Messrs. Lillie and Co. believe the statement or not, I care
very little, as Colonel Olcott and other friends know it now to be the true one.
I have known and conversed with many a “John King” in my life—a generic name
for more than one spook—but, thank heaven,
255———————————————————MR. A. LILLIE’S DELUSIONS.
I was never yet
“controlled” by one! My rnedium-ship has been crushed out of me a quarter of a
century or more; and I defy loudly all the “spirits” of the Kâma Loka to
approach—let alone to control me—now. Surely it is Mr. Arthur Lillie who must
be “controlled” by some one to make untruthful statements which can be so
easily refuted as this one.
2. Mr. Lillie asks
for
Information about
the seven years’ initiation of Madame Blavatsky.
The humble
individual of this name has never heard of such an initiation. With that
accuracy in the explanation of Esoteric terms that so preeminently characterizes
the author of Buddha and Early Buddhism, the word may be intended for
‘‘instruction”? If so, then I should be quite justified in first asking Mr.
Lillie what right he has to cross-examine me. But since he chooses to take such
liberties with my name, I will tell him plainly that he himself knows nothing,
not merely of initiations and Tibet, but even of exoteric—let alone
Esoteric—Buddhism. What he pretends to know about Lamaism he has picked tip
from the hazy information of travellers, who, having forced them selves into
the borderland of Tibet, pretend on that account to know all that is within the
country closed for centuries to the average traveller. Even Csomo de Koros knew
very little of the real gyelukpas and Esoteric Lamaism, except what he was
permitted to know, for he never went beyond Zanskar and the lamasery of
Phagdal—erroneously spelt by those who pretend to know all about Tibet, Pugdal
which is incorrect, just because there are no meaning-less names in Tibet’, as
Mr. Lillie has been taught to say. And I will tell him also that I have lived
at different periods in Little Tibet as well as in Great Tibet, and that these
combined periods form more than seven years.
Yet I have never
stated either verbally or over my signature that I had passed seven consecutive
years in a convent. What I have said, and repeat now, is that I have stopped in
Lamaistic convents; that I have visited Tzi-gadze, the Teshu Hlumpo territory
anti its neighbour hood, and that I have been further into, and have visited such
places of Tibet as have never been visited by other Europeans, and such as he
can never hope to visit.
Mr. Lillie had no
right to expect more “ample details” in Mr. Finch’s pamphlet. Mr. Finch is an
honourable man, who speaks of the private life of a person only so far as that
person permits him. My friends and those whom I respect and for whose opinion I
care, have ample
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evidence—from my
family for instance—that I have been in Tibet, and this is all I care for. As
to—
The names, perhaps,
of three or four ... English [ Anglo-Indian] officials, who would certify
to having seen me
when I passed, I am afraid their vigilance would not be found at the height of
their trustworthiness. Only two years back, as I can prove by numerous
witnesses, when journeying from Chandernagore to Darjeeling, instead of
proceeding to it direct, I left the train half-way, was met by friends with a
conveyance, and passed with them into the territory of Sikkhim where I found my
Master and Mahâtmâ Kuthumi. Thence I went five miles across the old border land
of Tibet.
Upon my return,
five days later, to Darjeeling, I received a kind note from the Deputy
Commissioner. It notified me in the politest of terms that, having heard of my
intention of going over to Tibet, the government could not allow me to proceed
there before I had received permission to that effect from Simla, nor could it
accept the responsibility of my safety,
The Râjah of
Sikkhim being very averse to allow travellers on his territory, etc.
This I would call
shutting the stable-door when the steed is stolen. Nor had the very
“trustworthy” official even heard that a month before Mr. Sinnett had kindly
procured for me permission, since I went to Sikkhim but for a few days, and no
farther than the old Tibetan borderland. The question is not whether the
Anglo-Indian Government will or will not grant such permission, but whether the
Tibetans will let one cross their territory. Of the latter, I am sure any day.
I invite Mr. Lillie to try the same. He may at the same time study with profit
geography, and ascertain that there are other routes than those laid down into
Tibet, besides via “English officials.” He tries his best to make me out, in
plain words, a liar. He will find it even more difficult than to disprove that
he knows nothing of either Tibet or Buddhism or our “Byang Tisubs.”
I will surely never
lose my time in showing that his accusations against One, Whom no insult of his
can reach, are perfectly worthless. There are numbers of men quite as
intelligent as he believes himself to be, whose opinion of our Mahâtmâs’
letters is the reverse of his. He can “suppose” that the authorities by him
cited knew more about Tibet than our Masters; others think they do not; and the
thousand
257———————————————————MR. A. LILLIE’S DELUSIONS
and one blunders of
his Buddha and Early Buddhism show us what these authorities are worth when
trusted literally. As to his trying to insinuate that there is no Mahâtmâ
Kuthumi at all, the idea alone is absurd. He will have to dispose, before he
does anything more, of a certain lady in Russia, whose truthfulness and
impartiality no one who knows her would ever presume to question, who received
a letter from that Master so far back as 1870. Perchance a forgery also? As to
my having been in Tibet, at Mahâtmâ Kuthumi's house, I have better proof in
store—when I believe it needed—than Mr. Lillie’s rancorous ingenuity will ever
be able to make away with.
If the teachings of
Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism are considered atheistic, then I am an atheist
too. And yet I would not deny what I wrote in Isis, as quoted by Mr. Finch. If
Mr. Lillie knows no difference between an anthropomorphic extra-cosmic God, and
the Divine Essence of the Advaitis and other Esotericists, then, I must only
lose a little more of my respect for the R. A. S. in which he claims
membership; and it may justify the more our assertions that there is more
knowledge in “Bâbu (?) Subba Row’s” solitary head than in dozens of the heads
of “Orientalists” about London we know of. The same with regard to the Master’s
name. If Mr. Lillie tells us that “Kuthumi ” is not a Tibetan name, we answer
that we never claimed it to be one. Everyone knows that the Master is a
Punjabi, whose family was settled for years in Cashmere. But if he tells us
that an expert at the British Museum ransacked the Tibetan dictionary for the
words “Kut” and “Humi,” “and found no such words,” then I say: Buy a better
dictionary or replace the expert by a more “expert” one. Let Mr. Lillie try the
glossaries of the Moravian Brothers and their alphabets. I am afraid he is
ruining terribly his reputation as an Orientalist. Indeed, before this
controversy is settled he may leave in it the last shreds of his supposed
Oriental learning.
Lest Mr. Lillie
should take my omitting to answer a single one of his very indiscreet questions
as a new pretext for printing some impertinence, I say: I was at Mentana during
the battle in October, 1867, and left Italy in November of the same year for
India. Whether I was sent there, or found myself there by accident, are
questions that pertain to my private life, with which, it appears to me, Mr.
Lillie has no concern. But this is on a par with his other ways of dealing with
his opponents.
Mr. Lillie’s other
sarcasms touch me very little, for I know their
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value. I may let
them pass without any further notice. Some persons have an extraordinarily
clever way of avoiding an embarrassing position by trying to place their
antagonists in the same situation. For instance, Mr. Lillie could not answer
the criticisms made on his Buddha and Early Buddhism in The Theosophist, nor
has he ever attempted to do so. But he applied himself instead to collect every
vile rumour and idle gossip about me, its editor. Why does he not show, to
begin with, that his reviewer was wrong? Why does he not, by contradicting our
statements, firmly establish his own authority as an Orientalist, showing first
of all that lie is a genuine scholar, who knows the subject he is talking about,
before he allows himself to deny and contradict other people’s statements in
matters which he knows still less about? He does nothing of the kind,
however—not a word, not a mention of the scourging criticism that he is unable
to relute. Instead of that, one finds the offended author trying to throw
ridicule on his reviewers, probably so as to lessen the value of what they have
to say of his own book. This is clever, very clever strategy—whether it is
equally honourable remains, withal, an open question.
It might be
difficult, after the conclusions reached by qualified scholars in India
concerning his first book, to secure much attention in The Theosophist for his
second, but if this volume in turn were examined with the care almost
undeservedly devoted to the first, and if it were referred to the authority of
such real Oriental scholars and Sanskritists as Mr. R. T. H. Griffith, for
instance, I think it would be found that the aggregate blundering of the two
books put together might excite even as much amusement as the singular
complacency with which the author betrays himself to the public.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
August 3rd, 1884.
WHAT IS THEOSOPHY?
—————
[Vol. I. No. I,
October, 1879.]
THIS question has
been so often asked, and misconception so widely prevails, that the editors of
a journal devoted to an exposition of the world’s Theosophy would be remiss,
were its first number issued with-out coming to a full understanding with their
readers. But our heading involves two further queries: what is the Theosophical
Society; and what are the Theosophists? To each an answer will be given.
According to
lexicographers, the term Theosophia is composed of two Greek words—Theos,
“God,” and sophia, “wisdom.” So far, correct. But the explanations that follow
are far from giving a clear idea of Theosophy. Webster defines it most
originally as
A supposed
intercourse with God and superior spirits, and consequent attainment of
superhuman knowledge, by physical processes, as by the theurgic operations of
some ancient Platonists, or by the chemical processes of the German
fire-philosophers.
This, to say the
least, is a poor and flippant explanation. To attribute such ideas to men like
Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Jamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus, shows either
intentional misrepresentation, or Mr. Webster’s ignorance of the philosophy and
motives of the greatest geniuses of the later Alexandrian School. To impute to
those whom their contemporaries as well as posterity styled “Theodidaktoi,”
God- taught, a purpose to develop their psychological, spiritual perceptions by
“physical processes,” is to describe them as materialists. As to the concluding
fling at the fire-philosophers, it rebounds from them to fall home among our
most eminent modern men of science, those in whose mouths the Rev. James
Martineau places the following boast: “Matter is all we want; give us atoms
alone and we will explain the universe.”
Vaughan offers a
far better, more philosophical definition. He says:
A Theosophist is
one who gives you a theory of God or the works of God, which has not
revelation, but an inspiration of his own for its basis.
In this view every
great thinker and philosopher, especially every founder of a new religion,
school of philosophy, or sect is necessarily a Theosophist. Hence Theosophy and
Theosophists have existed ever
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since the first
glimmering of nascent thought made man seek instinctively for the means of
expressing his own independent opinions.
There were
Theosophists before the Christian era, notwithstanding that the Christian
writers ascribe the development of the eclectic Theosophical system to the
early part of the third century of their era. Diogenes Laertius traces
Theosophy to an epoch antedating the dynasty of the Ptolemies; and names as its
founder an Egyptian Hierophant called Pot-Amun, the name being Coptic and
signifying a priest consecrated to Amun, the God of Wisdom. But history shows
it revived by Ammonius Saccas, the founder of the Neo-Platonic School. He and
his disciples called themselves “Philalethians”—lovers of the truth; while
others termed them the ‘‘Analogists,” on account of their method of
interpreting all sacred legends, symbolical myths and mysteries, by a rule of
analogy or correspondence, so that events which had occurred in the external
world were regarded as expressing operations and experiences of the human soul.
It was the aim and purpose of Ammonius to reconcile all sects, peoples and
nations under one common faith—a belief in one Supreme Eternal, Unknown and
Unnamed Power, governing the universe by immutable and eternal laws. His object
was to prove a primitive system of Theosophy, which at the beginning was essentially
alike in all countries; to induce all men to lay aside their strifes and
quarrels, and unite in purpose and thought as the children of one common
mother; to purify the ancient religions, by degrees corrupted and obscured,
from all dross of human element, by uniting and expounding them upon pure
philosophical principles. Hence, the Buddhistic, Vedantic and Magian, or
Zoroastrian, systems were taught in the Eclectic Theosophical School along with
all the philosophies of Greece. Hence also, that preeminently Buddhistic and
Indian feature among the ancient Theosophists of Alexandria, of due reverence
for parents and aged persons; a fraternal affection for the whole human race;
and a compassionate feeling for even the dumb animals. While seeking to establish
a system of moral discipline, which enforced upon people the duty to live
according to the laws of their respective countries, to exalt their minds by
the research and contemplation of the one Absolute Truth; his chief object, in
order, as he believed, to achieve all others, was to extract from the various
religions teachings, as from a many-chorded instrument, one full and harmonious
melody, which would find response in every truth-loving heart.
263——————————————————WHAT IS THEOSOPHY?
Theosophy is, then,
the archaic Wisdom the esoteric doctrine once known in every ancient country
having claims to civilization. This “Wisdom” all the old writings show us as an
emanation of the divine Principle; and the clear comprehension of it is typified
in such names as the Indian Budh, the Babylonian Nebo, the Thoth of Memphis,
the Hermes of Greece; in the appellations, also, of some goddesses—Metis,
Neitha, Athena, the Gnostic Sophia finally the Vedas, from the word “to know.”
Under this designation, all the ancient philosophers of the East and West, the
Hierophants of old Egypt, the Rishis of Aryávartta, the Theodidaktoi of Greece,
included all knowledge of things occult and essentially divine. The Mercavah of
the Hebrew rabbis, the secular and popular series, were thus designated as only
the vehicle, the outward shell which contained the higher esoteric knowledge.
The Magi of Zoroaster received instruction and were initiated in the caves and
secret lodges of Bactria; the Egyptian and Grecian Hierophants had their
aporrheta, or secret discourses, during which the Mystés became an Epoptes
Seer.
The central idea of
Eclectic Theosophy was that of a single Supreme Essence, Unknown and
Unknowable, for—”How could one know the knower?” as enquires the Brihadáranyaka
Upanishad Their system was characterized by three distinct features: the theory
of the above named Essence; the doctrine of the human soul—an emanation from
the latter, hence of the same nature; and its theurgy. It is this last science
which has caused the Neo-Platonists to be so misrepresented in our era of
materialistic science. Theurgy being essentially the art of applying the divine
powers of man to the subordination of the blind forces of nature, its votaries
were first termed magicians—a corruption of the word “Magh,” signifying a wise,
or learned man—and then derided. Sceptics of a century ago would have been as
wide of the mark if they had laughed at the idea of a phonograph or telegraph.
The ridiculed and the “infidels” of one generation generally become the wise
men and saints of the next.
As regards the
Divine Essence and the nature of the soul and spirit, modern Theosophy believes
now as ancient Theosophy did. The popular Din of the Aryan nations was
identical with the Iao of the Chaldæans and even with the Jupiter of the less
learned and philosophical among the Romans; and it was just as identical with
the Jahve of the Samaritans, the Tiu or “Tiusco” of the Northmen, the Duw of
the Britons, and the Zeus of the Thracians. As to the Absolute
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Essence, the One
and All—whether we accept the Greek Pythagorean, the Chaldæan Kabalistic, or
the Aryan philosophy in regard to it, it will all lead to one and the same
result. The Primeval Monad of the Pythagorean system, which retires into
darkness and is itself Darkness for human intellect) was made the basis of all
things; and we can find the idea in all its integrity in the philosophical
systems of Leibnitz and Spinoza. Therefore, whether a Theosophist agrees with
the Kabalah which, speaking of En-Soph propounds the query: “Who, then, can
comprehend It, since It is formless and Non-existent?”; or, remembering that
magnificent hymn from the Rig Veda (book x, hymn 129)—enquires:
Who knows from
whence this great creation sprang?
Whether his will created or was mute.
He knows it—or perchance even He knows it not;
or, again, accepts
the Vedântic conception of Brahma, who in the Upanishads is represented as
“without life, without mind, pure,” unconscious, for—Brahma is “Absolute
Consciousness”; or even, finally, whether, siding with the Svâbhâvikas of
Nepaul, he maintains that nothing exists but “Svabhâva” (substance or nature)
which exists by itself without any creator; any one of the above conceptions
can lead but to pure and absolute Theosophy—that Theosophy which prompted such
men as Hegel, Fichte and Spinoza to take up the labours of the old Grecian
philosophers and speculate upon the One Substance, the Deity, the Divine All
proceeding from the Divine Wisdom, incomprehensible, unknown and unnamed, by
any ancient or modern religious philosophy, with the exception of Christianity
and Mohammedanism. Every Theosophist, then, holding to a theory of the Deity
“which has not revelation, but an inspiration of his own for its basis,” may
accept any of the above definitions, or belong to any of these religions, and
yet remain strictly within the boundaries of Theosophy. For the latter is
belief in the Deity as the ALL, the source of all existence, the infinite that
cannot be either comprehended or known, the universe alone revealing It, or, as
some prefer it, Him, thus giving a sex to that, to anthropomorphize which is
blasphemy True Theosophy shrinks from brutal materialization; it prefers
believing that, from eternity retired within itself, the Spirit of the Deity
neither wills nor creates; but that, from the infinite effulgency everywhere
going forth from the Great Centre, that which produces all visible and
invisible things is but a Ray containing in itself the generative and
conceptive power,
265———————————————————WHAT IS THEOSOPHY?
which, in its turn,
produces that which the Greeks called Macrocosm, the Kabalists Tikkun or Adam
Kadmon—the archetypal man—and the Aryans Purusha, the manifested Brahmâ, or the
Divine Male. Theosophy believes also in the Anastasis or continued existence,
and in transmigration (evolution) or a series of changes in the soul * which
can be defended and explained on strict philosophical principles, and only by
making a distinction between Paramâtmâ (transcendental, supreme soul) and
Jivâtmâ (animal, or conscious soul) of the Vedântins.
To fully define
Theosophy we must consider it under all its aspects. The interior world has not
been hidden from all by impenetrable darkness. By that higher intuition
acquired by Theosophia, or God-knowledge, which carried the mind from the world
of form into that of formless spirit, man has been sometimes enabled in every
age and every country to perceive things in the interior or invisible world.
Hence the “Samadhi,” or Dhyân Yog Samâdhi, of the Hindu ascetics; the ‘‘
Daimonion—photisma,’’ or spiritual illumination of the Neo—Platonists; the
“sidereal confabulation of soul,” of the Rosicrucians or fire-philosophers;
and, even the ecstatic trance of mystics and of the modern mesmerists and
spiritualists, are identical in nature, though various as to manifestation. The
search after man’s diviner “self,” so often and so erroneously interpreted as
individual communion with a personal God, was the object of every mystic, and
belief in its possibility seems to have been coëval with the genesis of
humanity, each people giving it another name. Thus Plato and Plotinus call “Noëtic
work” that which the Vogin and the Shrotriya term Vidyâ.
By reflection,
self-knowledge and intellectual discipline, the soul can be raised to the
vision of eternal truth, goodness and beauty—that is, to the Vision of God—
thus is the epopteia,
said the Greeks,
and Porphyry adds:
To unite one’s soul
to the Universal Soul requires but a perfectly’ pure mind. Through
self-contemplation, perfect chastity, and purity of body, we may approach
nearer to It, and receive, in that state, true knowledge and wonderful insight.
And Svami Dayânand
Sarasvati, who has read neither Porphyry nor other Greek authors, but who is a
thorough Vedic scholar, says in his
Veda Bhashya:,
—————
* In a series of
at-tides entitled ‘‘The World’s Great Theosophists,’ ‘ we intend showing that
from Pythagoras, who got his wisdom in India, down to our best known modern
philosophers and Theosophists—David Hume, Shelley, and the Spiritists of France
included—many believed end yet believe in metempsychosis, or reincarnation of
the soul, however unelaborated the system of the Spiritists may be considered.
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To obtain Dikshâ
(highest initiations) and Yoga, one has to practise according to the rules. The
soul in human body can perform the greatest wonders by knowing the Universal
Spirit (or God) and acquainting itself with the properties and qualities
(occult) of all the things in the universe. A human being (a Dikshita or
initiate) can thus acquire a power of seeing and hearing at great distances.
Finally, Alfred R.
Wallace, F.R.S., a spiritualist and yet a confessedly great naturalist, says,
with brave candour:
It is “spirit” that
alone feels, and perceives, and thinks—that acquires knowledge, and reasons and
aspires ... there not unfrequently occur individuals so constituted that the
spirit can perceive independently of the corporeal organs of sense, or can,
perhaps, wholly or partially, quit the body for a time and return to it again
... the spirit ... communicates with spirit easier than with matter.
We can now see how,
after thousands of years have intervened between the age of the Gymnosophists *
and our own highly civilized era, notwithstanding, or, perhaps, just because of
such an enlightenment which pours its radiant light upon the psychological as
well as upon the physical realms of nature, over twenty millions of people
to-day believe, under a different form, in those same spiritual powers, that were
believed in by the Yogins and the Pythagoreans, nearly 3,000 years ago. Thus,
while the Aryan mystic claimed for himself the power of solving all the
problems of life and death, when he had once obtained the power of acting
independently of his body, through the Atmâ—”self or “soul”; and the old Greeks
went in search of Atme—the Hidden One, or the God-Soul of man, with the
symbolical mirror of the Thesmopnorian mysteries; so the Spiritualists of
to-day believe in the faculty of the spirits, or the souls of the disembodied
persons, to communicate visibly and tangibly with those they loved on earth.
And all these, Aryan Yogins, Greek philosophers, and modern Spiritualists,
affirm that possibility on the ground that the embodied soul and its never
embodied spirit—the real self—are not separated from either the Universal Soul
or other spirits by space, but merely by the differentiation of their
qualities; as in the boundless expanse of the universe there can be no
limitation. And that when this difference is once removed—according to the
Greeks and Aryans by abstract contemplation, producing the temporary liberation
of the imprisoned soul ; and according to Spiritualists, through
mediumship—such a union between embodied and disembodied spirits becomes
possible. Thus was it that Patanjali’s Yogins, and, following in their steps,
—————
* The reality of
the Yoga-power was affirmed by many Greek and Roman writers, who call the
Yogins Indian Gymnosophists; by Strabo, Lucan, Plutarch, Cicero, Pliny, etc.
267———————————————————WHAT IS THEOSOPHY?
Plotinus, Porphyry
and other Neo-Platonists, maintained that in their hours of ecstasy they had
been united to, or rather become as one with, God, several times during the
course of their lives. This idea, erroneous as it may seem in its application
to the Universal Spirit, was, and is, claimed by too many great philosophers to
be put aside as entirely chimerical. In the case of the Theodidaktoi, the only
controvertible point, the dark spot on this philosophy of extreme mysticism,
was its claim to include that which is simply ecstatic illumination under the
head of sensuous perception. In the case of the Yogins, who maintained their
ability to see Ishvara “face to face,” this claim was successfully overthrown
by the stern logic of Kapila. As to the similar assumption made for their Greek
followers, for a long array of Christian ecstatics, and, finally, for the last
two claimants to “God seeing” within these last hundred years Böhme and
Swedenborg—this pretension would and should have been philosophically and
logically questioned, if a few of our great men of science who are
Spiritualists had had more interest in the philosophy than in the mere
phenomenalism of Spiritualism.
The Alexandrian
Theosophists were divided into neophytes, initiates and masters, or
Hierophants; and their rules were copied from the ancient Mysteries of Orpheus,
who, according to Herodotus, brought them from India. Ammonius obliged his
disciples under oath not to divulge his higher doctrines, except to those who
were proved thoroughly worthy and initiated, and who had learned to regard the
gods, the angels and the demons of other peoples, according to the esoteric
Hyponoia, or under-meaning. Epicurus observes:
The Gods exist, but
they are not what the hoi polloi, the uneducated multitude, suppose them to be.
He is not an atheist who denies the existence of the Gods whom the multitude
worship, but he is such who fastens on these gods the opinions of the
multitude.
In his turn,
Aristotle declares that of the Divine Essence pervading the whole world of
nature, what are styled the Gods are simply the first principles.
Plotinus, the pupil
of the ‘‘God-taught” Ammonius, tells us that the secret gnosis or the knowledge
of Theosophy, has three degrees— opinion, science and illumination.
The means or
instrument of the first is sense, or perception; of the second, dialectics; of
the third, intuition. To the last, reason is subordinate; it is absolute
knowledge, founded on the identification of the mind with the object known.
Theosophy is the
exact science of psychology, so to say; it stands in
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relation to
natural, uncultivated mediumship, as the knowledge of a Tyndall stands to that
of a school-boy in physics. It develops in man a direct beholding; that which
Schelling denominates “a realization of the identity of subject and object in the
individual”; so that under the influence and knowledge of hyponoia man thinks
divine thoughts, views all things as they really are, and, finally, “becomes
recipient of the Soul of the World,” to use one of the finest expressions of
Emerson. “I, the imperfect, adore my own perfect”—he says in his superb Essay
on The Over Besides this psychological, or soul-state, Theosophy cultivated
every branch of sciences and arts. It was thoroughly familiar with what is now
commonly known as mesmerism. Practical theurgy or “ceremonial magic,” so often
resorted to in their exorcisms by the Roman Catholic clergy, was discarded by
the Theosophists. It is but Jamblichus alone who, transcending the other
eclectics, added to Theosophy the doctrine of Theurgy. When ignorant of the
true meaning of the esoteric divine symbols of nature, man is apt to
miscalculate the powers of his soul, and, instead of communing spiritually and
mentally with the higher, celestial beings, the good spirits (the gods of the
theurgists of the Platonic school), he will unconsciously call forth the evil,
dark powers which lurk around humanity—the undying, grim creations of human
crimes and vices—and thus fall from Theurgia (white magic) into goetia (or
black magic, sorcery). Yet, neither white nor black magic are what popular
superstition under stands by the terms. The possibility of “raising a spirit,”
according to the key of Solomon, is the height of superstition and ignorance.
Purity of deed and thought can alone raise us to an intercourse “with the
gods,” and attain for us the goal we desire. Alchemy, believed by so many to
have been a spiritual philosophy as well as a physical science, belonged to the
teachings of the Theosophical school.
It is a noticeable
fact that neither Zoroaster, Buddha, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Confucius, Socrates,
nor Ammonius Saccas, committed anything to writing. The reason for it is
obvious. Theosophy is a double-edged weapon and unfit for the ignorant or the
selfish. Like every ancient philosophy, it has its votaries among the moderns;
but, until late in our own days, its disciples were few in number, and of the
most various sects and opinions.
Entirely
speculative, and founding no schools, they have still exercised a silent
influence upon philosophy; and no doubt, when the time arrives, many ideas thus
silently propounded may yet give new directions to human thought,
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remarks Mr. Kenneth
R. H. Mackenzie, IX° ... himself a mystic and a Theosophist, in his large and
valuable work, The Royal Masonic Cyclopædia ( articles “Theosophical Society of
New York” and “Theosophy,” p. 73I ).* ” Since the days of the
fire-philosophers, they had never formed themselves into societies, for,
tracked like wild beasts by the Christian clergy, to be known as a Theosophist
often amounted, hardly a century ago, to a death-warrant. The statistics show
that, during a period of 150 years, no less than 90,000 men and women were
burned in Europe for alleged witchcraft. In Great Britain only, from AD. 1640
to 1660, but twenty years, 3,000 persons were put to death for compact with the
“Devil.” It was but late in the present century—in 1875 some progressed mystics
and Spiritualists, unsatisfied with the theories and explanations of
Spiritualism, started by its votaries, and finding that they were far from
covering the whole ground of the wide range of phenomena, formed at New York,
America, an association which is now widely known as the Theosophical Society.
And now, having explained what is Theosophy, we will, in a separate article,
explain what is the nature of our Society, which is also called the ‘‘Universal
Brotherhood of Humanity.”
————————————————————————————————————————
* The Royal Masonic
Cyclopædia of History, Rites, Symbolism and Biography. Edited bv Kenneth R. H.
Mackenzie, IXº (Cryptonymus), Hon. Member of the canongate Kilwinning Lodge,
No. 2, Scotland.. New York: J. W. Bouton, 706, Broadway. 1877.
WHAT ARE THE
THEOSOPHISTS?
—————
ARE they what they
claim to be—students of natural law, of ancient and modern philosophy, and even
of exact science? Are they Deists, Atheists, Socialists, Materialists, or
Idealists; or are they but a schism of modern Spiritualism—mere visionaries?
Are they entitled to any consideration, as capable of discussing philosophy and
promoting real science; or should they be treated with the compassionate
toleration which one gives to “harmless enthusiasts”? The Theosophical Society
has been variously charged with a belief in “miracles” and “miracle working”;
with a secret political object—like the Carbonari; with being spies of an
autocratic Czar; with preaching socialistic and nihilistic doctrines; and,
mirabile dietu, with having a covert understanding with the French Jesuits, to
disrupt modern Spiritualism for a pecuniary consideration! With equal violence
they have been denounced as dreamers, by the American Positivists; as
fetish-worshippers, by some of the New York press; as revivalists of “mouldy
superstitions,” by the Spiritualists ; as infidel emissaries of Satan, by the
Christian Church; as the very types of “gobe-mouche,” by Prof. W. B. Carpenter,
F.R.S.; and, finally, and most absurdly, some Hindu opponents, with a view to
lessening their influence, have flatly charged them with the employment of
demons to perform certain phenomena. Out of all this pother of opinions, one
fact stands conspicuous—the Society, its members, and their views, are deemed
of enough importance to be discussed and denounced: Men slander only those whom
they hate—or fear.
But, if the Society
has had its enemies and traducers, it has also had its friends and advocates.
For every word of censure, there has been a word of praise. Beginning with a
party of about a dozen earnest men and women, a month later its numbers had so
increased as to necessitate the hiring of a public hall for its meetings;
within two years it had working branches in European countries. Still later, it
found itself in alliance with the Indian Arya Samâj, headed by. the
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learned Pandit Dayânand
Sarasvati Svâmi, and the Ceylonese Buddhists, under the erudite H. Sumangala,
High Priest of Adam’s Peak and President of the Vidyodaya College, Colombo.
He who would
seriously attempt to fathom the psychological sciences, must come to the sacred
land of ancient Aryâvartta. None is older than she in esoteric wisdom and
civilization, however fallen may be her poor shadow—modern India. Holding this
country, as we do, for the fruitful hot-bed whence proceeded all subsequent
philosophical systems, to this source of all psychology and philosophy a
portion of our Society has come to learn its ancient wisdom and ask for the
impartation of its weird secrets. Philology has made too much progress to
require at this late day a demonstration of this fact of the primogenitive
nationality of Aryâvartta. The unproved and prejudiced hypothesis of modern
chronology is not worthy of a moment’s thought, and it will vanish in time like
so many other unproved hypotheses. The line of philosophical heredity, from
Kapila through Epicurus to James Mill; from Patanjali through Plotinus to Jacob
Böhme, can be traced like the course of a river through a landscape. One of the
objects of the Society’s organization was to examine the too transcendent views
of the Spiritualists in regard to the powers of disembodied spirits; and,
having told them what, in our opinion at least, a portion of their phenomena
are not, it will become incumbent upon us now to show what the are. So apparent
is it that it is in the East, and especially in India, that the key to the
alleged “supernatural” phenomena of the Spiritualists must be sought, that it
has recently been conceded in the Allahabad Pioneer (Aug. 11, 1879), an
Anglo-Indian daily journal .which has not the reputation of saying what it does
not mean. Blaming the men of science who, “intent upon physical discovery, for
some generations have been too prone to neglect super-physical investigation,”
it mentions “the new wave of doubt” (Spiritualism) which has “latterly
disturbed this conviction.” To a large number of persons, including many of
high culture and intelligence, it adds, “the super natural has again asserted
itself as a fit subject of enquiry and research. And there are plausible
hypotheses in favour of the idea that among the ‘sages’ of the East . . there
may be found in a higher degree than among the more modernized inhabitants of
the West traces of those personal peculiarities, whatever they may be, which
are required as a Condition precedent to the occurrence of supernatural
phenomena.” And then, unaware that the cause he pleads is one of the chief aims
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and objects of our
Society, the editorial writer remarks that it is “the only direction in which,
it seems to us, the efforts of the Theosophists in India might possibly be
useful. The leading members of the Theosophical Society in India are known to
be very advanced students of occult phenomena already, and we cannot but hope
that their professions of interest in Oriental philosophy . . . may cover a
reserved intention of carrying out explorations of the kind we indicate.”
While, as observed,
one of our objects, it yet is but one of many; the most important of which is
to revive the work of Ammonius Saccas, and make various nations remember that
they are the children “of one mother.” As to the transcendental side of the
ancient Theosophy, it is also high time that the Theosophical Society should explain.
With how much, then, of this nature-searching, God-seeking science of the
ancient Aryan and Greek mystics, and of the powers of modern spiritual
mediumship, does the Society agree? Our answer is: With it all. But if asked
what it believes in, the reply will be: “As a body— nothing.” The Society, as a
body, has no creed, as creeds are but the shells around spiritual knowledge;
and Theosophy in its fruition is spiritual knowledge itself—the very essence of
philosophical and theistic enquiry. Visible representative of Universal
Theosophy, it can be no more sectarian than a Geographical Society, which
represents universal geographical exploration without caring whether the
explorers be of one creed or another. The religion of the Society is an
algebraical equation, in which so long as the sign of equality (=) is not
omitted, each member is allowed to substitute quantities of his own, which
better accord with climatic and other exigencies of his native land, with the
idiosyncrasies of his people, or even with his own. Having no accepted creed,
our Society is very ready to give and take, to learn and teach, by practical
experimentation, as opposed to mere passive and credulous acceptance of
enforced dogma. It is willing to accept every result claimed by any of the
foregoing schools or systems, that can be logically and experimentally
demonstrated. Conversely, it can take nothing on mere faith, no matter by whom
the demand may be made.
But when we come to
consider ourselves individually, it is quite another thing. The Society’s
members represent the most varied nationalities and races, and were born and
educated in the most dissimilar creeds and social conditions. Some of them
believe in one thing, others in another. Some incline towards the ancient
magic, or
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ARE THE THEOSOPHISTS?
secret wisdom that
was taught in the sanctuaries, which was the very opposite of supernaturalism
or diabolism; others in modern spiritual ism, or intercourse with the spirits
of the dead; still others in mesmerism or animal magnetism, or only an occult
dynamic force in nature. A certain number have scarcely yet acquired any
definite belief, but are in a state of attentive expectancy; and there are even
those who call themselves materialists, in a certain sense. Of atheists and
bigoted sectarians of any religion, there are none in the Society; for the very
fact of a man’s joining it proves that he is in search of the final truth as to
the ultimate essence of things. If there be such a thing as a speculative atheist,
which philosophers may deny, he would have to reject both cause and effect,
whether in this world of matter, or in that of spirit. There may be members
who, like the poet Shelley, have let their imagination soar from cause to prior
cause adinfinitum, as each in its turn became logically transformed into a
result necessitating a prior cause, until they have thinned the Eternal into a
mere mist. But even they are not atheist in the speculative sense, whether they
identify the material forces of the universe with the functions with which the
theists endow their God, or otherwise; for once that they cannot free
themselves from the conception of the abstract ideal of power, cause,
necessity, and effect, they can be considered as atheists only in respect to a personal
God, and not to the Universal Soul of the pantheist. On the other hand the
bigoted sectarian, fenced in, as he is, with a creed upon every paling of which
is written the warning ‘‘No Thorough fare,” can neither come out of ins
enclosure to join the Theosophical Society, nor, if he could, has it room for
one whose very religion for bids examination. The very root idea of the Society
is free and fearless investigation.
As a body, the
Theosophical Society holds that all original thinkers and investigators of the
hidden side of nature, whether materialists— those who find in matter “the
promise and potency of all terrestrial life,” or Spiritualists—that is. those
who discover in spirit the source of all energy and of matter as well—were and
are, properly, Theosophists. For to be one, one need not necessarily recognize
the existence of any special God or Deity. One need but worship the spirit of
living nature, and try to identify oneself with it. To revere that Presence,
the invisible Cause, which is yet ever manifesting itself in its incessant
results; the intangible, omnipotent, and omnipresent Proteus: indivisible in
its Essence, and eluding form, yet appearing under all and every
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form; who is here
and there, and everywhere and nowhere; is ALL, and NOTHING; ubiquitous yet one;
the Essence filling, binding, bound ing, containing everything; contained in
all. It will, we think, be seen now, that whether classed as theists,
pantheists or atheists, such men are near kinsmen to the rest. Be lie what lie
may, once that a student abandons the old and trodden highway of routine, and
enters upon the solitary path of independent thought—Godward—he is a
Theosophist; an original thinker, a seeker after the eternal truth with “an
inspiration of his own” to solve the universal problems.
With every man that
is earnestly searching in his own way after a knowledge of the Divine Principle,
of man’s relations to it, and nature’s manifestations of it, Theosophy is
allied. It is likewise the ally of honest science, as distinguished from much
that passes for exact, physical science, so long as the latter does not poach
on the domains of psychology and metaphysics.
And it is also the
ally of every honest religion—to wit, a religion willing to be judged by the
same tests as it applies to the others. Those books, which contain the most
self-evident truth, are to it inspired (not revealed). But all books it
regards, on account of the human element contained in them, as inferior to the
Book of Nature; to read which and comprehend it correctly, the innate powers of
the soul must be highly developed. Ideal laws can be perceived by the intuitive
faculty alone; they are beyond the domain of argument and dialectics, and no
one can understand or rightly appreciate them through the explanations of
another mind, even though this mind be claiming a direct revelation. And as
this Society, which allows the widest sweep in the realms of the pure ideal, is
no less firm in the sphere of facts, its deference to modern science and its
just representatives is sincere. Despite all their lack of a higher spiritual
intuition, the world’s debt to the representatives of modern physical science
is immense; hence, the Society endorses heartily the noble and indignant
protest of that gifted and eloquent preacher, the Rev. 0. B. Frothingham,
against those who try to undervalue the services of our great naturalists.
“Talk of Science as being irreligious, atheistic,” he exclaimed in a recent
lecture, delivered at New York, “Science is creating a new idea of God. It is
due to Science that we have any conception at all of a living God. If we do not
become atheists one of these days under the maddening effect of Protestantism,
it will be due to Science, because it is disabusing us of hideous illusions
that tease and embar-
275——————————————————WHAT ARE THE THEOSOPHISTS?
rass us, and
putting us in the way of knowing how to reason about the things we see....”
And it is also due
to the unremitting labours of such Orientalists as Sir W. Jones, Max Muller,
Burnouf, Colebrooke, Haug, St. Hilaire, and so many others, that the Society,
as a body, feels equal respect and veneration for Vedic, Buddhist, Zoroastrian,
and other old religions of the world; and a like brotherly feeling toward its
Hindu Sinhalese, Pârsi, Jain, Hebrew and Christian members as individual
students of “self,” of nature, and of the divine in nature.
Born in the United
States of America, the Society was constituted on the model of its Mother Land.
The latter, omitting the name of God from its constitution lest it should
afford a pretext one day to make a state religion, gives absolute equality to
all religions in its laws. All support and each is in turn protected by the
State. The Society, modelled upon this constitution, may fairly be termed a
“Republic of Conscience.”
We have now, we
think, made clear why our members, as individuals, are free to stay outside or
inside any creed they please, provided they do not pretend that none hut
themselves shall enjoy the privilege of conscience, and try to force their
opinions upon the others. In this respect the rules of the Society are very
strict. It tries to act upon the wisdom of the old Buddhistic axiom, “Honour
thine own faith, and do not slander that of others”; echoed back in our present
century, in the “Declaration of Principles” of the Brahma Samâj, which so nobly
states that “no sect shall be vilified, ridiculed, or hated.” In Section VI of
the Revised Rules of the Theosophical Society, recently adopted in General
Council, at Bombay, is this mandate:
It is not lawful
for any officer of the Parent Society to express, by word or act, any hostility
to, or preference for, any one section (sectarian division, or group within the
Society) more than another. All must be regarded and treated as equally the
objects of the Society’s solicitude and exertions. All have an equal right to
have the essential features of their religious belief laid before the tribunal
of an impartial world.
In their individual
capacity, members may, when attacked, occasionally break this rule, but,
nevertheless, as officers, they are restrained, and the rule is strictly enforced
during the meetings. For above all human sects stands Theosophy in its abstract
sense; Theosophy, which is too wide for any of them to contain, but which
easily contains them.
In conclusion, we
may state that, broader and far more universal in its views than any existing
mere scientific Society, it has plus science
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its belief in every
possibility, and determined will to penetrate into those unknown spiritual
regions which exact science pretends that its votaries have no business to
explore. And, it has one quality more than any religion, in that it makes no
difference between Gentile, Jew, or Christian. It is in this spirit that the
Society has been established upon the footing of a Universal Brotherhood.
Unconcerned about
politics, and all political organizations, the Society cares but little about
the outward human management of the material world. The whole of its
aspirations are directed towards the occult truths of the visible and invisible
worlds. Whether the physical man be under the rule of an empire or a republic,
concerns only the man of matter. His body may be enslaved; as to his soul, he
has the right to give to his rulers the proud answer of Socrates to his judges.
They have no sway over the inner man.
Such, then, is the
Theosophical Society, and such its principles, its multifarious aims, and its
objects. Need we wonder at the past misconceptions of the general public, and
the easy hold the enemy has been able to find to lower it in the public
estimation. The true student has ever been a recluse, a man of silence and
meditation. With the busy world his habits and tastes are so little in common
that, while he is studying, his enemies and slanderers have undisturbed
opportunities. But time cures all, and lies are but ephemera. Truth alone is
eternal.
About a few of the
Fellows of the Society who have made great scientific discoveries, and some
others to whom the psychologist and the biologist are indebted for the new
light thrown upon the darker problems of the inner man, we will speak later on.
Our object now was but to prove to the reader that Theosophy is neither “a
new-fangled doctrine,” a political cabal, nor one of those societies of
enthusiasts which are born to-day but to die to-morrow. That not all of its
members can think alike, is proved by the Society being organized in two great
divisions—the Eastern and the Western—and the latter being divided into
numerous sections, according to races and religious views. One man’s thought,
infinitely various as are its manifestations, is not all-embracing. Denied
ubiquity, it must necessarily speculate but in one direction; and once
transcending the boundaries of exact human knowledge, it has to err and wander,
for the ramifications of the one central and absolute Truth are infinite.
Hence, we occasionally find even the greater philosophers losing themselves in
the labyrinths of speculation, thereby provoking the criticism of posterity.
But as
277——————————————————WHAT ARE THE THEOSOPHISTS?
all work for one
and the same object, namely the disenthralment of human thought, the
elimination of superstitions, and the discovery of truth, all are equally
welcome. The attainment of these objects, all agree, can best be secured by
convincing the reason and warming the enthusiasm of the generation of fresh
young minds that are just ripening into maturity, and making ready to take the
place of their prejudiced and conservative fathers. And, as each—the great ones
as well as small—have trodden the royal road to knowledge, we listen to all,
and take both small and great into our fellowship. For no honest searcher comes
back empty-handed, and even he who has enjoyed the least share of popular
favour can lay at least his mite upon the one altar of Truth.
ANTIQUITY OF THE
VEDAS
—————
[Vol. I. No. 1,
October, 1879.]
A JOURNAL
interested like The Thesophist in the explorations of arch and archaic
religions, as well as the study of the occult in nature, has to be doubly
prudent and discreet. To bring the two conflicting elements—exact science and
metaphysics—into direct contact, might create as great a disturbance as to
throw a piece of potassium into a basin of water. The very fact that we are
predestined and pledged to prove that some of the wisest of Western scholars
have been misled by the dead letter of appearances, and that they are unable to
discover the hidden spirit in the relics of old, places us under the ban from
the first. With those sciolists who are neither broad enough nor sufficiently
modest to allow their decisions to be reviewed, we are necessarily in
antagonism. Therefore it is essential that our position in relation to certain
scientific hypotheses, perhaps tentative and only sanctioned for want of better
ones, should be clearly defined at the outset.
An infinitude of
study has been bestowed by the arch and the Orientalists upon the question of
chronology, especially in regard to comparative theology. So far their affirmations
as to the relative antiquity of the great religions of the pre-Christian era
are little more than plausible hypotheses. How far back the national and
religious Vedic period, so-called, extends, “it is impossible to tell,”
confesses Prof. Max Muller; nevertheless he traces it “to a period anterior to
1000 B.C.,” and brings us to “1100 or 1200 B.C., as the earliest time when we
may suppose the collection of the Vedic hymns to have been finished.” Nor do
any other of our leading scholars claim to have finally settled the vexed
question, especially delicate as it is in its bearing upon the chronology of
the book of Genesis. Christianity, the direct outflow of Judaism and in most
cases the state religion of their respective countries, has unfortunately stood
in their way. Hence scarcely two scholars agree; and each assigns a different
date to the
279———————————————————ANTIQUITY OF THE VEDAS.
Vedas and the
Mosaic books, taking care in every case to give the latter the benefit of the
doubt. Even that leader of the leaders in philological and chronological
questions, Prof. Muller, hardly twenty years ago allowed himself a prudent
margin by stating that it will be difficult to settle “whether the Veda ‘is the
oldest of books,’ and whether some of the portions of the Old Testament may not
be traced back to the same or even an earlier date than the oldest hymns of the
Veda.” The Theosophist is, therefore, quite warranted in either adopting or
rejecting as it pleases the so-called authoritative chronology of science. Do
we err, then, in confessing that we rather incline to accept the chronology of
that renowned Vedic scholar, Svâmi Dayânand Sarasvati, who unquestionably knows
what he is talking about, has the four Vedas by heart, is perfectly familiar
with all Sanskrit literature, has no such scruples as the Western Orientalists
in regard to public feelings, nor desire to humour the superstitious notions of
the majority, nor has any object to gain in suppressing facts. We are only too
conscious of the risk in withholding our adulation from scientific authorities.
Yet, with the common temerity of the heterodox, we must take our course, even
though, like the Tarpeia of old, we be smothered under a heap of shields, a
shower of learned quotations from those “authorities.” We are far from feeling
ready to adopt the absurd chronology of a Berosus or even Syncellus, though in
truth they appear absurd only in the light of our preconceptions. But between
the extreme claims of the Brâhmans and the ridiculously short periods conceded
by our Orientalists for the development and full growth of that gigantic
literature of the ante-Mahabharatan period, there ought to be a just mean.
While Svami Dayânand Sarasvati asserts that: “The Vedas have now ceased to be
objects of study for nearly 5,000 years,” and places the first appearance of
the four Vedas at an immense antiquity; Prof. Muller, assigning for the
composition of even the earliest among the Brâhmanas, the years from about 1000
to 800 B.C., hardly dares, as we have seen, to place the collection and the
original composition of the Sanhitâ, of Rig Vedic hymns, earlier than 1200 to
1500 before our era! * Whom ought we to believe, and which of the two is the
better informed? Cannot this gap of several thousand years be closed, or would
it be equally difficult for either of the two cited authorities to give data
which would be regarded by science as thoroughly convincing?
—————
* Chips from a
German Workshop, Lecture on the Vedas, p.II
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It is as easy to
reach a false conclusion by the modern inductive method as to assume false
premises from which to make deductions. Doubtless Prof. Max Muller has good
reasons for arriving at his chronological conclusions. But so has Dayânand
Sarasvati Pandit. The gradual modifications, development, and growth of the
Sanskrit language are sure guides enough for an expert philologist. But that
there is a possibility of his having been led into error would seem to suggest
itself upon considering a certain argument brought forward by Svâmi Dayânand.
Our respected friend and teacher maintains that both Prof. Muller and Dr.
Wilson have been solely guided in their researches and conclusion by the
inaccurate and untrustworthy commentaries of Sâyana, Mahidara and Uvata;
commentaries which differ diametrically from those of a far earlier period as
used by himself in connection with his great work, the Veda Bháshya. A cry was
raised at the outset of this publication that Svâmi’s commentary is calculated
to refute Sâyana and the English interpreters. Pandit Dayânand very justly
remarks:
For this I cannot
be blamed; if Sâyana has erred and the English interpreters have chosen to take
him as their guide, the delusion cannot be long maintained. Truth alone can
stand, and falsehood must fall.*
And if, as he
claims, his Veda Bháshya is entirely founded on the old commentaries of the
ante-Mahâbhâratan period to which the Western scholars have had no access,
then, since his were the surest guides of the two classes, we cannot hesitate
to follow him rather than the best of our European Orientalists.
But, apart from
such primâ facie evidence, we would respectfully request Prof. Max Muller to
solve us a riddle. Propounded by himself; it has puzzled us for over twenty
years, and pertains as much to simple logic as to the chronology in question.
Clear and undeviating, like the Rhône through the Geneva lake, the idea runs
through the course of his lectures, from the first volume of Chips down to his
last discourse. We will try to explain. All who have followed his lectures as
attentively as ourselves will remember that Prof. Max Muller attributes the
wealth of myths, symbols and religious allegories in the Vedic hymns, as in
Grecian mythology, to the early worship of nature by man. To quote his words:
In the hymns of the
Veda, we see man left to himself to solve the riddle of this world. . . . He is
awakened from darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and him whom his
eyes cannot behold, and who seems to grant him the daily
—————
* Answer to the
Objections to the Veda Bhashya.
281——————————————————ANTIQUITY OF THE VEDAS.
pittance of his
existence he calls “his life, his breath, his brilliant Lord and Protector.” He
gives names to all the powers of nature, and after he has called the fire
“Agni,’’ the sunlight “Indra,” the storms ‘‘Maruts,” and the dawn “Ushas,” they
all seem to grow naturally into beings like himself, nay, greater than
himself.*
This definition of
the mental state of primitive man, in the days of the very infancy of humanity,
and when hardly out of its cradle, is— perfect. The period to which he
attributes these effusions of an infantile mind is the Vedic period, and the
time which separates us from it is, as claimed above, 3,000 years. So much
impressed seems the great philologist with this idea of the mental feebleness
of mankind at the time when these hymns were composed by the most venerable
Rishis, that in his Introduction to the Science of Religion (p. 278) we find
the Professor saying:
Do you still wonder
at polytheism or at mythology? Why, they are inevitable. They are, if you like,
a parler enfantin of religion. But the world has its child hood, and when it
was a child it spoke as a child [nota bane, 3,000 years ago], it understood as
a child, it thought as a child the fault rests with us if we insist on taking
the language of children for the language of men.......
The language of antiquity is the language of childhood . . . The parler
enfantin in religion is not extinct . . . as, for instance, the religion of
India.
Having read thus
far we pause and think. At the very close of this able explanation we meet with
a tremendous difficulty, the idea of which must have never occurred to the able
advocate of the ancient faiths. To one familiar with the writings and ideas of
this Oriental scholar, it would seem the height of absurdity to suspect him of
accepting the biblical chronology of 6,ooo years since the appearance of the
first man upon earth as the basis of his calculations. And yet the recognition
of such chronology is inevitable if we have to accept Prof. Muller’s reasons at
all; for here we run against a purely arithmetical and mathematical obstacle, a
gigantic miscalculation of proportion.
No one can deny
that the growth and development of mankind— mental as well as physical—must be
analogically measured by the growth and development of man. An anthropologist,
if he cares to go beyond the simple consideration of the relations of man to
other members of the animal kingdom, has to be in a certain way a physiologist
as well as an anatomist; for, as much as ethnology, his is a progressive
science, which can be well treated but by those who are able to follow
—————
* Chips from a
German Workshop, vol. i. p. 68.
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A MODERN PANARION.
up retrospectively
the regular unfolding of human faculties and powers, assigning to each a
certain period of life. Thus no one would regard a skull in which the
wisdom-tooth, so-called, should be apparent, as the skull of an infant. Now,
according to geology, recent researches, Prof. W. Draper tells us:
Give good reasons
to believe that under low and base grades the existence of man can be traced
back into the tertiary times. In the old glacial drift of Scotland the relics
of man are found along with those of the fossil elephant.
Now, the best
calculations, so far, assign a period of 240,000 years since the beginning of
the last glacial period. Making a proportion between 240,000 years—the least
age we can accord to the human race—and the twenty-four years of a man’s life,
we find that 3,000 years ago, or the period of the composition of the Vedic
hymns, mankind would be just twenty-one, the legal age of majority, and
certainly a period at which man ceases using, if he ever will, the “parler
enfantin,” or childish lisping. But, according to the views of the lecturer, it
follows that man was, 3,000 years ago, at twenty-one, a foolish and
undeveloped—though a very promising—infant, and at twenty-four has become the
brilliant, acute, learned, highly analytical and philosophical man of the nineteenth
century. Or, still keeping our equation in view, in other words, the Professor
might as well say that an individual who was a nursing baby at 12 noon, on a
certain day, would at 12.20 p.m. on the same day have become an adult, speaking
high wisdom instead of his ‘‘ parler enfantin
It really seems the
duty of the eminent Sankritist and Lecturer on Comparative Theology to get out
of this dilemma. Either the Rig Veda. hymns were composed but 3,000 years ago,
and, therefore cannot be expressed in the “language of childhood”—man having
lived in the glacial period—but the generation which composed them must have
been composed of adults, presumably as philosophical and scientific in the
knowledge of their day as we are in our own; or we have to ascribe to them an
immense antiquity in order to carry them back to the days of man’s mental
infancy. And in this latter case, Prof. Max Muller will have to withdraw a
previous remark, expressing the doubt
Whether some of the
portions of the Old Testament may not be traced back to the same or even an
earlier date than the oldest hymns of the Vedas.
PERSIAN
ZOROASTRIANISM AND
RUSSIAN VANDALISM
—————
[Vol. I. No. I,
October, 1879.]
Few persons are
capable of appreciating the truly beautiful and æsthetic; fewer still of revering
those monumental relics of bygone ages, which prove that even in the remotest
epochs mankind worshipped a Supreme Power, and people were moved to express
their abstract conceptions in works which should defy the ravages of time. The
Vandals—whether Slavic Wends, or some barbarous nation of Germanic race—came at
all events from the North. A recent occurrence is calculated to make us regret
that Justinian did not destroy them all; for it appears that there are still
left in the North worthy scions of those terrible destroyers of monuments of
arts and sciences, in the persons of certain Russian merchants who have just
perpetrated an act of inexcusable Vandalism. According to the late Russian
papers, the Moscow arch-millionaire, Kokoref, with his Tiflis partner the
Armenian Crœsus Mirzoef is desecrating and about to totally destroy the oldest
relic in the world of Zoroastrianism—
the “Attesh-Gag” of Baku.
Few foreigners, and
perhaps as few Russians, know anything of this venerable sanctuary of the
fire-worshippers beside the Caspian Sea. About twenty versts from the small
town of Baku in the valley of Apsheron in Russian Georgia, and among the
barren, desolated steppes of the shores of the Caspian, there stands—alas!
rather stood, but a few months ago—a strange structure, something between a
mediæval cathedral and a fortified castle. It was built in unknown ages, and by
builders as unknown. Over an area of so more than a square mile, a tract known
as the Fiery Field, upon which the structure stands, if one but digs from two
to three inches into the sandy earth, and applies a lighted match, a jet of
fire will stream up, as if from a spout.* The “Guebre Temple,” as the building
is sometimes termed,
—————
* A bluish flame is
seen to arise there, but this fire does not consume, “and if a person finds him
self in the middle of it, he is not sensible of any warmth.”—See Kinneir’s
Persia, p. 35.
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is carved out of
one solid rock. It is an enormous square enclosed by crenelated walls, and at
the centre of the square, a high tower, also rectangular, resting upon four
gigantic pillars. The latter were pierced vertically down to the bed-rock and
the cavities were continued up to the battlements where they opened out into
the atmosphere; thus forming continuous tubes through which the inflammable gas
stored up in the heart of the mother rock was conducted to the top of the
tower. This tower has been for centuries a shrine of the fire-worshippers, and
bears the symbolical representation of the trident—called tirsut. All around
the interior face of the external wall are excavated the cells, about twenty in
number, which served as habitations for past generations of Zoroastrian
recluses. Under the supervision of a High Mobed, here, in the silence of their
isolated cloisters, they studied the Ayesta, the Vendidad the Yashna—especially
the latter, it seems, as the rocky walls of the cells are inscribed with a
greater number of quotations from the sacred songs. Under the tower-altar three
huge bells were hung. A legend says that they were miraculously produced by a
holy traveller, in the tenth century, during the Mussulman persecution, to warn
the faithful of the approach of the enemy. But a few weeks ago the tall
tower-altar was yet ablaze with the same flame that local tradition affirms had
been kindled thirty centuries ago. At the horizontal orifices in the four
hollow pillars burned four perpetual fires, fed uninterruptedly from the
inexhaustible subterranean reservoir. From every merlon on the walls, as well
as from every embrasure, flashed forth a radiant light, like so many tongues of
fire; and even the large porch overhanging the main entrance was encircled by a
garland of fiery stars, the lambent lights shooting forth from smaller and
narrower orifices. It was amid these impressive surroundings that the Guebre
recluses used to send up their daily prayers, meeting under the open tower-altar;
every face reverentially turned toward the setting sun as they united their
voices in a parting evening hymn. And as the luminary—the “Eye of
Ahura-mazda”—sank lower and lower down the horizon, their voices grew lower and
softer, until the chant sounded like a plaintive and subdued murmur. . . . A
last flash— and the sun is gone; and as darkness follows daylight almost
suddenly in these regions, the departure of the Deity’s symbol was the signal
for a general illumination, unrivalled even by the greatest fireworks at regal
festivals. The whole field seemed nightly like one blazing prairie. .
285—————————————PERSIAN ZOROASTRIANISM AND RUSSIAN VANDALISM
Till about 1840,
Attesh-Gag was the chief rendezvous for all the fire-worshippers of Persia.
Thousands of pilgrims came and went; for no true Guebre could die happy unless
he had performed the sacred pilgrimage at least once during his lifetime. A
traveller—Koch—who visited the cloister about that time, found in it but five
Zoroastrians, with their pupils. In 1878, about fourteen months ago, a lady of
Tiflis, who visited the Attesh-Gag, mentioned in a private letter that she
found there but one solitary hermit, who emerges from his cell but to meet the
rising and salute the departing sun. And now, hardly a year later, we find in
the papers that Messrs. Kokoref and Co. are busy erecting on the Fiery Field
enormous buildings for the refining of petroleum! All the cells but the one
occupied by the poor old hermit, half ruined and dirty beyond expression, are inhabited
by the firm’s workmen; the altar over which blazed the sacred flame is now
piled high with rubbish, mortar and mud, and the flame itself turned off in
another direction. The bells are now, during the periodical visits of a Russian
priest, taken down and suspended in the porch of the superintendent’s house;
heathen relics being as usual used—though abused—by the religion which
supplants the previous worship. And all looks like the abomination of
desolation It is a matter of surprise to me,” writes a Baku correspondent in
the St. Petersburg Viedomosti, who was the first to send the unwelcome news,
“that the trident, the sacred tirsut itself, has not as yet been put to some
appropriate use in the new firm’s kitchen it then so absolutely necessary that
the millionaire Kokoref should desecrate the Zoroastrian cloister, which
occupies such a trifling compound in comparison to the space allotted to his
manufactories and stores? And shall such a remarkable relic of antiquity be
sacrificed to commercial greediness which can after all neither lose nor gain
one single rouble by destroying it?’’
It must,
apparently, since Messrs. Kokoref and Co. have rented the whole field from the
Government, which seems to feel quite indifferent to this idiotic and useless
Vandalism. It is now more than twenty years since I visited Attesh-Gag for the
last time. In those days besides a small group of recluses, it had the visits
of many pilgrims. And since it is more than likely that ten years hence people
will hear no more of it, I may give a few more details of its history. Our
Pârsi friends will, I am sure, feel an interest in a few legends gathered by me
on the spot.
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A veil seems to be
drawn over the origin of Attesh-Gag. Historical data are scarce and
contradictory. With the exception of some old Armenian chronicles which mention
it incidentally as having existed before Christianity was brought into the
country by St. Nina during the third century * there is no mention of it
anywhere else, so far as I know.
Tradition informs
us—how far correctly is not for me to decide— that long before Zarathushtra,
the people, who now are called in contempt by the Mussulmans and Christians
“Guebres,” and who term themselves “Behedin” (followers of the true faith)
recognized Mithra, the Mediator, as their sole and highest God—who included
within himself all the good as well as the bad Gods. Mithra representing the
two natures of Ormazd and Ahriman combined, the people feared him, whereas they
would have had no need of fearing, but only of loving and reverencing him as
Ahura-Mazda, were Mithra without the Ahriman element.
—————
* Though St. Nina
appeared in Georgia in the third, it is not before the fifth century that the
idolatrous Gronzines were converted to christianity by the thirteen Syrian
Fathers. They came under the leadership of both St. Antony and St. John of
Zedadzene—so called, because he is alleged to have travelled to the Caucasian
regions on purpose to fight and conquer the chief idol Zeda! And thus while—as
incontrovertible proof of the existence of both—the opulent tresses of the
black hair of St. Nina are preserved to this day as relics, in Zion cathedral
at Tiflis—the thaumaturgic John has immortalized his name still more. Zeda, who
was the Baal of Trans-Caucasus, had children sacrificed to him, as the legend
tells us, on the top of the zedadzene mount, about eighteen versts from Tiflis.
It is there that the saint defied the idol—or rather Satan under the guise of a
stone statue—to single combat, and miraculously conquered him, i.e., threw down
and trampled upon the idol. Dot he did not stop there in the exhibition of his
powers. The mountain peak is of immense height, and being only a barren rock at
its top, spring water is nowhere to be found on its summit. But in
commemoration of his triumph, the saint had a spring appear at the very bottom
of the deep, and—as people assert—fathomless well dug down into the very bowels
of the mountain, and the gaping mouth of which was situated near the altar of
the god Zeda, just in the centre of his temple. It was into this opening that
the limbs of the murdered infants were cast down after the sacrifice. The
miraculously spring, however, was soon dried up, and for many centuries no
water appeared. But when Christianity was firmly established, the water began
reappearing on the seventh day of every May, and continues to do so till the
present time. Strange to say this fact does not pertain to the domain of
legend, but is one that has provoked an intense curiosity even among men of
science, such as the eminent geologist, Dr. Abich, who resided for years at
Tifiis. Thousands upon thousands proceed yearly upon pilgrimage to zedadzene on
the seventh of May, and all witness the “miracle.” From early morning water is
heard bobbling down at the rocky bottom of the well; and, as noon approaches,
the parched-op walls of the month beco moist, and clear, cold, sparkling water
seems to come out from every pore of the rock; it rises higher and higher,
bubbles, increases, until at last having reached the very brim it suddenly
stops, and a prolonged shoot of triumphant Joy bursts from the fanatical crowd.
This cry seems to shake the very depths of the mountain like a sudden discharge
of artillery and awakens the echo for miles around. Everyone hurries to fill a
vessel with the miraculous water. There are necks wrung and heads broken on
that day at zedadzene, not everyone who survives carries home a provision of
the crystal fold. Toward evening the water begins decreasing as mysteriously as
it had appeared, and at midnight the well is again perfectly dry. Not a drop of
water, nor a trace of any spring, could be found by the engineers and
geologists bent upon discovering the “trick.” For a whole year the sanctuary
remains deserted, and there is not even a janitor to watch the poor shrine. The
geologists have declared that the soil of the mountain precludes the
possibility of having springs concealed in it. Who will explain the puzzle?
287—————————————PERSIAN ZOROASTRIANISM AND RUSSIAN VANDALISM.
One day as the God,
disguised as a shepherd, was wandering about the earth, he came to Baku, then a
dreary, deserted sea-shore, and found an old devotee of his quarrelling with
his wife. Upon this barren spot wood was scarce, and she would not give up a
certain portion of her stock of cooking fuel to be burned upon the altar. So
the Ahriman element was aroused in the God, and, striking the stingy old woman,
he changed her into a gigantic rock. Then, the Ahura-Mazda element prevailing,
he, to console the bereaved widower, promised that neither he nor his
descendants should ever need fuel any more, for he would provide such a supply
as should last till the end of time. So he struck the rock again and then
struck the ground for miles around, and the earth and the calcareous soil of
the Caspian shores were filled up to the brim with naphtha. To commemorate the
happy event the old devotee assembled all the youths of the neighbourhood and
set himself to excavating the rock—which was all that remained of his ex-wife.
He cut the battlemented walls, and fashioned the altar and the four pillars,
hollowing them all to allow the gases to rise and escape through the top of the
merlons. The God Mithra upon seeing the work ended, sent a lightning flash,
which set the fire upon the altar ablaze, and lit up every merlon upon the
walls. Then, in order that it should burn the brighter, he called forth the
four winds and ordered them to blow the flame in every direction. To this day
Baku is known under its primitive name of “Baadey-ku-ba which means literally
the gathering of winds.
The other legend,
which is but a continuation of the above, runs thus: For countless ages time
devotees of Mithra worshipped at Ins shrines, until Zarathushtra, descending
from heaven in the shape of a “Golden Star,” transformed himself into a man,
and began teaching a new doctrine. He sung the praises of the One but Triple
God—the supreme Eternal, the in comprehensible essence “Zervana-Akarna,” which
emanating from itself ‘‘Primeval Light,’’ the latter in its turn produced
Ahura-Mazda. But this process required that the “Primeval One” should
previously absorb in itself all the light from the fiery Mithra, and thus left
the poor God despoiled of all his brightness. Losing his right of undivided
supremacy, Mithra, in despair, and instigated by his Ahrimanian nature,
annihilated himself for the time being, leaving Ahriman alone, to fight out his
quarrel with Ormazd, as best he could. Hence the prevailing duality in nature
since that time until Mithra returns; for he promised to his faithful devotees
to
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A MODERN PANARION.
come back some day.
Only, since then, a series of calamities fell upon the fire-worshippers. The
last of these was the invasion of their country by the Moslems in the seventh
century, when these fanatics began most cruel persecutions against the Behedin.
Driven away from every quarter, the Guebres found refuge but in the province of
Kerman, and in the city of Yezd. Then followed heresies. Many of the
Zoroastrians abandoning the faith of their forefathers became Moslems; others,
in their unquenchable hatred for the new rulers, joined the ferocious Kurds and
became devil-,
as well as fire-worshippers. These are the Yezids. The whole religion of these
strange sectarians—with the exception of a few who have more weird rites, which
are a secret to all but to themselves—consists in the following. As soon as the
morning sun appears, they place their two thumbs crosswise one upon the other,
kiss the symbol, and touch their brows with them in reverential silence. Then
they salute the sun and turn back into their tents. They believe in the power
of the devil, dread it, and propitiate the “fallen angel” by every means;
getting very angry whenever they hear him spoken of disrespectfully by either a
Mussulman or a Christian. Murders have been committed by them on account of
such irreverent talk, but people have become more prudent of late.
With the exception
of the Bombay community of Pârsis, fire-worshippers are, then, to be found but
in the two places before mentioned, and scattered around Baku. In Persia some
years ago, according to statistics they numbered about 100,000 men, I doubt,
though, whether their religion has been preserved as pure as even that of the
Gujarâti Pârsis, adulterated as is the latter by the errors and carelessness of
generations of uneducated Mobeds. And yet, as is the case of their Bombay
brethren, who are considered by all the travellers as well as Anglo-Indians, as
the most intelligent, industrious and well-behaved community of the native
races, the fire-worshippers of Kerman and Yezd bear a very high character among
the Persians, as well as among the Russians of Baku. Uncouth and crafty some of
them have become, owing to long centuries of persecution and spoliation; but
the unanimous testimony is in their favour, and they are spoken of as a
virtuous, highly moral, and industrious population. “As good as the word of a
Guebre” is a common saying among the Kurds, who repeat it without being in the
least conscious of the self-condemnation contained in it.
I cannot close
without expressing my astonishment at the utter ignorance as to their religion,
which seems to prevail in Russia even
289——————————————PERSIAN ZOROASTRIANISM AND RUSSIAN VANDALISM.
among the
journalists. One of them speaks of the Guebres, in the article of the St.
Petersburg Viedomosti above referred to, as of a sect of Hindu idolaters, in
whose prayers the name of Brahmâ is constantly invoked. To add to the
importance of this historical item, Alexandre Dumas (senior) is quoted, as
mentioning in his work, Travels in the Caucasus, that during his visit to
Attesh-Gag, he found in one of the cells of the Zoroastrian cloister “two Hindu
idols”! Without forgetting the charitable dictum: De mortuis nil nisi bonum, we
cannot refrain from reminding the correspondent of our esteemed contemporary of
a fact which no reader of the novels of the brilliant French writer ought to be
ignorant of, namely, that for the variety and inexhaustible stock of historical
facts, evolved out of the abysmal depths of his own consciousness, even the
immortal Baron Münchausen was hardly his equal. The sensational narrative of
his tiger-hunting in Mingrelia, where, since the days of Noah, there never was
a tiger, is yet fresh in the memory of his readers.
CROSS AND FIRE
—————
[Vol. I. No. 2,
November, 1879.]
PERHAPS the most
widespread and universal symbols in the old astronomical systems which have
passed down the stream of time to our century, and have left traces everywhere
in the Christian religion as else where, are the Cross and the Fire, the latter
the symbol of the sun. The ancient Aryans used them both as the symbols of
Agni. Whenever the ancient devotee desired to worship Agni—says E. Burnouf
(Science des Religions, ch. x.)—he arranged two pieces of wood in the form of a
cross, and by a peculiar whirling and friction obtained fire for his sacrifice.
As a symbol it is called Svastika, and as an instrument manufactured out of a
sacred tree and in possession of every Brâhman, it is known as Arani.
The Scandinavians
had the same sign and called it Thor’s Hammer, as bearing a mysterious
magneto-electric relation to Thor, the God of Thunder, who, like Jupiter armed
with his thunderbolts, holds in his hand this ensign of power, not only over
mortals but also the mischievous spirits of the elements, over which he
presides. In Masonry it appears in the form of the grand master’s mallet; at
Allahabad it may be seen on the fort as the Jaina Cross, or the talisman of the
Jaina kings; and the gavel of the modern judge is no more than this crux
dissimulata, as de Rossi the arch calls it; for the gavel is the sign of power
and strength, as the hammer represented the might of Thor, who in the Norse
legend splits a rock with it. Dr. Schliemann found it in terra-cotta discs, on
the site, as he believes, of ancient Troy, in the lowest strata of his
excavations; which indicated, according to Dr. Lundy, “an Aryan civilization
long anterior to the Greek—say from two to three thousand years B.C.” Burnouf
calls it the oldest form of the Cross known, and affirms that “it is found
personified in the ancient religion of the Greeks under the figure of
Prometheus, the fire-bearer crucified on Mount Caucasus, while the celestial
bird—the
291————————————————————CROSS AND FIRE.
Shyena of the Vedic
hymns—daily devours his entrails.” Boldetti (Osservazioni, 15, p. 60) gives a
copy from the painting in the cemetery of St. Sebastian, representing a
Christian convert and gravedigger named Diogenes, who wears on both his legs
and right arm the signs of the Svastika. The Mexicans and the Peruvians had it,
and it is found as the sacred Tan in the oldest tombs of Egypt.
It is, to say the
least, a strange coincidence, remarked even by some Christian clergymen, that
Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God, should have symbols identical with the Indian God
Agni. While Agnus Dei expiates and takes away the sins of the world, in one
religion, the God Agni in the other, likewise expiates sins against the Gods,
man, the manes, the soul and repeated sins, as shown in the six prayers
accompanied by six oblations (Colebrooke Essays, vol. i. p. 190).
If, then, we find
these two—the Cross and the Fire—so closely associated in the esoteric
symbolism of nearly every nation, it is because on the combined powers of the
two rests the whole plan of universal law. In astronomy, physics, chemistry, in
the whole range of natural philosophy, in short, they always come out as the
invisible cause and the visible result; and only metaphysics and alchemy —or
shall we say meta-chemistry, since we prefer coming a new word to shocking
sceptical ears—can fully and conclusively solve their mysterious meaning. An
instance or two will suffice for those who are willing to think over hints.
The central point,
or the great central Sun of the Kosmos, as the Kabalists call it, is the Deity.
It is the point of intersection between the two great conflicting powers—the
centripetal and the centrifugal forces—which drive the planets into their
elliptical orbits, making them trace a cross in their path through the Zodiac.
These two terrible, though as yet hypothetical and imaginary powers, preserve
harmony and keep the universe in steady, unceasing motion; and the four bent
points of the Svastika typify the revolution of the earth upon its axis. Plato
calls the universe a “blessed god,” made in a circle and decussated in the form
of the letter X. So much for astronomy.
In Masonry the
Royal Arch degree retains the Cross as the triple Egyptian Tau. It is the
mundane circle with the astronomical cross upon it rapidly revolving; the
perfect square of the Pythagorean mathematics in the scale of numbers, as its
occult meaning is interpreted by Cornelius Agrippa. Fire is heat—the central
point; the perpendicular ray represents the male element—spirit, and the hori-
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A MODERN PANARION.
zontal one the
female element—matter. Spirit vivifies and fructifies matter, and everything proceeds
from the central point, the focus of life, and light, and heat, represented by
the terrestrial fire. So much again for physics and chemistry; for the field of
analogies is boundless, and universal laws are immutable and identical in their
outward and inward applications. Without intending to he disrespectful to
anyone, or to wander far away from truth, we think we may say that there are
strong reasons to believe that in their original sense the Christian Cross as
the cause, and eternal torment by hell-fire as the direct effect of negation of
the former, have more to do with these two ancient symbols than our Western
theologians are prepared to admit.
If Fire is the
Deity with some heathens, so in the Bible God is like wise the Life and the
Light of the world.
If the Holy Ghost
and Fire cleanse and purify the Christian, Lucifer is also Light, and the ‘‘Son
of the morning.’’
Turn where we will,
we are sure to find these conjoint relics of ancient worship among almost every
nation and people. From the Aryans, the Chaldæans, the Zoroastrians, Peruvians,
Mexicans, Scandinavians, Celts, and ancient Greeks and Latins, they have
descended in their completeness to the modern Pârsi. The Phœnician Cabiri and
the Greek Dioscuri are partially revived in every temple, cathedral, and
village church; while, as will now be shown, the Christian Bulgarians have even
preserved the sun-worship more than a thousand years since they were converted
to Christianity. And yet they appear none the less pagans than they were before,
for this is how they keep Christmas and New Year’s Day. To this time they call
this festival Sourjvaki, as it falls in with the festival in honour of the
ancient Slavonian God Sourja. In the Slavonian mythology this Deity—Sourja or
Sourva— evidently identical with the Aryan Surya—sun—is the God of heat,
fertility and abundance. The celebration of this festival is of immense
antiquity as, far before the clays of Christianity, the Bulgarians worshipped
Sourva, and consecrated New Year’s Day to this God, praying him to bless their
fields with fertility, and send them happiness and prosperity. This custom has
remained among them in all its primitive heathenism, and though it varies
according to localities, yet the rites and ceremonies are essentially the same.
On the eve of New
Year’s Day, the Bulgarians do no work, and are obliged to fast. Young betrothed
maidens are busy preparing a large platiy (cake) in which they place roots and
young shoots of various
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forms, to each of
which a name is given, according to the shape of the root. Thus one means the
house, another represents the garden; others again, the mill, the vineyard, the
horse, a hen, a cat, and so on, according to the landed property and worldly
possessions of the family. Even articles of value such as jewelry and bags of
money are represented in this emblem of the horn of abundance. Besides all
these, a large and ancient silver coin is placed inside the cake; it is called
babkaand and is tied two ways with a red thread, which forms a cross. This coin
is regarded as the symbol of fortune. After sunset and other ceremonies
including prayers, addressed in the direction of the departing luminary, the
whole family assemble about a large round table, called paralya, on which are
placed the above-mentioned cake, dry vegetables, corn, a wax taper, and finally
a large censer containing incense of the best quality, to perfume the God. The
head of the family, usually the oldest in the family—either the grandfather or
the father himself— taking up the censer with the greatest veneration in one
hand, and the wax taper in the other, begins walking about the premises,
incensing the four corners, beginning and ending with the east, and reads
various invocations, which close with the Christian “Our Father, which art in
heaven,” addressed to Sourja. The taper is then laid away to be preserved
throughout the whole year, till the next festival. It is thought to have
acquired marvellous healing properties, and is lighted only upon occasions of
family sickness, in which case it is expected to cure the patient.
After this
ceremony, the old man takes his knife and cuts the cake into as many slices as
there are members of the household present. Each person, on receiving his or
her share, makes haste to open and search the piece. The happiest for the
ensuing year, is he or she who gets the part containing the old coin crossed
with the scarlet thread; he is considered the elect of Sourja, and everyone
envies the fortunate possessor. Then in order of importance come the emblems of
the house, the vineyard, and so on; and according to his finding, the finder
reads his horoscope for the coming year. Most unlucky is he who gets the cat;
he turns pale and trembles. Woe to him and misery, for he is surrounded by
enemies, and has to prepare for great trials.
At the same time, a
large log which represents a flaming altar, is set up in the chimney-place, and
fire is applied to it. This log burns in honour of Sourja, and is intended as
an oracle for the whole house. If it burns the whole night through till
morning, without the flame
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dying out, it is a
good sign; otherwise the family prepares to see death that year, and deep
lamentations end the festival. Neither the montzee (young bachelor), nor the
mommee (the maiden), sleep that night. At midnight begins a series of
soothsaying, magic, and various rites, in which the burning log plays the part
of the oracle. A young bud thrown into the fire and bursting with a loud snap,
is a sign of happy and speedy marriage. Long after midnight the young couples
leave their respective homes, and begin visiting their acquaintances from house
to house, offering and receiving congratulations, and rendering thanks to the
Deity. These couples are called Souryakari, and each male carries a large
branch ornamented with red ribbons, old coins, and the image of Sourja, and as
they wend their way, they sing in chorus. Their chant is as original as it is
peculiar, and merits translation, though of course it must lose in being
rendered into a foreign language. The following stanzas are addressed by them
to those they visit:
Sourva, Sourva,
Lord of the season,
Happy New Year
mayst thou send:
Health and fortune
on this household,
Success and
blessings till next year.
With good crops and
full ears,
With gold and silk,
and grapes and fruit,
With barrels full
of wine, and stomachs full,
You and your house
be blessed by the God . .
His blessing on you
all. Amen! Amen! Amen!
The singing
Sourvakari, recompensed for their good wishes with a present at every house, go
home at early dawn. And this is how the symbolical exoteric Cross and Fire-worship
of old Aryâvartta go hand in hand in Christian Bulgaria.
WAR IN OLYMPUS
—————
[Vol. I. No. 2,
November, 1879.]
DARK clouds are
gathering over the hitherto cold and serene horizon of exact science, which
forebode a squall. Already two camps are forming among the votaries of
scientific research. One wages war on the other, and hard words are
occasionally exchanged. The apple of discord in this case is—Spiritualism.
Fresh and illustrious victims are yearly decoyed away from the impregnable
strongholds of materialistic negation, and ensnared into examining and testing
the alleged spiritual phenomena. And we all know that when a true Scientist
examines them without prejudice well, he generally ends like Professor Hare,
Mr. William Crookes, F.R.S., the great Alfred Russell Wallace, another F.R.S.,
and so many other eminent men of science—he passes over to the enemy.
We are really
curious to know what will be the new theory advanced in the present crisis by
the sceptics, and how they will account for such apostasy of several of their
luminaries, as has just occurred. The venerable accusations of non compos
mentis and “dotage” will not bear another refurbishing. The eminent perverts
are increasing numerically so fast, that if mental incapacity is charged upon all
of them who experimentally satisfy themselves that tables can talk sense, and
mediums float through the air, it might augur ill for science; there might soon
be none but weakened brains in the learned societies. They may, possibly, for a
time find some consolation in accounting for the lodgment of the extraordinary
“delusion” in very scholarly heads, upon the theory of atavism—the mysterious
law of latent transmission, so much favoured by the modern schools of Darwinian
evolutionism— especially in Germany, as represented by that thorough-going
apostle of the modern “struggle for culture,” Ernst Hæckle professor at Jena.
They may attribute the belief of their colleagues in the phenomena to certain
molecular movements of the cell in the ganglia of their once
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powerful brains,
hereditarily transmitted to them by their ignorant mediæval ancestors. Or,
again, they may split their ranks, and establishing an imperium in imperio
“divide and conquer” still. All this is possible; but time alone will show
which of the parties will come off best.
We have been led to
these reflections by a row now going On between German and Russian
professors—all eminent and illustrious savants. The Teutons and Slavs, in the
case under observation, are not fighting according to their nationality, but
conformably to their respective beliefs and unbeliefs. Having concluded, for
the occasion, an offensive as well as a defensive alliance, regardless of
race—they have broken up in two camps, one representing the Spiritualists, and
the other the sceptics. And now war to the knife is declared. Leading one
party, are Professors Zollner, Ulrizzi and Fichte, Butlerof and Wagner, of the
Leipzig, Halle and St. Petersburg Universities; the other follows Professors
Wundt, Mendelevef and a host of other German and Russian celebrities. Hardly
has Zollner—a most renowned astronomer and physicist——printed his confession of
faith in Dr. Slade’s mediumistic phenomena and, set his learned colleagues
aghast when Professor Ulrizzi, of the Halle University, arouses the wrath of
the Olympus of science by publishing a pamphlet entitled, The so-called
Spiritulism a Scientific Question, intended as a complete refutation of the
arguments of Professor Wundt, of the Leipzig University, against the modern
belief, and contained in another pamphlet called by its auther Spiri-
tualism—The so-called Scientific Question. And now steps in another active
combatant, Mr. Butlerof, Professor of Chemistry and Natural Sciences in St.
Petersburg, who narrates his experiments in London, with the medium Williams,
and thus rouses up a most ferocious polemic. The humoristical illustrated paper
Kladderadatsch executes a war-dance, and shouts with joy, while the more
serious conservative papers are indignant. Pressed behind their last
entrenchments by the cool and uncontrovertible assertions of a most
distinguished naturalist, the critics, led forward by the St. Petersburg star,
Mr. Burenin, seem desperate, and evidently short of ammunition, since they are
reduced to the expedient of trying to rout the enemy with the most remarkable
paradoxes. The pro and con of the dispute are too interesting, and our posterity
might complain, were the incidents suffered to be left beyond the reach of
English and American readers interested in Spiritualism, by remaining confined
to the German and Russian newspapers. So,
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IN OLYMPUS.
Homer-like, we will
follow the combatants and condense this modern Iliad for the benefit of our
friends.
After several years
of diligent research and investigation of the phenomena, Messrs Wagner and
Butlerof both distinguished savants and professors of St. Petersburg
University, became thoroughly convinced of the reality of the weird
manifestations. As a result, both wrote numerous and strong articles in the
leading periodicals in defence of the ‘‘mischievous epidemic’’—as in his
moments of ‘‘ unconscious cerebration” and “prepossession” in favour of his own
hobby, Dr. Carpenter calls Spiritualism. Both of the above eminent gentle men
are endowed with those precious qualities, which are the more to be respected
as they are so seldom met with among our men of science. These qualities,
admitted by Mr. Burenin, their critic, himself, are:
(1) a serious and
profound conviction that what they defend is true; (2) an unwavering courage in
stating at every hazard, before a prejudiced and inimical public that such is
their conviction; (3) clearness and consecutiveness in their statements; (4)
the serene calmness and impartiality with which they treat the opinions of
their opponents; (5) a full and profound acquaintance with the subject under
discussion. The combination of the qualities enumerated, adds their critic,
Leads us to regard
the recent article by Professor Butlerof, Empiricism and dogmatism in the
Domain of Mediumship as one of those essays whose commanding significance
cannot be denied and winch are sure to strongly impress the readers. Such
articles are positively rare in our periodicals; rare because of the
originality of the author’s conclusions; and because of the clear, precise, and
serious presentation of facts.
The article so
eulogized may be summed up in a few words. We will not stop to enumerate the
marvels of spiritual phenomena witnessed by Professor Zöllner with Dr. Slade
and defended by Professor Butlerof, since they are no more marvellous than the
latter gentleman’s personal experience in this direction with Mr. Williams, a
medium of London, in 1876. The seances took place in a London hotel in the room
occupied by the Hon. Alexandre Aksakof, Russian Imperial Councillor, in which,
with the exception of this gentleman, there were but two other persons—Professor
Butlerof and the medium. Confederacy was thus utterly impossible. And now, what
took place under these conditions, which so impressed one of the first
scientists of Russia? Simply this:
Mr. Williams, the
medium, was made to sit with his hands, feet, and even his body tightly bound
with cords to his chair, which was placed
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in a dead-wall
corner of the room, behind Mr. Butlerof’s plaid hung across so as to form a
screen. Williams soon fell into a kind of lethargic stupor, known among
Spiritualists as the trance condition, and ‘spirits” began to appear before the
eyes of the investigators. Various voices were heard, and loud sentences
pronounced by the “invisibles,” from every part of the room; things—toilet
appurtenances and so forth—began flying in every direction through the air, and
finally “John King”—a sort of king of the spooks, who has been famous for
years— made his appearance bodily. But we must allow Professor Butlerof to tell
his phenomenal story himself.
We first saw
several bright lights moving in the air, and inmediately after appeared the
full figure of “John King.” His apparition is generally preceded by a greenish
phosphoric light which, gradually becoming brighter, illuminates, more and
more, the whole bust of “John King.” Then it is that those present perceive
that the light emanates from some kind of luminous object held by the ‘‘spirit.’’
The face of a man with a thick black beard becomes clearly distinguishable: the
head is enveloped in a white turban. The figure appeared outside the cabinet
(that is to say, the screened corner where the medium sat), and finally
approached us. We saw it each time for a few seconds; then rapidly waning, the
light was extinguished and the figure became invisible to reappear again in a
moment or two; then from the surrounding darkness “John’s” voice was heard
proceeding from the spot on which he had appeared mostly, though not always,
when he had already disappeared. “John” asked us: “What can I do for you?” and
Mr. Aksakof requested him to rise up to the ceiling and speak to us. In
accordance with the wish expressed, the figure suddenly appeared above the table
and towered majestically above our heads to the ceiling, which became all
illuminated with the luminous object held in the spirit’s hand, when ‘‘John’’
was quite under the ceiling he shouted down to us: ‘‘Will that do?"
During another
seance M. Butlerof asked “John” to approach him quite near, which the ‘‘spirit”
did, and so gave him the opportunity of seeing clearly “the sparkling, clear
eyes of John.” Another spirit, ‘‘Peter,” though he never put in a visible
appearance during the seances, yet conversed with Messrs. Butlerof and Aksakof,
wrote for them on paper furnished by them, and so forth.
Though the learned
Professor minutely enumerates all the precautions he had taken against possible
fraud, the critic is not yet satisfied, and asks, pertinently enough:
Why did not the
respectable savant catch ‘‘John’’ in his arms, when the spirit was hut a foot
distant from him? Again, why did not both Messrs. Aksakof and Bntlerof try to
get hold of “John’s” legs, when he was mounting to the ceiling? Indeed they
ought to have done all tins, if they are really so anxious to learn the truth
for their own sake, as for that of science, when they struggle to lead on
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toward the domains
of the “other world.” And, had they complied with such a simple and, at the
same time, very little scientific test, there would be no more need for them,
perhaps, to . . . further explain the scientific importance of the spiritual
manifestations.
That this
importance is not exaggerated, and has as much significance for the world of
science, as for that of religious thought, is proved by so many philosophical
minds speculating upon the modern “delusion.” This is what Fichte, the learned
German savant, says of it.
Modern Spiritualism
chiefly proves the existence of that which, in common par. lance, is very
vaguely and inaptly termed “aftftarilion of spirits.” If we concede the reality
of such apparitions, then they become an undeniable, practical proof of the
continuation of our personal, conscious existence (beyond the portals of
death). And such a tangible, fully demonstrated fact cannot he otherwise but
beneficent in this epoch, which, having fallen into a dreary denial of
immortality, thinks, in the proud self-sufficiency of its vast intellect, that it
has already happily left behind it every superstition of the kind.
If such a tangible
evidence could be really found, and demonstrated to us, beyond any doubt or
cavil, reasons Fichte further on :
If the reality of
the continuation of our lives after death were furnished us upon positive
proof, in strict accordance with the logical elements of experimental natural
sciences, then it would be, indeed, a result with which, owing to its nature
and peculiar significance for humanity, no other result to be met with in all
the history of civilization could he compared. The old problem of man’s
destination upon earth would thus be solved, and consciousness in humanity
would he elevated one step. That which, hitherto, could be revealed to man but
in the domain of blind faith, presentiment and passionate hope, would become to
him—positive knowledge; he would have acquired the certainty that he was a
member of an eternal, a spiritual world, in which he would continue living, and
that his temporary existence upon this earth forms but a fractional portion of
a future eternal life, and that it is only there that he would be enabled to
perceive, and fully comprehend his real destiny. Having acquired this profound
conviction, mankind would be thoroughly impressed with a new and animating
comprehension of life, and its intellectual perceptions opened to an idealism
strong with incontrovertible facts. This would prove tantamount to a complete
reconstruction of man in relation to his existence as an entity and his mission
upon earth; it would be, so to say, a “new birth.” Whoever has lost all inner
convictions as to his eternal destiny’, his faith in eternal life, whether the
ease be that of an isolated individuality, a whole nation, or time
representative of a certain epoch, he or it may be regarded as having had
uprooted, and to the very core, all sense of that invigorating force which
alone lends itself to self-devotion and to progress. Such a man becomes what
was inevitable—an egotistical, selfish, sensual being, concerned wholly for his
self-preservation. His culture, his enlightenment and civilization, can serve
him but as a help and ornament toward that life of sensualism, or, at best, to
guard him from all that can harm it.
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Such is the
enormous importance attributed by Professor Fichte of Germany, and Professor
Butlerof of Russia, to the spiritual phenomena; and we may say the feeling is
more than sincerely echoed in England by Mr. A. R. Wallace, F.R.S.
An influential
American scientific journal uses equally strong language when speaking of the
value that a scientific demonstration of the survival of the human soul would
have for the world. If Spiritualism prove true, it says,
It will become the
one grand event of the world’s history; it will give an unperishable lustre of
glory to the nineteenth century. Its discoverer will have no rival in renown,
and his name will be written high above any other. If the pretensions of
Spiritualism have a rational foundation, no more important work has been
offered to men of science then their verification. (Scientific American, 1874,
as quoted in Olcott’s People from The Other World, Preface, p. v.)
And now we will see
what the stubborn Russian critic (who seems to be but the mouth-piece of
European materialistic science), has to say in response to the unanswerable
arguments and logic of Messrs. Fichte and Butlerof. If scepticism has no
stronger arguments to oppose to Spiritualism but the following original
paradox, then we will have to declare it worsted in the dispute. Instead of the
beneficial results foretold by Fichte in the case of the final triumph of
Spiritualism, the critic forecasts quite a different state of things.
As soon as such
scientific methods shall have demonstrated, beyond doubt or cavil, to the
general satisfaction, that our world is-crammed with souls of men who have
preceded us, and whom we will all join in turn; as soon as it shall be proven
that these “souls of the deceased” call communicate with mortals, all the
earthly physical science of the eminent scholars will vanish like a
soap-bubble, and will have lost all its interest for us living men. Why should
people care for their proportionately short life upon earth, once that they
have the positive assurance and conviction of another life to come after bodily
death; a death which does not in the least preclude conscious relations with
the world of the living, or even their post mortem participation in all its
interests? Once that, with the help of science, based on mediumistic
experiments and the discoveries of Spiritualism, such relations shall have been
firmly established, they will naturally become every day more and more intimate;
an extraordinary friendship will ensue between this and the ‘‘other’’ world;
that other world will begin divulging to this one the most occult mysteries of
life and death, and the hitherto most inaccessible laws of time universe—those
which now exact the greatest efforts of man’s mental powers. Finally, nothing
will remains for us in this temporary world to either do or desire, but to pass
away as soon as possible into the world of eternity. No inventions, no
observations, no sciences will be any more needed! Why should people exercise
their brains, for instance, in perfecting the telegraphs, when nothing else
will he required but to
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be on good terms
with spirits in order to avail of their services for the instantaneous
transmission of thoughts and objects, not only from Europe to America, but even
to the moon, if so desired? The following are a few of the results which a
communion de facto between this world and the “other,’’ that certain men of
science are hoping to establish by the help of Spiritualism, will inevitably
lead us to: the complete extinction of all science, and even of the human race,
which will be ever rushing onward to a better life. The learned and scholarly
phantasists who are so anxious to promote the science of Spiritualism, of a
close communication between the two worlds, ought to bear the above in mind.
To which the
‘‘scholarly phantasists’’ would be quite warranted in answering that one would
have to bring his own mind to the exact measure of microscopic capacity
required to elaborate such a theory as this, before he could take it into
consideration at all. Is the above meant to be offered as an objection for
serious consideration? Strange logic! We are asked to believe that, because
these men of science, who now believe in naught but matter, and thus try to fit
every phenomenon—even of a mental and spiritual character—to the Procrustean
bed of their own preconceived hobbies, would find themselves, by the mere
strength of circumstances, forced in their turn, to fit these cherished hobbies
to truth, however unwelcome, and to facts wherever found—that because of that,
science will lose all its charm for humanity. Nay—life itself will become a
burden! There are millions upon millions of people who, without believing in
Spiritualism at all, yet have faith in another and a better world. And were
that blind faith to become positive knowledge indeed, it could but better
humanity.
Before closing his
scathing criticism upon the “credulous men of science,” our reviewer sends one
more bomb in their direction, which unfortunately, like many other explosive
shells, misses the culprits and wounds the whole group of their learned
colleagues. We translate the missile verbatim, this time for the benefit of all
the European and American academicians.
Speaking of
Butlerof and his article, he adds:
The eminent
professor, among other things, makes the most of the strange fact that
Spiritualism gains with every day more and more converts within the corporation
of our great scientists. He enumerates a long list of English and German names
among illustrious men of science, who have more or less confessed themselves in
favour of the spiritual doctrines. Among these names we find such as are quite
authoritative, those of the greatest luminaries of science. Such a fact is, to
say the least, very striking, and, in any case, lends a great weight to
Spiritualism. But we have only to ponder coolly over it, to come very easily to
the conclusion that it is just among such great men of science that
Spiritualism is most likely to spread
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and find ready
converts. With all their powerful intellects and gigantic knowledge, our great
scholars are firstly, men of sedentary habits, and, secondly, they are, with
scarcely an exception, men with diseased and shattered nerves, inclined toward
an abnormal development of an overstrained brain. Such sedentary men are the
easiest to hoodwink; a clever charlatan will make an easier prey of and
bamboozle with far more facility, a scholar than an unlearned but practical
man. Hallucination will far sooner get hold of persons inclined to nervous
receptivity, especially if they once concentrate themselves upon some peculiar
ideas, or a favourite hobby. This, I believe, will explain the fact that we see
so many men of science enrolling themselves in the army of Spiritualists.
We need not stop to
enquire how Messrs. Tyndall, Huxley, Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Lewes, and other
eminent scientific and philosophical sceptics, will like such a prospect of
rickety ganglionic centres, collective softening of the brain, and the
resulting “hallucinations.” The argument is not only an impertinent naivete but
a literary monstrosity.
We are far from
agreeing entirely with the views of Professor Butler, or even Mr. Wallace, as
to the agencies at work behind the modern phenomena; yet between the extremes
of spiritual negation and affirmation, there ought to be a middle ground; only
pure philosophy can establish truth upon firm principles; and no philosophy can
he complete unless it embraces both physics and metaphysics. Mr. Tyndall, who
declares in Science and Man that “metaphysics will be welcomed when it abandons
its pretensions to scientific discovery, and consents to be ranked as a kind of
poetry,” opens himself to the criticism of posterity. Meanwhile, he must not
regard it as an impertinence if his Spiritualistic opponents retort with the
answer that “physics will always be welcomed, when it abandons its pretension
to psychological discovery.” The physicists will have to consent to be regarded
in a near future as no more than supervisors and analysts of physical results,
who have to leave the spiritual causes to those who believe in them. Whatever
the issue of the present quarrel, we fear, though, that Spiritualism has made
its appearance a century too late. Our age is preeminently one of extremes. The
earnest philosophical, yet reverent, doubters are few, and the name for those
who rush to the opposite extreme is—Legion. We are the children of our century.
Thanks to that same law of atavism, it seems to have inherited from its
parent—the eighteenth—the century of both Voltaire and Jonathan Edwards—all its
extreme scepticism, and, at the same time, religious credulity and bigoted
intolerance. Spiritualism is an abnormal and premature outgrowth, standing
between the two; and, though it stands
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IN OLYMPUS.
right on the
highway to truth, its ill-defined beliefs make it wander on through by-paths
which lead to anything but philosophy. Its future depends wholly upon the
timely help it can receive from honest science—that science which scorns no
truth. It was, perhaps, when thinking of the opponents of the latter, that
Alfred de Musset wrote the following magnificent apostrophe:
Sleep’st thou
content, Voltaire?
And thy dread smile
hovers it still above
Thy fleshless
bones. . . . ?
Thine age they call
too young to understand thee;
This one should
suit thee better—
Thy men are born!
And the huge
edifice that, day and night, thy great hands undermined,
Is fallen upon us. . . .
A LAND OF MYSTERY
—————
[Vol. I. Nos. 6, 7,
9 and 11, March, April, June and August, 1880.]
WHETHER one surveys
the imposing ruins of Memphis or Palmyra; stands at the foot of the great
pyramid of Ghizeh; wanders along the shores of the Nile; or ponders amid the
desolate fastnesses of the long-lost and mysterious Petra; however clouded and
misty the origin of these pre-historic relics may appear, one nevertheless
finds at least certain fragments of firm ground upon which to build conjecture.
Thick as may be the curtain behind which the history of these anti- quities is
hidden, still there are rents here and there through which one may catch
glimpses of light. We are acquainted with the descendants of the builders; and,
however superficially, we also know the story of the nations whose vestiges are
scattered around us. Not so with the antiquities of the New World of the two
Americas. There, all along the coast of Peru, all over the Isthmus and North
America, in the canyons of the Cordilleras, in the impassable gorges of the
Andes, and, especially, beyond the valley of Mexico, lie, ruined and desolate,
hundreds of once mighty cities, lost to the memory of men, and having
themselves lost even a name. Buried in dense forests, entombed in inaccessible
valleys, sometimes sixty feet underground, from the day of their discovery
until now they have ever remained a riddle, baffling all enquiry, and they have
been muter than the Egyptian Sphinx herself. We know nothing of America prior
to the Spanish Conquest—positively nothing. No chronicles, not even
comparatively modern ones, survive; there are no traditions, even among the
aboriginal tribes, as to its past events. We are as ignorant of the races that
built these cyclopean structures as of the strange worship that inspired the
antediluvian sculptors who carved upon hundreds of miles of walls, of
monuments, monoliths and altars, these weird hieroglyphics, these groups of
animals and men, pictures of an unknown life and lost arts—scenes so fantastic
and wild, at times, that they involuntarily suggest
305————————————————————A LAND OF MYSTERY.
the idea of a feverish
dream, whose phantasmagoria suddenly crystallized into granite at the wave of
some mighty magician’s hand, to bewilder the coming generations for ever and
ever. So late as the beginning of the present century the very existence of
such a wealth of antiquities was unknown. The petty, suspicious jealousy of the
Spaniards had, from the first, created a Chinese wall between their American
possessions and the too curious traveller; and the ignorance and fanaticism of
the conquerors, and their carelessness as to all but the satisfaction of their
insatiable greed, had precluded scientific research. Even the enthusiastic
accounts of Cortez and his army of brigands and priests, and of Pizarro and his
robbers and monks, as to the splendour of the temples, palaces and cities of
Mexico and Peru, were long discredited. In his History of America, Dr.
Robertson goes so far as to inform his reader that the houses of the ancient
Mexicans were
Mere huts, built
with turf or mud, or the branches of trees, like those of the rudest Indians.*
And, upon the
testimony of some Spaniards, he even risked the assertion that there was not
In all the extent
of that vast empire a single monument or vestige of any building more ancient
than the Conquest.
It was reserved to
the great Alexander Humboldt to vindicate the truth. In 1803 a flood of new
light was poured into the world of arch by this eminent and learned traveller.
In this he luckily proved but the pioneer of future discoverers. He then
described but Mitla, or the Vale of the Dead, Xoxichalco, and the great
pyramidal Temple of Cholula. But after him came Stephens, Catherwood, and
Squier; and in Peru, D’Orbigny and Dr. Tschuddi. Since then numerous travellers
have visited and given us accurate details of many of the antiquities. But how
many more yet remain not only unexplored, but even unknown, no one can tell. As
regards prehistoric buildings, both Peru and Mexico are rivals of Egypt.
Equalling the latter in the immensity of her cyclopean structures, Peru
surpasses her in their number; while Cholula exceeds the grand pyramid of
Cheops in breadth, if not in height. Works of public utility, such as walls,
fortifications, terraces, water-courses, aqueducts, bridges, temples,
burial-grounds, whole cities, and exquisitely paved roads, hundreds of
—————
* See Stephens’
Central America.
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miles in length,
stretch in an unbroken line, almost covering the land as with a net. On the
coast they are built of sun-dried bricks; in the mountains, of porphyritic
lime, granite and silicated sandstones. Of the long generations of peoples who
built them, history knows nothing, and even tradition is silent. As a matter of
course, most of these lithic remains are covered with a dense vegetation. Whole
forests have grown out of the cities’ broken hearts, and, with a few
exceptions, everything is in ruin. But one may judge of what once was by that
which yet remains.
With a most
flippant unconcern, the Spanish historians refer nearly every ruin to Incal
times. No greater mistake can be made. The hieroglyphics which sometimes cover
whole walls and monoliths from top to bottom are, as they were from the first,
a dead letter to modern science. But they were equally a dead letter to the
Incas, though the history of the latter can be traced to the eleventh century.
They had no clue to the meaning of these inscriptions, but attributed all such
to their unknown predecessors; thus barring the presumption of their own
descent from the first civilizers of their country. Briefly, the Incal history
runs thus:
Inca is the Quichua
title for chief or emperor, and the name of the ruling and most aristocratic
race or rather caste of the land which was governed by them for an unknown
period, prior to, and until, the Spanish Conquest. Some place their first
appearance in Peru from regions unknown in 1021; others, also, on conjecture.
at five centuries after the biblical “flood,” and according to the modest
notions of Christian theology. Still the latter theory is undoubtedly nearer
truth than the former. The Incas, judged by their exclusive privileges, power
and ‘‘infallibility,’’ are the antipodal counterpart of the Brâhmanical caste
of India. Like the latter, the Incas claimed direct descent from the Deity,
which, as in the case of the Suryavansha dynasty of India, was the Sun.
According to the sole but general tradition, there was a time when the whole of
tile population of the now New World was broken tip into independent, warring
and bar barian tribes. At last the “Highest” Deity—the Sun—took pity upon them,
and, in order to rescue the people from ignorance, sent down upon earth to
teach them his two children, Manco Capac, and his sister and wife, Mama Ocollo
Huaco—the counterparts, again, of the Egyptian Osiris, and his sister and wife,
Isis, as well as of the several Hindu Gods and demi-Gods and their wives. These
two made their appear-
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ance on a beautiful
island in Lake Titicaca—of which we will speak further on—and thence proceeded
northward to Cuzco, later on the capital of the Incas, where they at once began
to disseminate civilization. Collecting together the various races from all
parts of Peru, the divine couple then divided their labour. Manco Capac taught
men agriculture, legislation, architecture and arts; while Mama Ocollo
instructed the women in weaving, spinning, embroidery and house keeping. It is
from this celestial pair that the Incas claimed their descent; and yet they
were utterly ignorant of the people who built the stupendous and now ruined
cities which cover the whole area of their empire, and which then extended from
the equator over thirty-seven degrees of latitude, and included not only the
western slope of the Andes, but the whole mountain chain with its eastern
declivities to the Amazon and Orinoco. As the direct descendants of the Sun,
they were the high priests of the state religion, and at the same time emperors
and the highest statesmen in the land; in virtue of which, they, again like the
Brâhmans arrogated to themselves a divine superiority over the ordinary
mortals, thus founding, like the “twice born,” an exclusive and aristocratic
caste—the Inca race. Considered as the son of the Sun, every reigning Inca was
the high priest, the oracle, chief captain in war, and absolute sovereign; thus
realizing the double office of Pope and King, and so long anticipating the
dream of the Roman Pontiffs. To his command the blindest obedience was exacted;
his person was sacred; and he was the object of divine honours. The highest
officers of the land could not appear shod in his presence; this mark of
respect pointing again to an Oriental origin; while the custom of boring the
ears of the youths of royal blood and inserting in them golden rings, ‘‘which
were increased in size as they advanced in rank, until the distension of the
cartilage became a positive deformity,” suggests a strange resemblance between
the sculptured portraits of many of them that we find in the more modern ruins,
and the images of Buddha and of some Hindu deities, not to mention our
contemporary dandies of Siam, Burmah and Southern India. Once more like India,
in the palmy days of the Brâhman power, no one had the right to receive an
education or study religion except the young men of the privileged Inca caste.
And, when the reigning Inca died, or, as it was termed, “was called home to the
mansion of his father,” a very large number of his attendants and his wives were
made to die with him, during the ceremonies of his obsequies, just as we find
in the
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old annals of
Râjasthân, and down to the but just abolished custom of Sati. Taking all this
into consideration, the arch cannot remain satisfied with the brief remark of
certain historians that:
In this tradition
we trace only another version of the story of the civilization Common to all
primitive nations, and that imposture of a celestial relationship whereby
designing rulers and cunning priests have sought to secure their ascendency
among men.
No more is it an
explanation to say that:
Manco Capac is the
almost exact counterpart of the Chinese Foh, the Hindu Buddha, the terrestrial
Osiris of Egypt, the Quetzacoatl of Mexico, and Votan of Central America.
For all this is but
too evident. What we want to learn is, how came these nations, so antipodal to
each other as India, Egypt and America, to offer such extraordinary points of
resemblance, not only in their general religious, political and social views,
but sometimes in the minutest details. The task much-needed is to find out
which one of them preceded the other; to explain how these peoples came to
plant at the four corners of the earth nearly identical architecture and arts,
unless there was a time when, as asserted by Plato and believed in by more than
one modern archæologist, no ships were needed for such a transit, as the two
worlds formed but one continent.
According to the
most recent researches, there are five distinct styles of architecture in the
Andes alone, of which the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco was the latest. And this
one, perhaps, is the only structure of importance which, according to modern
travellers, can be safely attributed to the Incas, whose imperial glories are
believed to have been the last gleam of a civilization dating back for untold
ages. Dr. E. R. Heath, of Kansas, thinks that
Long before Manco
Capac the Andes had been the dwelling-place of races whose beginnings must have
been coeval with the savages of Western Europe. The gigantic architecture
points to the cyclopean family, the founders of the Temple of Babel and the
Egyptian pyramids. The Grecian scroll found in man)’ places is borrowed (?)
from the Egyptians; the mode of burial and embalming their dead points to
Egypt.
Further on, this
learned traveller finds that the skulls taken from the burial-grounds,
according to craniologists, represent three distinct races: the Chinchas, who
occupied the western part of Peru from the Andes to the Pacific; the Aymaras,
dwellers of the elevated plains of Peru and Bolivia, on the southern shore of
Lake Titicaca; and the Huancas, who “occupied the plateau between the chains of
the Andes,
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north of Lake
Titicaca to the ninth degree of south latitude.’’ To confound the buildings of
the epoch of the Incas in Peru, and of Montezuma and his Caciques, in Mexico,
with the aboriginal monuments, is fatal to archæology. While Cholula, Uxmal,
Quiche, Pachacamac and Chichen were all perfectly preserved and occupied at the
time of the invasion of the Spanish banditti, there are hundreds of ruined
cities and works which were in the same state of ruin even then; whose origin
was as unknown to the conquered Incas and Caciques as it is to us; and which
are undoubtedly the remains of unknown and now extinct peoples. The strange
shapes of the heads and profiles of the human figures upon the monoliths of
Copan are a warrant for the correctness of the hypothesis. The pronounced
difference between the skulls of these races and the Indo-European skulls was
at first attributed to mechanical means, used by the mothers for giving a
peculiar conformation to the head of their children during infancy, as is often
done by other tribes and peoples. But, as the same author tells us, the finding
in
A mummy of a fœtus
of seven or eight months having the same conformation of skull, has placed a
doubt as to the certainty of this fact.
And besides
hypothesis, we have scientific and unimpeachable proof of a civilization that
must have existed in Peru ages ago. Were we to give the number of thousands of
years that have probably elapsed since then, without first showing good reasons
for the assumption, the reader might feel like holding his breath. So let us
try.
The Peruvian guano
(huano), that precious fertilizer, composed of the excrement of sea-fowls,
intermixed with their decaying bodies, eggs, remains of seal, and so on, which
has accumulated upon the isles of the Pacific and the coast of South America,
and its formation, are now well known. It was Humboldt who first discovered and
drew the world’s attention to it in 1804. And, while describing the deposits as
covering the granite rocks of the Chincas and other islands to the depth of
fifty or sixty feet, he states that the accumulation of the preceding 300
years, since the conquest, had formed only a few lines in thick-ness. How many
thousands of years, then, it required to form this deposit sixty feet deep, is
a matter of simple calculation. In this connection we may now quote something
of a discovery spoken of in the ‘‘Peruvian Antiquities.” *
—————
* A paper published
by Dr. F. R. heath in the Kansas City Review of Science and Industry, November,
1878.
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Buried sixty-two
feet under the ground, on the Chinca islands, stone-idols and water-pots were
found, while thirty-three and thirty-five feet below the surface were wooden
idols. From beneath the guano on the Guanapi islands, just south of Truxillo,
and Macabi just north, mummies, birds and birds’ eggs, gold and silver
ornaments were taken. On the Macabi the labourers found some large valuable
golden vases, which they broke up and divided among themselves, even though
offered weight for weight in gold coin, and thus relics of the greatest
interest to the scientist have been lost for ever. He who can determine the
centuries necessary to deposit thirty and sixty feet of guano on these islands,
remembering that since the Conquest three hundred years ago, no appreciable
increase in depth has been noted, can give you an idea of the antiquity of
these relics.
If we confine
ourselves to a strictly arithmetical calculation, then allowing twelve lines to
an inch, and twelve inches to a foot, and allowing one line to every century,
we are forced to believe that the people who made these precious gold vases
lived 864,000 years ago! Leave an ample margin for errors, and give twelve
lines to a century—say an inch to every 100 years—and we will yet have 72,000
years back a civilization which—if we judge by its public works, the durability
of its constructions, and the grandeur of its buildings—equalled, and in some
things certainly surpassed, our own.
Having well-defined
ideas as to the periodicity of cycles, for the world as well as for nations,
empires and tribes, we are convinced that our present modern civilization is
but the latest dawn of that which already has been seen an innumerable number
of times upon this planet. It may not be exact science, but it is both
inductive and deductive logic, based upon theories far less hypothetical and
more palpable than many another theory, held as strictly scientific. To express
it in the words of Prof. T. E. Nipher, of St. Louis, “we are not the friends of
theory but of truth,” and until truth is found, we welcome every new theory,
however unpopular at first, for fear of rejecting in our ignorance the stone
which may in time become the very corner-stone of the truth.
The errors of
scientific men are well-nigh countless, not because they are men of science,
but because they are men, says the same scientist; and further quotes the noble
words of Faraday:
Occasionally, and
frequently the exercise of the judgment ought to end in absolute reservation.
It may be very distasteful and a great fatigue to suspend a conclusion, but as
we are not infallible, so we ought to he cautions. (Experimental Researches,
24th Series.)
It is doubtful
whether, with the exception of a few of the most prominent ruins, a detailed
account of the so-called American anti-
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quities ever was
attempted. Yet, in order to bring out the more prominently a point of
comparison, such a work would be absolutely necessary. If the history of
religion and of mythology and—far more important—the origin, developing and
final grouping of the human species are ever to be unravelled, we have to trust
to archæological research rather than to the hypothetical deductions of
philology. We must begin by massing together the concrete imagery of the early
thought, more eloquent in its stationary form than the verbal expression of the
same, the latter being but too liable, in its manifold interpretations, to be
distorted in a thousand ways. This would afford us an easier and more
trustworthy clue. Archæological Societies ought to have a whole cyclopædia of
the world’s remains, with a collation of the most important of the speculations
as to each locality. For, however fantastic and wild some of these hypotheses
may seem at first glance, yet each has a chance of proving useful at some time.
It is often more beneficial to know what a thing is not than to know what it
is, as Max Muller truly tells us.
It is not within
the limits of an article in our paper that any such object could be achieved.
Availing ourselves, though, of the reports of the Government surveyors,
trustworthy travellers, men of science, and even our own limited experience, we
will try in future issues to give to our Hindu readers, who possibly may never
have heard of these antiquities, a general idea of them. Our information is
drawn from every reliable source; the survey of the Peruvian antiquities being
mostly due to Dr. Heath’s able paper, above mentioned.
II.
Evidently we
Theosophists are not the only iconoclasts in this world of mutual deception and
hypocrisy. We are not the only ones who believe in cycles, and, opposing the
biblical chronology, lean towards those opinions which are secretly shared by
so many, but publicly avowed by so few. We Europeans are just emerging from the
very bottom of a new cycle, and progressing upwards, while the Asiatics—
Indians especially—are the lingering remnants of the nations which filled the
world in the previous and now departed cycles. Whether the Aryans sprang from
the archaic Americans, or the latter from the prehistoric Aryans, is a question
which no living man can decide. But that there must have been an intimate
connection at some time between the old Aryans, the pre-historic inhabitants of
America—whatever
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might have been
their name—and the ancient Egyptians, is a matter more easily proved than
contradicted. And probably, if there ever was such a connection, it must have
taken place at a time when the Atlantic did not yet divide the two hemispheres
as it does now.
In his Peruvian
Antiquities, Dr. Heath, of Kansas City—rara avis among scientific men, a
fearless searcher, who accepts truth wherever he finds it, and is not afraid to
speak it out in the very face of dogmatic opposition—sums up his impressions of
the Peruvian relics in the following words:
Three times the
Andes sank hundreds of feet beneath the ocean level, and again were slowly
brought to their present height. A man’s life would be too short to count even
the centuries consumed in this operation. The coast of Peru has risen eighty
feet since it felt the tread of Pizarro. Supposing the Andes to have risen
uniformly and without interruption, 70,000 years must have elapsed before they
reached their present altitude.
Who knows, then,
but that Jules Verne’s fanciful idea* regarding the lost continent Atlantis may
be near the truth? Who can say that, where now the Atlantic Ocean is, a
continent did not formerly exist, with its dense population, advanced in the
arts and sciences, who, as they found their land sinking beneath the waters,
retired part east and part west, thus populating the two hemispheres? This
would explain the similarity of their arch structures and races, and their
differ-ences, modified by and adapted to the character of their respective
climates and countries. Thus would the llama and camel differ, although of the
same species; thus the algoraba and espino trees; thus the Iroquois Indians of
North America and the most ancient Arabs call the constellation of the “Great
Bear” by the same name; thus various nations, cut off from all intercourse or
knowledge of each other, divide the zodiac into twelve constellations, apply to
them the same names, and the Northern Hindus apply the name Andes to their
Himalayan mountains, as did the South Americans to their principal chain.† Must
we fall in the old rut, and suppose no other means of populating the Western
Hemisphere except “by way of Behring’s Strait”? Must we still locate a geographical
Eden in the East, and suppose a land, equally adapted to man and as old
geologically, must wait the aimless wanderings of the “lost tribes of Israel”
to become populated?
Go where we may, to
explore the antiquities of America—whether of Northern, Central, or Southern
America—we are first of all impressed with the magnitude of these relics of
ages and races unknown, and then with the extraordinary similarity they present
to the mounds and
—————
* This
"idea" is plainly expressed and asserted as a fact by Plato in his
Banquet; and was taken up by Bacon in his New Atlantis.
† The name
America,” said I, in Isis Unveiled (vol. ii. p. 591(, three years ago, ‘may one
day he found closely related to Meru, the sacred mount in the centre of the
seven continents.” When first discovered, America was found to bear among some
native tribes the name of Atlanta. In the states of Central America we find the
name Amerih, signifying, like I a great mountain. The origin of the Kamas
Indians of America is also unknown.
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ancient structures
of old India, of Egypt and even of some parts of Europe. Whoever has seen one
of these mounds has seen all. Who ever has stood before the cyclopean structures
of one continent can have a pretty accurate idea of those of the other. Only be
it said—we know still less of the age of the antiquities of America than even
of those in the Valley of the Nile, of which we know next to nothing. But their
symbolism—apart from their outward form—is evidently the same as in Egypt,
India and elsewhere. As before the great pyramid of Cheops in Cairo, so before
the great mound, 100 feet high, on the plain of Cahokia—near St. Louis
(Missouri)—which measures 700 feet long by 800 feet broad at the base, and
covers upwards of eight acres of ground, having 20,000,000 cubic feet of
contents, and the mound on the banks of Brush Creek, Ohio, so accurately
described by Squier and Davis, one knows not whether to admire more the
geometrical precision, prescribed by the wonderful and mysterious builders in
the form of their monuments, or the hidden symbolism they evidently sought to
express. The Ohio mound represents a serpent, upwards of 1,000 feet long.
Gracefully coiled in capricious curves, it terminates in a triple coil at the
tail.
The embankment
constituting the effigy is upwards of five feet in height, by thirty feet at
the centre of the body, slightly diminishing towards the tail.*
The neck is
stretched out and its mouth wide open, holding within its jaws an oval figure.
Formed by an
embankment four feet in height, this oval is perfectly regular in outline, its
transverse and conjugate diameters being 160 and eighty feet respectively, say
the surveyors. The whole represents the universal cosmological idea of the
serpent and the egg. This is easy to surmise. But how came this great symbol of
the Hermetic wisdom of old Egypt to find itself represented in North America?
How is it that the sacred buildings found in Ohio and elsewhere, these squares,
circles, octagons, and other geometrical figures, in which one recognizes so
easily the prevailing idea of the Pythagorean sacred numerals, seem copied from
The Book of Numbers? Apart from the complete silence as to their origin, even
among the Indian tribes, who have otherwise preserved their own traditions in
every case, the antiquity of these ruins is proved by the existence of the
largest and most ancient forests growing on the buried cities. The prudent
archæologists of America have generously assigned them 2,000 years. But by whom
built, and whether their
—————
* Smithsonian
contributions to Knowledge, vol. i.
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authors migrated,
or disappeared beneath victorious armies, or were swept out of existence by
some direful epidemic, or a universal famine, are questions, “probably beyond
the power of human investigation to answer,” they say. The earliest inhabitants
of Mexico, of whom history has any knowledge—more hypothetical than proven—are
the Toltecs. These are supposed to have come from the North and believed to
have entered Anahuac in the seventh century A.D. They are also credited with
having constructed in Central America, where they spread in the eleventh
century, some of the great cities whose ruins still exist. In this case it is
they who must also have carved the hieroglyphics that cover some of the relics.
How is it, then, that the pictorial system of writing of Mexico, which was used
by the conquered people and learned by the conquerors and their missionaries,
does not Yet furnish the keys to the hieroglyphics of Palenque and Copan, not
to mention those of Peru? And these civilized Toltecs themselves, who were
they, and whence did they come? And who are the Aztecs that succeeded them?
Even among the hieroglyphical systems of Mexico, there were some which the
foreign interpreters were precluded. the possibility of studying. These were
the so-called schemes of judicial astrology “given but not explained in Lord
Kingsborough’s published collection,” and set down as purely figurative and
symbolical, “intended only for the use of the priests and diviners and
possessed of an esoteric significance.” Many of the hieroglyphics on the
monoliths of Palenque and Copan are of the same character. The “priests and
diviners” were all killed off by the Catholic fanatics—the secret died with
them.
Nearly all the
mounds in North America are terraced and ascended by large graded ways,
sometimes square, often hexagonal, octagonal or truncated, but in all respects
similar to the teocallis of Mexico, and to the topes of India. As the latter
are attributed throughout this country to the work of the five Pândus of the
Lunar Race, so the cyclopean monuments and monoliths on the shores of Lake
Titicaca, in the republic of Bolivia, are ascribed to giants, the five exiled
brothers ‘‘from beyond the mounts.’’ They worshipped the moon as their
progenitor and lived before the time of the “Sons and Virgins of the Sun.”
Here, the similarity of the Aryan with the South American tradition is again
but too obvious, and the Solar and Lunar races—the Surya Vansha and the Chandra
Vansha—reäppear in America.
This Lake Titicaca,
which occupies the centre of one of the most remarkable terrestrial basins on
the whole globe, is:
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One hundred and
sixty miles long and from fifty to eighty broad, and discharges through the
valley of El Desaguadero, to the south-east into another lake, called. Lake
Aullagas, which is probably kept at a lower level by evaporation or filtration,
since it has no known outlet. The surface of the lake is 12,846 feet above the
sea, and it is the most elevated body of waters of similar size in the world.
As the level of its
waters has very much decreased in the historical period, it is believed on good
grounds that they once surrounded the elevated spot on which are found the
remarkable ruins of Tiahuanaco.
The latter are
without any doubt aboriginal monuments pertaining to an epoch which preceded
the Incal period, much as the Dravidian and other aboriginal peoples preceded
the Aryans in India. Although the traditions of the Incas maintain that the
great law-giver and teacher of the Peruvians, Manco Capac—the Manu of South
America—diffused his knowledge and influence from this centre, yet the
statement is unsupported by facts. If the original seat of the Aymara, or
“Inca” race was there, as claimed by some, how is it that neither the Incas,
nor the Aymaras, who dwell on the shores of the lake to this day, nor yet the
ancient Peruvians, had the slightest knowledge concerning their history? Beyond
a vague tradition which tells us of “giants” having built these immense
structures in one night, we do not find the faintest clue. And we have every
reason to doubt whether the Incas are of the Aymara race at all. The Incas
claim their descent from Manco Capac, the son of the Sun, and the Aymaras claim
this legislator as their instructor and the founder of the era of their
civilization. Yet neither the Incas of the Spanish period could prove the one,
nor the Aymaras the other. The language of the latter is quite distinct from
the Inichua—the tongue of the Incas; and they were the only race that refused
to give up their language when conquered by the descendants of the Sun, as Dr.
Heath tells us.
The ruins afford
every evidence of the highest antiquity. Some are built on a pyramidal plan, as
most of the American mounds are, and cover several acres; while the monolithic
doorways, pillars and stone idols, so elaborately carved, are “sculptured in a
style wholly different from any other remains of art yet found in America.”
D’Orbigny speaks of the ruins in the most enthusiastic manner. He says:
These monuments
consist of a mound raised nearly 100 feet, surrounded with pillars—of temples
from 600 to 1,200 feet in length, opening precisely towards the east, and
adorned with colossal angular columns—of porticoes of a single stone, covered
with reliefs of skilful execution, displaying symbolical representations of the
Sun, and the condor, his messenger—of basaltic statues loaded with bas-reliefs,
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in which the design
of the carved head is half Egyptian—and lastly, of the interior of a palace
formed of enormous blocks of rock, completely hewn, whose dimensions are often
twenty-one feet in length, twelve in breadth, and six in thickness. In the
temples and palaces, the portals are not inclined, as among those of the Incas,
but perpendicular; and their vast dimensions, and the imposing masses of which
they are composed, surpass in beauty and grandeur all that were afterwards built
by the sovereigna of Cuzco.
Like the rest of
his fellow-explorers, M. D’Orbigny believes these ruins to have been the work
of a race far anterior to the Incas.
Two distinct styles
of architecture are found in these relics of Lake Titicaca. Those of the island
of Coati, for instance, bear every feature in common with the ruins of
Tiahuanaco ; so do the vast blocks of stone elaborately sculptured, some of
which, according to the report of the surveyors in 1846, measure
Three feet in width
by eighteen feet in length, and six feet in thickness;
while on some of
the islands of the Lake Titicaca there are monuments of great extent;
But of true
Peruvian type, believed to be the remains of temples destroyed by the
Spaniards.
The famous
sanctuary, with the human figure in it, belongs to the former. Its doorway, ten
feet high, thirteen feet broad, with an opening six feet four inches by three
feet two inches, is cut from a single stone.
Its east front has
a cornice, in the centre of which is a human figure of strange form, crowned
with rays, interspersed with serpents with crested heads. On each side of this
figure are three rows of square compartments, filled with human and other
figures, of apparently symbolic design.
Were this temple in
India, it would undoubtedly be attributed to Shiva; but it is at the Antipodes,
where neither the foot of a Shaiva nor one of the Naga tribe has ever
penetrated to the knowledge of man, though the Mexican Indians have their
Nargal, or chief sorcerer and serpent worshipper. The ruins standing on an
eminence, which, from the water-marks around it, seems to have been formerly an
island in Lake Titicaca, and:
The level of the
lake now being 135 feet lower, and its shores twelve miles distant, this fact,
in conjunction with others, warrants the belief that these remains antedate any
others known in America.*
Hence, all these
relics are unanimously ascribed to the same
Unknown and
mysterious people who preceded the Peruvians, as the Tulhuatecas or Toltecs did
the Aztecs. It seems to have been the seat of the highest and most
—————
* New .American
Cyclopædia, art. “Teotihuacan.”
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ancient
civilization of South America and of a people who have left the most gigantic
monuments of their power and skill.
And these monuments
are all either Dracontias—temples sacred to the Snake—or temples dedicated to
the Sun.
Of this same
character are the ruined pyramids of Teotihuacan and the monoliths of Palenque
and Copan. The former are some eight leagues from the city of Mexico on the
plain of Otumla, and are considered among the most ancient in the land. The two
principal ones are dedicated to the Sun and Moon, respectively. They are built
of cut stone, square, with four stories and a level area at the top. The
larger, that of the Sun, is 221 feet high, 680 feet square at the base, and
covers an area of eleven acres, nearly equal to that of the great pyramid of
Cheops. And yet, the pyramid of Cholula, higher than that of Teotihuacan by ten
feet according to Humboldt, and having 1,400 feet square at the base, covers an
area of forty-five acres!
It is interesting
to hear what the earliest writers—time historians who saw them during the first
conquest—say even of some of the most modern of these buildings, of the great
temple of Mexico, among others. It consisted of an immense square area,
Surrounded In a wall of stone and lime, eight feet thick, with battlements,
ornamented with many stone figures in the form of serpents.
says one. Cortez
shows that 500 houses might be easily placed within its enclosure. It was paved
with polished stones, so smooth, that ‘‘the horses of the Spaniards could not
move over them without slipping,’’ writes Bernal Diaz. In connection with this,
we must remember that it was not the Spaniards who conquered the Mexicans, but
their horses. As a horse was never seen before by this people in America, until
the Europeans landed it on the coast, the natives, though excessively Brave,
were so awestruck at the sight of horses and the roar of the artillery, that
they took the Spaniards to be of divine origin and sent them human beings as
sacrifices. This superstitious panic is sufficient to account for the fact that
a handful of men could so easily conquer incalculable thousands of warriors.
According to
G6mara, the four walls of the enclosure of the temple corresponded with the
cardinal points. In the centre of this gigantic area arose the great temple, an
immense pyramidal structure of eight stages, faced with stone, 300 feet square
at the base and 120 feet in height, truncated, with a level summit, upon which
were situated two
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towers, the shrines
of the divinities to whom it was consecrated—Tezcatlipoca and Huitzlipochtli.
It was here that the sacrifices were performed, and the eternal fire
maintained. Clavigero tells us that, besides this great pyramid, there were
forty other similar structures consecrated to various divinities. The one
called Tezcacalli,
The House of the
Shining Mirrors, sacred to Tezcatlipoca, the God of Light, the Soul of the
World, the Vivifier, the Spiritual Sun.
The dwellings of
priests, who, according to Zarate, amounted to 8,000, were near by, as well as
the seminaries and the schools. Ponds and fountains, groves and gardens, in
which flowers and sweet smelling herbs were cultivated for use in certain
sacred rites and the decoration of altars, were in abundance; and, so large was
the inner yard, that:
Eight thousand or
10,000 persons had sufficient room to dance in it upon their solemn
festivities,
says Solis.
Torquemada estimates the number of such temples in the Mexican empire at
40,000, but Clavigero, speaking of the majestic Teocalli (literally, houses of
God) of Mexico, estimates the number higher.
So wonderful are
the features of resemblance between the ancient shrines of the Old and the New
World that Humboldt remains unable to express his surprise. He exclaims:
What striking
analogies exist between the monuments of the old continents and those of the
Toltecs who built these colossal structure, truncated pyramids, divided by
layers, like the temple of Belus at Babylon ! Where did they take the model of
these edifices?
The eminent
naturalist might have also enquired whence the Mexicans got all their Christian
virtues, being but poor pagans. The code of the Aztecs, says Prescott:
Evinces a profound
respect for the great principles of morality, and as clear a perception of
these principles as is to be found in the most cultivated nations.
Some of these are
very curious inasmuch as they show such a similaritv to some of the Gospel
ethics. “He who looks too curiously on a woman, commits adultery with his
eyes,’’ says one of them. ‘‘ Keep peace with all; hear injuries with humility;
God, who sees, will avenge you,” declares another. Recognizing but one Supreme
Power in Nature, they addressed it as the Deity
By whom see live,
omnipresent, that knoweth all thoughts and giveth all gifts, without whom man
is as nothing; invisible, incorporeal, of perfection and purity, under whose
wings we find repose and a sure defence.
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And, in naming
their children, says Lord Kingsborough:
They used a
ceremony strongly resembling the Christian rite of baptism, the lips and bosom
of the infant being sprinkled with water, and the Lord implored to wash away
the sin that was given to it before the foundation of the world, so that the
child might be born anew. Their laws were perfect; justice, contentment and
peace reigned in the kingdom of these benighted heathens, when the brigands and
the Jesuits of Cortez landed at Tabasco. A century of murders, robbery, and
forced conversion, were sufficient to transform this quiet, inoffensive and
wise people into what they are now. They have fully benefited by dogmatic
Christianity. And he, who ever went to Mexico, knows what that means. The
country is full of bloodthirsty Christian fanatics, thieves, rogues, drunkards,
debauchees, murderers, and the greatest liars the world has ever produced!
Peace and glory to your ashes, 0 Cortez and Torquemada! In this case at least,
will you never he permitted to boast of tile enlighten roar Christianity has
poured out on the poor, and once virtuous heathens!
III.
The ruins of
Central America are no less imposing. Massively built, with walls of a great
thickness, they are usually marked by broad stairways leading to the principal
entrance. When composed of several stories, each successive story is usually
smaller than that below it, giving the structure the appearance of a pyramid of
several stages. The front walls, either made of stone or stuccoed, are covered
with elaborately carved, symbolical figures; and the interior divided into
corridors and dark chambers, with arched ceilings, the roofs supported by
overlapping courses of stones,
Constituting a
pointed arch, corresponding in type with the earliest monuments of the Old
World.
Within several
chambers at Palenque, tablets, covered with sculptures and hieroglyphics of
fine design and artistic execution, were discovered by Stephens. In Honduras,
at Copan, a whole city—temples, houses and grand monoliths intricately
carved—was unearthed in an old forest by Catherwood and Stephens. The sculpture
and general style of Copan are unique, and no such style or even anything
approaching it has been found anywhere else, except at Quirigua and in the
islands of Lake Nicaragua. No one can decipher the weird hieroglyphical inscriptions
on the altars and monoliths. With the exception of a few works of uncut stone,
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To Copan we may
safely assign an antiquity higher than to any of the other monuments of Central
America with which we are acquainted,
says the New
American Cyclopædia. At the period of the Spanish conquest Copan was already a
forgotten ruin, concerning which only the vaguest traditions existed.
No less
extraordinary are the remains of the different epochs in Peru. The ruins of the
temple of the Sun at Cuzco are yet imposing, notwithstanding that the
depredatory hand of the Vandal Spaniard passed heavily over it. If we may
believe the narratives of the conquerors themselves, they found it on their
arrival, a kind of fairy-tale castle. With its enormous circular stone wall
completely encompassing the principal temple, chapels and buildings, it is
situated in the very heart of the city, and even its remains justly provoke the
admiration of the traveller.
Aqueducts opened
within the sacred enclosure; and within it were gardens and walks among shrubs
and flowers of gold and silver, made in imitation of the productions of nature.
It was attended by 4,000 priests. The ground for 200 paces around the temple
was considered holy, and no one was allowed to pass within this boundary but
with naked feet.*
Besides this great
temple, there were 300 other inferior temples at Cuzco. Next to the latter in
beauty was the celebrated temple of Pachacamac. Still another great temple of
the Sun is mentioned by Humboldt; and,
At the base of the
hill of Cannar was formerly a famous shrine of the Sun, consisting of the
universal symbol of that luminary, formed by nature upon the face of a great
rock.
Roman tells us
That the temples of
Peru were built upon high ground or the top of the hills, and were surrounded
by three and four circular embankments of earth, one within the other.
Other remains seen
by myself—especially mounds—are surrounded by two, three and four circles of
stones. Near the town of Cayambe, on the very spot on which Ulloa saw and
described an ancient Peruvian temple, “perfectly circular in form and open at
the top,” there are several such cromlechs. Quoting from an article in the
Madras Times of 1876, Mr. J. H. Rivett-Carnac gives, in his Arch Notes, the
following information upon some curious mounds in the neighbour hood of
Bangalore: †
—————
* La Vega.
† ‘‘On Ancient
Sculpturing on Rocks in Kumaon, India, similar to those found on Monoliths and
Rocks in Europe.” By J. H. Rivett-Carnac, Bengal Civil Service, C.I.E., F.S.A.,
M.R.A.S., F.G.S., etc.
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Near the village
there are at least one hundred cromlechs plainly to be seen. These cromlechs
are surrounded by circles of stones, some of them with concentric circles three
and four deep. One very remarkable in appearance has four circles of large
stones around it, and is called by the natives “Pandavara Gudi” or the temple
of the Pandus. This is supposed to be the first instance where the natives
popularly imagine a structure of this kind to have been the temple of a bygone,
if not of a mythical, race. Many of these structures have a triple circle, some
a double, and a few single circles of stone round them.
In the thirty-fifth
degree of latitude, the Arizona Indians in North America have their rude altars
to this day, surrounded by precisely such circles, and their sacred spring,
discovered by Major Alfred R. Calhoun, F.G.S., of the United States Army Survey
Commission, is surrounded with the same symbolical wall of stones as is found
in Stonehenge and elsewhere.
By far the most
interesting and full account we have read for a long time of the Peruvian
antiquities is that from the pen of Dr. Heath, of Kansas, already mentioned.
Condensing the general picture of the remains into the limited space of a few
pages in a periodical,* he yet manages to present a masterly and vivid picture
of the wealth of these remains. More than one speculator has grown rich in a
few days through his desecrations of the “huacas.” The remains of count less
generations of unknown races who had slept there undisturbed— who knows for how
many ages?—are now left by the sacrilegious treasure-hunter to crumble into
dust under the tropical sun. Dr. Heath’s conclusions, more startling,
perchance, than his discoveries, are worthy of being recorded. We will repeat
in brief his descriptions:
In the Jeguatepegue
valley in Peru in 10° 24' S. latitude, four miles north of the port of
Pacasmayo, is the Jeguatepegue river. Near it, beside the southern shore, is an
elevated platform “one-fourth of a mile square and forty feet high, all of
adobes, or sun-burnt bricks. A wall of fifty feet in width connects it with
another,” 150 feet high, 200 feet across the top, and 500 at the base, nearly
square. This latter was built in sections of rooms, ten feet square at the
base, six feet at the top and about eight feet high. All of this same class of
mounds—temples to worship the sun, or fortresses, as they may be—have on the
northerly side an incline for an entrance. Treasure-seekers have cut into this
one about half-way, and it is said 150,000 dollars’ worth of gold and silver
ornaments were found.
Here many thousands
of men were buried, and beside the skeletons were found in abundance ornaments
of gold, silver, copper, coral beads, etc.
—————
* See Kansas City
Review of Science and Industry, November, 1878
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On the north side
of the river are the extensive ruins of a walled city, two miles wide by six
long. . . follow the river to the mountains. All along you pass ruin after ruin
and huaca after huaca (burial places).
At Tolon there is
another ruined city. Five miles further up the river
There is an
isolated boulder of granite, four and six feet in its diameters, covered with
hieroglyphics; fourteen miles further, a point of mountain at the junction of
two ravines is covered to a height of more than fifty feet with the same class
of hieroglyphics—birds, fishes, snakes, cats, monkeys, men, sun, moon, and many
odd and now unintelligible forms. The rock on which these are cut is a silicated
sand stone, and many of the lines are an eighth of an inch deep. In one large
stone there are three holes, twenty to thirty inches deep, six inches in
diameter at the orifice and two at the apex . . .At Anchi, on the Rimac river,
upon the face of a perpendicular wall 200 feet above the river-bed, there are
two hieroglyphics, representing an imperfect B and a perfect D. In a crevice
below them, near the river, were found buried 25,000 dollars’ worth of gold and
silver. When the Incas learned of the murder of their chief, what did they do
with the gold they were bringing for his ransom ? Rumour says they buried it. .
. May not these markings at Yonan tell something, since they are on the road
and near to the Incal city?
The above was
published in November, 1878; when in October, 1877, in Isis Unveiled (vol. i.
p. 595), I gave a legend which, from circumstances too long to explain, I hold
to be perfectly trustworthy, relating to these same buried treasures for the
Inca’s ransom, a journal more satirical than polite classed it with the tales
of Baron Münchausen. The secret was revealed to me by a Peruvian. At Arica,
going from Lima, there stands an enormous rock, which tradition points to as
the tomb of the Incas. As the last rays of the setting Still strike the face of
the rock one can see curious hieroglyphics inscribed upon it. These characters
form one of the land-marks that show how to get at the immense treasures buried
in subterranean corridors. The details are given in Isis, and I will not repeat
them. Strong corroborative evidence is now found in more than one recent
scientific work, and the statement may be less pooh—poohed now than it was
then. Some miles beyond Vonan, on a ridge of a mountain 700 feet above the
river, are the walls of another city. Six and twelve miles further are
extensive walls and terraces seventy-eight miles from the coast “you zig-zag up
the mountain side 7,000 feet, then descend 2,000” to arrive at Coxamolca, the
city where, unto this day, stands the house in which Atahualpa, the unfortunate
Inca, was held prisoner by the treacherous Pizarro. It is the house which the
Inca “promised to fill with gold
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as high as he could
reach in exchange for his liberty” in 1532; he did fill it with 17,500,000
dollars’ worth of gold, and so kept his promise. But Pizarro, the swineherd of
Spain and the worthy acolyte of the priest Hernando de Lugues, murdered him,
notwithstanding his pledge of honour. Three miles from this town
There is a wall of
unknown make, cemented; the cement is harder than stone itself. . . At Chepen
there is a mountain with a wall twenty feet high, the summit being almost
entirely artificial. Fifty miles south of Pacaomayo, between the seaport of
Huanchaco and Truxillo, are the ruins of Chan-Chan, the capital city of the
Chimoa kingdom. . . . The road from the port to the city crosses these ruins,
entering by a causeway about four feet from the ground, and leading from one
great mass of ruins to another; beneath tins is a tunnel.
Be they forts,
castles, palaces, or burial mounds called “huacas,” all bear the name “huaca.”
Hours of wandering on horseback among these ruins give only a confused idea of
them, nor can any explorers there point out what were palaces and what were
not. . . . The highest enclosures must have cost an immense amount of labour.
To give an idea of
the wealth found in the country by the Spaniards we copy the following, taken
from the records of the municipality in the city of Truxillo by Dr. Heath. It
is a copy of the accounts that are found in the Book of Fifths of the Treasury
in the years 1577 and 1578, of the treasures found in the “Huaca of Toledo” by
one man alone.
Firstly.—In
Truxillo, Peru, on July 22nd, 1577, Don Gracia Gutierrez de Toledo presented
himself at the royal treasury, to give into the royal chest a fifth. He brought
a bar of gold 19 carats ley and weighing 2,400 Spanish dollars, of which the
fifth being 708 dollars, together with 1½ per cent, to the chief assayer, were deposited
in the royal box.
Secondly.—On
December 12th he presented himself with five bars of gold, 15 and 19 carats
ley, weighing 8,918 dollars.
Thirdly.—On January
7th, 1578, he came with his fifth of large bars and plates of gold, 115 in
number, 15 to 20 carats 1ey, weighing 153280 dollars.
Fourthly—On March
8th he brought sixteen bars of gold, 14 to 21 carats ley, weighing 21,118
dollars.
Fifthly.—On April 5
he brought different ornaments of gold, being little belts of gold and patterns
of corn-heads and other things, of 14 carats ley, weighing 6,272 dollars.
Sixthly.—On April
20th he brought three small bars of gold, 20 carats ley, weighing 4,170
dollars.
Seventhly.—On July
12th he came with forty.seven bars, 14 to 21 carats ley, weighing 77,312
dollars.
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Eightly.—On the
same day he came back with another portion of gold and ornaments of corn-heads
and pieces of effigies of animals, weighing 4,704 dollars.
The sum of these
eight bringings amounted to 278,174 gold dollars or Spanish ounces. Multiplied
by sixteen gives 4,450,784 silver dollars. Deducting the royal fifth 985,953.75
dollars—left 3,464,830.25 dollars as Toledo’s portion! Even after this great
haul, effigies of different animals of gold were found from time to time.
Mantles also adorned with square pieces of gold, as well as robes made with
feathers of divers colours, were dug up. There is a tradition that in the huaca
of Toledo there were two treasures, known as the great and little fish. The
smaller only has been found. Between Huacho and Supe, the latter being 120
miles north of Callao, near a point called Atahuangri, there are two enormous
mounds resembling the Campana and San Mignel, of the Huatica valley, soon to be
described. About five miles from Patavilea (south, and near Supe) is a place
called Paramonga,’’ or the fortress. The ruins of a fortress of great extent
are here visible; the walls are of tempered clay, about six feet thick The
principal building stood on an eminence, but the walls were continued to the
foot of it, like regular circumvallations; the ascent winding round the hill
like a labyrinth, having many angles which probably served as outworks to
defend the place. In this neighbourhood much treasure has been excavated, all
of which must have been concealed by the pre-Historic Indians, as we have no
evidence of the Incas ever having occupied this part of Peru after they had
subdued it.
Not far from Ancon,
on a circuit of six to eight miles,
On every side you
see skulls, legs, arms and whole skeletons lying about in the sand. . . At
Parmayo, fourteen miles further down north,
and on the
sea—shore is another great burying-ground. Thousands of skeletons lie about,
thrown out by the treasure-seekers. It has more than half a mile of cutting
through it. . . . It extends up the face of the hill from the sea-shore to the
height of about 8oo feet.
. . .Whence come
these hundreds and thousands of peoples who are buried at Ancon ? Time and time
again the archæologist finds himself face to face with such questions, to winch
he can only shrug his shoulder and say with the natives—’’Quien Sabe?’’—who
knows?
Dr. Hutchinson
writes, under date of October 3oth, 1872, in the South Pacific Times :
I am come to the
conclusion that Chancay is a great city of the dead, or has been an immense
ossuary of Peru; for go where you will, on a mountain top or level plain, or by
the sea-side, you meet at every turn skulls and bones of all description.
In the Huatica
valley, which is an extensive ruin, there are seventeen mounds, called
huacas,’’ although, remarks the writer, they present more the form of
fortresses or castles than burying-grounds.” A triple wall surrounded the city.
These walls are often three yards
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in thickness and
from fifteen to twenty feet high. To the east of these is the enormous mound
called Huaca of Pando . . and the great ruins of fortresses, which natives
entitle Huaca of the Bell. La Campana, the Huacas of Pando, consisting of a
series of large and small mounds, and extending over a stretch of ground
incalculable without being measured, form a colossal accumulation. The ‘‘Bell’’
mound is 110 feet high. Towards Callao there is an oblong plateau (278 yards
long and ninety-six across), having on the top eight gradations of declivity,
each from one to two yards lower than its neighbour, and making a total in
length and breadth of about 278 yards, according to the calculation of J. B.
Steere, of Michigan, Professor of Natural History.
The square plateau
first mentioned, at the base consists of two divisions each measuring a perfect
square forty-seven to forty eight yards; the two joining form the square of
ninety-six yards. Besides this, is another square of forty-seven to forty-eight
yards. On the top, returning again, we find the same symmetry of measurement in
the multiples of twelve, nearly all the ruins in this valley being the same,
which is a fact for the curious. Was it by accident or design?
The mound is a
truncated pyramidal form, and is calculated to contain a mass of 14,641,820
cubit feet of material. . . . The “Fortress” is a huge structure, eighty feet
high and 150 yards in measurement. Many large square rooms show their outlines
on the top, but are filled with earth. Who brought this earth here, and with
what object was the filling-up accomplished? The work of obliterating all space
in these rooms with loose earth must have been almost as great as the
construction of the building itself. . . . Two miles south we find another
similar structure, more spacious and with a greater number of apartments. . .
It is nearly 170 yards in length, and 168 in breadth, and ninety-eight feet
high. The whole of these ruins• • • were enclosed by high walls of adobes—large
mud bricks— some from one to two yards in thickness, length and breadth. The
“huaca” of the “Bell” contains about 20,220,840 cubic feet of material, while
that of “San Miguel” has 25,650,800. These two buildings, with their terraces,
parapets and bastions, with a large number of rooms and squares, are now filled
up with earth!
Near “Mira Flores”
is Ocheran—the largest mound in the Huatica valley. It has ninety-five feet of
elevation and a width of fifty-five yards on the summit, and a total length of
428 yards, or 1,284 feet,
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another multiple of
twelve. It is enclosed by a double wall, 8 yards in length by 700 across, thus
enclosing 117 acres. Between Ocharas and the ocean are from fifteen to twenty
masses of ruins like those already described.
The Inca temple of
the Sun, like the temple of Cholula on the plains of Mexico, is a sort of vast
terraced pyramid of earth. It is from 200 to 300 feet high, and forms a
semi-lunar shape that is beyond half a mile in extent. Its top measures about
ten acres square. Many of the walls are washed over with red paint, and are as
fresh and bright as when centuries ago it was first put on. . . . In the Canete
valley, opposite the Chincha Guano Islands, are extensive ruins, described by
Squier. From the hill called “Hill of Gold,” copper and silver pins were taken
like those used by ladies to pin their shawls; also tweezers the pulling out
the hair of the eyebrows, eyelids and whiskers, as well as silver cups.
Dr. Heath observes:
The coast of Peru
extends from Tumbey to the river Loa, a distance of 1,233 miles. Scattered over
this whole extent there are thousands of ruins besides those just mentioned,
while nearly every hill and spire of the mountains have upon them or about them
some relic of the past; and in every ravine, from the coast to the central
plateau, there are ruins of walls, cities, fortresses, burial-vaults and miles
and miles of terraces and water-courses. Across the plateau and down the
eastern slope of the Andes to the home of the wild Indian, and into the unknown
inpenetrable forest, still you find them. In the mountains, however, where
showers of rain and snow with the terrific thunder and lightning are nearly
constant a numher of months each year, the ruins are different. Of granite,
porphyritic lime and silicated sandstone, these massive, colossal, cyclopean
structures have resisted the disintegration of time, geological
transformations, earthquakes, and the sacrilegious, destructive hand of the
warrior and treasure-seeker. The masonry composing these walls, temples,
houses, towers, fortresses, or sepulchres, is uncemented, held in place by the
inchne of the walls from the perpendicular, and adaptation of each stone to the
Place destined for it, the stones having from six to many sides, each dressed
and smoothed to fit another or others with such exactness that the blade of a
small penknife cannot be inserted in any of the seams thus formed, whether in
the central parts entirely hidden or on the internal or external surfaces.
These stones, selected with no reference to uniformity in shape or size, vary
from one-half cubic foot to 1,500 cubic feet solid contents, and if, in the
many, many millions of stones you could find one that would fit in time place
of another, it would he purely accidental. In “Triumph Street,” in time city of
Cuzco, in a part of the wall of the ancient house of the Virgins of the Sun, is
a very large stone, known as “the stone of the twelve corners,” since it is
joined with those that surround it, by twelve faces, each having a different
angle. Besides these twelve
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faces it has its
internal one, and no one knows how many it has on its back that is hidden in
the masonry. In the wall in the centre of the Cuzco fortress there are stones thirteen
feet high, fifteen feet long, and eight feet thick, and all have been quarried
miles away. Near this city there is an oblong smooth boulder, eighteen feet in
its longer axis and twelve feet in its lesser. On one side are large niches cut
out, in which a man can stand, and, by swaying his body, can cause the stone to
rock. These niches apparently were made solely for this purpose. One of the
most wonderful and extensive of these works in stone is that called
Ollantay-Tambo, a ruin situated thirty miles north of Cuzco, in a narrow ravine
on the bank of the river Urubamba. It consists of a fortress constructed on the
top of a sloping, craggy eminence. Extending from it to the plain below is a
stony stairway. At the top of the stairway are six large slabs, twelve feet
high, five feet wide and three feet thick, side by side, having between them
and on top narrow strips of stone about six inches wide, frames, as it were, to
the slabs, and all being of dressed stone. At the bottom of the hall, part of
which was made by hand, and at the foot of the stairs, a stone wall ten feet
wide and twelve feet high extends some distance into the plain. In it are many
niches all facing the sooth.
The ruins in the
islands in Lake Titicaca, where local history begins, have often been
described.
At Tiahuanaco, a
few miles south of the lake, there are stones in the form of columns, partly
dressed, placed in line at certain distances from each other, and having an
elevation above the ground of from eighteen to twenty feet. In this same line
there is a monolithic doorway, now broken, ten feet high by thirteen wide. The
space cut out for the door is seven feet four inches high by three feet two
inches wide. The whole face of the stone above the door is engraved. Another,
similar, but smaller, lies on tho ground beside it. These stones are of hard
porphyry, and differ geologically from the surrounding rock; hence we infer
they must have been brought from elsewhere.
At “Chavin de
Huanta.’’ a town in the province of Huari, there are some ruins worthy of note.
The entrance to them is by an alley.way, six feet wide and nine feet high,
roofed over with sandstone partly dressed, of more than twelve feet in length.
On each side there are rooms twelve feet wide, roofed over by large pieces of
sandstone, one and a half feet thick and front six to nine feet wide. The walls
of the rooms are six feet thick and have some loopholes in them, probably for
ventilation. In the floor of thus passage there is a very narrow entrance to a
subterranean passage that passes beneath the river to the other side. From this
many huacas. stone drinking vessels, instruments of copper and silver, and a
skeleton of an Indian sitting were taken. The greater part of these ruins were
situated over aqueducts. The bridge to these castles is made of three stones of
dressed granite, twenty-four feet long, two feet wide by one and a half thick.
Some of the granite stones are covered with hieroglyphics.
At Corralones,
twenty-fonr miles front Arequipa, there are hieroglyphics engraved on masses of
granite, which appear as if painted with chalk. There are figures of men,
llamas, circles, parallelograms, letters like an R and an 0, and even remains
of a system of astronomy.
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At Huaytar, in the
province of Castro Virreina, there is an edifice with the same engravings.
At Nazca, in the
province of Ica, there are some wonderful ruins of aqueducts, four to five feet
high and three feet wide, very straight, double-walled, of unfinished stone,
flagged on top.
At Quelap, not far
from Chochapayas, there have lately been examined some extensive works; a wall
of dressed stone, 560 feet wide, 3,660 long, and 150 feet high. The lower part
is solid. Another wall above this has 600 feet length, 500 width, and the same
elevation of 150 feet. There are niches over both walls three feet long, one
and a half wide and thick, containing the remains of the ancient inhabitants,
some naked, others enveloped in shawls of cotton of distinct colours and well
embroidered.
Following the
entrances of the second and highest wall, there are other sepulchres like small
ovens, six feet high and twenty-four in circumference; in their base are flags,
upon which some cadavers reposed. On the north side there is on the
perpendicular rocky side of the mountain a brick wall, having small windows,
600 feet from the bottom. No reason for this, nor means of approach, can now be
found. The skilful construction of utensils of gold and silver that were found
here, the ingenuity and solidity of this gigantic work of dressed stone, make
it also probably of pre-Incal date. . . Estimating 500 ravines in the 1,200
miles of Peru, and ten miles of terraces of fifty tiers to each ravine, which
would only be five miles of twenty-five tiers to each side, we have 250,000
miles of stone wall, averaging three to four feet high—enough to encircle this
globe ten times. Surprising as these estimates may seem, I am fully convinced
that all actual measurement would more than double them, for these ravines vary
from thirty to 100 miiles in length. While at San Mateo, a town in the valley
of the river Rimac, where the mountains rise to a height of 1,500 or 2,000 feet
above the river bed, I counted 200 tiers, none of which were less than four and
many more than six miles long.
Dr. Heath then very
pertinently enquires:
Who then were these
people, cutting through sixty miles of granite; transplanting blocks of hard porphyry,
of Baalbec dimensions, miles from the place where quarried, across valleys
thousands of feet deep, over mountains, along plains, leaving no trace of how
or where they carried them; people (said to be) ignorant of the use of wood,
with the feeble llama their only beast of burden; who after having brought
these stones fitted them into other stones with mosaic precision; terracing
thousands of miles of mountain side; building lulls of adobes and earth, and
huge cities; leaving works in clay, stone, copper, silver, gold and embroidery,
many of which cannot he duplicated at the present age; people apparently vying
with Dives in riches, Hercules in strength and energy, and the ant and bee
industry?
Callao was
submerged in 1746 and entirely destroyed. Lima was ruined in 1678; in 1746 only
twenty houses out of 3,000 were left standing, while the ancient cities in the
Huatica and Lurin valleys still remain in a comparatively good state of
preservation. San Miguel de
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Puiro, founded by
Pizarro in 1531, was entirely destroyed in 1855, while the old ruins near by
suffered little. Arequipo was thrown down in August, 1868, but the ruins near
show no change. In engineering, at least, the present may learn from the past.
We hope to show that it may in most things else.
IV.
To refer all these
cyclopean constructions, then, to the days of the Incas, is, as we have shown
before, yet more inconsistent, and seems even a greater fallacy than that too
common one of attributing every rock-temple of India to Buddhist excavators. As
many authorities show—Dr. Heath among the rest—Inca history only dates back to
the eleventh century A.D., and the period, from that time to the Conquest, is
utterly insufficient to account for such grandiose and innumerable works; nor
do the Spanish historians know much of them. Nor again, must we forget that the
temples of heathendom were odious to the narrow bigotry of the Roman Catholic
fanatics of those days; and that, whenever the chance offered, they either
converted them into Christian churches or razed them to the ground. Another
strong objection to the idea lies in the fact that the Incas were destitute of
a written language, and that these antique relics of bygone ages are covered
with hieroglyphics.
It is granted that
the temple of the Sun, at Cuzco, was of Incal make, but that is the latest of
the five styles of architecture visible in the Andes, each probably
representing an age of human progress.
The hieroglyphics
of Peru and Central America have been, are, and will most probably remain for
ever as dead a letter to our cryptographers as they were to the Incas. The
latter like the barbarous ancient Chinese and Mexicans kept their records by
means of a quipus (or knot in Peruvian)—a cord, several feet long, composed of
different coloured threads, from which a multicoloured fringe was suspended;
each colour denoting a sensible object, and knots serving as ciphers. Says
Prescott:
The mysterious
science of the quipus supplied the Peruvians with the means of communicating
their ideas to one another, and of transmitting them to future generations.
Each locality,
however, had its own method of interpreting these elaborate records, hence a
quipus was only intelligible in the place where it was kept. Dr. Heath writes:
Many quipus have
been taken from the graves, in an excellent state of preservation in colour and
texture, but the lips that alone could pronounce the verbal key have
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for ever ceased
their function, and the relic-seeker has failed to note the exact spot where
each was found, so that the records, which could tell so much we want to know,
will remain sealed till all is revealed at the last day
—if anything at all
is revealed then. But what is certainly as good as a revelation now, while our
brains are in function, and our mind is acutely alive to some preeminently
suggestive facts, is the incessant discoveries of archæology, ethnology and
other sciences. It is the almost irrepressible conviction that man having
existed upon earth millions of years—for all we know—the theory of cycles is
the only plausible theory to solve the great problems of humanity, the rise and
fall of numberless nations and races, and the ethnological differences among
the latter. This difference—which, though as marked as the one between a
handsome and intellectual European and a Digger Indian, yet makes the ignorant
shudder and raise a great outcry at the thought of destroying the imaginary
“great gulf between man and brute creation ‘‘—might thus be well accounted for.
The Digger Indian, then, in company with many other savage, though to him
superior, nations, which are evidently dying out to afford room to men and
races of a superior kind, would have to be regarded in the same light as so
many dying-out species of animals—and no more. Who can tell but that the
forefathers of this flat-headed savage—forefathers who may have lived and prospered
amidst the highest civilization before the glacial period—were in arts and
sciences far beyond those of the present civilization, though, it may be, in
quite another direction? That man has lived in America, at least 50,000 years
ago, is now proved scientifically and remains a fact beyond doubt or cavil. In
a lecture delivered at Manchester, in June last, by Mr. H. A. Allbutt, Honorary
Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society, the lecturer stated the following:
Near New Orleans,
in one part of the modern delta, in excavating for gas works, a series of beds,
almost wholly made up of vegetable matter, were dug through. In the excavation,
at a depth of sixteen feet from the upper surface, and beneath four buried
forests, one on the top of the other, the labourers discovered some charcoal
and the skeleton of a man, the cranium of which was reported to be that of the
type of the aboriginal Red Indian race. To this skeleton Dr. Dowler ascribed
all antiquity of some 50,000 years.
The irresistible
cycle in the course of time brought down the descendants of the contemporaries
of the late inhabitant of this skeleton, and intellectually as well as
physically they have degenerated, as the present elephant has degenerated from
his proud and monstrous forefather, the antediluvian Sivatherium, whose fossil
remains are still
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found in the
Himalayas, or, as the lizard has from the plesiosaurus. Why should man be the
only species upon earth which has never changed in form since the first day of
his appearance upon this planet? The fancied superiority of every generation of
mankind over the preceding one is not yet so well established as to make it
impossible for us to learn some day that, as in everything else, the theory is
a two-sided question—incessant progress on the one side, and an as irresistible
decadence on the other, of the cycle.
Even as regards
knowledge and power, the advance, which some claim as a characteristic feature
of humanity, is effected by exceptional individuals who arise in certain races
under favourable circumstances only, and is quite compatible with long
intervals of immobility, and even of decline,*
says a modern man
of science. This point is corroborated by what we see in the modern degenerate
descendants of the great and powerful races of ancient America—the Peruvians
and the Mexicans.
How changed! How
fallen from their greatness must have been the Incas, when a little band of 160
men could penetrate, uninjured, to their mountain homes, murder their worshipped
kings and thousands of their warriors, and carry away their riches, and that,
too, in a country where a few men with stones could resist an army
successfully! Who could recognize in the present Inichua and Aymara Indians
their noble ancestry?
Thus writes Dr.
Heath, and his conviction that America was once united with Europe, Asia,
Africa and Australia, seems as firm as our own. There must exist geological and
physical cycles as well as intellectual and spiritual; globes and planets, as
well as races and nations, are born to grow, progress, decline and—die. Great
nations split, scatter into small tribes, lose all remembrance of their
integrity, gradually fall into their primitive state and—disappear, one after
the other, from the face of the earth. So do great continents. Ceylon must have
formed, once upon a time, part of the Indian continent. So, to all appearance,
was Spain once joined to Africa, the narrow channel between Gibraltar and the
latter continent having been once upon a time dry land. Gibraltar is full of
large apes of the same kind as those which are found in great numbers on the
opposite side of the African coast, whereas nowhere in Spain is either a monkey
or ape to be found at any place whatever. And the caves of Gibraltar are also full
of gigantic human bones, supporting the theory that they belong to an
antediluvian race of men. The same Dr. Heath mentions the town
—————
* Journal of
Science for February, art. “The Alleged Distinction between Man and Brute.’’
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of Eten in 10° S.
latitude of America, in which the inhabitants of an unknown tribe of men speak
a monosyllabic language that imported Chinese labourers understood from the
first day of their arrival. They have their own laws, customs and dress,
neither holding nor permitting communication with the outside world. No one can
tell whence they came or when; whether it was before or after the Spanish
Conquest. They are a living mystery to all who chance to visit them.
With such facts
before us to puzzle exact science herself, and show our entire ignorance of the
past, verily, we recognize no right of any man on earth— in geography or
ethnology, in exact or abstract sciences—to tell his neighbour, “So far shalt
thou go, and no further!”
But recognizing our
debt of gratitude to Dr. Heath of Kansas, whose able and interesting paper has
furnished us with such a number of facts and suggested such possibilities, we
can do no better than quote his concluding reflections:
Thirteen thousand
years ago, Vega or a lyræ was the north polar star; since then how many changes
has she seen in our planet! How many nations and races spring into life, rise
to their zenith of splendour, and then decay; and when we shall have been gone
thirteen thousand years, and once more she resumes her post at the north,
completing a “Platonic or Great Year,” think you that those who shall fill our
places on the earth at that time will be more conversant with our history than
we are of those that have passed? Verily might we exclaim, in terms almost
psalmistic, “Great God, Creator and Director of the Universe, what is man that
Thou art mindful of him!’’
Amen! ought to be
the response of such as yet believe in a God who is “the Creator and Director
of the Universe.”
WHICH FIRST—THE EGG
OR THE
BIRD?
I Beg to present my
warmest thanks to Mr. William Simpson, F.R.G.S., the distinguished artist and
antiquary, who last year extended his researches to Peshawur valley and
elsewhere, and thereby so enriched the Lahore Museum, for kindly presenting me
with a copy of his very valuable paper, “Buddhist Architecture: Jellalabad,”
enriched with seven illustrations. Our thanks are none the less due to Mr.
Simpson, that in one point, and a very important one too, it is impossible for
either our Society or myself, to agree with his conclusions. The feature of Mr.
Simpson’s interesting and learned paper is, to quote the words of Mr. James
Fergusson, F.R.G.S., Past Vice-President, that every “form of art was imported
into India, and nothing ever came out of it” (the italics are mine). Mr.
Simpson builds his hasty conclusions upon the fact that most of the capitals of
the pillars and pilasters in the ruins of the valley of the Kabul river, are
Corinthian, and “the bases and mouldings generally are such as are most
unmistakably derived from the far west,” and finally that a “number of
bell-shaped capitals, surmounted by double animals which look like a reminiscence
of the pillars of Persepolis,” are also found in the caves of Karli, and other
caves of India, as well as in the valley of Peshawur.
I will not limit my
protest in this case to merely pointing to the words of Mr. Fergusson, who
cautiously remarks that “the similarity is, however, so remote that it is
hardly sufficient to sustain Mr. Simpson’s assertion that every form of art was
imported into India, and nothing ever came out of it.” But I will humbly
suggest that in a country like India, whose past history is a total blank,
every attempt to decide the age of the monuments, or whether their style was
original or borrowed, is now pretty much as open a question as it was a century
ago. A new discovery may any day annihilate the theory of the day
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before. Lack of
space forbids me to enter upon the discussion more elaborately. Therefore, I
will permit myself only to say that Mr. Simpson’s present “assertion” remains
as hypothetical as before. Otherwise, we would have to decide a priori, whether
India or Greece borrowed from the other in other important cases now pending.
Besides “Corinthian pillars” and “double animals,” once so dear to the
Persepolitans, we have, here, the solar race of the Hari-Kula (Sun family)
whose deeds must have been a copy of, or the model for, the labours and very
name of the Grecian Sun-God Hercules. No less is it a matter for the consideration
of philologists and archæologists which of the two—the Egyptian Sphinx, called
by them Harimukh, or Har-M-Kho (the Sun in his resting-place) or the lofty
Himalaya peak, also called Harimukh (the mouth of the Sun) in the range to the
north of Cashmir, owes its name to the other.
THE PRALAYA OF
MODERN
SCIENCE
[Vol. II. No. I,
October, 1880.]
IF’ Science is
right, then the future of our Solar System—hence of what we call the
universe—offers but little of hope or consolation for our descendants. Two of
her votaries, Messrs. Thompson and Klausius, have simultaneously reached the
conclusive opinion that the universe is doomed at some future, and not very
remote period, to destruction. Such is also the theory of several other
astronomers, one and all describing the gradual cooling off and the final
dissolution of our planet in terms nearly identical with those used by the
greatest Hindu and even some of the Greek sages. One might almost think he were
reading over again Manu, Kanâda, Kapila and others. The following are some of
the newest theories of our Western pandits.
All the ponderable
masses which must have separated themselves at the evolution or first
appearance upon the earth from the primeval mass of matter, will reunite
themselves again into one gigantic and boundless heavenly body, every visible
movement in this mass will be arrested, and alone the molecular motion will
remain, which will equally spread throughout this ponderous body under the form
of heat,
say our scientists.
Kanâda, the atomist, the old Hindu sage, said as much. He remarks:
In creation two
atoms begin to be agitated, till at length they become separated from their
former union and then unite, by which a new substance is formed, which
possesses the qualities of the things from which it arose.
Lohschmidt, the
Austrian professor of mathematics and astronomy and the English astronomer,
Proctor, treating of the same subject, have both arrived at another and
different view of the cause from which will come the future dissolution of the
world. They attribute it to the gradual and slow cooling of the sun, which must
result in the final extinction of this planet some day. All the planets will
then, following
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the law of
gravitation, tumble in upon the inanimate cold luminary, and coalesce with it
into one huge body. If this thing should happen, says the German savant, and
such a period begins, then it is impossible that it should last for ever, for
such a state would not be one of absolute equilibrium. During a wonderful
period of time, the sun, gradually hardening, will go on absorbing the radiant
heat from the universal space, and concentrating it around itself.
But let us listen
to Professor Tay upon this question. According to his opinion, the total
cooling off of our planet will bring with it this unavoidable death. Animal and
vegetable life which will have, previous to that event, shifted its quarters
from the northern and already frozen regions to the equator, will then finally
and for ever disappear from the surface of the globe, without leaving behind
any trace of its existence. The earth will be wrapped in dense cold and
darkness; the now ceaseless atmospheric motion will have changed into complete
rest and silence; the last clouds will have poured upon the earth their last
rain; the course of the streams and rivers bereaved of their vivifier and
motor—the sun—will be arrested, and the seas frozen into a mass. Our globe will
have no other light than the occasional glimmering of the shooting stars, which
will not yet have ceased to penetrate into and become inflamed in our atmosphere.
Perhaps, too, the sun under the influence of the cataclysm of the solar mass,
will yet exhibit for a time some signs of vitality, and heat and light will
reenter it for a short space of time; but the reaction will not fail to
reassert itself, for the sun, powerless and dying, will again become extinct,
and this time for ever. Such a change was remarked and actually took place in
the now extinct constellations of the Swan, the Crown, and the Ophiucus in the
first period of their cooling And the same fate will reach all the other
planets, which, meanwhile, obeying the law of inertia, will go on revolving
around the extinct sun Further on the learned astronomer depicts the last year
of the expiring globe in the very words of a Hindu philosopher describing the
Pralaya:
Cold and death blow
from the northern pole, and spread along the entire face of the earth,
nine-tenths of which have already expired. Life, hardly perceptible, is all
concentrated at her heart—the equator—in the few remaining regions which are
yet inhabited, and where reigns a complete confusion of tongues and
nationalities. The surviving representatives of the human race are soon joined
by the largest specimens of animals which are also driven there by the intense
cold. One object, one aspiration, huddles together all this varied mass of
beings—the struggle for life. Groups of animals without distinction of kinds
crowd together
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into one herd in
the hope of finding some heat in the rapidly freezing bodies; snakes threaten
no more with their poisonous fangs, nor lions and tigers with their sharp
claws; all that each of them begs for is life—nothing but life, life to the
last minute! At last comes that last day, and the pale and expiring rays of the
sun illuminate the following gloomy scene: the frozen bodies of the last of the
human family, dead from cold and lack of air, on the shores of a likewise
rapidly freezing motionless sea.
The words may not
be precisely those of the learned professor, for they are utilized from notes
taken in a foreign language, but the ideas are literally his. The picture is
indeed gloomy, but the ideas, based upon scientific mathematical deductions,
are not new, and we have read in a Hindu author of the pre-Christian era a
description of the same catastrophe as given by Manu in a language far superior
to this one. The general reader is invited to compare, and the Hindu reader to
see in this one more corroboration of the great wisdom and knowledge of his
forefathers, who anticipated the modern researches in almost every thing.
Strange noises are
heard proceeding from every point. . . . These are the precursors of the Night
of Brahmâ. Dusk rises at the horizon and the sun passes away. Gradually light
pales, heat diminishes, uninhabitable spots multiply on the earth, the air
becomes more and more rarefied, the springs of waters dry up, the great rivers
see their waves exhausted, the ocean shows its sandy bottom, and plants die. .
. . Life and motion lose their force; planets can hardly gravitate in space;
they are extinguished one by one. Surya flickers and goes out; matter falls
into dissolution, and Brahmâ (the creative force) merges back into Dyaus, the
unrevealed, and his task being accomphshed he falls asleep. . .
Night for the
universe has come! (By VAMADEVA.)
THE YOGA
PHILOSOPHY*
—————
[ Vol. II. Nos. 2,
4 and 7, November,1880, and January and April, 1881.]
[Yoga, or human
hibernation, being only prolonged sleep, it is interesting to notice that there
are instances on record of individuals sleeping for weeks, months, nay, even
for years.]
We have ourself
known a Russian lady—Mme. Kashereninoff—whose sister, then an unmarried lady
about twenty-seven, slept regularly for six weeks at a time. After that period
she would awake, weak but not very exhausted, and ask for some milk, her
habitual food. At the end of a fortnight, sometimes three weeks, she would
begin to show the mistakable signs of somnolence, and at the end of a month
fall into her trance again. Thus it lasted for seven years, she being
considered by the populace a great saint. It was in 1841. What became of her
after that we are unable to say.
[Yoga has been
differently defined by different authorities. Some have defined it as mental
abstraction some have defined it as silent prayer; some have defined it as the
Union of the inspired to the expired air; some have defined it as the union of
mind to soul. But by Yoga, I understand the art of suspending the respiration
and circulation. Yoga is chiefly divided into Râja Yoga and Hatha Yoga.]
Here the author
falls into an unmistakable error He confounds the Râja with the Hatha Yogins,
whereas the former have nothing to do with the physical training of the Hatha
nor with any other of the innumerable sects who have now adopted the name and
emblems of Yogins. Wilson, in his Essays on the Religions of the Hindus, falls
into the same confusion, and knows very little, if anything at all of the true
Râja Yogins, who have no more to do with Shiva than with Vishnu, or any other deity.
Alone, the most learned among the Shankara’s Dandins of Northern India,
especially those who are settled in Râjputâna, would be able—if they were
willing—to give some correct notions about the
—————
* The paragraphs in
small type within square brackets are summarized from an article in The
Theosophist to which H. P. B. attached notes. We insert them to render the
comments intelligible.
339—————————————————————THE YOGA PHILOSOPHY.
Râja Yogins; for
these men, who have adopted the philosophical tenets of Shankara’s Vedânta are,
moreover, profoundly versed in the doctrines of the Tantras—termed devilish by
those who either do not understand them or reject their tenets with some
preconceived object. If in speaking of the Dandins we have used above the phrase
beginning with the conjunction “if,” it is because we happen to know how
carefully the secrets of the real Yogins—nay even their existence itself—are
denied within this fraternity. It is comparatively but lately that the usual
excuse adopted by them, in support of which they bring their strongest
authorities, who affirm that the Yoga state is unattainable in the present or
Kali age, has been set afloat by them. “From the unsteadiness of the senses,
the prevalence of sin in the Kali, and the shortness of life, how can
exaltation by Yoga be obtained?” enquires Kâshikhanda. But this declaration can
be refuted in two words and with their own weapons. The duration of the present
Kali Yuga is 432,000 years, of which 4,979 have already expired. It is at the very
beginning of Kali Yuga that Krishna and Arjuna were born. It is since Vishnu’s
eighth incarnation that the country had all its historical Yogins, for as to
the prehistoric ones, or those claimed as such, we do not find ourselves
entitled to force them upon public notice. Are we then to understand that none
of these numerous saints, philosophers and ascetics from Krishna down to the
late Vishnu Brahmachari Bawa of Bombay had ever reached the “exaltation by
Yoga”? To repeat this assertion is simply suicidal to their own interests.
It is not that
among the Hatha Yogins—men who at times had reached through a physical and
well-organized system of training the highest powers as “wonder workers”—there
has never been a man worthy of being considered as a true Yogin. What we say is
simply this: the Râja Yogin trains but his mental and intellectual powers,
leaving the physical alone and making but little of the exercise of phenomena
simply of a physical character. Hence it is the rarest thing in the world to
find a real Yogin boasting of being one, or willing to exhibit such
powers—though he does acquire them as well as the one practising Hath Yoga, but
through another and far more intellectual system. Generally they deny these
powers point-blank, for reasons but too well grounded. The former need not even
belong to any apparent order of ascetics, and are oftener known as private
individuals than members of a religious fraternity, nor need they necessarily
be Hindus. Kabir, who was one of them, fulminates against most of the later
sects
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of mendicants who
occasionally become warriors when not simply brigands, and sketches them with a
masterly hand:
I never beheld,
such a Yogin , 0 brother! who, forgetting his doctrine, roves about in
negligence. He follows professedly the faith of Mahadeva and calls himself an
eminent teacher: the scene of his abstraction is the fair or the market. Maya.
is the mistress of the false saint. When did Dattatraya demolish a dwelling
When did Sukhadeva collect an armed host? When did Nârada mount a matchlock?
When did Vyâsadeva blow a trumpet? etc.
Therefore, whenever
the author—Dr. Paul—speaks of Râja Yoga, the Hatha simply is to be understood.
[Minute directions
then follow for the practising of postures, the repetition of Mantras; and
Yamyasana and Pranayama, or the inspiration and suspension of the breath.]
All the above are,
as we said before, the practices of Hatha Yoga, and conducive but to the
production of physical phenomena affording very rarely flashes of real
clairvoyance, unless it be a kind of feverish state of artificial ecstasy. If
we publish them, it is merely for the great value we set upon this information
as liable to afford a glimpse of truth to sceptics, by showing them that even
in the case of the Hatha Yogins, the cause for the production of the phenomena
as well as the results obtained can be all explained scientifically; and that
therefore there is no need to either reject the phenomena a priori and without
investigation or to attribute them to any but natural, though occult powers,
more or less latent in every man and woman.
[Dr. Paul next
describes the eight varieties. Kumbhaka, which Yogins practise with a view to
study the nature of the Soul. Khechari Mudra. is the lengthening the tongue by
splitting and then “milking” it until it is long enough to be turned back into
the gullet, and, with its point, to press the epiglottis and so close the rima
glottidis, which confines the inspired air within the system, the lungs and
intestines being completely filled. By this practice he becomes insensible to
every thing that is external. ‘‘Without it,” says Dr. Paul, “He can never be
absorbed into God.”]
As the science and
study of Yoga Philosophy pertains to Buddhist, Lamaic and other religions
supposed to be atheistical, i.e., rejecting belief in a personal deity, and as
a Vedântin would by no means use such an expression, we must understand the
term “absorption into God” in the sense of union with the Universal Soul, or
Parama-Purusha—the primal or One Spirit.
[Directions are
then given for the practice of Mulabandha, a process by which youth is said to
be restored to an old man.]
341———————————————————THE YOGA PHILOSOPHY.
This posture will
hardly have the desired effect unless its philosophy is well understood and it
is practised from youth. The appearance of old age, when the skin has wrinkled
and the tissues have relaxed, can be restored but temporarily, and with the
help of Mâyâ. The Mulabandha is simply a process to throw oneself into sleep
(thus gaining the regular hours of sleep).
[Ujjayi Kumbhaka.
Assume the posture called Sukhasana, render the two nostrils free by the first
Kumbhaka, inspire through both nostrils, fill the stomach and throat with the
inspired air, and then expire slowly through the left nostril. He that
practises this Kumbhaka cures all diseases dependent upon deficient inhala tion
of oxygen.
And if anyone feels
inclined to sneer at the novel remedy employed by the Yogins to cure “coryza,”
“worms” and other diseases—which is only a certain mode of inhalation—his
attention is invited to the fact that these illiterate and superstitious
ascetics seem to have only anticipated the discoveries of modern science. One
of the latest is reported in the last number of the New York Medical Record
(Sept.,1888), under the title of “A New and Curious Plan for Deadening Pain.”
The experiments were made by Dr Bonwill, a well-known physician of
Philadelphia, in 1872, and have been since successfully applied as an an We
quote it from the Dubuque Daily Telegraph :
In 1875 Dr. A.
Hewson made a favourable report of his experience with it to the International
Medical Congress, and at a recent meeting of the Philadelphia County Medical
Society several papers were read on the subject, and much discussion followed.
In using the method, the operator merely requests the patient to breathe rapidly,
making about one hundred respirations per minute, ending in rapid puffing
expirations. At the end of from two to five minutes an entire or partial
absence of pain results for half a minute or more, and during that time teeth
may be drawn or incisions made. The patient may be in any position, but that
recommended is lying on the side, and it is generally best to throw a
handkerchief over the face to prevent distraction of the patient’s attention.
When the rapid breathing is first begun the patient may feel some exhilaration
, following this comes a sensation of fulness in the head or dizziness. The
face is at first flushed and afterwards pale or even bluish, the heart beats
rather feebly and fast, but the sense of touch is not affected, nor is consciousness
lost. The effect is produced more readily in females than in males, and in
middle—aged more easily than in the old; children can hardly be made to breathe
properly. It is denied that there is any possible danger. Several minor
operations, other than dental ones, have been successfully made by this method,
and it is claimed that in dentistry, surgery and obstetrics it may supplant the
common anæsthetics. Dr. Hewson’s explanation is that rapid breathing
diminishies the oxygenation of the blood, and that the resultant excess of
carbonic acid temporarily poisons the nerve centres. Dr. Bonwill gives several
explanations, one
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being the specific
effect of carbonic acid, another the diversion of will-force produced by rapid
voluntary muscular action, and, third, the damming up of the blood in the
brain, due to the excessive amount of air passing into the lungs. The Record is
not satisfied with the theories, but considers it well proved that pain may be
deadened by the method, which it commends to the profession for the
experimental determination of its precise value.
And if it be well
proved that about one hundred respirations per minute ending in rapid puffing
expirations can successfully deaden pain, then why should not a varied mode of
inhaling oxygen be productive of other and still more extraordinary results,
yet unknown to Science, but awaiting her future discoveries?
[After speaking at
some length concerning Samâdhi and of the various branches of Raja Yoga, Dr.
Paul’s remarks call forth the following note.]
This system,
evolved by long ages of practice until it was brought to bear the
above-described results, was not practised in India alone in the days of
antiquity The greatest philosophers of all countries sought to acquire these
powers, and, certainly, behind the external ridiculous postures of the Yogins
of to-day, lies concealed the profound wisdom of the archaic ages, one that
included among other things a perfect knowledge of what are now termed
physiology and psychology. Ammonius Saccas, Porphyry, Proclus and others
practised it in Egypt; and Greece and Rome did not hesitate at all in their
time of philosophical glory to follow suit. Pythagoras speaks of the celestial
music of the spheres that one hears in hours of ecstasy, Zeno finds a wise man
who, having conquered all passions, feels happiness and emotion but in the
midst of torture. Plato advocates the man of meditation and likens his powers
to those of the divinity and we see the
Christian ascetics themselves through a mere life of contemplation and
self-torture acquire powers of levitation or æthrobacy, which, though
attributed to the miraculous intervention of a personal God, are nevertheless
real and time result of physiological changes in the human body Says Patanjali:
The Yogin will hear
celestial sounds, the songs and conversations of celestial choirs. He will have
the perception of their touch in their passage through the air,
which, translated
into more sober language, means that the ascetic is enabled to see with the
spiritual eye in the Astral Light, hear with the spiritual ear subjective
sounds inaudible to others, and live and feel, so to say, in the Unseen
Universe.
The Yogin is able
to enter a dead or a living body by the path of the senses, and in this body to
act as though it were his own.
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YOGA PHILOSOPHY.
The “path of the
senses”; our physical senses, supposed to originate in the astral body, the
ethereal counterpart of man, or the jivâtma, which dies with the body; the
senses are here meant in their spiritual sense—volition of the higher principle
in man. The true Râja Yogin is a stoic; and Kapila, who deals but with the
latter—utterly rejecting the claim of the Hatha Yogins to converse during
Samâdhi with the Infinite Ishvara—describes their state in the following words:
To a Yogin in whose
mind all things are identified as spirit, what is infatuation ? What is grief?
He sees all things as one; he is destitute of affections; he neither rejoices
in good nor is offended with evil. . . A wise man sees so many false things in
those which are called true, so much misery in what is called happiness, that
he turns away with disgust he who in the body has obtained liberation (from the
tyranny of the senses) is of no caste, of no sect, of no order, attends to no
duties, adheres to no shastras, to no formulas, to no works of merit; he is
beyond the reach of speech; he remains at a distance from all secular concerns;
he has renounced the love and the knowledge of all sensible objects; he
flatters none, he honours none, he is not worshipped, he worships none; whether
he practises and follows the customs of his fellow-men or not this is his
character.
And a selfish and a
disgustingly misanthropical one this character would be were it that for which
the True Adept was striving. But it must not be understood literally, and we
shall have something more to say upon the subject in the following article,
which will conclude Dr. Paul’s essay on yoga Philosophy.
[One of the
practices followed by the Hatha Yogin is called Dhauti. This is the act of
swallowing a bandage of linen moistened with water, measuring three inches in
breadth and fifteen cubits in length. This is rather a difficult process. But
very few fakirs can practise it.]
And a happy thing
it is that the process is so difficult, as we do not know of anything half so
disgusting. No true Râja Yogin will ever condescend to practise it. Besides, as
every physician can easily tell, the process, if repeated, becomes a very
dangerous one for the experimenter. There are other “processes” still more
hideous, and as use less for psychological purposes.
[Nor does his hair
grow during the time he remains buried.]
In reference to the
arrest of the growth of the hair, some adepts in the secret science claim to
know more than this. They prove their ability to completely suspend the
functions of life each night during the hours intended for sleep. Life then is,
so to say, held in total abeyance. The wear and tear of the inner as well as
the outer organ-
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ism being thus
artificially arrested, and there being no possibility of waste, these men
accumulate as much vital energy for use in their waking state as they would
have lost in sleep, during which state, if natural, the process of energy and
expense of force is still mechanically going on in the human body. In the
induced state described, as in that of a deep swoon, the brain no more dreams
than if it were dead. One century, if passed, would appear no longer than one
second, for all perception of time is lost for him who is subjected to it. Nor
do the hairs or nails grow under such circumstances, though they do for a
certain time in a body actually dead, which proves, if anything can, that the
atoms and tissues of the physical body are held under conditions quite
different from those of the state we call death. For, to use a physiological
paradox, life in a dead animal organism is even more intensely active than it
ever is in a living one, which, as we see, does not hold good in the case under
notice. Though the average sceptic may regard this statement as sheer nonsense
those who have experienced this in themselves know it as an undoubted fact.
Two certain fakirs
from Nepaul once agreed to try the experiment. One of them, previous to
attempting the hibernation, underwent all the ceremonies of preparation as
described by Dr. Paul, and took all the necessary precautions; the other simply
threw himself by a process known to himself and others into that temporary
state of complete paralysis which imposes no limits of time, may last months as
well as hours, and which is known in certain Tibetan lamaseries as .
The result was that
while the hair, beard and nails of the former had grown at the end of six
weeks, though feebly Yet perceptibly, the cells of the latter had remained as
closed and inactive as if he had been transformed for that lapse of time into a
marble statue. Not having personally seen either of these men, or the
experiment, we can vouch only in a general way for the possibility of the
phenomenon, not for the details of this peculiar case, though we would as soon
doubt our existence as the truthfulness of those from whom we have the story.
We only hope that among the sceptical and materialistic who may scoff, we may
not find either people who nevertheless accept with a firm and pious conviction
the story of the resurrection of the half decayed Lazarus amid other like
miracles, or yet those who while ready to crush a Theosophist for his beliefs,
would never dare to scoff at those of a Christian.
345—————————————————————THE
YOGA PHILOSOPHY.
[A Yogin acquires
an increase of specific gravity by swallowing great draughts of the air, and
compressing the same within the system.]
This is what, three
years ago, in describing the phenomenon in Isis Unveiled we called
“interpolarization.” (See vol. i. op. cit., pp.23 and 24.)
[On the powers
resulting from Prâpti, it is said . .]
As a deaf and dumb
person learns to understand the exact meaning of what is said simply from the
motion of the lips and face of the speaker, and without understanding any
language phonetically, other and extra senses can be developed in the soul as
well as in the physical mind of a mute, a sixth and equally phenomenal sense is
developed as the result of practice, which supplies for him the lack of the
other two.
Magnetic and
mesmeric aura, or “fluid,” can he generated and intensified in every man to an
almost miraculous extent, unless he be by nature utterly passive.
We have known of
such a faculty (divining the thoughts of others) to exist in individuals who
were far from being adepts or Yogins, and had never heard of the latter It can
be easily developed by intense will, perseverance and practice, especially in
persons who are born with natural analytical powers, intuitive perception, and
a certain aptness for observation and penetration. These may, if they only
preserve perfect purity, develop the faculty of divining people’s thoughts to a
degree which seems almost supernatural. Some very clever but quite uneducated
detectives in London and Paris, develop it in themselves to an almost faultless
perfection. It can also be helped by mathematical study and practice. If then
such is found to be the case with simple individuals, why not in men who have
devoted to it a whole life, helped on by a study of the accumulated experience
of many a generation of mystics and under the tuition of real adepts?
The dual soul is no
fancy and may be one day explained in scientific language, when the
psycho-physiological faculties of man shall be better studied, when the
possibility of many a now-doubted phenomenon is discovered, and when truth will
no longer be sacrificed to conceit, vanity and routine. Our physical senses
have nothing to do with the spiritual or psychological faculties. The latter
begin their action where the former stop, owing to that Chinese wall about the
soul empire, called matter.
[Concerning the
power called Vashitva, it is observed . .]
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Perhaps the
Hobilgans and the Shaberons of Tibet might have something to tell us if they
chose. The great secret which enwraps the mystery of the reincarnations of their
great Dalay-Lamas, their supreme Hobilgans, and others who as well as the
former are supposed, a few days after their enlightened souls have laid aside
their mortal clothing, to reincarnate themselves in young, and, previously to
that, very weak bodies of children, has never yet been told. These children,
who are invariably on the point of death when designated to have their bodies
become the tabernacles of the souls of deceased Buddhas, recover immediately
after the ceremony, and, barring accident, live long years, exhibiting trait
for trait the same peculiarities of temper, characteristics and predilections
as the dead man’s. Vashitva is also said to be the power of taming living
creatures and of making them obedient to one’s own wishes and orders.
[Pythagoras who
visited India, is said to have tamed by the influence of his will or word a
furious bear, prevented an ox from eating beans, and stopped an eagle in its
flight.]
These are mesmeric
feats and it is only by (in)exact scientists that mesmerism is denied in our
days. It is largely treated of in Isis, and the power of Pythagoras is
explained in vol. i. p. 283, et seq.
[Ishatwa or divine
power. When the passions are restrained from their desires, the mind becomes
tranquil and the soul is awakened.]
In which case it
means that the soul, being liberated from the yoke of the body through certain
practices, discipline and purity of life, during the lifetime of the latter,
acquires powers identical with its primitive element, the universal soul. It
has overpowered its material custodian; the terrestrial gross appetites and
passions of the latter, from being its despotic masters, have become its
slaves, hence the soul has become free henceforth to exercise its
transcendental powers,
untrammelled by any fetters.
[ regard to
restoring the dead to life.]
Life once extinct
can never be recalled, but another life and another soul can sometimes
reanimate the abandoned frame, if we may believe learned men who were never
known to utter an untruth.
Wherever the word
“soul” has occurred in the course of the above comments, the reader must bear
in mind that we do not use it in the sense of an immortal principle in man, but
in that of the group of personal qualities which are but a congeries of
material particles whose term of survival beyond the physical, or material,
personality is for a
347—————————————————————THE YOGA PHILOSOPHY.
longer or shorter
period, proportionately with the grossness or refinement of the individual.
Various correspondents have asked whether the Siddhis of Yoga call only be
acquired by the rude training of Hatha Yoga; and The Journal of Science
(London) assuming that they cannot, launched out in the violent expressions
which were recently quoted in these pages. But the fact is that there is another,
an unobjectionable and rational process, the particulars of which cannot be
given to tile idle enquirer, and which must not even be touched upon at the
latter end of a commentary like the present one. The subject may be reverted to
at a more favourable time.
A YEAR OF THEOSOPHY
————————————————————
[Vol. II. No. 4,
January,1881.]
THE dial of time
marks off another of the world’s hours......
And as the old year
passes into eternity, like a rain-drop falling into the ocean, its vacant place
on the calendar is occupied by a successor which, if one may credit the ancient
prophetic warnings of Mother Shipton and other seers, is to bring woe and
disaster to some portions of the world. Let it go with its joys and triumphs,
its badness and bitterness, if it but leave behind for our instruction the
memory of our experience and the lesson of our mistakes. Wise is he who lets
“the dead past bury its dead,” and turns with courage to meet the fresher
duties of the New Year; only the weak and foolish bemoan the irrevocable. It
will be well to take a brief retrospect of those incidents of the year 1880
(A.D.) which possess an interest for members of the Theosophical Society. The
more so since, in consequence of the absence from Bombay of the President and
Corresponding Secretary, the anniversary day of the Society was not publicly
celebrated.
It will not be
necessary to enter minutely into those details of administration which, however
important in themselves as links, weak or strong, in the general chain of
progress, and however they may have taxed the patience, nerves, or other
resources of the chief officers, do not at all interest the public. It is not
so much explanation as results that are demanded, and these in our case abound.
Even our worst enemy would he forced to admit, were he to look closely into our
transactions, that the Society is immeasurably stronger morally, numerically,
and as regards a capacity for future usefulness, than it was a year ago. Its
name has become most widely known; its fellow ship has been enriched by the
accession of some very distinguished men; it has planted new branch societies
in India, Ceylon and else where; applications are now pending for the
organization of still other branches, in California, India, Australia and
elsewhere; its Magazine
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YEAR OF THEOSOPHY
has successfully
entered the second volume; its local issues with the government of India have
been finally and creditably settled; a mischievous attempt by a handful of
malcontents at Bombay to disrupt it has miserably failed.* It has made official
alliances with the Sanskrit Samâj of Benares, that is to say, with the most
distinguished body of orthodox Sanskrit pandits in the world, with the other
Sabhâ of which Pandit Râma Misra Shâstri is manager, and with the Hindu Sabhâ,
of Cochin State; while, at the same time, strengthening its fraternal relations
with the Arya Samâjes of the Punjab and North-Western Provinces. Besides all
this, we can point with joy and pride to the results of the late mission to Ceylon,
where, within the space of fifty-seven days, seven branch societies of Buddhist
laymen, one Ecclesiastical Council of Buddhist priests, and one scientific
society were organized, and some hundreds of new fellows were added to our
list.
All this work could
not be accomplished without great labour, mental anxiety and physical
discomfort. If to this be added the burden of a correspondence with many
different countries, and the time required for making two journeys to Northern
India and one to Ceylon, our friends at a distance will see that whatever other
blame may properly attach to the founders, who have never claimed infallibility
of any sort, that of laziness is assuredly not to be cast in their teeth. Nor,
when they learn that the work done since leaving America, the travelling
expenses and the fitting and maintenance of the Head quarters’ establishment
have cost some Rs. 20,000, while the cash receipts of the treasurer (exclusive
of those from Ceylon, Rs. 2,440, which sum is set aside as a special fund to be
used in the interests of Buddhism) have been only one thousand two hundred and
forty rupees, all told, including one donation of Rs.200 from the universally
respected Mâhârani Svarnamayi, and another of Rs. 20 from a well-wisher in
Bengal, will those who direct the Society’s affairs be regarded by them as
making money out of their offices? And these figures. which may most readily be
verified, are our only answer to the calumnies which have maliciously been
circulated by some who did not and others who did know the truth.
The trip to Ceylon
occupied twenty-seven days in all, the second one to Northern India 125 days.
Thus the founders have been absent
—————————————————————————
* Secret letters by
former members denouncing its founders, sent to Parisian and other
Theosophists, and pretending that the Bombay Society was virtually extinct (its
best members having resigned), were sent hack to us with new protestations of
friendship and loyalty and expressions Of scorn for the conspirators.—[Ed.
Theos.]
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from Bombay on duty
twenty-nine weeks out of the fifty-two; their travels extending through
twenty-five degrees of latitude, from Lahore at the extreme north of India to
Matara, the southernmost point of ancient Lanka. Each of the Indian
Presidencies has contributed a quota of new members; and at the former capital
of the late lion hearted Runjeet Singh, a branch was recently organized by
Sikhs and Punjabis under the title of the “Punjab Theosophical Society.” During
the twelvemonth, President Olcott delivered seventy-nine lectures and
addresses, a majority of which were interpreted in the Hindi, Urdu, Guzerati
and Singhalese languages.
Many misconceptions
prevail as to the nature and objects of the Theosophical Society. Some—Sir
Richard Temple in the number— fancy it is a religious sect; many believe it is
composed of atheists; a third party are convinced that its sole object is the
study of occult science and the initiation of green hands into the Sacred
Mysteries. If we have had one we certainly have had a hundred intimations from
strangers that they were ready to join at once if they could be sure that they
would shortly be endowed with Siddhis, or the power to work occult phenomena.
The beginning of a new year is a suitable time to make one more attempt—we wish
it could be the last—to set these errors right. So, then, let us again say: (1)
The Theosophical Society teaches no new religion, aims to destroy no old one,
promulgates no creed of its own, follows no religious leader, and distinctly
and emphatically is not a sect nor ever was one. It admits worthy people of any
religion to membership on condition of mutual tolerance and mutual help to
discover truth. The founders have never consented to be taken as religious
leaders, they repudiate any such idea, and they have not taken and will not
take disciples. (2) The Society is not composed of atheists, nor is it any more
conducted in the interest of atheism than in that of deism or polytheism. It
has members of almost every religion, and is on equally friendly terms with
each and all. ( Not a majority, nor even a respectable minority numerically
speaking, of its fellows are students of occult science or ever expect to
become adepts. All who care for the information have been told what sacrifices
are necessary in order to gain the higher knowledge, and few are in a position to
make one tenth of them. He who joins our Society gains no Siddhis by that act,
nor is there any certainty that he will even see any phenomena, let alone meet
with an adept. Some have enjoyed both these opportunities, and so the
possibility of the phenomena and the
351—————————————————————A
YEAR OF THEOSOPHY.
existence of
Siddhis do not rest upon our unverified assertions. Those who have seen things
have perhaps been allowed to do so on account of some personal merit detected
by those who showed them the Siddhis, or for other reasons known to themselves
and over which we have no control.
For thousands of
years these things have, whether rightly or wrongly, been guarded as sacred
mysteries, and Asiatics at least need not be reminded that often even after months
or years of the most faithful and assiduous personal service, the disciples of
a Yogi have not been shown “miracles” or endowed with powers. What folly,
therefore, to imagine that by entering any society one might make a short cut
to adeptship! The weary traveller along a strange road is grateful even to find
a guide-post that shows him his way to his place of destination. Our Society,
if it does naught else, performs this kindly office for the searcher after
truth. And it is much.
Before closing, one
word must be said in correction of an unfortunate impression that has got
abroad. Because our pamphlet of rules mentions a relationship between our
Society and certain proficients in Occult Science, or “Mahâtmâs,” many persons
fancy that these great men are personally engaged in the practical direction of
its affairs; and that in such a case, being primarily responsible for the
several mistakes that have occurred in the admission of unworthy members and in
other matters, they can neither be so wise, so prudent, nor so far-seeing as is
claimed for them. It is also imagined that the President and Corresponding
Secretary (especially the latter) are, if not actually Yogis and Mahâtmâs
themselves, at least persons of ascetic habits, who assume superior moral excellence.
Neither of these suppositions is correct, and both are positively absurd. The
administration of the Society is, unless in exceptionally important crises,
left to the recognized officials, and they are wholly responsible for all the
errors that are made. Many may doubtless have been made, and our management may
be very faulty, but the wonder is that no more have occurred, if the
multiplicity of duties necessarily imposed upon the two chief officers and the
world-wide range of activity be taken into account. Colonel Olcott and Madame
Blavatsky do not pretend to asceticism, nor would it be possible for them to
practise it while in the thick of the struggle to win a permanent foothold for
the Society in the face of every possible obstacle that a selfish,
sensuality-loving world puts in the way. What either of them has heretofore
been, or either
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or both may in the
future become, is quite a different affair. At present they only claim to be
trying honestly and earnestly, so far as their natural infirmities of character
permit, to enforce by example and precept the ideas which are embodied in’ the
purposes and rules of the Theosophical Society. Once or twice ill-wishers have
publicly taunted us with not having given practical proofs of our alleged
affection for India. Our final vindication must be left to posterity, which
always renders that justice that the present too often denies. But even now— if
we may judge by the tone of our correspondence, as well as by the enthusiasm
which has everywhere greeted us in the course of our journeyings—a palpably
good effect has been produced by our appeals to the educated Indian public. The
moral regeneration of India and the revival of her ancient spiritual glories
must be exclusively the work of her own sons. All we can do is to apply the
match to the train, to fan the smouldering embers into a genial warmth, and
this we are trying to do. One step in the right direction, it will doubtless be
conceded, is the alliance effected with the Benares pandits.
“A WORD WITH OUR
FRIENDS”
————————
[ II. No. 4
(Supplement), January, 1881.]
THAT cause must be
weak and desperate, indeed, that has to resort to the arts of the slanderer to
prop it up and injure its victims. And it is truly lamentable to see people
adopting these tactics against the Theosophical Society and its founders. Soon
after we reached India we were obliged to begin legal proceedings against a
missionary organ, to compel its editor to apologize for some base slanders he
had indulged in; and readers of The Theosophist are aware of the conduct of the
Christian party in Ceylon, and their utter discomfiture at Panadure. However great
our efforts to avoid any conflict with them, some strange fatality seems to be
for ever urging these good people to adopt questionable measures to hasten
their own ultimate ruin. Our Society has been their favourite mark. The most
recent shot was fired at Benares by a well-known convert to the Christian
faith, who, unable to lay hold upon anything disreputable in our Indian career,
did his best to injure us in a certain important direction by sneeringly
suggesting to a very high personage that Colonel Olcott was a man of no
position in his own country, and had doubtless come to India as an adventurer,
to make money out of the people. Happily his venom was poured into
unsympathetic ears. Yet, as he is a man of a certain influence, and others of
our friends have also been similarly approached by him and other enemies of
ours, such calumnies as these cannot be well over looked. We are quite aware
that a document of such a nature as the present, if launched on the public
without a word of explanation, would give rise to criticism, and perhaps be
thought in bad taste, unless very serious amid important reasons can be shown
for its appearance. Such reasons unquestionably exist, even were no account to
be taken of the malicious plot of our Benares opponent. When, in addition to
this, we reflect that ever since we landed in this country, impelled by
motives, sincere and honest—though, perhaps, as we now find it our-
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selves, too
enthusiastic, too unusual in foreigners to be readily believed in by natives
without some more substantial proof than our simple word—we have been
surrounded by more enemies and opponents than by friends and sympathizers; and
that we two are strangers to rulers as well as the ruled, we believe that no
available proof should be with held that will show that, at least, we are
honest and peaceful people, if not actually that which we know ourselves to be—most
sincere friends of India and her sons. Our personal honour, as well as the
honour of the whole Society, is at stake at the present moment. “Tell me what
your friends are and I will tell you what you are,” is a wise saying. A man at
Colonel Olcott’s time of life is not likely to so change in character as to
abandon his country, where he has such an honourable past and where his income
was so large as it was, to come to India and turn “adventurer.” Therefore, we
have concluded, with Colonel Olcott’s permission, to give the following
details. They are but a few out of many now lying before us, that show his
honourable, efficient and faithful career, both as a member of the Bar, a
private gentleman, and a public official, from the year 1853 down to the very
moment of his departure from the United States for India. As Colonel Olcott is
not a man to sound his own praises, the writer, his colleague, may state that
his name has been widely known in America for nearly thirty years as a promoter
of various public reforms. It was he who founded (in 1856) the first scientific
agricultural school there upon the Swiss model; it was he again who aided in
introducing a new crop now universally cultivated; addressed three state
legislatures upon the subject by invitation; wrote three works upon
agriculture, of which one passed through seven editions, and was introduced
into the school libraries; was offered by Government a botanical mission to
Caffraria, and, later, the Chief Commissionership of Agriculture, and was offered
by M. Evangelides, of Greece, the Professorship of Agriculture in the
University of Athens. He was at one time Agricultural Editor of Horace
Greeley’s great journal, The Tribune, and also American Correspondent of The
Mark Lane Express. For his public services in connection with agricultural
reform he was voted two medals of honour by the National (U. S.) Agricultural
Society, and a silver goblet by the American Institute.
The breaking out of
the fearful civil war in America called every man to serve his country. Colonel
Olcott after passing through four battles and one siege (the capture of Fort
Macon), and after recovering
355———————————————————“A WORD WITH OUR FRIENDS.”
from a severe
illness contracted in the field, was offered by the late Secretary of War the
highly honourable and responsible appointment of Special Commissioner of the
War Department; and two years later, was, at the request of the late Secretary
of the Navy, ordered on special duty in connection with that branch of the
service, additional to his regular duties in the War Department. His services
were most conspicuous, as his papers—which include a complimentary report to
the U.S. Senate, by the Secretary of the Navy—prove.
At the close of the
war the national army of one million men was quietly disbanded, and was
reäbsorbed back into the nation as though nothing had happened. Colonel Olcott
resumed his profession, and was shortly invited to take the secretaryship and
practical direction of the National Insurance Convention—a conference or league
of the officials of the various state governments for the purpose of codifying
and simplifying the laws affecting insurance companies. Accepting, he was thus
for two years or more in the closest contact with, and the trusted adviser of
some of the leading state public functionaries of the Union ; and a statute
drafted by him, in connection with another well-known legal gentleman (Mr.
Abbott) was passed by ten state legislatures and became law. What his public
services were in this connection, and how he was thanked and honoured for them,
may readily be seen by consulting the two large volumes of the
Convention’s ‘‘Transactions,’’ which are in the Library of the Theosophical
Society, at Bombay.
This brings us down
to the year 1872. In 1876 he was deputed by His Honour the Mayor of New York
City to collect a public subscription in aid of a charitable object. In 1877 he
was one of an International Committee chosen by the Italian residents of New
York to erect a monument to Mazzini, in Central Park. The same year he was
Honorary Secretary of a National Committee—one member of which was the just
elected President of the United States, General Garfield
—formed to secure a
worthy representation of American arts and industries at the Paris “Exposition
Universelle,” of 1878. In the following year he left New York for India, and
just before sailing received from the President and Secretary of State a
diplomatic pass port, such as is only issued to the most eminent American
citizens, and circular autograph letters recommending him to the particular
favour of all U.S. Ministers and Consuls, as a gentleman who had been requested
to promote in every practicable and proper way the
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mutual commercial
relations of the United States and India. And now if the enemies of the
Theosophical Society can produce an “adventurer” with such a record and such
testimonials of integrity and capacity, by all means let them name their man.
(Signed) H. P.
BLAVATSKY.
QUESTIONS ANSWERED
ABOUT
YOGA VIDYA
————
[Vol. II. No. 5,
February, 1881.]
A HINDU gentleman
of the Madras Presidency propounds a number of questions about Occult Science
which we answer in these columns, as the information is often demanded of us
and we can reach all at once in this way.
Q.—Do you or
Colonel Olcott undertake to teach this wonderful Vidyâ to anyone who may be
anxious to learn it?
A.—No; the
correspondent is referred to our January number for remarks upon this point.
Q.—Would you like
to give proofs of the existence of occult powers in man to anyone who may be
sceptically inclined, or who may desire to have his faith strengthened, as you
have given to Mr. and Mrs. —— and the editor of The Amrita Bazar Patrika?
A—We would “like”
that everyone should have such proofs who needs them, but, as the world is
rather full of people—some twenty- four crores being in India alone—the thing
is impracticable. Still such proofs have always been found by those who sought
them in earnest, from the beginning of time until now. We found them—in India.
But then we spared neither time nor trouble in journeying round the world.
Q.—Can you give
such proofs to one like myself, who is at a great distance; or must I come to
Bombay?
A.—Answered above.
We would not undertake to do this thing, even if we could, for we would be run
down with thousands of curiosity-seekers, and our life become a burden.
Q.—Can a married
man acquire the Vidyâ?
A.—No, not while a
Grihasta. You know the invariable rule was that a boy was placed at a tender
age under his Guru for this training;
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he stopped with him
until he was twenty—five to thirty; then lived as a married man fifteen to
twenty years; finally retired to the forest to resume his spiritual studies.
The use of liquors, of beef, and certain other meats and certain vegetables,
and the relations of marriage, prevent spiritual development.
Q.—Does God reveal
himself by inspiration to a Yogi?
A.—Every man has
his own ideas about “God.” So far as we have learned, the Yogi discovers his
God in his inner self, his Atmâ. When he reaches that point he is inspired—by
the union of himself with the Universal, Divine Principle—Parabrahman. With a
personal God—a God who thinks, plots, rewards, punishes and repents are not
acquainted. Nor do we think any Yogi ever saw such a one—unless it be true, as
a missionary affirmed the other day, at the close of Colonel Olcott’s lecture
at Lahore, that Moses, who had murdered a man in Egypt, and the adulterous
murderer (David), were Yogis!
Q.—If any Adept has
power to do anytlnng he likes, as Colonel Olcott said in his lecture at Simla,*
can he make me, who am hungering and thirsting after the Vidyâ, a thorough
Adept like himself?
A.—Colonel Olcott
is no Adept and never boasted of being one. Does our friend suppose any Adept
ever became such without making himself one, without breaking through every
impediment through sheer force of will and soul-power? Such adeptship would be
a mere farce. “An Adept becomes, he is not made,” was the motto of the ancient
Rosicrucians.
Q.—How is it that
in the presence of such clear proof the most civilized nations still continue
to be sceptical?
A.—The peoples
referred to are Christian, and although Jesus declared that all who believed in
him should have the power to do all manner of wonders (see Mark, xxvi. 17, 18),
like a Hindu Yogi’s, Christendom has been waiting in vain some eighteen
centuries to see them. And now, having become total disbelievers in the
possibility of such Siddhis, they must come to India to get their proofs, if
they care for them at all.
Q.—Why does Colonel
Olcott fix the year 1848 as the time from which occult phenomena have occurred?
A .—Our friend
should read more carefully, and not put us to the trouble to answer questions
that are quite useless. What Colonel Olcott did say was that modern
Spiritualism dates from 1848.
—————————————————————————
* Colonel Olcott
said nothing of the kind.
359—————————————————QUESTIONS ANSWERED ABOUT YOGA VIDYA
Q.—Are there any
such mediums in India as William Eddy, in whose presence materialized forms can
be seen?
A.—We do not know,
but suspect there are. We heard of a case at Calcutta where a dead girl
revisited her parents’ house in broad day light, and sat and conversed with her
mother on various occasions. Mediumship can be easily developed anywhere, but
we think it a dangerous thing and decline to give instructions for its
development. Those who think otherwise can find what they want in any current
number of the London Spiritualist, The Medium and Daybreak the Melbourne
Harbinger of Light, the American Banner of Light, or any other respectable
Spiritualistic organ.
Q.—How do these
mediums get their powers; by a course of training, or as the result of an
accident of their constitution?
A.—Mediums are
mainly so from birth; theirs is a peculiar psycho physiological constitution.
But some of the most noted mediums of our times have been made so by sitting in
circles. There is in many persons a latent mediumistic faculty, which can be
developed by effort and the right conditions. The same remark applies to
adeptship. We all have the latent germs of adeptship in us, but in the case of
some individuals it is infinitely easier to bring them into activity than in
others.
Q.—Colonel Olcott
repudiates the idea of spirit agency as necessary to account for the production
of phenomena, yet I have read that a certain scientist sent spirits to visit
the planets and report what they saw there.
A—Perhaps reference
is made to Professor William Denton, the American geologist, author of that
interesting work, The Soul of Things. His explorations were made through
psychometry, his wife—a very intellectual lady though a great sceptic as to
spirits—being the psychometer. Our correspondent should read the book.
Q.—What becomes of
the spirits of the departed?
A—There is but one
“Spirit”—Parabrahman, or by whatever other name one chooses to call the Eternal
Principle. The “souls” of the departed pass through many other stages of
existence after leaving this earth-body, just as they were in many others
anterior to their birth as men and women here. The exact truth about this
mystery is known only to the highest Adepts; but it may be said even by the
lowest of the neophytes that each of us controls his future rebirths, making
each next succeeding one better or worse according to his present efforts and
deserts.
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Q.—Is asceticism
necessary for Yoga?
A—Yoga exacts
certain conditions which will be found described at p. 47 of our December
number. One of these conditions is seclusion in a place where the Yogi is free
from all impurities—whether physical or moral. In short, he must get away from
the immoral atmosphere of the world. If anyone has by such study gained powers,
he cannot remain long in the world without losing the greater part of his
powers— and that the higher and nobler part. So that, if any such person is
seen for many consecutive years labouring in public, and neither for money nor
fame, it should be known that he is sacrificing himself for the good of his
fellow-men. Some day such men seem to suddenly die, and their supposed remains
are disposed of; but yet they may not be dead. “Appearances are deceitful,” the
proverb says.
THE MISSING LINK
———————
[Vol. II. No. 5,
February, 1881.]
A GOOD many of the
Western papers are terribly excited over a bit of news just arrived in Europe
from Saigon. The most radical and freethinking of them crow over the fact—as
well they may in the interest of truth—as though the thickest, and hitherto
most impenetrable of the veils covering Mother Nature’s doings had been removed
for ever, and anthropology had no more secrets to learn. The excitement is due
to a little monster, a seven-year-old boy, now on exhibition at Saigon. The
child is a native of Cambodia, quite robust and healthy, yet exhibiting in his
anatomy the most precious and rare of physical endowments—a real tail, ten
inches long and one and a half thick at its root!
This original
little sample of humanity—unique, we believe, of his kind—is now made out by
the disciples of Darwin and Hæckel to be the bona (bony?) fide missing link.
Let us suppose, for argument’s sake, that the evolutionists (whose colours we
certainly wear) are right in their hypothesis, and that the cherished theory of
having baboons for our ancestors turns out true. Will every difficulty in our
way be then removed? By no means: for then more than ever shall we have to try
to solve the hitherto insoluble problem, which comes first, the man or the ape?
It will be the Aristotelean egg and chicken problem of creation over again. We
can never know the truth until some streak of good chance shall enable science
to witness at different periods and under various climates either women giving
birth to apes, graced with a caudal appendage, or female orang-outangs becoming
mothers of tail less, and, moreover, semi-human children, endowed with a
capacity for speech at least as great as that of a moderately clever parrot or
mina.
Science is but a
broken reed for us in this respect, for science is just as perplexed, if not
more so, than the rest of us common mortals. So little is it able to enlighten
us upon the mystery, that the men of most
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learning are those
who confuse us the most in some respects. As in regard to the heliocentric
system, which, after it had been left an undisputed fact for more than three
centuries, found in the later part of our own a most serious opponent in Dr.
Shroepfer, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Berlin, so the Darwinian
theory of the evolution of man from an anthropoid, has among its learned
opponents one, who, though an evolutionist himself, is eager to oppose Darwin,
and seeks to establish a school of his own.
This new
“perfectionist” is a professor in the Hungarian town of Fünfkirchen, who is
delivering just now a series of lectures through out Germany. ‘‘Man,’’ says he,
‘‘whose origin must be placed in the Silurian mud, whence he began evoluting
from a frog, must necessarily some day reëvolute into the same animal.” So far,
well and good. But the explanations going to prove this hypothesis, which
Professor Charles Deezy accepts as a perfectly established fact, are rather too
vague to enable us to build anything like an impregnable theory upon them. He
tells us:
In time primitive
days of the first period of evolution there lived a huge, frog. like, mammalian
animal, inhabiting the seas, but which, being of the amphibious kind, lived
likewise on land, breathing in the air as easily as it did in water, its chief
habitat, though, was in the salt sea-water. This frog-like creature is now what
we call—man (!) and his marine origin is proved by the fact that. he cannot
live without salt.
There are other
signs about man, almost as impressive as the above, by which this origin can be
established, if we may believe this new prophet of science. For instance:
A well-defined
remnant of fins, to be seen between his thumbs and fingers, as also his
insurmountable tendency towards the element of water;
a tendency, we
remark passim, more noticeable in the Hindu than the Highlander!
No less does the
Hungarian scientist set himself against Darwin’s theory of man descending from
the ape. According to his new teaching,
It is not the
anthropoid which begot man, but the latter who is the progenitor of the monkey.
The ape is merely a man returned once more to its primitive, savage state.
Our Professor’s
views as to geology and the ultimate destruction of our globe, coupled with his
notions regarding the future state of man kind, are no less original, and are
the very sweetest fruit of his Tree of
363—————————————————————THE MISSING LINK.
Scientific
Knowledge. Provoking though they do general hilarity, they are nevertheless
given out by the “learned” lecturer in quite a serious spirit, and his works
are placed among the text-hooks for colleges. If we have to credit his statement,
then we must believe that “the moon is slowly but surely approaching the
earth.” The result of such an indiscretion on the part of our fair Diana is to
be most certainly the following:
The sea waves will
some day immerse our globe and gradually submerge all the continents. Then man,
unable to live any longer on dry land, will have but to return to his primitive
form, i.e., be will rebecome an aquatic animal—a man-frog.
And the
life—insurance companies will have to shut up shop and become bankrupts—he
might have added. Daring speculators are advised to take their precautions in
advance.
Having permitted
ourselves this bit of irreverence about science—those, rather, who abuse their
connection with it—we may as well give here some of the more acceptable
theories respecting the missing link. These are by no means so scarce as bigots
would like to make us believe, Schweinfurth and other great African travellers
vouchsafe for the truth of these assertions and believe they have found races
which may, after all, be the missing links—between man and ape. Such are the
Akkas of Africa; those whom Herodotus calls the Pigmies (ii. 32) and the
account of whom—notwithstanding it came from the very pen of the father of
history—was until very recently believed to he erroneous and they themselves
myths of a fabled nation. But, since the public has had the most trustworthy
narratives of European travellers, we have learned to know better, and no one
any longer thinks that Herodotus has confounded in his account men and the
cynocephaloid apes of Africa.
We have but to read
the description of the orang-outang and of the chimpanzee to find that these
animals—all but the hairy surface—answer in nearly every respect to these
Akkas. They are said to have large cylindrical heads on a thin neck, and a body
about four feet high; very long arms, perfectly disproportionate, as they reach
far lower than their knees; a chest narrow at the shoulders and widening
tremendously toward the stomach, which is always enormous; knees thick, and
hands of an extraordinary beauty of design (a characteristic of monkeys’ hands,
which, with the exception of their short thumbs, have wonderfully neat and
slender fingers tapering to the ends, and always prettily shaped finger nails).
The Akkas’ walk is vacillating,
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which is due to the
abnormal size of their stomach, as in the chimpanzee and the orang-outang. Their
cranium is large, profoundly depressed at the root of the nose, and surmounted
by a contracting forehead sloping directly backward; a projecting mouth with
very thin lips, and a beardless chin—or rather no chin at all. The hair on
their heads does not grow, and though less noisy than the orang-outang they are
enormously so when compared with other men. On account of the long grass which
often grows twice their own size in the regions they inhabit, they are said to
jump like so man grasshoppers, to make enormous strides, and to have all the
outward motions of big anthropoids.
Some scientists
think—this time with pretty good reason—that the Akkas, more even than the
Matimbas, of which d’Escayrac de Lauture gives such interesting accounts, the
Kimosas and the Bushmen, of austral Africa, are all remnants of the missing
link.
HYPNOTISM
——————
[Vol. II. No.5 ,
February,1881.]
THE views of
medical men in regard to hypnotism or seif-mesmerization have been greatly
strengthened of late. This is evident from the report by Dr. Grishhorn, of St.
Petersburg, at the latest meeting of the Society of the St. Petersburg
Physicians, on November 18th (Dec. 1st), a report which is full of interest.
Until recently, the phenomena of hypnotism have been only accepted under a
quasi protest, while mesmerism and clairvoyance were regarded and denounced by
the best authorities in science as pure charlatanism. The greatest physicians
remained sceptical as to the reality of the phenomena, until one after the
other came to learn better; and these were those, of course, who had the
patience to devote some time and labour to personal experiment in this
direction. Still many have thus acquired the profound conviction that there
exists in man a faculty—mysterious and yet unexplained—which causes him under a
certain degree of self- concentration to become as rigid as a statue and lose
more or less his consciousness. That once in such a nervous state, at times his
spiritual and mental faculties will seem paralyzed, and the mechanical action
of the body alone remain; while at others it will be quite the contrary; his
physical senses becoming benumbed, his mental and spiritual faculties will
acquire a most wonderful degree of acuteness.
Last summer Dr.
Grishhorn made, with Professor Berger, a series of hypnotic experiments and
observations in the Breslau Hospital for Nervous Diseases. One of the first
patients experimented upon was a young girl of about twenty, who suffered
acutely from rheumatic pain. Professor Berger, applying to the tip of her nose
a small hammer used for auscultations, directed her to concentrate all her
attention upon the spot touched. Hardly a few minutes had elapsed, when, to his
utmost astonishment, the girl became quite rigid. A bronze statue could not be
more motionless and stiff. Then Dr. Grishhorn tried every kind of
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experiment in order
to ascertain that the girl did not play a part. A lighted candle was closely
approached to her eyes, and it was found that the pupil did not contract; the
eyes remaining opened and glassy, as if the person had been dead. He then
passed a long needle through her lip and moved it in every direction; but the
two doctors remarked neither the slightest sign of pain, nor, what was most
strange, was there a single drop of blood. He called her by her name; there
came no answer. But when, taking her by the hand, he began to converse with
her, the young girl answered all his questions, though feebly at first and as
if compelled by an irresistible power.
The second
experiment proved more wonderful yet. It was made with a young soldier, who had
just been brought into the hospital, and who proved ‘‘what the Spiritualists
call a medium’’—says the official report. This last experiment finally
convinced Drs. Grishhorn and Berger of the reality of the doubted phenomena.
The soldier, a German, ignorant of a single word of Russian, spoke in his
trance with the doctor in that language, pronouncing the most difficult words
most perfectly, without the slightest foreign accent. Suffering from a
paralysis of both legs, during his hypnotic sleep he used them freely, walking
with entire ease, and repeating every movement and gesture made by Dr.
Grishhorn with absolute precision. The Russian sentences he pronounced very
rapidly, while his own tongue he spoke very slowly. He even went so far as to
write, at the doctor’s dictation, a few words in that language, quite unknown
to him, and in the Russian characters.
The debates upon
this most important report by a veil-known physician were announced to take
place at the next meeting of the Society of the St. Petersburg Medical
Practitioners. As soon as the official report of the proceedings is published,
we will give it to our readers. It is really interesting to witness how the men
of science are gradually being led to acknowledge facts which they have
hitherto so bitterly denounced.
Hypnotism, we may add,
is nought but the Trâtaka of the Yogi, the act of concentrating his mind on the
tip of the nose, or on the spot between the eyebrows. It was known and
practised by the ascetics in order to produce the final Samâdhi, or temporary
deliverance of the soul from the body; a complete disenthralment of the
spiritual man from the slavery of the physical with its gross senses. It is
being practised unto the present day.
THE LEAVEN OF
THEOSOPHY
——————
[Vol. II. No. 6,
March, 1881.]
Those of us whose
duty it is to watch the Theosophical movement and and its progress can afford
to be amused at the ignorant conceit displayed by certain journals in their
criticisms upon our Society and its officers. Some seem to think that when they
have flung their handful of dirt we must certainly be overwhelmed. One or two
have even gone so far as, with mock sympathy, to pronounce us already
hopelessly disrupted. It is a pity we cannot oblige them, but so it is, and
they must make the best of the situation. Our Society as a body might certainly
be wrecked by mismanagement or the death of its founders, but the idea which it
represents and which has gained so wide a currency, will run on like a crested
wave of thought until it dashes upon the hard beach where materialism is
picking and sorting its pebbles. Of the thirteen persons who composed our first
hoard of officers, in 1875, nine were Spiritualists of greater or less
experience. It goes without saying, then, that the aim of the Society was not
to destroy but to better and purify Spiritualism. The phenomena we knew to be
real, and we believed them to be the most important of all current subjects for
investigation. For, whether they should finally prove to be traceable to the
agency of the departed, or but manifesta- tions of occult natural forces acting
in concert with latent psycho physiological human powers, they opened up a
great field of research, the outcome of which must be enlightenment upon the
master problem of life: Man and his Relations. We had seen phenomenalism
running riot and twenty millions of believers clutching at one drifting theory
after another in the hope to gain the truth. We had reason to know that the
whole truth could only be found in one quarter, the Asiatic schools of
philosophy, and we felt convinced that the truth could never be discovered
until men of all races and creeds should join like brothers in the search. So
taking our stand upon that ground, we began to point the way eastward.
368—————————————————————A M0DERN PANARION.
Our first step was
to lay down the proposition that, even admitting the phenomena to be real, they
need not of necessity be ascribed to departed souls We showed that there was
ample historical evidence that such phenomena had from remotest times been
exhibited by men who were not mediums, who repudiated the passivity exacted of
mediums, and who simply claimed to produce them by cultivating inherent powers
in their living selves. Hence the burden of proving that those wonders were and
could only be done by the dead with the agency of passive medial agents, lay
with the Spiritualists.
To deny our
proposition involved either the repudiation of the testimony of the most
trustworthy authorities in many countries and in different epochs, or the
wholesale ascription of mediumship to every wonder-worker mentioned in history.
The latter horn of the dilemma had been taken. Reference to the works of the
most noted Spiritualistic writers, as well as to the newspaper organs of the
movement, will show that the thaums, or ‘‘miracles’’ of every ‘‘magician,”
saint, religious leader, and ascetic, from the Chaldæan Magians, the ancient
Hindu saint, the Egyptian Jannes and Jambres, the Hebrew Moses and Jesus, and
the Mussulman prophet, down to the Benares sannyâsi of M. Jacolliot, and the
common fakir of to-day, who has made Anglo Indian mouths gape with wonder, have
each and all been spoken of as true mediumistic marvels. This was the best that
could be done with a difficult subject, but it could not prevent Spiritualists
from thinking. The more they have thought, read and compared notes, during the
past five years, with those who have travelled in Asia and studied
psychological science as a science, the more has the first acrid feeling
against our Society abated. We noticed this change in the first issue of this
magazine. After only five years of agitation, without abuse from us or any
aggressive propagandism on our part, the leaven of this great truth has begun
to work. It can be seen on every side. We are now kindly asked to show Europe
and America experimental proofs of the correctness of our assertions. Little by
little a body of persons, including some of the best minds in the movement, has
come over to our side and many now cordially endorse our position: that there
can be no spiritual intercourse either with the souls of the living or the
dead, unless it is preceded by self-spiritualization, the conquest of the
meaner self, the education of the nobler powers within us. The serious dangers,
as well as the more evident gratifications of mediumship, are becoming
gradually appreciated. Phenomenalism, thanks to the
369————————————————————THE LEAVEN OF THEOSOPHY.
splendid works of
Professor Zöllner, Mr. Crookes, Mr. Varley, and other able experimentalists, is
tending towards its proper limits of a problem of science. There is a
thoughtful and more and more earnest study of spiritual philosophy. We see
this, not alone among the Spiritualists of Great Britain, Australasia and the
United States, but also among the intellectual and numerous classes of the
continental spiritists and the magnetists. Should nothing occur to break the
present harmony and impede the progress of ideas, we may well expect, within
another five years, to see the entire body of investigators of the phenomena of
mesmerism and mediumism more or less imbued with a conviction that the greatest
psychological truth in its most unadulterated form, can be found in the Indian
Philosophies. And let it be remembered we ascribe this great result not to
anything we few may personally have done or said, but to the gradual growth of
a conviction that the experience of mankind and the lessons of the past can no
longer be ignored.
It would be easy to
fill many pages with extracts from the journalism of to-day that sustain the
above views, but we forbear. Wherever these lines are read—and that will be by
subscribers in almost every quarter of the globe—their truth will not be denied
by impartial observers. Merely to show the tendency of things, let us take the
following excerpts from the Spiritual Notes and the Revue Spirite, organs
respectively of the spiritualist and the spiritist parties. The first says:
From Certain
delicate yet well-defined signs of the times we are led to believe that a great
change is gradually passing over the spirit of that system which, for the last
thirty years, has been called by the not altogether happy title of Modern
Spiritualism. This change is observable, not perhaps so much in the popular
aspect of the subject, which will doubtless always remain more or less one of
sign and wonder. It is probably necessary that such should be the case. It is
very likely a sine qua non that there should always be a fringe of the purely
marvellous to attract the criers of Lo here “ “Lo there!” from whose numbers
the higher and inner circle of initiates may be from time to time recruited. It
is here we discern the great value, with all their possible abuses, of physical
manifestations, materializations, and the like. These form the alphabet of the
neophyte. But the change which strikes us at the present moment is what we may
call the rapid growth of the initiate class as opposed to the neophytes; the
class of those who have quite grown out of the need of these sensible wonders
(a need through which, however, they have duly passed) and who are prepared to
pass to the sublimest heights of the spiritual philosophy. We cannot but regard
this as an eminently happy sign, because
it is the evidence
of normal growth. We have had first the blade, then the ear,
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but now we have the
full corn in the ear. Among the many evidences of this change we note two
especially, each of which has been mentioned already in these columns in its
single aspect. One is the publication of Dr. Wyld’s book on Christian
Theosophy, the other the formation and development of the secret society called
the Guild of the Holy Spirit. We are not prepared to commit ourselves to all
the doctrines of Dr. Wyld’s book. The Guild would probably be too ecclesias
tical in its structure for many of our readers—it is founded, we may mention,
by a clergyman of the Church of England—but in each case we notice what is
called a “levelling up.” We perceive that the paramount idea is not to call
spirits from the vasty deep—not to force the hand of the spirit world, so to
say, and to compel its denizens to come “down” or “up” to us, but so to
regulate life as to open up the dormant sense on our side, and enable us to see
those who are not in a land that is very far off, from which they have come up
or down to us. This, we happen to know, is preëminently the case with the
Guild, which, beginning by being regulative of life and worship, includes a
margin for any amount of thaumaturgical element. We may not say more, but we
may also point to every page of Dr. Wyld’s book as an indication of a similar
method; and we notice the supervention of that method with much satisfaction.
It will never be the popular method, but its presence, however secret, in our
midst, will work like leaven, and affect the whole mass of “Modern
Spiritualism.”
COUNT ST. GERMAIN
——————
[Vol. II. No. 8,
May, 1881.]
AT long intervals
have appeared in Europe certain men whose rare intellectual endowments, brilliant
conversation, and mysterious modes of life have astounded and dazzled the
public mind. The article now copied from All the Year Round relates to one of
these men—the Count St. Germain. In Hargrave Jennings’ curious work, The
Rosicrucians, is described another, a certain Signor Gualdi, who was once the
talk of Venetian society. A third was the historical personage known as
Alessandro di Cagliostro, whose name has been made the synonym of infamy by a
forged Catholic biography. It is not now intended to compare these three
individuals with each other or with the common run of men. We copy the article
of our London contemporary for quite another object. We wish to show how basely
personal character is traduced without the slightest provocation—unless the
fact of one’s being brighter in mind, and more versed in the secrets of natural
law can be construed as a sufficient provocation to set the slanderer’s pen and
the gossip’s tongue in motion. Let the reader attentively note what follows.
The writer in All the Year Round says:
This famous
adventurer [ Count St. Germain] is supposed to have been a Hungarian by birth,
but the early part of his life was by himself carefully wrapped in mystery. His
person and his title alike stimulated curiosity. His age was unknown and his
parentage equally obscure. We catch the first glimpse of him in Paris, a
century and a quarter ago, filling the court and the town with his renown.
Amazed Paris saw a man—apparently of middle age——a man who lived in magnificent
style, who went to dinner parties where he ate nothing, but talked incessantly
and with exceeding brilliancy on every imaginable topic. His tone was perhaps
over trenchant—the tone of a man who knows perfectly what he is talking about.
Learned, speaking every civilized language admirably, a great musician, an
excellent chemist, he played the part of a prodigy, and played it to
perfection. Endowed with extra ordinary confidence or consummate impudence, he
not only laid down the law magisterially concerning the present, but spoke
without hesitation of events 200 years old. His anecdotes of remote occurrences
were related with extraordinary
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minuteness. He
spoke of scenes at the court of Francis I. as if he had seen them, describing
exactly the appearance of the king, imitating his voice, manner and language,
affecting throughout the character of an eye-witness. In like style he edified
his audience with pleasant stories of Louis XIV., and regaled them with vivid
descriptions of places and persons. Hardly saying in so many words that he was
actually present when the events happened, he yet contrived, by his great
graphic power, to convey that impression . . . intending to astonish, he
succeeded completely. Wild stories were current concerning him. He was reported
to be 300 years old, and to have prolonged his life by the use of a famous
elixir. Paris went mad about him. He was questioned constantly about his secret
of longevity, and was marvellously adroit in his replies, denying all power to
make old folks young again, but quietly asserting his possession of the secret
of arresting decay in the human frame. Diet, he protested, was, with his
marvellous elixir, the true secret of long life, and he resolutely refused to
eat any food but such as had been specially prepared for him-—oatmeal, groats
and the white meat of chickens. On great occasions he drank a little wine, sat
up as late as anyone would listen to him, but took extraordinary precautions
against the cold. To ladies he gave mysterious cosmetics to preserve their
beauty unimpaired; to men, he talked openly of his method of transmuting
metals, and of a certain process for melting down a dozen little diamonds into
one large stone. These astounding assertions were backed by the possession of
apparently boundless wealth, and a collection of jewels of rare size and
beauty.
From time to time
this strange being appeared in various European capitals, under various names,
as Marquis de Montferrat, Count Bellamare, at Venice; Chevalier Schoening, at
Pisa; Chevalier Weldon, Milan; Count Soltikoff, at Genoa; Count Tzarogy at
Schwalbach, and, finally, as Count St. Germain at Paris; but, after his
disaster at the Hague, no longer seems so wealthy as before, and has at times
the appearance of seeking his fortune. At Tournay, he is “interviewed” by the
renowned Chevalier de Seingalt, who finds him in an Armenian robe and pointed
cap, with a long beard descending to his waist, and ivory wand in hand—the
complete make-up of a necromancer. St. Germain is surrounded by a legion of
bottles, and is occupied in developing the manufacture of hats upon chemical
principles. Senigalt being indisposed, the Count offers to physic him gratis
and offers to dose him with an elixir, which appears to have been æther; but
the other refuses, with many polite speeches. It is the scene of the two
augurs. Not being allowed to act as physician, St. Germain determines to show
his power as an alchemist, takes a twelve-sons piece from the other augur, puts
it on red-hot charcoal, and works with a blow-pipe, the piece of money is fused
and allowed to cool. “Now,” says St. Germain, “take your money again.” “But it
is gold.” “Of the purest.” Augur No. 2 does not believe in the transmutation
and looks on the whole operation as a trick; but he pockets the piece,
nevertheless, and finally presents it to the celebrated Marshal Keith, then
governor of Neuchatel.
Again, in pursuit
of dyeing and other manufacturing schemes, St. Germain turned up at St.
Petersburg, Dresden and Milan. Once he got into trouble and was arrested in a
petty town of Piedmont on a protested bill of exchange; but he
373—————————————————————COUNT
ST. GERMAIN.
pulled out a
hundred thousand crowns’ worth of jewels, paid on the spot, bullied the
governor of the town like a pickpocket, and was released with the most
respectful excuses.
Very little doubt
exists that during one of his residences in Russia, he played an important part
in the revolution which placed Catherine II. on the throne. In support of this
view, Baron Gleichen cites the extraordinary attention bestowed on St. Germain
at Leghorn, 1770, by Count Alexis Orloff, and a remark made by Prince Gregory
Orloff to the Margrave of Onspach during his stay at Nureniberg.
After all, who was
he ?—the son of a Portuguese king or of a Portuguese Jew? Or did he in his old
age tell the truth to his protector and enthusiastic admirer, Prince Charles of
Hesse Cassel? According to the story told by his last friend, he was the son of
a Prince Rakoczy of Transylvania, and his first wife a Tekely. He was placed,
when an infant, under the protection of the last of the Medici. When he grew up
and heard that his two brothers, sons of the Princess Hesse Rheinfels, of
Rothenburg, had received the names of St. Charles and St. Elizabeth, he
determined to take the name of their holy brother St. Germanus. What was the
truth? One thing alone is certain, that he was a protege of the last Medici.
Prince Charles, who appears to have regretted his death, which happened in
1783, very sincerely tells us that he fell sick, while pursuing his experiments
in colours at Ekrenforde, and died shortly after, despite the innumerable
medicaments prepared by his own private apothecary. Frederick the Great, who,
despite his scepticism, took a queer interest in astrologers, said of him,
“This is a man who does not die.” Mirabeau adds epigrammatically, “he was
always a careless fellow, and at last, like his predecessors, forgot not to
die.”
And now we ask what
shadow of proof is herein afforded either that St. Germain was an “adventurer,”
that he meant to “play the part of a prodigy,” or that he sought to make money
out of dupes. Not one single sign is there of his being other than what he
seemed, viz., a possessor of ample means to support honestly his standing in
society. He claimed to know how to fuse small diamonds into large ones, and to
transmute metals, and backed his “assertions” by the possession of apparently
boundless wealth and a collection of jewels of rare size and beauty. Are
“adventurers” like this? Do charlatans enjoy the confidence and admiration of
the cleverest statesmen and nobles of Europe for long years, and not even at
their deaths show in one thing that they were undeserving? Some encyclopædists
(see New American Cyclopædia xiv. 266) say: “He is supposed to have been
employed during the greater part of his life as a spy at the courts at which he
resided.” But upon what evidence is this supposition based? Has anyone found it
in any of the state papers in the secret archives of either of those courts?
Not one word, not one shred of fact to build this base calumny upon, has ever
been found. It is simply a malicious he. The treatment
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this great man,
this pupil of Indian and Egyptian hierophants, this proficient in the secret
wisdom of the East, has had from Western writers, is a stigma upon human
nature. And so has the stupid world behaved towards every other person who,
like St. Germain, has revisited it after long seclusion devoted to study, with
his stores of accumulated esoteric wisdom, in the hope of bettering it, and
making it wiser and happier.
One other point
should be noticed. The above account gives no particulars of the last hours of
the mysterious Count or of his funeral. Is it not absurd to suppose that if he
really died at the time and place mentioned, he would have been laid in the
ground without the pomp and ceremony, the official supervision, the police
registration which attend the funerals of men of his rank and notoriety? Where
are these data? He passed out of public sight more than a century ago, yet no
memoir contains them. A man who so lived in the full blaze of publicity could
not have vanished, if he really died then and there, and left no trace behind.
Moreover, to this negative we have the alleged positive proof that he was
living several years after 1784. He is said to have had a most important
private conference with the Empress of Russia in 1785 or 1786, and to have
appeared to the Princess de Lamballe when she stood before the tribunal, a few
moments before she was struck down with a billet, and a butcher-boy cut off her
head; and to Jeanne Dubarry, the mistress of Louis XV. as she waited on her
scaffold at Paris the stroke of the guillotine in the Days of Terror of 1793.
A respected member
of our Society, residing in Russia, possesses some highly important documents
about Count St. Germain, and for the vindication of the memory of one of the
grandest characters of modern times, it is hoped that the long-needed but
missing links in the chain of his history may speedily be given to tile world
through these columns.
LAMAS AND DRUSES.
——————
[Vol. II. No. 9,
June, 1881.]
Mr. L. OLIPHANT’S
new work, Land of Gilcad, attracts considerable attention. Reviews appeared
some time since, but we had to lay the subject aside, until now, for lack of
space. We shall now have something to say, not of the work itself—though
justice can hardly be sufficiently done to the writings of that clever
author—but of what he tells us respecting the Druses, those mystics of Mount
Lebanon of whom so little is known. We may perchance shed some new light on the
subject. Mr. Oliphant thinks that
The Druse has a
firm conviction that the end of the world is at hand. Recent events have so far
tallied with the enigmatical prophecies of his sacred books, that he looks
forward to the speedy resurrection of El Hakim, the founder and divine
personage of the sect. In order to comprehend this, the connection between
China and Druse theology has to be remembered. The souls of all pious Druses
are supposed to be occupying in large numbers certain cities in the west of
China. The end of the world will be signalized by the approach of a mighty army
from the East against the contending powers of Islam and Christianity. This
army will be under the command of the Universal Mind and will consist of
millions of Chinese Unitarians. To it Christians and Mahomedans will surrender
and march before it to Mecca. El Hakim will then appear; at his command the
Caaba will be demolished by fire from Heaven, and the resurrection of the dead
will take place. Now that Russia has come into collision with China, the Druses
see the fulfilment of their sacred prophecies, and are eagerly waiting for an
Armageddon in which they believe themselves destined to play a prominent part.
(Pioneer.)
Mr. Laurence
Oliphant is in our opinion one of England’s best writers. He is also more
deeply acquainted with the inner life of the East than most of the travellers
and writers who have written on the subject—not even excepting Captain and Mrs.
R. Burton. But even this acute and observing intellect could hardly fathom the
secret of the profoundly mystical beliefs of the Druses. To begin with, El
Hakim is not the founder of their sect. Their ritual and dogmas were never made
known but to those who had been admitted into their brother-
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hood. Their origin
is next to unknown. As to their external religion, or rather what has
transpired of it, that can be told in a few words. The Druses are believed to
be a mixture of Kurds, Mardi-Arabs, and other semi-civilized tribes. We humbly
maintain that they are the descendants of and a mixture of, mystics of all nations,
mystics who, in the face of cruel and unrelenting persecution by the orthodox
Christian Church and orthodox Islamism, have, ever since the first centuries of
the Mohammedan propaganda, been gathered together, and who gradually made a
permanent settlement in the fastnesses of Syria and Mount Lebanon, where they
had from the first found refuge. Since then they have preserved the strictest
silence upon their beliefs and truly occult rites. Later on their warlike
character, great bravery and unity of purpose, which made their foes, whether
Mussulmans or Christians, equally fear them, helped them toward forming an
independent community, or, as we may term it, an imperium in imperio They are
the Sikhs of Asia Minor, and their polity offers many points of similarity with
the late “commonwealth” of the followers of Guru Nânak, even extending to their
mysticism and indomitable bravery. But the two are even more closely related to
a third and far more mysterious community of religionists, of which nothing or
next to nothing is known by outsiders: we mean that fraternity of Tibetan
Lamaists, known as the Brotherhood of Khe-lang, who mix but little with the
rest. Even Csoma de Körös, who passed several years with the Lamas, learned
hardly more of the religion of these Chakravartins (wheel-turners) than what
they chose to let him know of their exoteric rites, and of the Khe-langs he
learned positively nothing.
The mystery that
hangs over the scriptures and religion of the Druses is far more impenetrable
than that connected with the Amritsar and Lahore “Disciples,” whose Grantha is
well known and has been translated into European languages more than once. Of
the alleged forty-five sacred books* of the Lebanon mystics none were ever
seen, let alone examined, by any European scholar.
Many manuscripts
have never left the underground Holoweys (place
————————————————————————
* The work
presented by Nasr-Allah to the French king as a portion of the Druse
scriptures, and translated by Petis de la Croix in 1701 is pronounced a forgery.
Not one of the copies now in the possession of the Bodleian, Vienna, or Vatican
Libraries is genuine; and, besides, each of them is a copy from the other.
Great was always the curiosity of the travellers, and greater yet the efforts
of the indomitable and ever-prying missionary, to penetrate behind the veil of
Druse worship, but all have resulted in failure. The strictest secrecy as to
the nature of their beliefs, the peculiar rites practised in their subterranean
Holoweys, and the contents of their canonical books was enjoined upon their
followers by H’amsa and Boha-eddin, the chief and first disciple of the former.
377—————————————————————LAMAS AND DRUSES.
of religious
meeting), invariably built under the meeting-room on the ground floor, and the
public Thursday assemblies of the Druses are simply blinds intended for
over-curious travellers and neighbours.
Verily a strange
sect are the disciples of H’amsa, as they call themselves. Their Okhal or
spiritual teachers, besides having, like the Sikh Akali, the duty of defending
the visible place of worship, which is merely a large unfurnished room, are
also the guardians of the Mystical Temple and the “wise men,” or the Initiates
of their mysteries—as their name of Okhal implies, Akl being in Arabic “intelligence”
or “wisdom.” It is improper to call them Druses, as they regard it as an
insult; nor are they in reality the followers of Daruzi a heretical pupil of
H’amsa, but the true disciples of the latter. The origin of that personage, who
appeared among them in the eleventh century, coming from Central Asia, and
whose secret or mystery name is El Hamma, is quite unknown to our European
scholars. His spiritual titles are “Universal Source or Mind,” “Ocean of
Light,” and “Absolute or Divine Intelligence.” They are, in short, repetitions
of those of the Tibetan Dalai-Lama, whose appellation, “Path to the Ocean,” *
means Path or “Way to the Ocean of Light” (Intelligence) or Divine Wisdom—both
titles being identically the same. It is curious that the Hebrew word lamad
should also mean the “God-taught.”
An English
Orientalist recently found that the religion of Nânak had a good deal of
Buddhism in it (art. ‘‘ Diwali,’’ in Calcutta Review). This would only be
natural, since the Empire of Hindustan is the land of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
But that the religion of the Druses, between whose geographical and
ethnological position and that of the Hindus there is an abyss, should be so,
is far more incomprehensible and strange. Yet it is a fact. They are more
Lamaists in their beliefs and certain rites, than any other people on the face
of the globe. The fact may be contradicted, but it will only be because Europe
knows next to nothing of either. Their system of government is set down as
feudal and patriarchal, while it is as theocratic as that of
————————————————————————
* Lama ‘‘ means
path or road in the vulgar Tibetan language, but in that figurative sense it
conveys the meaning of way ; as the ‘way to wisdom or salvation.” strangely
enough it also means ‘cross.” It is the Roman figure X or ten, the emblem of
perfection or perfect number, and stood for ten with the Egyptians, Chinese,
Phœnicians, Romans, etc. It is also found in the Mexican secular calendars. The
Tartars call it Lama from the Scytho-Turanian word lamh, hand (from the number
of fingers on both hands), and it is synonymuos with the fad of the Chaldees,
“and thus became the name of a cross, of the High Priest of time Tartars, and
of the Lamaic Messenger of God,” says the author of The Book of God, in the “commentaries
on the Apocalypse.” With the Irish, luam signifies the head of the church, a
spiritual chief.
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the Lamaists—or as
that of the Sikhs, as it used to be. The mysterious representation of the Deity
appears in H’amsa, whose spirit is said to guide them, and periodically
reincarnate itself in the person of the chief Okhal of the Druses, as it does
in the Guru-Kings of the Sikhs, some of whom, like Guru Govind, claimed to be
the reIncarna tions of Nânak, while the Dalai Lamas of Tibet claim to be those
of Buddha. The latter, by the way, are loosely called Shaberons and Kuhilghans
(both in various degrees reincarnations not of Buddha, the man, but of his
Buddh-like divine spirit) by Abbe Huc and others, without any regard to the
difference in the appellation: El Hamma or H’amsa came from the “land of the
Word of God.” Where was that land? Swedenborg, the Northern Seer, advised his
followers to search for the LOST WORD among the hierophants of Tartary, Tibet
and China. To this we may add a few explanatory and corroborative facts.
Ll’hassa, the theocratic metropolis of Tibet, is commonly translated as “God
land,” that is to say, this is the only English equivalent that we can find .*
Though separated by
the Karakorum range and Little Tibet, the Great Tibet is on the same Asiatic
plateau in which our biblical scholars designate the table-land of Pamir,† as
the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of the mythical Adam. Tibet, or
Ti-Boutta will yield, etymologically, the words Ti—which is the equivalent for
God in Chinese—and Buddha or Wisdom: the land then of the Wisdom Deity, or the
incarnations of Wisdom. It is also called “Bod-Jid.” Now “Jid” and “Jod” are
synonymous apocalyptic and phallic names for the Deity—Yod being the Hebrew
name for God. G. Higgins shows in his Celtic Druids, the Welsh Druids altering
the name Bod-Jid into Budd-ud, which with them too meant the “Wisdom of Jid “—
what people now call “God.”‡
The religion of the
Druses is said to be a compound of Judaism, Mohammedanism and Christianity,
strongly tinged with Gnosticism
————————————————————————
* And a most
unsatisfactory term it is, as the Lamaists have no conception of the
anthropomorphic deity which the English word ‘God’’ represents. For Buddha (the
latter name being quite unknown to the common people) is their equivalent
expression for that All-embracing, Superior Good or Wisdom from which all
proceeds as does the light from the sun, the cause being nothing personal, but
simply all abstract principle. And it is this that in all our Theosophical
writing, for the want of a better word, we have to term ‘God-like” and “Divine.’’
† There are several
Pamirs in Central Asia. There is the Alichur Pamir which lies more north than
either; the Great Palmir with Lake Victoria in its vicinity; Taghdumbash Pamlr
and the Little Pamir more south; and eastward another chain of Pamirs dividing
Mustagh Pass and Little Guhjal. We would like to know on which of these we have
to look for the garden of Eden.
‡ The name in
Hebrew for sanctuary is te-bah, and ti-boutta and te-bet, also a cradle of the
human race, thebeth meaning a box,” the “ark” of Noah and the floating cradle
of Moses.
379—————————————————————LAMAS AND DRUSES.
and the Magian
system of Persia. Were people to call things by their right names, sacrificing
all self-conceit to truth, they might confess things otherwise. They could say,
for instance, that Mohammedanism being a compound of Chaldeeism, Christianity
and Judaism; Christianity a mixture of Judaism, Gnosticism and Paganism; and
Judaism a wholesale Egypto-Chaldæan Kabalism, masquerading under different
names and fables, made to fit the bits and scraps of the real history of the
Israelite tribes—the religious system of the Druses would then be found one of
the last survivals of the archaic Wisdom-Religion. It is entirely based on that
element of practical mysticism of which branches have from time to time sprung
into existence. They pass under the unpopular names of Kabalism, Theosophy and
Occultism. Except Christianity—which owing to the importance it gives to the
principal prop of its doctrine of salvation (we mean the dogma of Satan) had to
anathematize the practice of theurgy—every religion, including Judaism and
Mohammedanism, credits these above-named branches. Civilization having touched
with its materialistic, all-levelling and all-destroying hand even India and
Turkey amid the din and chaos of crumbling faiths and old sciences, the
reminiscence of archaic truths is now fast dying out.
It has become
popular and fashionable to denounce “the old and mouldy superstitions of our
forefathers,’’ verily even amongst the most natural allies of the students of
theurgy or occultism—the Spiritualists. Among the many creeds and faiths
striving to follow the cyclic tide, and helping it themselves to sweep away the
knowledge of old, strangely blind to the fact that the same powerful wave of
materialism and modern science also sweeps away their own foundations, the only
religions which have remained as alive as ever to these forgotten truths of
old, are those which from the first have kept strictly aloof from the rest. The
Druses, while outwardly mixing with Moslems and Christians, and alike ever
ready to read the Kurán as well as the Gospels in their Thursday public
meetings, have never allowed an uninitiated stranger to penetrate the mysteries
of their own doctrines. Intelligence alone, they say, communicates to the soul
(which to them is mortal, though it survives the body) the enlivening and
divine spark of the Supreme Wisdom, or Ti-meami, but it must be screened from
all non-believers in H’amsa. The work of the soul is to seek Wisdom, and the
substance of earthly wisdom is to know Universal Wisdom, or ‘‘God,” as other
religionists call that principle. This is the doctrine
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of the Buddhists
and Lamaists who say “Buddha” where the Druses say ‘‘Wisdom”—one word being the
translation of the other. ‘‘In spite of their external adoption of the
religious customs of the Moslems, of their readiness to educate their children
in Christian schools, their use of the Arabic language, and their free
intercourse with strangers, the Druses remain even more than the Jews a
peculiar people” says a writer.
They are very
rarely, if ever, converted; they marry within their own race, and adhere most
tenaciously to their traditions, baffling all efforts to discover their
cherished secrets. Yet neither are they fanatical nor do they covet proselytes.
In his Travels in
Tartary, Thibet and China, Huc speaks with great surprise of the extreme
tolerance and even outward respect shown by the Tibetans to other religions. A
Grand Lama or a “living Buddha,’’ as he calls him, whom the two missionaries
met at Choang Long, near Koum-Boum, certainly had the best of them in good
breeding as well as tact and deference to their feelings. The two French men,
however, neither understood nor appreciated the act, since they seemed quite
proud of the insult offered by them to the Hobilgan. ‘‘We were waiting for him
seated on the kang, and purposely did not rise to receive him, but merely made
him a slight salutation,’’ boasts Hue (Vol. ii. pp. 35, 36). The Grand Lama
“did not appear disconcerted,’’ though; upon seeing that they as ‘‘purposely
withheld from him’’ an invitation to sit down ‘‘he only looked at them
surprised,’’ as well he might. A breviary of theirs having attracted his
attention, he demanded ‘‘permission to examine it,” and then carrying it
solemnly to his brow, he said: “It is your book of prayer; we must always
honour and reverence other people’s prayers.” It was a good lesson, yet they
understood it not. We would like to see that Christian missionary who would
reverently carry to his brow the Vedas, the Tripitaka, or the Grantha, and
publicly honour other people’s prayers! White the Tibetan “savage,” the heathen
Hobilgan, was all affability and politeness, the two French “Lamas of Jehovah,”
as Abbe Hue called his companion and himself, behaved like two uneducated
bullies. And to think that they even boast of it in print!
No more than the
Druses do the Lamaists seek to make proselytes. Both people have their “schools
of magic,” those in Tibet being attached to some La-khang (lamaseries), and
those among the Druses in the closely—guarded crypts of initiation, no stranger
being even allowed
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inside the
buildings. As the Tibetan Hobilgans are the incarnations of Buddha’s spirit, so
the Druse Okhals—erroneously called “Spiritualists” by some writers—are the
incarnations of H’amsa. Both peoples have a regular system of pass-words and
signs of recognition among the neophytes, and we know them to be nearly
identical.
In the mystical
system of the Druses there are five “Messengers” or interpreters of the “Word
of the Supreme Wisdom,” who occupy the same position as the five chief
Bodhisattvas, or Hobilgans of Tibet, each of whom is the bodily temple of the
spirit of one of the five Buddhas. Let us see what can be made known of both
classes. The names of the five principal Druse “Messengers,” or rather their
titles—as these names are generic, in both the Druse and Tibetan hierarchies,
and the title passes at the death of each to his successor—are:
(1) H’amsa,* or El
Hamma (Spiritual Wisdom), considered as the Messiah, through whom speaks
Incarnate Wisdom.
(2) Ismail-Ti-meami
(the Universal Soul). He prepares the Druses before their initiation to receive
“Wisdom.”
(3) Mohammed (the
Word). His duty is to watch over the behaviour and necessities of the brethren;
a kind of bishop.
(4) Se-lama (the
Preceding), called the “Right Wing”
(5) Mokshatana,
Boha-eddin (the Following), named the “Left Wing.”
These last are both
messengers between H’amsa and the Brotherhood. Above these living mediators who
remain ever unknown to all but the chief 0khals, stand the ten incarnates of
the “Supreme Wisdom,” the last of whom is to return at the end of the cycle,
which is fast approaching, though no one but El Hamma knows the day last
“Messenger,” in accordance with the cyclic recurrences of events, being also
the first who came with H’amsa, hence Boha-eddin. The names of the Druse
incarnations are Ali A-llal, who appeared in India (Kabir, we believe); Albar,
in Persia; Alya, in Yemen; Moill and Kahim, in Eastern Africa; Moessa and
Had-di, in Central Asia; Albou
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* Very curiously
the Druses identify their H’amsa with Hemsa, the Prophet Mahomet’s uncle, who,
they say, tired of the world and its deceitful temptations, simulated death at
the battle of Dhod, A.D. 625, and retired to the fastnesses of a great mountain
in central Asia, where he became a saint, he never died in spirit. When several
centuries after that he appeared among them it was in his second spiritual
body, and when their Messiah had, after founding the Brotherhood, disappeared,
Se-lama and Boha-eddin were the only ones to know the retreat of their Master.
They alone knew the bodies into which he went on successively reincarnating
himself, as he is not permitted to die until the return of the Highest
Messenger, the last one of the ten Avatârs, He alone—the now invisible but
expected one—stands higher than H’amsa. But it is not, as erroneously believed,
“El Hakim,” the Fatimite Khalif of bad name.
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and Manssour, in
China; and Budea, that is Boha-eddin,* in Tartary, whence he came and whither
he returned. This last one, some say, was dual-sexed on earth. Having entered
into El Hakim—the Khalif, a monster of wickedness—he caused him to be
assassinated, and then sent H’amsa to preach and to found the Brotherhood of
Lebanon. El Hakim, then, is but a mask. It is Budea, i.e., Boha-eddin, they
expect.†
And now for the
Lamaic hierarchy. Of the living or incarnate Buddhas there are five also, the
chief of whom is Dalay, or rather Talay, Lama—from tale, “ocean” or “sea”; he
being called “Ocean of Wisdom.” Above him, as above H’amsa, there is but the
“Supreme Wisdom,” the abstract principle from which emanated the five
Buddhas—Maitrei-Buddha (the last Bodhisattva or Vishnu in the Kalki Avatar),
the tenth “Messenger” expected on earth, included. But this will be the One
Wisdom, and will incarnate itself in the whole humanity collectively, not in a
single individual. But of this mystery no more at present. These five Hobilgans
are distributed in the following order:
(i) Talay-Lama, of
Lha-ssa, the incarnation of the “spiritual, passive” wisdom, which proceeds
from Gautama or Siddhârtha Buddha, or Fo.
(2) Bande-cha-an
Rem-boo-tchi, at Djashi-Loombo. He is “the active earthly wisdom.”
(3) Sa-deha-fo, or
the “Mouthpiece of Buddha,” otherwise the ‘‘Word,” at Ssamboo.
(4) Khi-sson-Tamba,
the “Precursor” (of Buddha) at the Grand Kooren.
(
5)Tchang-Zya-Fo-Lang, in the Altai Mountains. He is called the “Successor” (of
Buddha).
The Shaberons are
one degree lower. They, like the chief Okhals of the Druses, are the Initiates
of the great wisdom or Buddha, esoteric religion. This double list of the
“five” shows great similarity at least between the polity of the two systems.
The reader must bear in mind that they have sprung into their present visible
conditions nearly at the same time. It was from the ninth to the fifteenth
centuries that
————————————————————————
* One of the names
of Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, was Budea.
† In the Druse
system there is no room for a personal deity, unless a portion of the divine
impersonal and abstract wisdom incarnates itself in a mortal man. The deific
principle with them is the essence of Life, the All, and as impersonal as the
Parabrahm of the Vedântins or the Nirvana state of the Buddhists, ever
invisible, all-pervading and incomprehensible to be known but by occasional
incarnations of the spirit in human form. These ten incarnations or human
avatârs, as above specified, are called the ‘Temples of Ti-meam” (Universal
Spirit).
383—————————————————————LAMAS AND DRUSES.
modern Lamaism
evolved its ritual and popular religion, which serves the Hobilgans and
Shaberons as a blind, even against the average Chinaman and Tibetan. It was in
the eleventh century that H’amsa founded the Brotherhood of Lebanon, and till
now no one has acquired its secrets!
It is supremely
strange that both the Lamas and the Druses should have the same mystical
statistics. They reckon the bulk of the human race at 1,332,000,000. When good
and evil, they say, will come to an equilibrium in the scales of human actions
(now evil is far the heavier), then the breath of “Wisdom” will annihilate in
the wink of an eye just 666,000,000 of men. The surviving 666,000,000 will have
“Supreme Wisdom” incarnated in them.* This may have and probably has an
allegorical meaning. But what relation might it possibly bear to the number of
the “beast” of St. John’s Revelation?
If more were known
than really is of the religions of Tibet and the Druses, then would scholars
see that there is more affinity between Turanian Lamaists and the Semitic “El
Hammists,” or Druses, than was ever suspected. But all is darkness, conjecture
and mere guess work whenever the writers speak of either the one or the other.
The little that has transpired of their beliefs is generally so disfigured by
prejudice and ignorance that no learned Lama or Druse would ever recognize a
glimpse of likeness to his faith in these speculative phantasies. Even the
profoundly suggestive conclusion to which Godfrey Higgins came (Celtic Druids,
part i. p. 101) however true is but half so. “It is evident,” he writes, “that
there was a secret science possessed somewhere [by the ancients] which must
have been guarded by the most solemn oaths . . . and I cannot help suspecting
that there is still a secret doctrine known only in the deep recesses of the
crypts of Tibet.”
To conclude with
the Druses. As Se-lama and Boha-eddin—- names more than suggestive of the words
“Lama” and “Buddha”—are the only ones entrusted with the secret of H’amsa’s
retreat, and having the means of consulting with their Master, they from time
to time bring his directions and commands to the Brotherhood; so even to
————————————————————————
* The Hindus have
the same belief. In the Deva-Yuga they will all be Devs or Gods, see
Lama-nim-tshen -po, or “Great Road to Perfection,’’ a work of the fifteenth
century. The author of this book is the great reformer of Lamaism, the famous
Tzong-ka-pa, from whose hair sprang up the famous Koum.boum letter tree, a tree
whose leaves all bear sacred Tibetan inscriptions, according to tradition. This
tree was seen by Abbe Hue some forty years ago, and was seen last year by the
Hungarian traveller Count Szitcheny, who, however, begging his pardon, could
not, under its physical surroundings, have carried away a branch of it as he
pretends to have done.
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this day do the
Okhals of that name travel every seventh year through Bussora and Persia into
Tartary and Tibet to the very west of China, and return at the expiration of
the eleventh year, bringing fresh orders from “El Hamma.” Owing to the
expectation of war between China and Russia, only last year a Druse messenger
passed through Bombay on his way to Tibet and Tartary. This would explain the
“superstitious” belief that “the souls of all pious Druses are supposed to be
occupying in large numbers certain cities in China.” It is around the plateau
of the Pamirs—they say, with the biblical scholars—that the cradle of the true
race must be located—but the cradle of initiated humanity only, of those who have
for the first time tasted of the fruit of knowledge, and those are in Tibet,
Mongolia, Tartary, China and India, where also the souls of their pious and
initiated brethren transmigrate and become “sons of God.” What this language
means every Theosophist ought to know. They discredit the fable of Adam and
Eve, and say that they who first ate of the forbidden fruit, and thus became
Elohim, were Enoch or Hermes (the supposed father of Masonry), and Seth Sat-an,
the father of secret wisdom and learning, whose abode, they say, is now in the
planet Mercury, and whom the Christians were kind enough to convert into a
chief devil, the “fallen angel.” Their evil one is an abstract principle, and
called the “Rival.”
The “millions of
Chinese Unitarians” may mean Tibetan Lamas, Hindus and others of the East, as
well as Chinamen. It is true that the Druses believe in and expect their
resurrection day in Armageddon, which, however, they pronounce otherwise. As
the phrase occurs in the Apocalypse it may seem to some that they got the idea
from St. John’s Revelation. It is nothing of the kind. On that day, which,
according to the Druse teaching, will consummate the great spiritual plan, “the
bodies of the wise and faithful will be absorbed into the absolute essence, and
transformed from the many into the One.” This is preeminently the Buddhist idea
of Nirvana, and that of the Vedântin final absorption into Parabrahm. Their
“Persian Magianism and Gnos-
————————————————————————
* Buddha is son of and (according to the Brâhmanic notion) of vishnu; Maia is
mother of Mercury by Jupiter. Buddha means the wise,” and Mercury is God of
Wisdom (Hermes) and the planet sacred to Gautama Buddha is Mercury; Venus and
Isis presided over navigation, as Mary or Maria, the Madonna, presides now. Is
not the latter hymned to this day by the Church:
" Ave Maria,
stella .
Dei mater alma”?
or
" Hail, Star of time Sea,
Mother of God”
—thus identified with Venus?
385—————————————————————LAMAS AND DRUSES.
ticism” makes them
regard St. John as Oannes, the Chaldæan man-fish, hence connects their belief
at once with the Indian Vishnu and the Lamaic symbology. Their “Armageddon” is
simply “Ramdagon," * and this is how it is explained.
The sentence in
Revelation is no better interpreted than so many other things by Christians,
while even the non-Kabalistic Jews know nothing of its real meaning. Armageddon
is mistaken for a geographical locality—the elevated table of Esdraelon or
Ar-mageddon, the mountain of Megiddo, where Gideon triumphed over the Midianites.†
It is an erroneous notion, for the name in the Revelation refers to a mythical
place mentioned in one of the most archaic traditions of the heathen east,
especially among the Turanian and Semitic races. It is simply a kind of
purgatorial Elysium, in which departed spirits are collected to await the day
of final judgment. That it is so is proved by the verses in Revelation: “And he
gathered them together into a place called . . . Armageddon. And the seventh
angel poured out his vial into the air” (xvi. 16, 17). The Druses pronounce the
name of that mystical locality “Ramdagon.” It is, then, highly probable that
the word is an anagram, as shown by the author of the “Commentary on the
Apocalypse.” It means “Rama-Dagon,”‡ the first signifying
————————————————————————
* Rama, of the
solar race, is an incarnation of Vishnu--a Sun-God. In the “Matsya,” or first
Avatar, in order to save humanity from final destruction (see Vishnu Purana)
that God appears to King Satyavrata and the seven saints who accompany him on
the vessel to escape universal deluge, as an enormous fish with one stupendous
horn. To this horn the king is commanded by Hari to tie the ship with a serpent
(the emblem of eternity( instead of a cable. The Dalay-Lania, besides his name
of “Ocean,” is also called Sarou, which in Tibetan means the “unicorn,” or
one-horned. He wears on his head-gear a prominent horn, set over a Yung-dang,
or mystic cross, which is the Jain and Hindu Svastika. The “fish” and the sea
or water are the most archaic emblems of the Messiahs, or incarnations of
divine wisdom, among all the ancient peoples. Fishes play a prominent figure on
old christian medals; and in the catacombs of Rome the “Mystic cross” or
“Anchor” stands between two fishes as supporters. Dagh.dae, the name of
Zaratushtra’s mother, means the “Divine Fish” or Holy Wisdom. The “Mover on the
waters,” whether we call him Narayana or Abatur (the Kabalistic Superior Father
and “Ancient of the World”( or “Holy spirit” is all one. According to Codex
Nazaræus, Kabalah and Genesis, the Holy Spirit when moving on the waters
mirrored himself—and ‘‘Adani Kadmon was born.’’ Mare in Latin is the sea, water
is associated with every creed. Mary and Venus are both patronesses of the sea
and of sailors—and both mothers of Gods of Love whether divine or earthly. The
mother of Jesus is called Mary or Mariah—the word meaning in Hebrew mirror,
that in which we find but the reflection instead of a reality, and 600 years
before Christiatnty there was Maya, Buddha’s mother, whose name means
illusion-—identically the same. Another curious “coincidence” is found in the
selections of new Dalay-Lamas in Tibet. The new incarnation of Buddha is
ascertained by a curious ichthyomancy with three gold fishes. Shutting
themselves up in the Buddha-La (temple), the Hobilgans place three gold fish in
an urn, and on one of these ancient emblems of Supreme Wisdom shortly appears
the name of the child into whom the soul of the late Dalay-Lama is supposed to
have transmigrated.
† It is not the
“Valley of Megeddo,” for there is no such valley known, Dr. Robinson’s typo
graphical and biblical notions being no better than hypotheses.
‡ Rama is also womb
and valley, and in Tibetan “goat”; Dag is fish, from Dagon, the man-fish, or
perfect wisdom.
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Sun-God of that
name, and the second “Dagon,” or the Chaldæan Holy Wisdom incarnated in their
“Messenger,” Oannes, the Man-Fish, and descending on the “Sons of God” or the
Initiates of whatever country; those, in short, through whom Deific Wisdom
occasionally reveals itself to the world.
A REPLY TO OUR
CRITICS
OUR FINAL ANSWER TO
SEVERAL OBJECTIONS.
—————
[Vol II. No.10,
July, 1881.]
IN the ordinary run
of daily life speech may be silver, while “silence is gold.” With the editors
of periodicals devoted to some special object “silence” in certain cases
amounts to cowardice and false pretences. Such shall not be our case.
We are perfectly
aware of the fact that the simple presence of the word “Spiritualism” on the
title-page of our journal “causes it to lose in the eyes of materialist and
sceptic fifty per cent of its value”—for we are repeatedly told so by many of
our best friends, some of whom promise us more popularity, hence an increase of
subscribers, would we but take out the “contemptible” term and replace it by
some other, synonymous in meaning, but less obnoxious phonetically to the
general public. That would be acting tinder false pretences. The undisturbed
presence of the unpopular word will indicate our reply.
That we did not
include ‘‘Spiritualism’’ among the other subjects to which our journal is
devoted “in the hopes that it should do us good service among the
Spiritualists” is proved by the following fact: From the first issue of our
Prospectus to the present day, subscribers from “spiritual” quarters have not
amounted to four per cent on our subscription list. Yet, to our merriment, we
are repeatedly spoken of as “Spiritualists” by the press and our opponents.
Whether really ignorant of or purposely ignoring our views, they tax us with
belief in spirits. Not that we would at all object to the appellation—too many
far worthier and wiser persons than we firmly believing in ‘‘Spirits’’—but that
would he acting under “false pretences” again. And so we are called a
“Spiritualist” by persons who foolishly regard the term as a ‘‘brand,” while
the orthodox Spiritualists, who are well aware that we attribute their
phenomena to quite another agency than spirits, resent our peculiar opinions as
an insult to their belief, and in their turn ridicule and oppose us.
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This fact alone
ought to prove, if anything ever will, that our journal pursues an honest
policy. That, established for the one and sole object, namely, for the elucidation
of truth, however unpopular, it has remained throughout true to its first
principle—that of absolute impartiality. And that as fully answers another
charge, viz., that of publishing views of our correspondents with which we
often do not concur ourselves. ‘‘Your journal teems with articles upholding
ridiculous superstitions and absurd ghost-stories,” is the complaint in one
letter. “You neglect laying a sufficient stress in your editorials upon the
necessity of discriminating between facts and error, and in the selection of
the matter furnished by your contributors,” says another. A third one accuses
us of not sufficiently rising “from supposed facts to principles, which would
prove to our readers in every case the former no better than fictions.” In other
words, as we understand it, we are accused of neglecting scientific induction.
Our critics may be right, but we also are not altogether wrong. In the face of
the many crucial and strictly scientific experiments made by our most eminent
savants, it would take a wiser sage than King Solomon himself to decide now
between fact and fiction. The query, “What is truth?” is more difficult to
answer in the nineteenth than in the first century of our era. The appearance
of his “evil genius” to Brutus in the shape of a monstrous human form, which,
entering his tent in the darkness and silence of the night, promised to meet
him in the plains of Philippi, was a fact to the Roman tyrannicide; it was but
a dream to his slaves, who neither saw nor heard anything on that night. The
existence of an antipodal continent and the heliocentric system were facts to
Columbus and Galileo years before they could actually demonstrate them; yet the
existence of America, as that of our present solar system, was as fiercely
denied several centuries back as the phenomena of Spiritualism are now. Facts
existed in the “pre-scientific past,” and errors are as thick as berries in our
scientific present. With whom then is the criterion of truth to be left? Are we
to abandon it to the mercy and judgment of a prejudiced society, constantly
caught trying to subvert that which it does not understand; ever seeking to
transform sham and hypocrisy into synonyms of “propriety” and “respectability”?
Or shall we blindly leave it to modern exact science, so-called? But science
has neither said her last word nor can her various branches of knowledge
rejoice in their qualification of exact but so long as the hypotheses of
yesterday are not upset by the dis-
389————————————————————A REPLY TO OUR CRITICS.
coveries of to-day.
“Science is atheistic, phantasmagorical, and always in labour with conjecture.
It can never become knowledge per se. Not to know is its climax,” says Prof. A.
Wilder, our New York Vice- President, certainly more of a man of science himself
than many a scientist better known than he is to the world. Moreover, the
learned representatives of the Royal Society have as many cherished hobbies,
and are as little free of prejudice and preconception as any other mortals. It
is perhaps to religion and her handmaid theology, with her “seventy-times
seven” sects, each claiming and none proving its right to the claim of truth,
that in our search for it we ought to humbly turn? One of our severe Christian
Areopagites actually expresses the fear that “even some of the absurd stories
of the Purãnas have found favour with The Theosophist.” But let him tell us,
Has the Bible any less “absurd ghost-stories” and “ridiculous miracles” in it
than the Hindu Puránas and Buddhist Maha Jataka, or even one of the most “shamefully
superstitious publications” of the Spiritualists? (We quote from his letter.)
We are afraid in one and all it is but
Faith, fanatic
faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last
and—we decline
accepting anything on faith. In common with most of the periodicals we remind
our readers in every number of The Theosophist so that its “Editors disclaim
responsibility for opinions expressed by contributors,” with some of which they
(we) do not agree. And that is all we can do. We never started out in our paper
as teachers, but rather as humble and faithful recorders of the innumerable
beliefs, creeds, scientific hypotheses, and—even “superstitions” current in the
past ages and now more than lingering yet in our own. Never having been a
sectarian—i.e., an interested party—we maintain that in the face of the present
situation, during that incessant warfare, in which old creeds and new
doctrines, conflicting schools and authorities, revivals of blind faith and
incessant scientific discoveries, running a race as though for the survival of
the fittest, swallow up and mutually destroy and annihilate each other—daring
indeed were that man who would assume the task of deciding between them! Who,
we ask, in the presence of those most wonderful and most unexpected achieve
ments of our great physicists and chemists would risk to draw the line of
demarcation between the possible and the impossible? Where is the honest man
who, conversant at all with the latest conclusions of archæology, philology, palæography
and especially Assyriology, would
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undertake to prove
the superiority of the religious “superstitions” of the civilized Europeans
over those of the “heathen,” and even of the fetish-worshipping savages?
Having said so
much, we have made clear, we hope, the reason why, believing no mortal man
infallible, nor claiming that privilege for ourselves, we open our columns to
the discussion of every view and opinion, provided it is not proved absolutely
supernatural. Besides, whenever we make room for “unscientific” contributions
it is when these treat upon subjects which lie entirely out of the province of
physical science—generally upon questions that the average and dogmatic
scientist rejects a priori and without examination, but which the real man of
science finds not only possible, but after investigation very often fearlessly
proclaims the disputed question as an undeniable fact. In respect to most
transcendental subjects the sceptic can no more disprove than the believer
prove his point. Fact is the only tribunal we submit to, and recognize it
without appeal. And before that tribunal a Tyndall and an ignoramus stand on a
perfect par. Alive to the truism that every path may eventually lead to the
highway as every river to the ocean, we never reject a contribution simply
because we do not believe in the subject it treats upon, or disagree with its
conclusions. Contrast alone can enable us to appreciate things at their right
value; and unless a judge compares notes and hears both sides he can hardly
come to a correct decision. Dum vitant stulti vitia in contraria is our motto;
and we seek to walk prudently between the many ditches without rushing into
either. For one man to demand from another that he shall believe like himself,
whether in a question of religion or science, is supremely unjust and despotic.
Besides, it is absurd. For it amounts to exacting that the brains of the
convert, his organs of perception, his whole organization, in short, be
reconstructed precisely on the model of that of his teacher, and that he shall
have the same temperament and mental faculties as the other has. And why not
his nose and eyes, in such a case? Mental slavery is the worst of all
slaveries. It is a state over which brutal force having no real power, it
always denotes either an abject cowardice or a great intellectual weakness.
Among many other
charges, we are accused of not sufficiently exercising our editorial right of
selection. We beg to differ and contradict the imputation. As every other
person blessed with brains instead of calves’ feet jelly in his head we
certainly have our opinions upon things
391————————————————————A REPLY TO OUR CRITICS.
in general, and
things occult especially, to some of which we hold very firmly. But these being
our personal views, and though we have as good a right to them as any, we have
none whatever to force them for recognition upon others. We do not believe in
the activity of “departed spirits”—others, and among these many of the Fellows
of the Theosophical Society, do, and we are bound to respect their Opinions so
long as they respect ours. To follow every article from a contributor with an
Editor’s Note correcting “his erroneous ideas” would amount to turning our
strictly impartial journal into a sectarian organ. We decline such an office of
“Sir Oracle.”
The Theosophist is
a journal of our Society. Each of its Fellows being left absolutely
untrammelled in his opinions, and the body representing collectively nearly
every creed, nationality and school of philosophy, every member has a right to
claim room in the organ of his Society for the defence of his own particular
creed and views. Our Society being an absolute and an uncompromising Republic
of conscience, preconception and narrow-mindedness in science and philosophy
have no room in it. They are as hateful and as much denounced by us as
dogmatism and bigotry in theology; and this we have repeated usque ad nauseam.
Having explained
our position, we will close with the following parting words to our sectarian
friends and critics. The materialists and sceptics who upbraid us in the name
of modern science—the dame who always shakes her head and finger in scorn at
everything she has not yet fathomed—we would remind of the suggestive but too
mild words of the great Arago: “He is a rash man who outside of pure
mathematics pronounces the word ‘impossible.’” And to theology, which under her
many orthodox masks throws mud at us from behind every secure corner, we retort
by Victor Hugo’s celebrated paradox:
“In the name of
Religion we protest against all and every religion!”
“THE CLAIMS OF
OCCULTISM”
————
[Vol. II. No. 12,
September, 1881.]
THIS IS the heading
of an article I find in a London publication, a new weekly called Light, and
described as a “Journal Devoted to the Highest Interests of Humanity, both Here
and Hereafter.” It is a good and useful journal; and, if I may judge from the
only two numbers I have ever seen, one whose dignified tone will prove far more
persuasive with the public than the passionate and often rude remarks passed on
their opponents and sceptics by its “spiritual” contemporaries. The article to
which I wish to call attention is signed by a familiar name (nom de plume),
“M.A. Oxon.,” that of a profoundly sympathetic writer, of a personal and
esteemed friend—of one, in short, who, I trust, whether he remains friendly or
antagonistic to our views, would never confound the doctrine with its
adherents, or, putting it more plainly, visit the sins of the Occultists upon
Occultism and vice versa.
It is with
considerable interest and attention, then, that the present writer has read
“The Claims of Occultism.” As everything else coming from “M.A. Oxon.’s” pen,
it bears a peculiar stamp, not only of originality but of that intense
individuality, that quiet but determined resolution to bring every new phasis,
every discovery in Psychological sciences back to its (to him) first principles—Spiritualism.
And when writing the word, I do not mean by it the vulgar “seance-room”
Spiritualism, which “M.A. Oxon.” has from the very first out grown, but that
primitive idea which underlies all the subsequent theories, the old parent root
from which have sprung the modern weeds, namely, belief in a guardian angel or
a tutelary spirit, who, whether his charge is conscious of it or not—i.e.,
mediumistic or non mediumistic—is placed by a still higher power over every
(baptized?) mortal to watch over his actions during life. And this, if not the
correct outline of “M.A. Oxon.’s” faith, is undoubtedly the main idea
393————————————————————“THE CLAIMS OF OCCULTISM.”
of all the
Christian-born Spiritualists, past, present, and future. The doctrine,
Christian as it now may be—and preeminently Roman Catholic it is—has not
originated, as we all know, with the Christian, but with the Pagan world.
Besides being represented in the tutelary daimon of Socrates—that ancient
“guide” of whom our Spiritualists make the most they can—it is the doctrine of
the Alexandrian Greek theurgists, of the Zoroastrians, and of the later
Babylonian Jews, one, moreover, sadly disfigured by the successors of all
these—the Christians. It matters little though, for we are now concerned but with
the personal views of “MA. Oxon.,” which he sets in opposition to those of some
Theosophists.
His doctrine then
seems to us more than ever to centre in, and gyrate around, that main idea that
the spirit of the living man is incapable of acting outside of the body
independently and per se; but that it must needs be like a tottering baby
guided by his mother or nurse—be led on by some kind of spiritual strings by a
disembodied spirit, an individuality entirely distinct from, and at some time
even foreign to him self, as such a spirit can only be a human soul, having at
some period or other lived on this planet of ours. I trust that I have now
correctly stated my friend’s belief, which is that of most of the intellectual,
progressive and liberal Spiritualists of our day, one, moreover, shared by all
those Theosophists who have joined our movement by deserting the ranks of the
hoi polloi of Spiritualism. Nevertheless, and bound though we be to respect the
private opinions of those of our Brother-Fellows who have started out in the
research of truth by the same path as “M.A. Oxon.,” however widely they may
have diverged from the one we ourselves follow, yet we will always say that
such is not the belief of all the Theosophists—the writer included. For all
that, we shall not follow the nefarious example set to us by most of the
Spiritualists and their papers, which are as bitter against us as most of the
missionary sectarian papers are against each other and the infidel
Theosophists. We will not quarrel, but simply argue, for “Light! more light!”
is the rallying cry of both progressive Spiritualists and Theosophists. Having
thus far explained myself, “M.A. Oxon.” will take, I am sure, en bon seigneur
every remark that I may make on his article in Light which I here quote
verbatim. I will not break his flowing narrative, but limit my answers to
modest footnotes.
It is now some
years since Spiritualists were startled by the publication of two ponderous
volumes by Madame Blavatsky, under the title of Isis Unveiled. Those
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who mastered the
diversified contents of those large and closely-printed pages, upwards of
twelve hundred in number, bore away a vague impression that Spiritualism had
been freely handled not altogether to its advantage, and that a portentous
claim had been more or less darkly set up for what was called Occultism. The
book was full of material—so full that I shall probably be right in saying that
no one has mastered its contents so as to folly grasp the author’s plan; but
the material sadly needed reducing to order, and many of the statements
required elucidation, and some, perhaps, limitation.* Moreover, the reader
wanted a guide to pilot him through the difficulties that he encountered on
every hand; and, above all, he sorely needed some more tangible hold on the his
history and pretensions of the mysterious Brotherhood for whom the author made
such tremendous claims.†
It seemed vain for
any seeker after truth to attempt to enter into relations, how ever remote,
with any adept of the order of which Madame Blavatsky is the visible
representative. All questions were met with polite or decisive refusal to
submit to any examination of the pretensions made. The Brothers would receive
an enquirer only after he had demonstrated his truth, honesty and courage by an
indefinitely prolonged probation. They sought no one; they promised to receive
none.‡ Meantime, they rejected no one who was persevering enough to go forward
in the prescribed path of training by which alone the divine powers of time
human spirit can, they allege, be developed.
The only palpable
outcome of all this elaborate effort at human enlightenment was the foundation
in America of the Theosophical Society, which has been the accepted, though not
the prescribed, organization of the Occult Brotherhood.§ They would utilize the
Society, but they would not advise as to the methods by which it should be
regulated, nor guarantee it any special aid, except in so far as to
————————————————————————
* It is not the
first time that the just reproach is unjustly laid at my door. It is but too
true that “the material sadly needed reducing to order,’’ but it never was my
province to do so, as I gave out one detached chapter after the other, and was
quite ignorant, as Mr. 5innett correctly states in The Occult World, whether I
had started upon a series of articles, one book or two books. Neither did I
much care. It was my duty to give out some hints, to point to the dangerous
phases of modern .Spiritualism, and to bring to bear upon that question all the
assertions and testimony of the ancient world and its sages that I could find,
as all evidence to corroborate my conclusions. I did the best could and knew
how. If the critics of Isis Unveiled but consider that (1) its author had never
studied the English language, and after learning it in her childhood colloquially
had not spoken it before coming to America half-a-dozen of times during a
period of many years; (2) that most of the doctrines (or shall we say
hypotheses?) given had to be translated from an Asiatic language; and (3) that
most, if not all of the quotations from, and references to, other works—some of
these out of print and many inaccessible but to the few—and which the author
personally had never read or seen, though the passages quoted were proved in
each instance minutely correct, then my friends would perhaps feel less
critically inclined. However, Isis Unveiled is but a natural entree en matiere
in the above article, and I must not lose time over its merits or demerits.
† Indeed, the
claims made for a ‘‘brother-hood’’ of living men were never half as pretentious
as those which are daily made by the Spiritualists on behalf of the disembodied
souls of dead people.
‡ No more do they
now.
§ We beg to draw to
this sentence the attention of all those of our Fellows and friends in the West
as in India, who felt inclined to either disbelieve in, or accuse the
‘‘Brothers of the First Section’’ on account of the administrative mistakes and
shortcomings of the Theosophical Society. From the first the Fellows were
notified that the First Section might issue occasionally orders to those who
knew them personally, yet had never promised to guide, or even protect, either
the body or its members.
395————————————————————THE CLAIMS OF OCCULTISM.”
give the very
guarded promise that whatever aid might at any time be vouchsafed by them to
enquiring humanity, would come, if at all, through that channel. It must be
admitted that this was a microscopically small crumb of comfort to fall from so
richly laden a table as Madame Blavatsky had depicted. But Theosophists had to be
content, or, at least, silent; and so they betook themselves, some of them, to
reflection.
What ground had
they for belief in the existence of these Brothers, adepts who had a mastery
over the secrets of nature which dwarfed the results of modern scientific
research, who had gained the profoundest knowledge—Know thyself”—and could
demonstrate by actual experiment the transcendent powers of the human spirit,
spurning time and space, and proving the existence of soul by the methods of
exact experimental science? What ground for such claims existed outside of that
on which the Theosophical Society rested?
For a long time the
answer was of the vaguest. But eventually evidence was gathered, and in this
book* we have Mr. Sinnett coming forward to give us the benefit of his own
researches into the matter, and especially to give us his correspondence with
Koot Hoomi, an adept and member of the Brotherhood, who had entered into closer
relations, still however of a secondary nature,†with him than had been vouchsafed
to other men. These letters are of an extremely striking nature, and their own
intrinsic value is high. This is greatly enhanced by the source from which they
come, and the light they throw upon the mental attitude of these Tibetan
recluses to whom the world and the things of the world are alike without
interest, save in so far as they call ameliorate man’s state, and teach him to
develop and use his powers.
Another fruitful
subject of questioning among those who leaned to theosophical study was as to
the nature of these occult powers. It was impossible to construct from Isis
Unveiled any exact scheme, supported by adequate testimony, or by sufficient
evidence from any proper source, of what was actually claimed for the adept.
Madame Blavatsky herself, though making no pretension to having attained the
full development of those whose representative she was, possessed certain
occult powers that seemed to the Spiritualist strangely like those of
mediumship‡ This, however, she disclaimed with much indignation. A medium, she
explained, was but a poor creature, a sort of conduit through which any foul
stream might be conveyed, a gas-pipe by means of which gas of a very low power
of illumination reached this earth And much pain was taken to show that the
water was very foul, and that time gas was derived from a source that, if at
all spiritual, was such as we, who craved true illumination, should by no means
be content with. It is
————————————————————————
* The Occult World,
by A. P. Sinnett.
† With Mr. Sinnett,
and only so far. His relations with a few other Fellows have been as personal
as they could desire.
‡ Medium, in the
sense of the postman who brings a letter from one living person to another; in
the sense of an assistant electrician whose master tells him how to turn this
screw and arrange that wire in the battery; never in the sense of a Spiritual
medium. “Madame Blavatsky’’ neither needed nor did she ever make use of either
dark seance-rooms, cabinets, “ trance-state,” “harmony,” nor any of the
hundreds of conditions required by the passive mediums who know not what is
going to occur. She always knew beforehand, and could state what was going to
happen save infallibly answering each time for complete success.
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impossible to deny
that the condition of public Spiritualism in America, at the time when these
strictures were passed upon it, was such as to warrant grave censure. It had
become sullied in the minds of observers, who viewed it from without, and who
were not acquainted with its redeeming features, by association with impurity
and fraud. The mistake was to assume that this was the complexion of
Spiritualism in itself, and not of Spiritualism as depraved by adventitious
causes. This, however, was assumed. If we desired true light, then we were told
that we must crush out medium-ship, close the doors through which the mere
Spiritual loafers come to perplex and ruin us, and seek for the true adepts who
alone could safely pilot us in our search. These, it was explained, had by no
means given up the right of entrance to their Spiritual house to any chance
spirit that might take a fancy to enter. They held the key and kept intruders
out, while, by unaided powers of their own, they performed wonders before which
medial phenomena paled. This was the only method of safety; and these powers,
inherent in all men, though susceptible of development only in the purest, and
then with difficulty, were the only means by which the adept worked.
Some Theosophists
demonstrated by practical experiment that there is a foundation of truth in
these pretensions. I am not aware whether anyone has found himself able to
separate quite conclusively between his own unaided efforts and those in which
external spirit has had a share. There is, however, one very note worthy fact
which gives a clue to the difference between the methods of the Spiritualist
and the Occultist. The medium is a passive recipient of spirit-influence. The
adept is an active, energizing, conscious creator of results which he knowingly
produces, and of which evidence exists and can be sifted. Spiritualists have
been slow to accept this account of what they are familiar with in another
shape. Theosophists have been equally slow to estimate the facts and theories
of Spiritualism with candour and patience. Mr. Sinnett records many remarkable
experiences of his own, which are well worthy of study, and which may lead
those who now approach these phenomena from opposite sides to ponder whether
there may not be a common ground on which they can meet. We do not know so much
of the working of spirit that we can afford to pass by contemptuously any
traces of its operation. Be we Spiritnalists or Theosophists—odd names to
ticket our selves with—we are all looking for evidence of the whence and
whither of humanity. We want to know somewhat of the great mystery of life, and
to pry a little into the no less sublime mystery of death. We are gathering day
by day more evidence that is becoming bewildering in its minute perplexities.
We want to get light from all sources; let us be patient, tolerant of divergent
opinion, quick to recognize the tiny hold that any one soul can have on truth,
and the multiform variety in which that which we call truth is presented to
mans view. Is it strange that we should see various sides of it? Can we not see
that it most needs be so? Can we not wait for the final moment of
reconciliation, when we shall see with clearer eye and understand as now we
cannot?
There is much in
Mr. Sinnett’s little book that may help those who are trying to assume this
mental attitude. The philosophy that it contains is clearly stated, and affords
rich material for thought. The facts recorded are set forth with scientific
397—————————————————————“THE CLAIMS OF OCCULTISM.”
accuracy, and must
profoundly impress the careful and candid reader. The glimpses revealed of this
silent Brotherhood, in its lonely home on one of the slopes of the mountains of
Tibet, working to solve the mighty problem, and to confer on humanity such
benefits as it can receive, are impressive enough even to the Philistine
sceptic. If they should indeed be flashes of a greater truth, now only dimly
revealed, the importance of such revelation is not to be measured in words.
Be this, however,
as it may—and there are many points on which light is necessary before a
decisive opinion may be pronounced—there is no doubt whatever that the
philosophy contained in Mr. Sinnett’s book is similar to that which the great
students of Theosophy in ages past have arrived at. It is a mere piece of
nineteenth-century arrogance to pooh-pooh it as unworthy of attention by those
on whom has flashed the dazzling light of the spirit circle. The facts recorded
are at least as scientifically conclusive as any recorded as having happened in
a dark seance, or under the ordinary conditions of Spiritualistic
investigation. The letters of Koot Hoomi are fruitful of suggestion, and will
repay careful study on their own merits. The whole book contains only 172
pages, and will not, therefore, unduly tax the reader’s patience. If any
instructed Spiritualist will read it, and can say that there is nothing in it
that adds to his knowledge, he will at least have the satisfaction of having
read both sides of the question, and that should present itself to all candid
thinkers as a paramount and imperative duty.
A NOTE ON ELIPHAS
LEVI
[Vol. III. No. I,
October, 1881]
[ To the Editor of
“The Theosophist.”
MADAM,—Since you
have published a posthumous letter of my master and beloved friend, the late
Eliphas Levi, I think it would be agreeable to you to publish, if judged
suitable, a few extracts of the many manuscripts in my possession, written
expressly for, and given to, me by my ever• regretted master.
To begin with, I
send you “Stray Thoughts on Death and Satan ‘‘ from his pen. I cannot close
this letter without expressing the deep indignation aroused in me by the base
diatribes published in the London Spiritualist against your society and its
members. Every honest heart is irritated at such unfair treatment, especially
when proceeding from a man of honour as Mr. Harrison (editor of The
Spiritualist) who admits in his journal anonymous contributions that are tantamount
to libels.
With the utmost
respect, I remain, Madam,
Yours devotedly.
(Baron) J.
Spedalieri.
Marseilles, July
29th, 1881.]
It is with feelings
of sincere gratitude that we thank Baron Spedalieri for his most valuable
contribution. The late Eliphas Levi was the most learned Kabalist and Occultist
of our age in Europe, and every thing from his pen is precious to us, in so far
as it helps us to compare notes with the Eastern Occult doctrines and, by the
light thrown upon both, to prove to the world of Spiritualists and Mystics,
that the two systems—the Eastern Aryan, and the Western or the Chaldæo-Jewish
Kabalah—are one in their principal metaphysical tenets. Only, while the Eastern
Occultists have never lost the key to their esotericism, and are daily
verifying and elaborating their doctrines by personal experiments, and by the
additional light of modern science, the Western or Jewish Kabalists, besides
having been misled for centuries by the introduction of foreign elements in it
such as Christian dogmas, dead— letter interpretations of the Bible, etc., have
most undeniably lost the true key to the esoteric meaning of Simeon Ben
Iochai’s Kabalah, and are trying to make up for the loss by interpretations
emanating from
399—————————————————————A
NOTE ON ÉLIPHAS LÉVI.
the depths of their
imagination and inner consciousness. Such is evidently the case with J. K., the
self-styled London “adept,” whose anonymous and powerless vilifications of the
Theosophical Society and its members are pertinently regarded by Baron
Spedalieri as “tanta mount to libels.” But we have to be charitable. That poor
descendant of the biblical Levites—as we know him to be—in his pigmy efforts to
upset the Theosophists, has most evidently fractured his skull against one of
his own “occult” sentences. There is one especially in The Spiritualist (July
22nd), to which the attention of the mystically inclined is drawn further down,
as this paragraph is most probably the cause of the sad accident which befell
so handsome a head. Be it as it may, but it now disables the illustrious J. K.
from communicating ‘‘scientifically his knowledge’’ and forces him at the same
time to remain, as he expresses it, “in an incommunicable ecstatic state.” For
it is in no other “state” that our great modern adept—the literary man of such
a “calibre” that to suspect him of “ignorance” becomes equal, in audacity, to
throwing suspicion upon the virtue of Cæsar's wife—could possibly have written
the following lines, intended by him, we believe, as a lucid and clear
exposition of his own psycho-kabalistic lore as juxtaposed to the “hard words,”
“outlandish verbiage,” “moral and philosophical platitudes,” and “jaw-breakers”
of “the learned Theosophists.”
These are the “gems
of occult wisdom” of the illustrious Jewish Kabalist who, like a bashful
violet, hides his occult learning under two modest initials.
In every human
creature there lies latent in the involitional part of the being a sufficient
quantity of the omniscient, the absolute. To induce the latent absolute, which
is the involitional part of our volitional conscious being, to become manifest,
it is essential that the volitional part of our being should become latent.
After the preparatory purification from acquired depravities, a kind of introversion
has to take place; the involitional has to become volitional, by the volitional
————————————————————————
* "To accuse a
literary man, of my calibre of ignorance, is as amusing a mistake as it would
have been to charge Porson of ignorance of Greeks’’ he writes in The
Spiritualist of July 8th .. " The occult is my special subject, and there
is but little that I do not know he adds. Now, the above sentence settles the
question at once for us. Not only no ‘‘ adept,’’ but no layman or profane of the
most widely recognized intellect and ability would ever have dared, under the
penalty of being henceforth and for ever regarded as the most ridiculously
conceited of Æsop’s heroes, to use such a sentence when speaking of himself! So
stupidly arrogant and cowardly impertinent behind the shield of his initials
has he shown himself in his transparent attacks upon far better and more worthy
men than himself in the above—named Spiritualist that it is the first and
certainly the last time that we do him the honour of noticing him in these
columns. Our Journal has a nobler task, we trust, than to be polemizing with
those, whom in vulgar parlance the world generally terms—bullies.
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becoming
involitional. When the conscious becomes semi-unconscious, the, to us, formerly
unconscious becomes fully conscious. The particle of the omniscient that is
within us, the vital and growing, sleepless, involitional, occult or female
principle being allowed to express itself in the volitional, mental, manifest,
or masculine part of the human being, while the latter remains in a state of
perfect passivity, the two formerly dissevered parts become reunited as one
holy (wholly) perfect being, and then the divine manifestation is inevitable.
Very luckily, J. K.
gives us himself the key to this grandiloquent gush by adding:
Necessarily, this
is only safely practicable while living in uncompromisingly firm purity, for
otherwise there is danger of unbalancement—insanity, or a questionable form of
mediumship.
The italics are
ours. Evidently with our immaculate “adept” the “involitional, occult or female
principle” was not allowed to “express itself in the volitional, mental,
manifest, or masculine part” of his being, and—behold the results
For the edification
of our Hindu readers, who are unprogressive enough to refuse to read the
lucubrations of J. K., or follow the mental “grand trapeze” performed by this
remarkable “adept” on the columns of The Spiritualist, we may add that in the
same article he informs his English readers that it is “Hindu mystification,
acting on Western credulity” which “brought out the Theosophical Society.”
“Hindu philosophy,” according to that great light of the nineteenth century, is
no ‘‘philosophy” but rather ‘‘ mysticism.”
Following the track
of the mystifying and mystified Hindus they [ The Theosophists] consider the
four above faculties [Siddhis of Krishna], Anima, Mahima, Laghima and Garima to
be time power they [We] have to strive for.
Indeed, what a
ludicrous confusion of effect with cause! The injury to the brain must have
been serious indeed. Let us hope that timely and repeated lotions of
“witch-hazel” or the “universal magic balm” will have its good effects.
Meanwhile, we turn the attention of our Hindu readers and students of Occultism
to the identity of the doctrines taught by Éliphas Lèvi (who is also
contemptuously sneered at, and sent by the “adept” to keep company with
“Brothers,” “Yogis,” and “Fakirs”) in every essential and vital point with
those of our Eastern initiates.
THE SIX=POINTED AND
FIVE=POINTED
STARS
———
[Vol. III. No. 2,
November, 1881.]
OUR authorities for
representing the pentagram or the five-pointed star as the microcosm, and the
six-pointed double triangle as the macrocosm, are all the best known Western
Kabalists—mediæval and modern. Éliphas Lévi (Abbé Constant) and, we believe,
Kunrath, one of the greatest occultists of the past ages, give their reasons
for it. In Hargrave Jennings’ Rosicrucians the correct cut of the microcosm
with man in the centre of the pentagram is given. There is no objection
whatever to publish their speculations save one—the lack of space in our
journal, as it would necessitate an enormous amount of explanations to make
their esoteric meaning clear. But room will always be found to correct a few
natural misconceptions which may arise in the minds of some of our readers,
owing to the necessary brevity of our editorial notes. So long as the question
raised provokes no discussion to show the interest taken in the subject, these
notes touch but superficially upon every question. The excellence of the
above-published paper [ Six-pointed and Five-pointed Stars,” by Krishna Shankar
Lalshankar], and the many valuable remarks contained in it, afford us now an
opportunity for correcting such errors in the author’s mind.
As understood in
the West by the real Kabalists, Spirit and Matter have their chief symbolical
meaning in the respective colours of the two interlaced triangles, and relate
in no way to any of the lines which bind the figures themselves. To the
Kabalist and Hermetic philosopher, everything in nature appears under a triune
aspect; everything is a multiplicity and trinity in unity, and is so
represented by him symbolically in various geometrical figures. “God
geometrizes,” says Plato. The “Three Kabalistic Faces” are the “Three Lights”
and the “Three Lives” of Ain-Suph (the Parabrahman of the Westerns), which is
also called the “Central Invisible Sun.” “The Universe is
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his Spirit, Soul
and Body,” his ‘‘Three Emanations.’’ This triune nature—the purely Spiritual,
the purely Material, and the Middle nature (or imponderable matter, of which
man’s astral soul is composed)—is represented by the equilateral triangle,
whose three sides are equal because these three principles are diffused throughout
the universe in equal proportions, and——the one law in nature being perfect
equilibrium—are eternal and coexistent. The Western symbology then, with a
trifling variation, is identically the same as that of the Aryans. Names may
vary, and trifling details may be added, but the fundamental ideas are the
same. The double triangle, representing symbolically the macrocosm, or great
universe, contains in itself the ideas of Unity, of Duality (as shown in the
two colours, and two triangles—the universe of Spirit and that of Matter), of
Trinity, of the Pythagoræan Tetraktys, the perfect Square, up to the Dodekagon
and the Dodekahedron. The ancient Chaldæan Kabalists—the masters and inspirers
of the Jewish Kabalah—were neither the Anthropomorphizers of the Old Testament,
nor those of the present day. Their Ain—Suph—the Endless and the Boundless—’’
has a form and then has no form,’’ says the Zohar,* and forthwith explains the
riddle by adding: ‘‘The Invisible assumed a Form when he called the Universe
into existence.” That is to say, the Deity can only be seen and conceived of in
objective nature—pure pantheism. The three sides of the triangles represent to
the Occultists as they do to the Aryans—Spirit, Matter, and the Middle nature
(the latter identical in its meaning with ‘‘Space”); hence also the creative,
preservative and destructive energies, typified in the ‘‘Three Lights.” The
first Light infuses intelligent, conscious life throughout the universe, thus
answering to the creative energy. The second Light incessantly produces forms
out of preexistent cosmic matter within the cosmic circle, and hence is the
preservative energy. The third Light produces the whole universe of gross
physical matter. As the latter keeps gradually receding from the central spiritual
Light, its brightness vanes, and it becomes Darkness or Evil, leading to Death.
Hence it becomes the destructive energy, which we find ever at work on forms
and shapes—the temporary and the changing. The ‘‘Three Kabalistic Faces’’ of
the ‘‘Ancient of the Ancient’’— ‘‘has no face”—are the Aryan deities called
respectively Brahmâ and Rudra or Shiva. The double triangle of the Kabalists is
enclosed
————————————————————————
* The Book of
Splendour written by Simeon Ben Iochai, in the first century B.C. according to
others in the year AD.80.
403————————————————THE SIX-POINTED AND FIVE-POINTED STARS.
within a circle
represented by a serpent swallowing its own tail (the Egyptian emblem of the
eternity), and sometimes by a simple circle (see the theosophical seal). The
only difference we can see between the Aryan and the Western symbology of the
double triangle—according to the author’s explanation—lies in his omission to
notice the profound and special meaning in that which, if we understand him
rightly, he terms “the zenith and the zero.” With the Western Kabalists, the
apex of the white triangle loses itself in the zenith, the world of pure
immateriality or unalloyed Spirit, while the lower angle of the black triangle
pointing downward towards the nadir shows—to use a very prosaic phrase of the
mediæval Hermetists—pure, or rather “impure matter,” as the “gross purgations
of the celestial fire” (Spirit) drawn into the vortex of annihilation, that
lower world, where forms and shapes and conscious life disappear to be
dispersed and return to the mother fount (Cosmic Matter). So with the central
point and the central cavity, which, according to the Paurânik teaching, “is
considered to be the seat of the Avyakta Brahma, or Unmanifested Deity.”
The Occultists, who
generally draw Simple central geometrical point (which, having neither length,
breadth nor thickness, represents the invisible
“Central Sun,’’ the Light of the ‘‘ Unmanifested Deity”), often place the Crux
Ansata (the “handled cross,” or the Egyptian Tau), at the zenith of which,
instead of a mere upright line, they substitute a circle, the symbol of
limitless, uncreated Space. Thus modified, this cross has nearly the same
significance as the “Mundane Cross” of the ancient Egyptian Hermetists, a cross
within a circle Å
Therefore, it is
erroneous to say that the editorial note stated that the double triangle
represented “Spirit and Matter only,” for it represents so many emblems that a
volume would not suffice to explain them. Says our critic:
————————————————————————
* The meaning is
the same in the Egyptian pyramid. A French archæologist of some renown, Dr.
Rebold, shows the great culture of the Egyptians, 5,000 B.C., by stating upon
various authorities that there were at that time no less than ‘‘ thirty or forty
colleges of the initiated priests who studied occult sciences and practical
magic.”
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If, as you say, the
double triangle is made to represent universal spirit and matter only, the
objection that two sides—or any two things—cannot form a triangle, or that a
triangle cannot be made to represent one—spirit alone, or matter alone—-as you
appear to have done by the distinction of white and black—remains unexplained.
Believing that we
have now sufficiently explained some of the difficulties, and shown that the
Western Kabalists always had regard to the ‘‘trinity in unity’’ and vice versa,
we may add that the Pythagoræans explained away the “objection” especially
insisted upon by the writer of the above words about 2,500 years ago. The
sacred numbers of that school—whose cardinal idea was that there existed a
permanent principle of Unity beneath all the forces and phenomenal changes of
the universe—did not include the number two or the Duad among the others. The
Pythagoræans refused to recognize that number, even as an abstract idea,
precisely on the ground that in geometry it was impossible to construct a
figure with only two straight lines. It is obvious that for symbolical the
number cannot be identified with any circumscribed figure, whether a plane or a
solid, geometric figure; and thus, as it could not he made to represent a unity
in a multiplicity as any other polygonal figure can, it could not be regarded
as a sacred number. The number two, represented in geometry by a double
horizontal line =, and in the Roman numerals by a double perpendicular line | |
, and, a line having length, but not breadth or thickness, another numeral had
to be added to it before it could be accepted. It is only in conjunction with
number one, thus becoming the equilateral triangle, that it can be called a
figure. It thus becomes evident why, in symbolizing Spirit and Matter (the
Alpha and Omega in the Kosmos), the Hermetists had to use two triangles
interlaced (both a ‘‘trinity in unity’’), making the one typifying Spirit white
with chalk, and the other typifying Matter black with charcoal.
To the question,
what do the two other angles of the white triangle signify, if the one ‘‘white
point ascending heavenward symbolizes Spirit”—we answer that, according to the
Kabalists. the two lower points signify ‘‘Spirit falling into generation,’’
i.e., the pure divine Spark already mixed with the Matter of the phenomenal
world. The same explanation holds good for the two base angles of time black
triangle; the third points showing respectively the progressive purification of
Spirit, and the progressive grossness of Matter. Again, to say that ‘‘any
thought of upward or downward’’ in ‘‘the sublime idea of the Kosmos” seems “not
only revolting but unreal,” is to object to
405—————————————————THE SIX-POINTED AND FIVE-POINTED STARS.
anything abstract
being symbolized in a concrete image. Then why not make away with all the signs
altogether, including that of Vishnu and with all the learned Paurânik
explanations thereof given by the writer? And why should the Kabalistic idea be
more revolting than that of “Death, Devourer, Time,” the latter word being a
synonym of Endless Eternity—represented by a circle surrounding the double
triangle? Strange inconsistency, and one, moreover, which clashes entirely with
the rest of the article! If the writer has not met “any where with the idea of
one triangle being white and the other black,” it is simply because he has
never studied, nor probably even seen the writings and illustrations of Western
Kabalists.
The above
explanations contain the key to the Pythagoræan general formula of unity in
multiplicity, the One evolving the man, and pervading the many and the whole.
Their mystic Dekad (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10), expresses the entire idea; it is not
only far from being ‘‘revolting’’ but it is positively sublime. The One is the
Deity; the Two Matter—the figure so despised by them as Matter per se can never
be a conscious unity.* The Three (or Triangle), combining Monad and Duad,
partaking of the nature of both, becomes the Triad or the phenomenal world. The
Tetrad or sacred Tetraktys, the form of perfection with the Pythagoræans
expresses at the same time the emptiness of all— Mayâ. While the Dekad, or sum
of all, involves the entire Kosmos. ‘‘The universe is the combination of a
thousand elements, and yet the expression of a single element—absolute harmony
or spirit—a chaos to the sense, a perfect kosmos to reason,” we say in Isis
Unveiled.
Pythagoras learned
his philosophy in India. Hence, the similarity in the fundamental ideas of the
ancient Brâhmanical Initiates and the Pythagorists. And when in defining the
Shatkon, the writer says it “represents the great universe (Brahmânda)—the
whole endless Mahâ kâsha—with all the planetary and stellar worlds contained in
it,’’ he only repeats in other words the explanation given by Pythagoras and
the Hermetic philosophers of the hexagonal star or the “double triangle,” as
shown above.
Nor do we find it
very difficult to fill up the gap left in our brief note in the August number
as to the ‘‘remaining three points of the two triangles,’’ and the three sides
of each element of the ‘‘double triangle’’ or of the circle surrounding the
figure. As the Hermetists symbolized
————————————————————————
* Compare in Kapila sânkhya— Purusha and Prakriti only the two combined when
forming a unity can manifest themselves in this world of the senses.
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A MODERN PANARION.
everything visible
and invisible they could not fail to symbolize the macrocosm in its completeness.
The Pythagoreans
who included in their Dekad the entire Kosmos, held the number twelve in still
higher reverence as it represented the sacred Tetraktys multiplied by three,
which gave a trinity of perfect squares called tetrads. The Hermetic philosophers
or Occultists following in their steps
represented this number twelve in the double triangle’’—the great universe or
the macrocosm as shown in this figure—and included in it the pentagram, or the
microcosm, called by them the little universe.
Dividing the twelve letters of the outer angles into four groups of triads, or
three groups of tetrads, they obtained the Dodekagon, a regular geometric
polygon, bounded by twelve equal sides and containing twelve equal angles,
which symbolized with the ancient Chaldæans the twelve “great gods,”* and with
the Hebrew Kabalists the ten Sephiroth, or creative powers of nature, emanated
from Sephira (Divine Light), herself the chief Sephiroth and emanation from
Hakoma, the Supreme (or Unmanifested) Wisdom, and Ain-Suph the Endless; viz.,
three groups of triads of the Sephiroth and a fourth triad, composed of
Sephira, Ain-Suph and Hakoma, the Supreme Wisdom which ‘‘cannot he understood
by reflection,’’ and which ‘‘lies concealed within and without the cranium of
Long Face,’’† the uppermost head of the upper triangle forming the ‘‘Three
Kabalistic Faces,” making up the twelve. Moreover, the twelve figures give two
squares or the double Tetraktys, representing in the Pythagoræan symbology the
two worlds—the spiritual and the physical. The eighteen inner and six central
angles yield, besides twenty-four, twice the sacred macrocosmic number, also
the twenty-four ‘‘divine unmanifested
————————————————————————
* According to
Haug's Aitareya Brahmana , the Hindu Manas or[ Mind] or Bhagavan creates no
more than the Pythagoræan Monas. He enters the Egg of the World and emanates
from it as Brahmâ as itself (Bhagavan) has no first cause (Apârva). Brahma, as
Prajapati, manifests himself as the androgyne Sephira and the ten Sephiroth) as
twelve bodies or attributes which are represented by the twelve Gods
symbolizing (1) Fire, (2) the Sun, (3) Soma, (4) all living Beings, (5)( Vâyu,
(6) Death—Shiva, (7) Earth, (8) Heaven, (9) Agni, (10) Aditya, (11) Mind,( 12)
the great Infinite cycle which is not to be stopped. This, with a few
variations, is purely the Kabalistic idea of the Sephroth.
† Idra Rabba, vi.
58.
407—————————————————THE SIX-POINTED AND FIVE-POINTED STARS.
powers.” These it
would be impossible to enumerate in so short a space. Besides, it is far more
reasonable in our days of scepticism to follow the hint of Iamblichus, who
says, that “the divine powers always felt indignant with those who rendered
manifest the composition of the Icosahedron,” viz., those who delivered the method
of inscribing in a sphere the Dodekahedron, one of the five solid figures in
geometry, contained by twelve equal and regular pentagons—the secret Kabalistic
meaning of which our opponents would do well to study.
In addition to all
this, as shown in the “double triangle” above, the pentagram in the centre
gives the key to the meaning of the Hermetic philosophers and Kabalists. So
well known and widespread is this double sign that it may be found over the
entrance door of the Lha khang (temples containing Buddhist images and
statues), in every Gong-pa (lamasery), and often over the relic-cupboard,
called in Tibet Doong-ting.
The mediæval
Kabalists give us in their writings the key to its meaning. “Man is a little
world inside the great universe”—Paracelsus teaches. And again: “A microcosm,
within the macrocosm, like a fœtus he is suspended by his three principal
spirits in the matrix of the universe.” These three spirits are described as
double: (1) the spirit of the elements (terrestrial body and vital principle);
(2) the spirit of the stars (sidereal or astral body and the will governing
it); (3) the spirits of the spiritual world (the animal and the spiritual
souls); the seventh principle being an almost immaterial spirit or the divine
Augoeides, Atmâ, represented by the central point, which corresponds to the
human navel. This seventh principle is the personal God of every man, say the
old Western and Eastern Occultists.
Therefore it is
that the explanations given by our critic of the Shatkon and Panchkon rather
corroborate than destroy our theory. Speaking of the five triangles composed of
“five times five” or twenty-five points, he remarks of the pentagram that it is
a “number otherwise corresponding with the twenty-five elements making a living
human creature.” Now we suppose that by “elements” the writer means just what
the Kabalists say when they teach that the emanations of the twenty-four divine
“unmanifested powers “—the “unexisting” or “central point” being the
twenty-fifth—make a perfect human being. But without disputing upon the
relative value of the words “element” and “emanation,” and strengthened
moreover as we find the above sentence by the author’s additional remark that
“the entire figure” of the
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A MODERN PANARION.
microcosm, “the
inner world of individual living being,” is “a figure which is the sign of
Brahmâ, the deified creative energy”—in what respect, we ask, does the above
sentence so much clash with our statement that some proficients in Hermetic
philosophy and Kabalists regard the five points of the pentagram as
representing the five cardinal limbs of the human body? We are no ardent
disciple or follower of the Western Kabalists, yet we maintain that in this
they are right. If the twenty-five elements represented by the five-pointed
star make up a “living human creature” then these elements are all vital,
whether mental or physical, and the figure symbolizing “creative energy” gives
the more force to the Kabalistic idea. Every one of the five gross
elements—earth, water, fire, air (or “wind”) and ether— enters into the
composition of man, and whether we say “five organs of action” or the “five
limbs” or even the “five senses,” it means all one and the same thing, if we
would refrain from hair-splitting.
Most undoubtedly
the “proficients” could explain their claim at least as satisfactorily as the
writer who controverts and denies it, in explaining his own. In the Codex
Nazaræus most Kabalistic of books—the Supreme King of Light and the chief Æon,
Mano, emanates the five Æons—he himself with the Lord Ferho (the “Unknown
Formless Life” of which he is an emanation) making up the seven, which typify
again the seven principles in man; the five being purely material and
semi-material, and the higher two almost immaterial and spiritual. Five
refulgent rays of light proceed from each of the seven Æons, five of these
shooting through the head, the two extended hands, and the two feet of man
represented in the five-pointed star, one enveloping him as with a mist and the
seventh settling like a bright star over his head. The illustration may be seen
in several old books upon the codex Nazaræus and the Kabalah. What wonder, then,
that since electricity or animal magnetism streams most powerfully from the
five cardinal limbs of man, and since the phenomena of what is now called
“mesmeric” force had been studied in the temples of ancient Egypt and Greece,
and mastered as it may never hope to be mastered in our age of idiotic and à
priori denial, the old Kabalists and philosophers who symbolized every power in
nature, should, for reasons perfectly evident for those who know anything of
the arcane sciences and the mysterious relations which exist between numbers,
figures and ideas, have chosen to represent “the five cardinal limbs of
man”—the head, the two arms and the two legs—in the five points of the
pentagram?
409—————————————————THE SIX-POINTED AND FIVE-POINTED STARS.
Eliphas Lévi the
modern Kabalist, goes as far, if not farther, than his ancient and mediæval
brethren, for, he says in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (p. 175):
The Kabalistic use
of the pentagram can determine the countenance of unborn infants, and an initiated
woman might give to her son the features of Nereus or Achilles, or those of
Louis XIV or Napoleon.
The Astral Light of
the Western Occultists is the Akâsha of the Hindus. Many of the latter will not
study its mysterious correlations, either under the guidance of initiated
Kabalists or that of their own initiated Brâhmans, preferring to Prajnâ
Pârarnitâ—their own conceit. And yet both exist and are identical.
THE GRAND
INQUISITOR
————
[Vol. III. Nos. 2
and 3, November and December, 1881.]
[Dedicated by the
Translator to those sceptics who clamour so loudy’, both in print and private
letters—” Show us the wonder-working ‘Brothers,’ let them come out publicly
and—we will believe in them !‘‘]
[The following is
an extract from M. Dostoevsky’s celebrated novel, The Brothers Karamazof the
last publication from the pen of the great Russian novelist, who died a few
months ago, just as the concluding chapters appeared in print. Dostoevsky is
beginning to be recognized as one of the ablest and profoundest among Russian
writers. His characters are invariably typical portraits drawn from various
classes of Russian society, strikingly life-like and realistic to the highest
degree. The following extract is a cutting satire on modern theology generally
and the Roman Catholic religion in particular. The idea is that Christ revisits
earth, coming to Spain at the period of the Inquisition, and is at once
arrested as a heretic by the Grand Inquisitor. One of the three brothers of the
story, Ivan, a rank materialist and an atheist of the new school, is supposed
to throw this conception into the form of a poem, which he describes to
Alyosha—the youngest of the brothers a young Christian mystic brought up by a
‘‘saint’’ in a monastery—as follows : ]
‘‘Quite impossible,
as you see, to start without an introduction,” laughed Ivan. “Well, then, I
mean to place the event described in the poem in the sixteenth century, an
age—as you must have been told at school—when it was the great fashion among
poets to make the denizens and powers of higher worlds descend on earth and mix
freely with mortals. . . . In France all the notaries’ clerks, and the monks in
their cloisters as well, used to give grand performances, dramatic plays in
which long scenes were enacted by the Madonna, the angels, the saints, Christ,
and even by God Himself. In those days, everything was very artless and
primitive. An instance of it may be found in Victor
411—————————————————————THE GRAND INQUISITOR
Hugo’s drama, Notre
Dame de Paris, where, at the Municipal Hall, a play called Le Bon Jugement de
la Très-sainte et Gracieuse Vierge Marie, is enacted in honour of Louis XI, in
which the Virgin appears personally to pronounce her ‘good judgement.’ In
Moscow, during the prepetrean period, performances of nearly the same
character, chosen especially from the Old Testament, were also in great favour.
Apart from such plays, the world was overflooded with mystical writings,
‘verses’—the heroes of which were always selected from the ranks of angels,
saints and other heavenly citizens answering to the devotional purposes of the
age. The recluses of our monasteries, like the Roman Catholic monks, passed
their time in translating, copying, and even producing original compositions
upon such subjects, and that, remember, during the Tartar period! . In this
connection, I am re- minded of a poem compiled in a convent—a translation from
the Greek, of course—called ‘The Travels of the Mother of God among the
Damned,’ with fitting illustrations and a boldness of conception inferior
nowise to that of Dante. The ‘Mother of God’ visits hell, in company with the
Archangel Michael as her cicerone to guide her through the legions of the
‘damned.’ She sees them all, and is witness to their multifarious tortures.
Among the many other exceedingly remarkable varieties of torments—every
category of sinners having its own—there is one especially worthy of notice,
namely, a class of the ‘damned’ sentenced to gradually sink in a burning lake
of brimstone and fire. Those whose sins cause them to sink so low that they no
longer can rise to the surface are for ever forgotten by God, i.e., they fade
out from the omniscient memory, says the poem—an expression, by the way, of an
extraordinary profundity of thought, when closely analyzed. The Virgin is
terribly shocked, and falling down upon her knees in tears before the throne of
God, begs that all she has seen in hell—all, all without exception, should have
their sentences remitted to them. Her dialogue with God is colossally
interesting. She supplicates, she will not leave Him. And when God, pointing to
the pierced hands and feet of her Son, cries, ‘How can I forgive His
executioners?’ she then commands that all the saints, martyrs, angels and
archangels, should prostrate themselves with her before the Immutable and the
Changeless One and implore Him to change His wrath into mercy and—forgive them
all. The poem closes upon her obtaining from God a compromise, a kind of yearly
respite of tortures between Good Friday and Trinity, a chorus of the ‘dawned’
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A MODERN PANARION.
singing loud
praises to God from their ‘bottomless pit,’ thanking and telling Him :
Thou art right, 0
Lord, very right,
Thou hast condemned us justly.
“My poem is of the
same character.
“In it, it is
Christ who appears on the scene. True, He says nothing, but only appears and
passes out of sight. Fifteen centuries have elapsed since He left the world
with the distinct promise to return ‘with power and great glory’; fifteen long
centuries since His prophet cried, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord!’ since He
Himself had foretold, while yet on earth, ‘Of that day and hour knoweth no man,
no, not the angels of heaven but my Father only.’ But Christendom expects Him
still.
‘‘It waits for Him
with the same old faith and the same emotion; aye, with a far greater faith,
for fifteen centuries have rolled away since the last sign from heaven was sent
to man,
And blind faith
remained alone
To lull the trusting heart,
As heav’n would send a sign no more.
“True, again, we
have all heard of miracles being wrought ever since the ‘age of miracles’
passed away to return no more. We had, and still have, our saints credited with
performing the most miraculous cures; and, if we can believe their biographers,
there have been those among them who have been personally visited by the Queen
of Heaven. But Satan sleepeth not, and the first germs of doubt, an
ever-increasing unbelief in such wonders, already had begun to sprout in
Christendom as early as the sixteenth century. It was just at that time that a
new and terrible heresy first made its appearance in the north of Germany.* A
great star ‘shining as it were a lamp . . . fell upon the fountains of waters’
. . and ‘they were made bitter.’ This ‘heresy’ blasphemously denied ‘miracles.’
But those who had remained faithful believed all the more ardently. The tears
of mankind ascended to Him as heretofore, and the Christian world was expecting
Him as confidently as ever; they loved Him and hoped in Him, thirsted and
hungered to suffer and die for Him just as many of them had done before. So
many centuries had weak, trusting humanity implored Him, crying with ardent
faith and fervour: ‘How long, 0 Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not come!’ So
many long centuries hath it
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* Luther’s reform.
413—————————————————————THE GRAND INQUISITOR
vainly appealed to
Him, that at last, in His inexhaustible compassion, He consenteth to answer the
prayer. . He decideth that once more, if it were but for one short hour, the
people—His long-suffering, tortured, fatally sinful, yet loving and child-like,
trusting people—shall behold Him again. The scene of action is placed by me in
Spain, at Seville, during that terrible period of the Inquisition, when, for
the greater glory of God, stakes were flaming all over the country,
Burning wicked
heretics,
In grand auto-da-fes.
‘‘This particular
visit has, of course, nothing to do with the promised Advent, when, according
to the programme, ‘after the tribulation of those days,’ He will appear ‘coming
in the clouds of heaven.’ For, that ‘coming of the Son of Man,’ as we are
informed, will take place as suddenly ‘as the lightning cometh out of the east
and shineth even unto the west.’ No; this once, He desired to come unknown, and
appear among His children, just when the bones of the heretics, sentenced to be
burnt alive, had commenced crackling at the flaming stakes. Owing to His
limitless mercy, He mixes once more with mortals and in the same form in which
He was wont to appear fifteen centuries ago. He descends, just at the very
moment when before king, courtiers, knights, cardinals, and the fairest dames
of court, before the whole population of Seville, upwards of a hundred wicked
heretics are being roasted, in a magnificent auto-da-fé ad majorem Dei gloriam,
by the order of the powerful Cardinal Grand Inquisitor.
• • • He comes
silently and unannounced; et all—how strange—yea, all recognize Him, at once!
The population rushes towards Him as if propelled by some irresistible force;
it surrounds, throngs, and presses around, it follows Him Silently, and with a
smile of boundless compassion upon His lips, He crosses the dense crowd, and
moves softly on. The Sun of Love burns in His heart, and warm rays of Light,
Wisdom and Power beam forth from His eyes, and pour down their waves upon the
swarming multitudes of the rabble assembled around, making their hearts vibrate
with returning love. He extends His hands over their heads, blesses them, and
from mere contact with Him, aye, even with His garments, a healing power goes
forth. An old man, blind from his birth, cries, ‘Lord, heal me, that I may see
Thee!’ and the scales falling off the closed eyes, the blind man beholds Him. .
. . The crowd weeps for joy, and kisses the ground upon which He treads.
Children strew flowers along His path and sing to
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A MODERN PANARION.
Him, ‘Hosanna! ‘ It
is He, it is Himself, they say to each other, it must be He, it can be none
other but He! He pauses at the portal of the old cathedral, just as a wee white
coffin is carried in, with tears and great lamentations. The lid is off, and in
the coffin lies the body of a fair girl-child, seven years old, the only child
of an eminent citizen of the city. The little corpse lies buried in flowers.
‘He will raise thy child to life! ‘ confidently shouts the crowd to the weeping
mother. The officiating priest who had come to meet the funeral procession,
looks perplexed, and frowns. A loud cry is suddenly heard, and the bereaved
mother prostrates herself at His feet. ‘If it be Thou, then bring back my child
to life!’ she cries beseechingly. The procession halts, and the little coffin
is gently lowered at His feet. Divine compassion beams forth from His eyes, and
as He looks at the child, His lips are heard to whisper once more, ‘Talitha
Cumi’—and ‘straightway the damsel arose.’ The child rises in her coffin. Her
little hands still hold the nosegay of white roses which after death was placed
in them, and, looking round with large astonished eyes she smiles sweetly. . .
. The crowd is violently excited. A terrible commotion rages among them, the
populace shouts and loudly weeps, when suddenly, before the cathedral door,
appears the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor himself is a tall, gaunt—looking old man
of nearly fourscore years and ten, with a stern, withered face, and deeply sunken
eyes, from the cavity of which glitter two fiery sparks. He has laid aside his
gorgeous cardinal’s robes in which he had appeared before the people at time
auto-da-fé of the enemies of the Romish Church, and is now clad in his old,
rough, monkish cassock. His sullen assistants and slaves of the ‘holy guard’
are following at a distance. He pauses before the crowd and observes. He has
seen all. He has witnessed the placing of the little coffin at His feet, the
calling back to life. And now, his dark, grim face has grown still darker; his
bushy grey eyebrows nearly meet, and his sunken eye flashes with sinister
light. Slowly raising his finger, he commands his minions to arrest Him.
“Such is his power
over the well-disciplined, submissive and now trembling people, that the thick
crowds immediately give way, and scattering before the guard, amid dead silence
and without one breath of protest, allow them to lay their sacrilegious hands
upon the stranger and lead Him away. . . . That same populace, like one man,
now bows its head to the ground before the old Inquisitor, who blesses it
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and slowly moves
onwards The guards conduct their prisoner to the ancient building of the Holy
Tribunal; pushing Him into a narrow, gloomy, vaulted prison-cell, they lock Him
in and retire.
“The day wanes, and
night—a dark, hot, breathless Spanish night— creeps on and settles upon the
city of Seville. The air smells of laurels and orange blossoms. In the
Cimmerian darkness of the old Tribunal Hall the iron door of the cell is
suddenly thrown open, and the Grand Inquisitor, holding a dark lantern, slowly
stalks into the dungeon. He is alone, and, as the heavy door closes behind him,
he pauses at the threshold, and, for a minute or two, silently and gloomily
scrutinizes the Face before him. At last, approaching with measured steps, he
sets his lantern down upon the table and addresses Him in these words:
“‘It is Thou!
Thou!’ . . Receiving no reply, he rapidly
continues: ‘Nay,
answer not; be silent!.. And what couldst
Thou say? . . I
know but too well Thy answer Besides,
Thou hast no right
to add one syllable to that which was already uttered by Thee before. . . Why
shouldst Thou now return, to impede us in our work? For Thou hast come but for
that only, and Thou knowest it well. But art Thou as well aware of what awaits
Thee in the morning? I do not know, nor do I care to know who Thou mayest be:
be it Thou or only Thine image, tomorrow I will condemn and burn Thee on the
stake, as the most wicked of all the heretics; and that same people, who to-day
were kissing Thy feet, tomorrow at one bend of my finger, will rush to add fuel
to Thy funeral pile. . . Wert Thou aware of this?’ he adds, speaking as if in
solemn thought, and never for one instant taking his piercing glance off the
meek Face before him.”
‘‘I can hardly
realize the situation described—what is all this, Ivan?” suddenly interrupted
Alyosha, who had remained silently listening to his brother. “Is this an
extravagant fancy, or some mistake of the old man, an impossible quid pro quo?”
“Let it be the
latter, if you like,’’ laughed Ivan, ‘‘since modern realism has so perverted
your taste that you feel unable to realize any thing from the world of fancy. .
. . Let it be a quid pro quo. if you so choose it. Again, the Inquisitor is
ninety years old, and he might have easily gone mad with his one idée fixe of
power; or, it might have as well been a delirious vision, called forth by dying
fancy, overheated by the auto-da-fé of the hundred heretics in that forenoon. .
. . But
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what matters for
the poem, whether it was a quid ptro quo or an uncontrollable fancy? The
question is, that the old man has to open his heart; that he must give out his
thought at last; and that the hour has come when he does speak it out, and says
loudly that which for ninety years he has kept secret within his own breast.”
“And his prisoner,
does He never reply? Does He keep silent, looking at him, without saying a
word?”
“Of course; and it
could not well be otherwise,” again retorted Ivan. “The Grand Inquisitor begins
from his very first words by telling Him that He has no right to add one
syllable to that which He had said before. To make the situation clear at once,
the above preliminary monologue is intended to convey to the reader the very
fundamental idea which underlies Roman Catholicism—as well as I can convey it,
his words mean, in short: ‘Everything was given over by Thee to the Pope, and
everything now rests with him alone; Thou hast no business to return and thus
hinder us in our work.’ In this sense the Jesuits not only talk but write
likewise.
“‘Hast thou the
right to divulge to us a single one of the mysteries of that world whence Thou
comest?’ enquires of Him my old Inquisitor, and forthwith answers for Him,
‘Nay, Thou hast no such right. For, that would be adding to that which was
already said by Thee before; hence depriving people of that freedom for which
Thou hast so stoutly stood up while yet on earth. . Anything new that Thou
wouldst now proclaim would have to be regarded as an attempt to interfere with
that freedom of choice, as it would come as a new and a miraculous revelation
superseding the old revelation of fifteen hundred years ago, when Thou didst so
repeatedly tell the people: “The truth shall make you free.” Behold then, Thy
“free” people now adds the old man with sombre irony. ‘Yea it has cost us
dearly,’ he continues, sternly looking at his victim. ‘But we have at last
accomplished our task, and—in Thy name For fifteen long centuries we had to
toil and suffer owing to that “freedom”; but now we have prevailed and our work
is done, and well and strongly it is done. . . . Believest not Thou it is so
very strong? . . . And why shouldst Thou look at me so meekly as if I were not
worthy even of Thy indignation?
Know then, that
now, and only now, Thy people feel fully sure and satisfied of their freedom;
and that only since they have them selves and of their own free will delivered
that freedom unto our hands by placing it submissively at our feet. But then,
that is what we have
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done. Is it that
which Thou hast striven for? Is this the kind of ‘‘freedom” Thou hast promised
them?’’’
“Now again, I do
not understand,” interrupted Alyosha. “Does the old man mock and laugh?”
“Not in the least.
He seriously regards it as a great service done by himself, his brother monks
and Jesuits, to humanity, to have conquered and subjected unto their authority
that freedom, and boasts that it was done but for the good of the world. ‘For
only now,’ he says (speaking of the Inquisition) ‘has it become possible to us,
for the first time, to give a serious thought to human happiness. Man is born a
rebel, and can rebels be ever happy? . . . Thou hast been fairly warned of it,
but evidently to no use, since Thou hast rejected the only means which could
make mankind happy; fortunately at Thy departure Thou hast delivered the task
to us. . . . Thou hast promised, ratifying the pledge by Thy own words, in
words giving us the right to bind and unbind . . . and surely, Thou couldst not
think of depriving us of it now!’”
“But what can he
mean by the words, ‘Thou hast been fairly warned’?” asked Alexis.
“These words give
the key to what the old man has to say for his justification. But listen—
‘The terrible and wise spirit, the spirit of self-annihilation and nonbeing,’
goes on the Inquisitor, ‘the great spirit of negation conversed with Thee in
the wilderness, and we are told that he “tempted” Thee.
Was it so? And if
it were so, then it is impossible to utter anything more truthful that what is
contained in his three offers, which Thou didst reject, and which are usually
called “temptations.” Yea; if ever there was on earth a genuine, striking
wonder produced, it was on that day of Thy three temptations, and it is
precisely in these three short sentences that the marvellous miracle is
contained. If it were possible that they should vanish and disappear for ever,
without leaving any trace, from the record and from the memory of man, and that
it should become necessary again to devise, invent, and make them reappear in
Thy history once more, thinkest Thou that all the world’s sages, all the
legislators, initiates, philosophers and thinkers, if called upon to frame
three questions which should, like these, besides answering the magnitude of
the event, express in three short sentences the whole future history of this
our world and of mankind—dost Thou believe, I ask Thee, that all their combined
efforts could ever create
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anything equal in
power and depth of thought to the three propositions offered Thee by the
powerful and all-wise spirit in the wilderness? Judging of them by their
marvellous aptness alone, one can at once perceive that they emanated not from
a finite, terrestrial intellect, but indeed, from the Eternal and the Absolute.
In these three offers we find, blended into one and foretold to us, the
complete subsequent history of man; we are shown three images, so to say,
uniting in them all the future axiomatic, insoluble problems and contradictions
of human nature, the world over. In those days, the wondrous wisdom contained
in them was not made so apparent as it is now, for futurity remained still
veiled; but now, when fifteen centuries have elapsed, we see that everything in
these three questions is so marvellously fore seen and foretold, that to add
to, or to take away from, the prophecy one jot, would be absolutely impossible!
“‘Decide then
Thyself,’ sternly proceeded the Inquisitor, ‘which of ye twain was right: Thou
who didst reject, or he who offered? Remember the subtle meaning of question
the first, which runs thus: Wouldst Thou go into the world empty-handed?
Wouldst Thou venture thither with Thy vague and undefined promise of freedom,
which men, dull and unruly as they are by nature, are unable so much as to
understand, which they avoid and fear ?—for never was there anything more
unbearable to the human race than personal freedom! Dost Thou see these stones
in the desolate and glaring wilderness? Command that these stones be made
bread—and mankind will run after Thee, obedient and grateful like a herd of
cattle. But even then it will be ever diffident and trembling, lest Thou shouldst
take away Thy hand, and they lose thereby their bread! Thou didst refuse to
accept the offer for fear of depriving men of their free choice; for where is
there freedom of choice where men are bribed with bread? Man shall not live by
bread alone—was Thine answer. Thou knewest not, it seems, that it was precisely
in the name of that earthly bread that the terrestrial spirit would one day
rise against, struggle with, and finally conquer Thee, followed by the hungry
multitudes shouting: ‘‘Who is like unto that Beast, who maketh fire come down
from heaven upon the earth!” Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence,
and the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and through its
mouth piece, Science, that there is no more crime, hence no more sin on earth,
but only hungry people? “Feed us first and then command us to be virtuous!”
will be the words written upon the banner lifted against
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Thee—a banner which
shall destroy Thy Church to its very foundations, and in the place of Thy
Temple shall raise once more the terrible Tower of Babel; and though its
building be left unfinished, as was that of the first one, yet the fact will
remain recorded that Thou couldst, but wouldst not, prevent the attempt to
build that new tower by accepting the offer, and thus saving mankind a
millennium of useless suffering on earth. And it is to us that the people will
return again. They will search for us everywhere; and they will find us under
ground in the catacombs, as we shall once more be persecuted and martyred—and
they will begin crying unto us: “Feed us, for they who promised us the fire
from heaven have deceived us!” It is then that we will finish building their
tower for them. For they alone who feed them shall finish it, and we shall feed
them in Thy name, and lying to them that it is in that name. Oh, never, never,
will they learn to feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give
them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that
freedom at our feet, and say. “Enslave, but feed us!” That day must come when
men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are
unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly
divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never
be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and
rebellious. Thou hast promised to them the bread of life, the bread of heaven;
but I ask Thee again, can that bread ever equal in the sight of the weak and
the vicious, the ever-ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth? And
even supposing that thousands and tens of thousands follow Thee in the name of,
and for the sake of, Thy heavenly bread, what will become of the millions and
hundreds of millions of human beings too weak to scorn the earthly for the sake
of Thy heavenly bread? Or is it but those tens of thousands chosen among the
great and the mighty, that are so dear to Thee, while the remaining millions,
innumerable as the grains of sand in the seas, the weak and the loving, have to
be used as material for the former? No, no! In our sight and for our purpose
the weak and the lowly are the more dear to us. True, they are vicious and
rebellions, but we will force them into obedience, and it is they who will
admire us the most. They will regard us as gods, and feel grateful to those who
have consented to lead the masses and bear their burden of freedom by ruling
over them—so terrible will that freedom at last appear to men! Then we will
tell them that it is
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in obedience to Thy
will and in Thy name that we rule over them. We will deceive them once more and
lie to them once again—for never, never more will we allow Thee to Come among
us. In this deception we will find our suffering, for we must needs lie
eternally, and never cease to lie!
“‘Such is the
secret meaning of “temptation” the first, and that is what Thou didst reject in
the wilderness for the sake of that freedom which Thou didst prize above all.
Meanwhile Thy tempter’s offer contained another great world-mystery. By
accepting the “bread,” Thou wouldst have satisfied and answered a universal
craving, a ceaseless longing alive in the heart of every individual human being,
lurking in the breast of collective mankind, that most perplexing problem—”whom
or what shall we worship?” There exists no greater or more painful anxiety for
a man who has freed himself from all religious bias, than how he shall soonest
find a new object or idea to worship. But man seeks to bow before that only
which is recognized by the greater majority, if not by all his fellow-men, as
having a right to be worshipped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men
agree unanimously to bow down to it. For the chief concern of these miserable
creatures is not to find and worship the idol of their own choice, but to
discover that which all others will believe in, and consent to bow down to in a
mass. It is that instinctive need of having a worship in common that is the
chief suffering of every man, the chief concern of mankind from the beginning
of times. It is for that universality of religious worship that people
destroyed each other by sword. Creating gods unto themselves, they forthwith
began appealing to each other: “Abandon your deities, come and bow down to
ours, or death to ye and your idols “ And so will they do till the end of this
world; they will do so even then, when all the gods themselves have
disappeared, for then men will prostrate themselves before and worship some
idea. Thou didst know, Thou couldst not be ignorant of, that mysterious
fundamental principle in human nature, and still Thou hast rejected the only
absolute banner offered Thee, to which all the nations would remain true, and before
which all would have bowed—the banner of earthly bread, rejected in the name of
freedom and of ‘‘ bread in the kingdom of God’’ ! Behold, then, what Thou hast
done furthermore for that ‘‘ freedom’s” sake! I repeat to Thee, man has no
greater anxiety in life than to find some one to whom he can make over that
gift of freedom with which the unfortunate creature is born. But he
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alone will prove
capable of silencing and quieting their consciences, that shall succeed in
possessing himself of the freedom of men. With “daily bread” an irresistible
power was offered Thee, show a man “bread” and he will follow Thee, for what
can he resist less than the attraction of bread? but if, at the same time,
another succeed in possessing himself of his conscience—oh! then even Thy bread
will be forgotten, and man will follow him who seduced his conscience. So far
Thou wert right. For the mystery of human being does not solely rest in the
desire to live, but in the problem—for what should one live at all? Without a
clear perception of his reasons for living, man will never consent to live, and
will rather destroy himself than tarry on earth, though he be surrounded with
bread. This is the truth. But what has happened? Instead of getting hold of
man’s freedom, Thou hast enlarged it still more! Hast Thou again forgotten that
to man rest and even death are preferable to a free choice between the
knowledge of Good and Evil? Nothing seems more seductive in his eyes than
freedom of conscience, and nothing proves more painful. And behold! instead of
laying a firm foundation whereon to rest once for all man’s conscience, Thou
hast chosen to stir up in him all that is abnormal, mysterious, and indefinite,
all that is beyond human strength, and hast acted as if Thou never hadst any
love for him, and yet Thou wert He who came to “lay down His life for His
friends”! Thou hast burdened man’s soul with anxieties hitherto unknown to him.
Thirsting for human love freely given, seeking to enable man, seduced and
charmed by Thee, to follow Thy path of his own free-will, instead of the old
and wise law which held him in subjection, Thou hast given him the right
henceforth to choose and freely decide what is good and bad for him, guided but
by Thine image in his heart. But hast Thou never dreamt of the probability,
nay, of the certainty, of that same man one day rejecting finally, and
controverting even Thine image and Thy truth, once he would find himself laden
with such a terrible burden as freedom of choice? That a time would surely come
when men would exclaim that Truth and Light cannot be in Thee, for no one could
have left them in a greater perplexity and mental suffering than Thou hast
done, lading them with so many cares and insoluble problems. Thus, it is
Thyself who hast laid the foundation for the destruction of Thine own kingdom
and no one but Thou is to be blamed for it.
“‘ Meantime, every
chance of success was offered Thee. There are three Powers, three unique Forces
upon earth, capable of conquering
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for ever by
charming the conscience of these weak rebels—men—for their own good; and these
Forces are: Miracle, Mystery and Authority. Thou hast rejected all the three,
and thus wert the first to set them an example. When the terrible and all-wise
spirit placed Thee on a pinnacle of the temple and said unto Thee, “If Thou be
the son of God, cast Thyself down, for it is written, He shall give His angels
charge concerning Thee: and in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest at any
time Thou dash Thy foot against a stone! “—for thus Thy faith in Thy father
should have been made evident, Thou didst refuse to accept his suggestion and
didst not follow it. Oh, undoubtedly, Thou didst act in this with all the
magnificent pride of a god, but then men—that weak and rebel race—are they also
gods, to understand Thy refusal? Of course, Thou didst well know that by taking
one single step forward, by making the slightest motion to throw Thyself down,
Thou wouldst have tempted ‘‘the Lord Thy God,’’ lost suddenly all faith in Him,
and dashed Thyself to atoms against that same earth which Thou camest to save,
and thus wouldst have allowed the wise spirit which tempted Thee to triumph and
rejoice. But then, how many such as Thee are to be found on this globe, I ask
Thee? Couldst Thou ever for a moment imagine that men would have the same
strength to resist such a temptation? Is human nature calculated to reject
miracle, and trust, during the most terrible moments in life, when the most
momentous, painful and perplexing problems struggle within man’s soul, to the
free decisions of his heart for the true solution? Oh, Thou knewest well that
that action of Thine would remain recorded in books for ages to come, reaching
to the confines of the globe, and Thy hope was, that following Thy example, man
would remain true to his God, without needing any miracle to keep his faith
alive! But Thou knewest not, it seems, that no sooner would man reject miracle
than he would reject God likewise, for he seeketh less God than ‘‘a sign’’ from
Him. And thus, as it is beyond the power of man to remain without miracles, so,
rather than live without, he will create for himself new wonders of his own
making; and he will bow to and worship the soothsayer’s miracles, the old
witch’s sorcery, were he a rebel, a heretic, and an atheist a hundred times
over. Thy refusal to come down from the cross when people, mocking and wagging
their heads were saying to Thee—”Save Thyself if Thou he the son of God, and we
will believe in Thee,” was due to the same determination—not to enslave man
through miracle, but to obtain faith in Thee freely and
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apart from any
miraculous influence. Thou thirstest for free and uninfluenced love, and
refusest the passionate adoration of the slave before a Potency which would
have subjected his will once for ever. Thou judgest of men too highly here,
again, for, though rebels they be, they are born slaves and nothing. more.
Behold, and judge of them once more, now that fifteen centuries have elapsed
since that moment. Look at them, whom Thou didst try to elevate unto Thee! I
swear man is weaker and lower than Thou hast ever imagined him to be! Can he
ever do that which Thou art said to have accomplished? By valuing him so highly
Thou hast acted as if there were no love for him in Thine heart, for Thou hast
demanded of him more than he could ever give—Thou, who lovest him more than
Thyself! Hadst Thou esteemed him less, less wouldst Thou have demanded of him,
and that would have been more like love, for his burden would have been made
thereby lighter. Man is weak and cowardly. What matters it, if he now riots and
rebels throughout the world against our will and power, and prides himself upon
that rebellion? It is but the petty pride and vanity of a school-boy. It is the
rioting of little children, getting up a mutiny in the class—room and driving
their schoolmaster out of it. But it will not last long, and when the day of
their triumph is over, they will have to pay dearly for it. They will destroy
the temples and raze them to the ground, flooding the earth with blood. But the
foolish children will have to learn some day that, rebels though they be and
riotous from nature, they are too weak to maintain the spirit of mutiny for any
length of time. Suffused with idiotic tears, they will confess that He who
created them rebellious undoubtedly did so but to mock them. They will
pronounce these words in despair, and such blasphemous utterances will but add
to their misery—for human nature cannot endure blasphemy, and takes her own
revenge in the end.
“‘And thus, after
all Thou hast suffered for mankind and its freedom, the present fate of men may
be summed up in three words:
Unrest, Confusion,
Misery! Thy great prophet John records in his vision, that he saw, during the
first resurrection of the chosen servants of God—”the number of them which were
sealed” in their foreheads, “twelve thousand” of every tribe. But were they,
indeed, as many? Then they must have been gods, not men. They had shared Thy
Cross for long years, suffered scores of years’ hunger and thirst in dreary
wildernesses and deserts, feeding upon locusts and roots—and of these children
of free love for Thee, and self-sacrifice in Thy name,
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Thou mayest well
feel proud. But remember that these are but a few thousands—of gods, not men;
and how about all others? And why should the weakest be held guilty for not
being able to endure what the strongest have endured? Why should a soul
incapable of containing such terrible gifts be punished for its weakness? Didst
Thou really come to, and for, the “elect” alone? If so, then the mystery will
remain for ever mysterious to our finite minds. And if a mystery, then were we
right to proclaim it as one, and preach it, teaching them that neither their
freely given love to Thee nor freedom of conscience were essential, but only
that incomprehensible mystery which they must blindly obey even against the
dictates of their conscience. Thus did we. We corrected and improved Thy
teaching and based it upon “Miracle, Mystery, and Authority.” And men rejoiced
at finding themselves led once more like a herd of cattle, and at finding their
hearts at last delivered of the terrible burden laid upon them by Thee, which
caused them so much suffering. Tell me, were we right in doing as we did? Did
not we show our great love for humanity, by realizing in such a humble spirit
its helplessness, by so mercifully lightening its great burden, and by
permitting and remitting for its weak nature every sin, provided it be
committed with our authoriza- tion? For what, then, hast Thou come again to
trouble us in our work? And why lookest Thou at me so penetratingly with Thy
meek eyes, and in such a silence? Rather shouldst Thou feel wroth, for I need
not Thy love, I reject it, and love Thee not, myself. Why should I conceal the
truth from Thee? I know but too well with whom I am now talking! What I had to
say was known to Thee before, I read it in Thine eye. How should I conceal from
Thee our secret? If per chance Thou wouldst hear it from my own lips, then
listen: We are not with Thee, but with him, and that is our secret! For
centuries have we abandoned Thee to follow him, yes—eight centuries. Eight
hundred years now since we accepted from him the gift rejected by Thee with
indignation; that last gift which he offered Thee from the high mountain, when,
showing all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, he saith unto
Thee: “All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship
me!” We took Rome from him and the glaive of Cæsar and declared ourselves alone
the kings of this earth, its sole kings, though our work is not yet fully
accomplished. But who is to blame for it? Our work is but in its incipient
stage, but it is nevertheless started. We may have long to wait until its
culmina-
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tion, and mankind
have to suffer much, but we shall reach the goal some day, and become sole
Cæsars, and then will be the time to think of universal happiness for men.
“‘Thou couldst
accept the glaive of Cæsar Thyself; why didst Thou reject the offer? By
accepting from the powerful spirit his third offer Thou wouldst have realized
every aspiration man seeketh for himself on earth; man would have found a
constant object for worship; one to deliver his conscience up to, and one that
should unite all together into one common and harmonious ant-hill; for an
innate necessity for universal union constitutes the third and final affliction
of mankind. Humanity as a whole has ever aspired to unite itself universally.
Many were the great nations with great histories, but the greater they were,
the more unhappy they felt, as they felt the stronger necessity of a universal
union among men. Great conquerors, like Timoor and Tchengis-Khan, passed like a
cyclone upon the face of the earth in their efforts to conquer the universe,
but even they, albeit unconsciously, expressed the same aspiration towards
universal and common union. In accepting the kingdom of the world and Cæsar's
purple, one would found a universal kingdom and secure to mankind eternal
peace. And who can rule mankind better than those who have possessed themselves
of man’s conscience, and hold in their hand man’s daily bread? Having accepted
Cæsar's glaive and purple, we had, of course, but to deny Thee, to henceforth
follow him alone. Oh, centuries of intellectual riot and rebellious
free-thought are yet before us, and their science will end by anthropophagy,
for having begun to build their Babylonian tower without our help they will
have to end by anthropophagy. But it is precisely at that time that the Beast
will crawl up to us in full submission, and lick the soles of our feet, and
sprinkle them with tears of blood. And we shall sit upon the scarlet-coloured
Beast, and lifting up high the golden cup “full of abomination and filthiness,”
shall show written upon it the word ‘‘Mystery” ! But it is only then that men
will see the beginning of a kingdom of peace and happiness. Thou art proud of
Thine own elect, but Thou hast none other but these elect, and we will give
rest to all. But that is not the end. Many are those among Thine elect and the
labourers of Thy vineyard, who, tired of waiting for Thy coming, already have
carried and will yet carry, the great fervour of their hearts and their
spiritual strength into another field, and will end by lifting up against Thee
Thine own banner of freedom. But it is Thyself Thou hast to thank. Under our
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rule and sway all
will be happy, and will neither rebel nor destroy each other as they did while
under Thy free banner. Oh, we will take good care to prove to them that they
will become absolutely free only when they have abjured their freedom in our
favour and submit to us absolutely. Thinkest Thou we shall be right or still
lying? They will convince themselves of our rightness, for they will see what a
depth of degrading slavery and strife that liberty of Thine has led them into.
Liberty, Freedom of Thought and Conscience, and Science will lead them into
such impassable chasms, place them face to face before such wonders and
insoluble mysteries, that some of them—more rebellious and ferocious than the
rest—will destroy themselves; others—rebellious but weak—will destroy each
other; while the remainder, weak, helpless and miserable, will crawl back to
our feet and cry: “Yes; right were ye, oh Fathers of Jesus; ye alone are in
possession of His mystery, and we return to you, praying that ye save us from
ourselves!” Receiving their bread from us, they will clearly see that we take
the bread from them, the bread made by their own, hands, but to give it back to
them in equal shares and that without any miracle; and having ascertained that,
though we have not changed stones into bread, yet bread they have, while every
other bread turned verily in their own hands into stones, they will be only too
glad to have it so Until that day, they will never be happy. And who is it that
helped the most to blind them, tell me? Who separated the flock and scattered
it over ways unknown if it be not Thee? But we will gather the sheep once more
and subject them to our will for ever. We will prove to them their own weakness
and make them humble again, whilst with Thee they have learnt but pride, for
Thou hast made more of them than they ever were worth. We will give them that
quiet, humble happiness, which alone benefits such weak, foolish creatures as
they are, and having once had proved to them their weakness, they will become
timid and obedient, and gather around us as chickens around their hen. They
will wonder at and feel a superstitious admiration for us, and feel proud to be
led by men so powerful and wise that a handful of them can subject a flock a
thousand millions strong. Gradually men will begin to fear us. They will
nervously dread our slightest anger, their intellects will weaken, their eyes
become as easily accessible to tears as those of children and women ; but we
will teach them an easy transition from grief and tears to laughter, childish
joy and mirthful song. Yes; we will make them work like slaves, but during
their recreation hours they shall have an
427——————————————————————THE GRAND INQUISITOR.
innocent child-like
life, full of play and merry laughter. We will even permit them sin, for, weak
and helpless, they will feel the more love for us for permitting them to
indulge in it. We will tell them that every kind of sin will be remitted to
them, so long as it is done with our permission; that we take all these sins
upon ourselves, for we so love the world, that we are even willing to sacrifice
our souls for its satisfaction. And, appearing before them in the light of
their scapegoats and redeemers, we shall be adored the more for it. They will
have no secrets from its. It will rest with us to permit them to live with
their wives and concubines, or to forbid them, to have children or remain
childless, either way depending on the degree of their obedience to us; and
they will submit most joyfully to us. The most agonizing secrets of their
souls—all, all will they lay down at our feet, and we will authorize and remit
them all in Thy name, and they will believe us and accept our mediation with
rapture, as it will deliver them from their greatest anxiety and torture—that
of having to decide freely for themselves. And all will be happy, all except
the one or two hundred thousands of their rulers. For it is but we, we the
keepers of the great Mystery who will be miserable. There will be thousands of
millions of happy infants, and one hundred thousand martyrs who have taken upon
themselves the curse of knowledge of good and evil. Peaceable will be their
end, and peacefully will they die, in Thy name, to find behind the portals of
the grave—but death. But we will keep the secret in violate, and deceive them
for their own good with the mirage of life eternal in Thy kingdom. For, were
there really anything like life beyond the grave, surely it would never fall to
the lot of such as they! People tell us and prophesy of Thy coming and
triumphing once more on earth; of Thy appearing with the army of Thy elect,
with Thy proud and mighty ones; but we will answer Thee that they have saved
but themselves while we have saved all. We are also threatened with the great
disgrace which awaits the whore, “Babylon the great, the mother of
harlots’’—who sits upon the Beast, holding in her hands the Mystery, the word
written upon her forehead ; and we are told that the weak ones, the lambs shall
rebel against her and shall make her desolate and naked. But then will I arise,
and point out to Thee the thousands of millions of happy infants free from any
sin. And we who have taken their sins upon us, for their own good, shall stand
before Thee and say: ‘‘Judge us if Thou canst and darest! ‘‘ Know then that I
fear Thee not. Know that I too have lived in the dreary wilderness,
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A MODERN PANARION.
where I fed upon
locusts and roots, that I too have blessed the freedom with which Thou hast
blessed men, and that I too have once prepared to join the ranks of Thy elect,
the proud and the mighty. But I awoke from my delusion and refused since then
to serve insanity. I returned to join the legion of those who corrected Thy
mistakes. I left the proud and returned to the really humble, and for their own
happiness. What I now tell Thee will come to pass, and our kingdom shall be
built, I tell Thee, not later than tomorrow. Thou shalt see that obedient flock
which at one simple motion of my hand will rush to add burning coals to Thy stake,
on which I will burn Thee for having dared to come and trouble us in our work.
For, if there ever was one who deserved more than any of the others our
inquisitorial fires—it is Thee! Tomorrow I will burn Thee. Dixi.’”
Ivan paused. He had
entered into the situation and had spoken with great animation, but now he
suddenly burst out laughing.
“But all that is
absurd!” suddenly exclaimed Alyosha, who had hitherto listened perplexed and
agitated but in profound silence. “Your poem is a glorification of Christ, not
an accusation, as you, perhaps, meant it to be. And who will believe you when
you speak of ‘freedom’? Is it thus that we Christians must understand it? It is
Rome (not all Rome, for that would be unjust), but the worst of the Roman
Catholics, the Inquisitors and the Jesuits, that you have been exposing! Your
Inquisitor is an impossible character. What are these sins they are taking upon
themselves? Who are those keepers of mystery who took upon themselves a curse
for the good of mankind? Who ever met them? We all know the Jesuits, and no one
has a good word to say in their favour; but when were they as you depict them?
Never, never! The Jesuits are merely a Romish army making ready for their
future temporal kingdom, with a mitred emperor—a Roman high priest at their
head. That is their ideal and object, without any mystery or elevated
suffering. The most prosaic thirsting for power, for the sake of the mean and
earthly pleasures of life, a desire to enslave their fellow-men, something like
our late system of serfs, with themselves at the head as landed
proprietors—that is all that they can be accused of. They may not believe in
God, that is also possible, but your suffering Inquisitor is simply—a fancy!”
“Hold, hold!”
interrupted Ivan, smiling. “Do not be so excited. A fancy, you say; be it so!
Of course, it is a fancy. But stop. Do you really imagine that all this
Catholic movement during the last centuries
429——————————————————————THE
GRAND INQUISITOR.
is naught but a
desire for power for the mere purpose of ‘mean pleasures’? Is this what your
Father Paissiy taught you?”
“No, no, quite the
reverse, for Father Paissiy once told me some thing very similar to what you
yourself say, though, of course, not that. Something quite different,” suddenly
added Alexis, blushing.
“A precious piece
of information, notwithstanding your ‘not that.’ I ask you, why should the
Inquisitors and the Jesuits of your imagination live but for the attainment of
‘mean material pleasures’? Why should there not be found among them one single
genuine martyr, suffering under a great and holy idea and loving humanity with
all his heart? Now let us suppose that among all these Jesuits thirsting and
hungering but after ‘mean material pleasures’ there may be one, just one like
my old Inquisitor, who had himself fed upon roots in the wilderness, suffered
the tortures of damnation while trying to conquer flesh, in order to become
free and perfect, but who had never ceased to love humanity, and who one day
prophetically beheld the truth; who saw as plain as he could see that the bulk
of humanity could never be happy under the old system, that it was not for them
that the great Idealist had come and died and dreamt of His Universal Harmony.
Having realized that truth, he returned into the world and joined— intelligent
and practical people. Is this so impossible?”
“Joined whom? What
intelligent and practical people?” exclaimed Alyosha quite excited. “Why should
they be more intelligent than other men, and what secrets and mysteries can
they have? They have neither. Atheism and infidelity is all the secret they
have. Your Inquisitor does not believe in God, and that is all the Mystery
there is in it!”
“It may be so. You
have guessed rightly there. And it is so, and that is his whole secret; but is
this not the acutest of sufferings for such a man as he, who killed all his
young life in asceticism in the desert, and yet could not cure himself of his
love toward his fellow-men? Toward the end of his life he becomes convinced
that it is only by following the advice of the great and terrible spirit that
the fate of these millions of weak rebels, these ‘half-finished samples of
humanity created in mockery’ can be made tolerable. And once convinced of it,
he sees as clearly that to achieve that object, one must follow blindly the
guidance of the wise spirit, the fearful spirit of death and destruction, hence
accept a system of lies and deception and lead humanity consciously this time
toward death and destruction,
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A MODERN PANARION.
and moreover, be
deceiving them all the while in order to prevent them from realizing where they
are being led, and so force the miserable blind men to feel happy, at least
while here on earth. And note this: a wholesale deception in the name of Him,
in whose ideal the old man had so passionately, so fervently, believed during
nearly his whole life! Is this no suffering? And were such a solitary exception
found amidst, and at the head of; that army ‘that thirsts for power but for the
sake of the mean pleasures of life,’ think you one such man would not suffice
to bring on a tragedy? Moreover, one single man like my Inquisitor as a
principal leader, would prove sufficient to discover the real guiding idea of
the Romish system with all its armies of Jesuits, the greatest and chiefest
agents of that system. And I tell you that it is my firm conviction that the
solitary type described in my poem has at no time ever disappeared from among
the chief leaders of that movement. Who knows but that terrible old man, loving
humanity so stubbornly and in such an original way, exists even in our days in
the shape of a whole host of such solitary exceptions, whose existence is not
due to mere chance, but to a well-defined association born of mutual consent,
to a secret league, organized several centuries back, in order to guard the
Mystery from the indiscreet eyes of the miserable and weak people, and only in
view of their own happiness? And so it is; it cannot be otherwise. I suspect
that even Masons have some such Mystery underlying the basis of their
organization, and that it is just the reason why the Roman Catholic clergy hate
them so, dreading to find in them rivals, competition, the dismemberment of the
unity of the idea, for the realization of which one flock and one Shepherd are
needed. However, in defending my idea, I look like an author whose production
is unable to stand criticism. Enough of this.”
“You are, perhaps,
a Mason yourself!” exclaimed Alyosha. “YOU do not believe in God,” he added,
with a note of profound sadness in his voice. But suddenly remarking that his
brother was looking at him with mockery, “How do on mean then to bring your
poem to a close?” he unexpectedly enquired, casting his eyes downward, “or does
it break off here?”
“My intention is to
end it with the following scene: Having disburdened his heart, the Inquisitor
waits for some time to hear his prisoner speak in His turn. His silence weighs
upon him. He has seen that his captive has been attentively listening to him
all the time, with His eyes fixed penetratingly and softly on the face of his
jailer, and evi-
431——————————————————————THE GRAND INQUISITOR.
dently bent upon
not replying to him. The old man longs to hear His voice, to hear Him reply;
better words of bitterness and scorn than His silence. Suddenly He rises;
slowly and silently approaching the Inquisitor, He bends towards him and softly
kisses the bloodless, four-score-and-ten-year-old lips. That is all the answer.
The Grand Inquisitor shudders. There is a convulsive twitch at the corner of
his mouth. He goes to the door, opens it, and addressing Him, ‘Go,’ he says,
‘go, and return no more . . do not come again . never, never!’ and—lets Him out
into the dark night. The prisoner vanishes.’’
“And the old man?”
“The kiss burns his
heart, but the old man remains firm in his own ideas and unbelief.”
“And you, together
with him? You too!” despairingly exclaimed Alyosha, while Ivan burst into a
still louder fit of laughter.
THE BRIGHT SPOT OF
LIGHT
————
[Vol. III. No. 2,
November, 1881.]
[ MADAME,— In the
last issue of your valuable journal a member of the New York Theosophical
Society seeks to be enlightened as to the cause of a bright spot of light which
he has often seen. I also am equally curious to have an explanation. I
attribute it to the highest concentration of the soul. As soon as I place
myself in that prescribed attitude, suddenly a bright spot appears before me
which fills my heart with delight, this being regarded as a special sign by the
Indian devotee that he is in the right path, leading to ultimate success in the
Yoga practice, that he is blessed by the special grace of the Almighty.
One evening,
sitting on the ground cross-legged, in that state of concentration when the
soul soars into high regions, I was blessed with a shower of flowers—a most
brilliant sight, which I long to see again. I tried to catch at flowers so
rare, but they eluded my grasp and suddenly disappeared, leaving me much
disappointed. Finally two flowers fell on me, one touching my head and the
other my right shoulder, but this time also the attempt to seize them was
unsuccessful. What can it be, if not a response that God has been pleased with
his worshipper, meditation being, I believe, the unique way of spiritual
worship.
September 18th,
1881.]
It depends. Those
of our orthodox native contributors who worship some particular God—or, if they
so prefer, the one Îshvara under some particular name—are too apt to attribute
every psychological effect, induced by mental concentration during the hours of
religious meditation, to their special deity, whereas, in ninety-nine cases out
of one hundred, such effects are due simply to purely psycho-physiological
effects. We know a number of mystically-inclined people who see such “lights”
as that described above as soon as they concentrate their thoughts.
Spiritualists attribute them to the agency of their departed friends; Buddhists
(who have no personal God) to a pre-nirvânic state; Pantheists and Vedântins to
Mâyá—or the illusion of the senses; and Christians—to a foresight of the
glories of Paradise. The modern Occultists say that, when not directly due to
cerebral action, the normal functions of which are certainly impeded by such
433———————————————————THE BRIGHT SPOT OF LIGHT.
an artificial mode
of deep concentration—these lights are glimpses of the Astral Light, or, to use
a more “scientific” expression, of the “Universal Ether,” firmly believed in by
more than one man of science, as proved by Stewart and Tait’s Unseen Universe.
Like the pure blue sky closely shrouded by thick vapours on a misty day, so is
the Astral Light concealed from our physical senses during the hours of our
normal daily life. But when, concentrating all our spiritual faculties we
succeed, for the time being, in paralyzing their enemy (the physical senses),
and the inner man becomes, so to say, distinct from the man of matter—then the
action of the ever-living spirit, like a breeze that clears the sky from its
obstructing clouds, sweeps away the mist which lies between our normal vision
and the Astral Light, and we obtain glimpses into, and of that Light.
The days of “smoking
furnaces” and “burning lamps” which form part of the biblical visions are long
gone by—to return no more. But whoever, refusing natural explanations, prefers
supernatural ones, is, of course, at liberty to imagine that an “Almighty God”
amuses us with visions of flowers, and sends burning lights’ before making
“covenants” with his worshippers.
“IS IT IDLE TO
ARGUE FURTHER?”
————
[Vol. III. No. 4,
January, 1882.]
SAYS Light in its
“Notes by the Way,” edited by “M.A. Oxon.”:
The current number
of The Theosophist contains an important manifesto, which establishes and
defines the ground finally taken up by that body. Shortly put, it is one of
complete antagonism to Spiritualism. The Spiritualist believes that it is
possible for spirits of the departed to communicate with this earth. Whatever
divergence of opinion there may be among us in respect of other matters, we are
agreed on this, the cardinal article of our faith. Our daily experience affirms
its truth. The consentient testimony of the most experienced among us agrees
that, whether there be, or whether there be not, other agencies at work, the
spirits we know of are human spirits who have once lived on this earth. To this
the Theosophist returns the simple answer that we are mistaken. No spirits
communicate with earth for the sufficient reason that they cannot. It is idle
to argue further. We can but go on our way with the assured conviction that,
whatever may be the case in the east, we find that the departed spirits of
mankind are both able and willing to communicate with us in the west. And no
metaphysical theorizing as to what cannot be disposes in any degree of what is.
The Theosophist is
forced to take exception to the form of statement of “facts” above used. As it
now stands, it is but a short series of speculative deductions from the very
superficially defined doctrines in our “Fragments of Occult Truth,” which give
a by no means complete idea of what is really taught in the doctrine, scraps of
which were explained in the article now most incorrectly styled a “manifesto.”
We regret the necessity to contradict once more our esteemed opponent, who
seems to be giving up the Theosophists in despair. But were we also to conclude
it “idle to argue further,” then the position taken up by us would, indeed, give
rise again to endless misinterpretations. The question of man’s state after
death, the future progress of his soul, spirit and other principles—whatever
anyone may call them—was hardly touched upon in the short article under our
critic’s notice. In itself the subject embraces a field of boundless extent and
of the most
435————————————————————“IS IT IDLE TO ARGUE FURTHER?”
metaphysical
intricacy, one which would demand volumes of commentaries and explanations to
be thoroughly sifted and understood. Yet superficially sketched as our ideas
may have been in the “Fragments”—which was but an answer to the direct
questions, not to say reproaches, of an esteemed brother, resident in
Australia—we nevertheless fail to detect in it such passages or ideas as justify
“M.A. Oxon.” in saying that our doctrine is “one of complete antagonism to
Spiritualism.” It is not half so antagonistic as he believes it to be, as we
will try to prove.
“The Spiritualist
believes that it is possible for spirits of the de parted to communicate with
this earth,” says the writer . . . “and to this the Theosophist returns the
simple answer that we are mistaken.” In this sentence alone, as a kernel in a
nut-shell, lies hidden the reason of that partial antagonism. Had “M.A. Oxon.,”
slightly modifying the construction of the above-quoted sentence—written
instead that “it is possible for spirits yet embodied on this earth to
communicate with the spirits of the departed”—then would there have been hardly
any antagonism at all to deplore. What we hold and do maintain is that all of
the so-called “physical phenomena,” and “materializations” especially, are
produced by something, to which we refuse the name of “spirit.” In the words of
the President of our Berhampore Branch (Babu Nobin Krishna Banerjee, President
of the Adhi Bhautic Bhratru Theosophical Society): “We, Hindus [and along with
them the European disciples of Eastern philosophy] are trying to spiritualize
our grosser material selves, while the American and European Spiritualists are
endeavouring in their se’ance-roorns to materialize spirits.” These words of
wisdom well show the opposite tendencies of the Eastern and the Western
minds—namely, that while the former are trying to purify matter, the latter do
their best to degrade spirit. Therefore what we say is, that ninety-nine times
out of one hundred, “materializations” so-called, when genuine, and whether
they be partial or’ complete, are produced by what we call “shells,” and
occasionally, perhaps, by the living medium’s astral body—but certainly never
in our humble opinion, by “disembodied” spirits them selves.
While we sincerely
regret this divergence of opinions with Light, we feel inclined to smile at the
naivete’ of some other Spiritualist opponents; as, for instance, at that of the
editor of the London Spiritualist, who, in his leading editorial of Nov. 18th,
entitled “Speculation-
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A MODERN PANARION.
Spinning,” calls
the scraps of occult doctrine given in our “Fragments” “unscientific,”
reproaching the writer (than whom there is no abler metaphysician, nor closer
or more acute and clever logician among Anglo-Indian writers) with a want of
“scientific method” in the presentation of his facts! At the same time, the
editorial informs us that by “facts” it does not “necessarily mean physical
facts, for there are demonstrable truths outside the realms of physics.”
Precisely. And it is upon just such “facts,” the existence of which is based
for us upon evidence which we “have weighed and examined” for ourselves, that
we maintain the demonstrability of the deductions and final conclusions at
which we have arrived. These we preach but to those who really want to know them.
As none, they say, are so blind as they who will not see, we abstain from
offering our doctrines to such as find them offensive—among whom are some
Spiritualists. But to the masses of impartial readers whose minds are not yet
wedded to this or that theory, we present our facts and tell them to see, hear
and judge for themselves; and there have been some who have not found our
theories merely “speculation-spinning,” based upon hypotheses and the crass
sentimentalism of a faith—welcome, because of its implied promises of a life
hereafter—but theories resting upon the logical and stern deduction from facts,
which constitute in themselves a knowledge. Now, what are these facts, and what
do they show and teach us?
First of all, and
as a rule—the rare exceptions to which but confirm it the more—we find that the
so-called “disembodied spirits,” instead of becoming the wiser for being rid of
the physiological impediments and the restraints of their gross material
senses, would seem to have become far more stupid, far less perspicacious and,
in every respect, worse than they were during their earthly life. Secondly, we
have to take note of the frequent contradictions and absurd blunders; of the
false information offered, and the remarkable vulgarity and common place
exhibited during their interviews with mortals; in materializing seances their
oral utterances being invariably vulgar common-place, and their inspirational
speeches or second-hand communication through trance and other mediums
frequently so. Adding to this the undeniable fact which shows their teachings
reflecting most faithfully the special creed, views, and thoughts of the
sensitive or medium used by them, or of a sitter or sitters, we have already
sufficient proof to show that our theory, that they are “shells” and not
disembodied spirits at
437————————————————————“IS IT IDLE TO ARGUE FURTHER?”
all, is far more
logical and “scientific” than that of the Spiritualists.* Speaking here in
general, we need not take into consideration exceptional cases, instances of
undeniable spiritual identity with which we are sure to find our arguments met
by our spiritual opponents. No one ever thought of calling “Imperator” a
“shell”; but then the latter, whether a living or a disembodied spirit, neither
materializes himself objectively, nor is it yet proved to the satisfaction of
anyone except “MA. Oxon.” himself that “he” descends to the medium, instead of
the spirit of the latter ascending to meet his instructor.
Thus, we maintain
that “spirits” are no more what they claim to be, than the chrysalis shell is
the butterfly which left it. That their personations of various individuals,
whom they sometimes represent, are mostly due to the accidental contact of an
“elementary” or “eidôlon” (attracted by the medium and the intense magnetic
desire of the circle present) with the personal “aura” of this or that
individual. The thoughts of the latter, the various acts and scenes in his past
life, the familiar and beloved faces of his departed ones, are then all drawn
out of the all-containing depths of the Astral Light and utilized. At times
this is done successfully, but frequently the thing proves a total failure.
Only while the former are, as a rule, recorded, the mention of the latter is
tacitly avoided; no spiritualistic journal having ever been edited with that
special view. So much for materialization and physical phenomena. As for the
rest, we are at one with the Spiritualists with but slight variances, more of
form than of substance.
——————————————————————
* We will not go to
the trouble of showing how much, or rather how little, of ‘‘ scientific
method’’ is to be generally found in The Spiritualist. But while speaking of
science and its methods, we may simply remark that though both our theories
(theosophical and spiritualistic) are sure to be viewed by the men of science
as “speculation-spinning ‘‘ and metaphysical windmills, yet the hypotheses of
spiritualists—as broadly accepted and whether “scientifically” or unscientifically
stated—are certain, to be pronounced by the majority of men of real science,
not merely unscientific, but very unphilosophical and illogical as well.
FRAGMENTS OF OCCULT
TRUTH
———
[Vol. III. Nos. 1,
6 and 12, October,1881, March and September, 1882.]
I.
WE have received
from a brother Theosophist an interesting and temperate note on some supposed
errors of occultists when dealing with the phenomena of spiritualism. The
subject is one of universal interest, and we shall therefore require no apology
for publishing some fragments of the lessons taught us on the subject in the
occult schools, which may possibly both help to remove some difficulties and
tend to convey to spiritualists generally a clearer conception of the causes of
many of the phenomena of which they have had experience.
“Those Theosophists
who deny to departed spirits a legitimate share in the marvellous phenomena”
are few indeed, for the great majority of Theosophists concern themselves with
spiritualism very little, if at all. Indeed our members may be divided into
five principal classes and described as follows:
(1) Men profoundly
concerned in the revival of their respective religious philosophies in all
their pristine purity—Buddhist devotees outnumbering all others They neither
know of nor do they care for spiritualism.
(2) Students of
various philosophies, searchers after truth whence so ever it may come. They
neither believe nor disbelieve in spirits. They are open to conviction, but
will accept nothing on second-hand testimony.
(3) Materialists,
freethinkers, agnostics, who care as little for occultism as they do for
spiritualism. Their only concern is to free the masses from the fetters of
ignorance and superstition and educate them. Many, indeed most of them, are
philanthropists who hold it more expedient to devote their energies to the
assistance of the living than to occupy their time in conversations with the
dead.
(4) Spiritualists
and spiritists who could not well be accused of such “heresy.” And finally,
(5) Occultists who
do not number a half per cent in the Theosophical Society.
439————————————————————FRAGMENTS OF OCCULT TRUTH.
These latter are
the only “Theosophists” who are really open to the above accusation, and even
these, if we look beyond the veil of words, which more or less conceals the
ideas of both spiritualists and occultists, will prove to differ less widely on
these points from the views of philosophical spiritualists than is at first
apparent. For, in this as in so many other cases, it is in a great measure to the
different significations attached to the same terms by the two parties that
their apparent irreconcilable divergence is due. “Words,” as Bacon, we think,
says, “mightily perplex the wisdom of the wisest, and like a Tartar’s bow,
shoot backward into the minds of those that follow them”; and so here the
conflict of opinions between spiritualists and occultists is solely due to the
fact that the former, overrating the quality and character of the communicating
entities, dignify with the name of “spirits” certain reliquiæ of deceased human
beings, while the occultists reserve the name of Spirit for the highest
principle of human nature, and treat these reliquiæ as mere eidôlons, or astral
simulacra, of the real Spirit.
In order to
understand clearly the view of the occultists, it is necessary to glance at the
constitution of the living human being. Even the spiritualistic theory teaches
that man is a trinity, composed of (1) a higher spirit or the “spiritual soul”
as ancient philosophers designated it; (2) its envelope—the ethereal form or
shadow of the body— called by the Neo-platonists the “animal soul”; and (3) the
physical body.
Although from one
point of view this is broadly correct, yet, accord ing to occultists, to render
our conceptions of this truth clearer and follow out successfully the course of
man after death, it is necessary to further subdivide these three entities and
resolve them into their constituent principles. This analysis being almost
wholly unknown to western nations, it is difficult in some cases to find any
English words by which to represent the occult subdivisions, but we give them
in the least obscure phraseology that we can command.
DIVISIONS OF THE
SPIRITUALISTS.
1. The
Body.SUBDIVISIONS OF THE OCCULTISTS.
1. The Physical
Body composed wholly of matter in its grossest and most tangible form.
2. The Vital
Principle (or Jivatman) a form of force, indestructible. When it is
disconnected with one set of atoms, it immediately becomes attracted by
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2. The Animal Soul
or Perisprit.3. The Astral Body (Linga Sharira)— composed of highly
etherealized matter. In its habitual passive state the perfect but very shadowy
duplicate of the body; its activity, consolidation, and form depend entirely on
the Kama Rupa.
4. The Astral Shape
(Kama Rupa) or body of desire—a principle defining the configuration of
5. The Animal or
Physical Intelligence or Consciousness or Ego—analogous to, though
proportionally higher in degree than the reason, instinct, memory, imagination,
etc., existing in the higher animals.3.The Spiritual Soul or Spirit,6. The
Higher or Spiritual Intelligence
or Consciousness, or Spiritual Ego—in
which mainly resides the state of consciousness of the perfect man, though the
lower dimmer animal consciousness coexists in No. 5.
7. The Spirit—an
emanation from the Absolute; uncreate, eternal; a state rather than a being.Now
the change that we call death only immediately affects the first three
constituents; the body decomposes to enter into new combinations, and the vital
force is dissipated to help to animate new organisms, and the astral human form
(Linga Sharira) dies with the body.
There remain four
principles. As a rule (we except the cases of the higher adepts), one of two
things occurs in accordance with the universal law of affinity. If the
spiritual Ego has been in life material in its tendencies, placing its main
enjoyment in, and centering its desires on, material objects and the
gratification of earthly desires, then, at death, it
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* Western science,
of course, as a rule, holds that animals have no conscious ego, but this we
know to be erroneous; they possess no spiritual, but they do possess an animal
consciousness, Could men communicate with them they would discover not only
this, but also that many of the anthropoid apes possess an intelligence,
consciousness, etc., little inferior to that of lunatics, madmen, and some
desperately wicked and depraved men who have, in fact, become animals, through
the loss, temporary or permanent, of their sixth and seventh principles, even
while the combination of the other five principles is still intact, i.e., even
during life. Was it some hazy tradition of the truth handed down through the
Romish church, which has ever possessed some secret knowledge of the teachings
of the ancient mysteries, or was it the great poet’s soul’s own glimpses into
the Astral Light, that made Dante represent the souls of several of his enemies
as already in the “Inferno” though the men themselves still lived upon earth?
Of course this fragment of truth was utterly distorted by the malign influence
of the then prevalent material hell superstition, but it was quite possible, as
the modern west has still to realize, that the souls of some of these evil men
might have already passed away (though not to the fabled Inferno), whilst the
men themselves still lived.
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continues to cling
blindly to the lower elements of its late combination, and the true spirit
severs itself from these and passes away elsewhere. To follow its course is
beside the question at present, since the remaining principles in which
personal or animal consciousness remains have parted with it for ever, and it
would require a complete exposition of the entire philosophy of occultism to
fully explain its course; suffice it to say now, that it passes away—taking
with it no fragment of the individual consciousness of the man with which it
was temporarily associated—to fulfill its mission, still guided and governed,
by the irresistible cyclic impulse which first projected it through the veil of
primitive cosmic matter.
But if, on the
other hand, the tendencies of the Ego have been towards things spiritual, if
its aspirations have been heavenwards—we use a conventional term—if it has,
when weighed, as it were, in the balance, a greater affinity for the spiritual
than for the earthly constituents, with their accompanying desires, of the
combination in which it recently took part, then will it cling to the spirit,
and with this pass into the adjoining so-called world of effects, in reality a
state, and not a place, and there, purified of much of its still remaining
material taints, evolve out of itself by the spirit’s aid a new Ego, to be
reborn, after a brief period of freedom and enjoyment, in the next higher world
of causes, an objective world similar to this present globe of ours, but higher
in the spiritual scale, where matter and material tendencies and desires play a
far less important part than here.
In either case, it
is not a matter of judgment, of salvation and damnation, of heaven and hell,
but solely the operation of the universal law of affinity or attraction, which
makes the Ego cling in one case to the more material, in the other to the
spiritual components of the late aggregation now separated by death. Now
neither during gestation in the subjective world of effects, nor during the
temporary period of enjoyment, in its newly evolved Ego-hood, of the fruits of
good deeds, its karma on earth, nor after its entry into the higher objective
world of causes, can the Ego reenter this present world. During the first
period it is, so to speak, dormant, and can no more issue from the state in
which it is developing than a child can come out of its mother’s womb to pay a
visit before the period of pregnancy concludes. During the second period,
however ethereal and purified of gross matter the regenerated Ego may be, it is
still subject to the physical and universal laws of matter. It cannot, even if
it would, span the abyss that
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separates its state
from ours. It can be visited in spirit by men, but it cannot descend into our
grosser atmosphere and reach us. It attracts, it cannot be attracted; its
spiritual polarity presenting an insuperable obstacle. Once reborn into the
higher world, and apart from the physical impossibility of any communication
between its world and ours, to all but the very highest adepts, the new Ego has
become a new person; it has lost its old consciousness linked with earthly
experiences, and has acquired a new consciousness, which, as time rolls on,
will be interpenetrated by its experiences in that higher sphere. The time will
come, no doubt, but many steps higher on the ladder, when the Ego will regain
its consciousness of all its past stages of existence; but in the next higher
world of causes, or activity, to our own, the new Ego has no more remembrance
of its earthly career than we here have of the life that preceded this present
one.
Therefore it is
that the occultists maintain that no “spirits” of the departed can appear or
take part in the phenomena of séance-rooms. To what can appear and take part in
these, the occultists refuse the name of “spirits.”
But it may be asked
what is it that can appear?
We reply—merely the
animal souls or perisprits of the deceased. It might appear from what we have
said that, while this, according to our previous exposition, would be true in
the case of the spiritually-minded, in that of the materially-minded we should
have these and the spiritual Ego or consciousness. But such is not the case.
Immediately on the severance of the spirit, whether at death, or, as we have
already hinted is sometimes the case, before death, the spiritual Ego is
dissipated and ceases to exist. It is the result of the action of spirit on
matter, and it might, to render the matter more clear, be described as a
combination of spirit and matter, just as flame is the result of the
combination of oxygen with the substance being oxygenized, and might loosely be
described as the combination of the two. Withdraw the oxygen and the flame
ceases; withdraw the spirit, and the spiritual Ego disappears. The sense of
individuality in spirit cannot exist without combination with matter. Thus the
pure planetary spirits, when first propelled into the circle of necessity, have
no individual consciousness, only the absolute consciousness which they share
with all fragments of the spirit hitherto entirely uncombined with matter. As
they, entering into generation, descend the ladder and grow gradually more and
more hemmed in by matter and isolated from the universal spirit, so the
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sense of
individuality, the spiritual Ego-ship, grows. How finally, on reäscending the
circle, step by step, they regain, on reunion with the universal, the absolute
consciousness, and simultaneously all the individual consciousnesses which they
have developed at each stage of their descending and ascending progress, is one
of the highest mysteries.
But to return to
the spiritual Ego-ship developed on this earth; if too tainted to follow the
spirit in its upward course, it is, as it were, forth with torn asunder from
it. Left in the terrestrial atmosphere without the sustaining spirit that gave
it existence, it has to disappear as the flame does when the oxygen is
exhausted. All the material elements which, in combination with the spirit,
gave it consistency, fly by the law of affinity to join the three other
principles that constitute the perisprit or natural soul, and the spiritual Ego
ceases to exist.
Thus alike in all
cases that remain, all that can appear are the shells of the deceased, the two
principles which we call the animal or surviving astral souls or animal Ego.
But there is this
to be noted. As the clay, as Saadi says, long retains traces of the perfume of
the roses which once honoured it with their companionship, so the etherealized
matter which has been in combination with spirit, long retains a power of
resisting disintegration. The more pure the spiritual Ego, the less of the
matter, which in combination with the spirit went to form it, does it leave
behind clinging to the two principles; the more impure, the greater the mass of
such spirit-vitalized matter which remains to invigorate the reliquiæ.
Thus it follows
that, in the case of the pure and good, the shells rapidly disintegrate; and
the animal soul, having ever been kept in subjection, is feeble and will-less;
and it can very rarely, if ever, happen that such should involuntarily appear
or manifest themselves, for their vitality, desires and aspirations existed
almost exclusively in what has passed away. No doubt a power exists which can
compel even these to appear, a power taught by the evil science of necromancy,
rightly denounced by all good men of old. But why evil, it may be asked?
Because until these shells have dissipated, a certain sympathy exists between
them and the departed spiritual Ego which is gestating in the fathomless womb
of the adjoining world of effects; and to disturb the shells by necromantic
sorcery is at the same time to disturb the foetal spiritual Ego.
We have said that
these shells in such cases rapidly decay, the
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rapidity being
exactly proportional to the purity of the departed spiritual Ego; and we may
add that similarly the rapidity of gestation of the new Ego is proportional to
the purity of the old Ego out of which it is evolved. Happily necromancy is
unknown to modern spiritualists, so that it is next to impossible that the
reliquiæ of the good and pure should ever appear in the se’ance-room. No doubt,
the simulacra of some spiritual Egos whose fate trembled in the balance, whose
affinities, earthwards and heavenwards, to use the popular phraseology, were
nearly equal, who have left behind too much of the matter that was combined to
form them, who will lie long in fœtal bonds before being able to develop the
new Ego-hood; no doubt, we say, such simulacra may survive longer and may
occasionally appear under exceptional conditions in se’ance-rooms, with a dim,
dazed consciousness of their past lives. But even this, owing to the conditions
of the case, will be rare, and they will never be active or intelligent, as the
stronger portions of their wills, the higher portions of their intelligence,
have gone elsewhere.
Nature draws no
hard and fast lines, though in the balance of forces very slight differences in
opposing energies may produce the most divergent results. All entities shade
off from one end to the other of the chain by imperceptible degrees, and it is
impossible for man to gauge the exact degree of purity of the deceased at which
the voluntary reappearance of his reliquiæ through the agency of mediumship
becomes impossible; but it is absolutely true that, broadly speaking, as a law,
it is only the reliquiæ of non-spiritually-minded men, whose spiritual Egos
have perished, that appear in séance-rooms, and are dignified by spiritualists
with the title of “spirits of the departed.”
These shells, these
animal souls, in whom still survive the major portions of the intelligence,
will-power and knowledge that they possessed when incorporated in the human
combination, invigorated too by the reässimilation of the spirit-vitalized
matter that once combined with the spirit to compose their spiritual Ego, are
often powerful and highly intelligent, and continue to survive for lengthened
periods, their intense desire for earthly life enabling them to seize from the
decaying simulacra of the good and feeble the material for prolonged existence.
To these eidola
occultists are used to give the name of elementaries, and these, by the aid of
the half-intelligent forces of nature which are attracted to them, perform most
of the wonders of the seance-rooms.
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If to these shells,
these eidola which have lost their immortality, and whence the divine essence
has for ever departed, the spiritualists insist on applying the title of
“spirits of the dead,” well and good; they are not spirits at all, they are of
the earth earthy, all that remains of the dead when their spirits have flown,
but if this be understood, and it be nevertheless considered desirable to call
them that to which thee are the precise antithesis, it is after all merely a
case of misnomer.
But let there be no
mistake as to what they are; hundreds and thousands of lost and ruined men and
women all over the globe attest the degradation to which constant subjection to
their influence in mediumship too generally leads, and we who know the truth
should ill discharge our duty if we did not warn all spiritualists, in the
strongest terms possible, against allowing the misuse of terms to mislead them
as to the real nature and character of the disembodied entities with which they
so constantly and confidingly deal.
Now probably
spiritualists will admit that our views would explain the vast mass of trash,
frivolous nonsense and falsehood communicated through mediums, as also the
manner in which so many of these, good and honest to begin with, gradually grow
into immoral impostors. But many objections will be raised. One man will say:
“I have repeatedly conversed with my late father; a better, kinder-hearted,
more spiritual- minded man never lived; and on one occasion he told me a fact,
unknown to me, and, I believe to everyone living, which I subsequently
verified.”
Nothing is simpler;
the father’s image was in the son’s mind; thus put en rapport the disembodied
elementary which, if of one of the more intelligent classes, has glimpses of
things in the astral light, and can here and there dimly distinguish the
pictures which record every deed, word and thought—pictures which we are all
unconsciously incessantly evolving, pictures which survive long after those who
originated them have passed away—the elementary, we say, scanning these, easily
picks up sufficient facts for its purpose, and by its will materializes itself
partly out of matter drawn from the medium’s body, partly out of inert cosmic
matter drawn to it by the help of the elementals or half-blind forces of nature
which it and probably the medium also, has attracted, and stands forth the counterpart
of the dead father and talks of things known only to that dead father. Of
course, if the matter talked of were known to any present, both elementary and
medium, if in a trance, could equally know it, but we have purposely supposed
one of
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those rare cases
which are considered to be the strongest proofs of “spirit identity,” as it is
called. Of course, too, everything that has once passed before that son’s mind,
intonation of voice, tricks of manner, infirmities of temper, though apparently
forgotten at the moment, are really indelibly recorded in his memory, as is
proved by their immediate recognition when reproduced by the elementary who has
gathered them out of those dormant records.
And it must be
remembered that these apparently strong and perfect cases are very rare, and
that the elernentaries, if they personate people of any note, usually make
gross blunders, and almost without exception betray their falsehood in one way
or another—Shakespeare and Milton dictating trash, Newton grossly ignorant of
his own Principia, and Plato teaching a washed-out Neo-platonic or sentimental
Christian philosophy, and so on. At the same time undoubtedly in rare cases the
ghostly relics of very clever, very bad and very determined, men constitute
disembodied entities of high intelligence, which survive for a lengthened
period, and the more wicked and more material they are in all their tendencies,
the longer do they escape disintegration.
The Orthodox Church
is much nearer the truth when it calls the entities that are mostly dealt with
in s “devils” than are the spiritualists who call them “spirits.” We do not
mean that they are generally actively malevolent, but their magnetic
attractions are evil, and they incline and lead those with whom they have much
to do to the same evil material passions which have been their own ruin.
Naturally
spiritualists will object that this cannot be true, since despite the mass of
folly and gibberish or worse often heard in se’ance rooms, the purest
sentiments and really lofty ideas and teachings are not rarely expressed
through mediums.
Several points
have, however, to be borne in mind. In the first place, though proved unfit for
further development, and, therefore, doomed in most cases by the eternal law of
the survival of the fittest to be disintegrated and, losing personal
consciousness, to be worked up again in the lower worlds into new combinations,
all elementaries are by no means actively wicked all round. When weighed in the
balance, their whole natures have proved to have a greater affinity to matter
than to spirit, and they are, therefore, incapable of further progress, but
when dealing with a pure circle and speaking through a still pure medium—very
few mediums, indeed, continue thus after a long course of mediumship—the better
and less degraded side of their nature comes out, and
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it is quite
possible for elementaries to have a perfect intellectual knowledge and
appreciation of virtue and purity and enlightened conceptions of truth, and yet
be innately vicious in their tendencies. We meet plenty of men who have a
sentimental love for virtue, and yet whose lives are one unbroken course of
lust and self-indulgence; and as the men were, so are the elementaries, their
reliquiæ. If we at times speak bitterly of popular modern Christianity, it is
because we know that, with all its other ennobling and saving tendencies, on
this all-important point it leads to the destruction of myriads of souls. For
it leads to the belief that it signifies little what a man does, if he only
believes that his sins are forgiven him, and that by relying on the merits of
Jesus Christ he may escape the vengeance of the Lord. But there is no
anthropomorphic Lord, no vengeance, no forgiveness; there is simply the action
of a natural law impressed on the universe by the Absolute, simply a question
of balance of affinities; and they, whose deeds and general tendencies are
earthly, go down in the scale, rarely, very rarely, to rise again in their own
identities; while those in whom these tendencies are spiritual pass upwards.
It is not, however,
possible to enter here into the great questions thus glanced at, and we return
to the subject of high, or comparatively high, teachings through mediums.
Now it must not for
a moment be supposed that all we hear from these latter comes from
elementaries. In the first place, a great many well-known mediums are clever
impostors. There are notorious trance mediums, especially women, who steadily
work up for their so-called trance orations, and these being really clever, and
working at good books, deliver essays of a respectable, and at times almost
first-class, character. There is no spiritual influence at work here; the only
apparently abnormal feature in these cases is that persons possessing such fair
abilities should be willing thus to prostitute them; and that people who can
talk so well and touchingly of truth and purity, should yet live such lives of
falsehood and immorality. Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor has ever
found a response in too many human hearts, and has in all ages rung the
annihilation-knell of too many personalities.
In the second
place, in the case of pure and genuine mediums, who, in trance, pass entirely
under the influence of their own seventh principle, the Augoeidês of the
Greeks, the whole teachings come from the medium’s own soul, and it is very
rare to obtain thus anything higher
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than what the
medium’s own intellect, when in a state of spiritual excitement, could produce.
It may be said
that, in many such cases, the medium says himself or herself, that it is Judge
Edmonds, or the late Bishop of , who is teaching him or her, but this is merely
due to the intervention of mischievous elementaries who are always crowding
about every medium, and who, if he is too pure to enable them to get command
over him, yet, ever anxious to get a finger in every pie, confuse and deceive
him. Only an adept can clearly and consciously place the spiritual Ego wholly
under the domination of the spirit. Mediums who, in trance, unconsciously
succeed in doing this, are unaware of the source whence they derive their
perceptions, and can be made, by any elementary exerting any influence over
them, through any weak point in their character, to believe that these are
derived from it. The same, though in a minor degree, is the case with those
rare, high, because specially pure, mediums, whose Ego and Spirit can soar
together when the rest of the combination is in a trance, into the astral light,
and there can read all the highest thoughts that man has ever thought. True,
the Ego of the highest and best mediums can reproduce in this material world
only in a fragmentary and confused manner what it reads in the astral light;
but still even this reproduction is sometimes of a character far transcending
the capacities alike of the medium and all those present. How it comes that the
thoughts thus fished up like pearls out of the astral light come often to be
attributed by the medium to spirits, we have already explained.
But an even more
common source of inspiration of mediums is the mind of one or more of those
present. When in a trance, the spiritual soul—the sixth and seventh
principles—can read all that is recorded in the mind or memory of those towards
whom it is in any way attracted; and the medium’s utterances will in such cases
be quite up to the highest standard of those with whom it is thus en rapport;
and if these are pure, highly cultivated persons, the teachings thus received
will be equally pure and intellectual. But here again the unconscious medium as
a whole does not know whence these perceptions are being derived. In its
spiritual soul it knows no doubt, but in its combination with the other
principles—a combination necessary for the writing or speaking of those
perceptions—it is quite in the dark, and can be impressed by any elementary at
hand of sufficient force, with any conception in regard to the point that it
chooses to convey.
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In truth,
rnediumship is a dangerous, too often a fatal, capacity; and if we oppose
spiritualism, as we have ever consistently done, it is not because we question
the reality of the phenomena which, we know, can and do occur, despite the
multitudes of fraudulent imitations, and which our adepts can reproduce at will
without danger to themselves, but because of the irreparable spiritual
injury—we say nothing of the mere physical sufferings—which the pursuit of
spiritualism inevitably entails on nine-tenths of the mediums employed. We have
seen scores, nay, rather hundreds, of ordinarily good, pure, honest men and
women, who, but for the cultivation of this evil capacity for the reception of
impressions by elernentaries, might, and would in all probability, have lived
lives leading to higher things; but who, through the gradual pernicious
influence of these low, earth-bound natures, have sunk from bad to worse,
ending, often prematurely, lives that could lead but to spiritual ruin.
These are no
speculations—we speak that we do know—and if one in five mediums, who
habitually exercise their capacity, escapes the doom that overtakes so many,
these exceptions cannot justify the spiritualists in aiding and abetting the
crowd of professional mediums who gamble away their immortality with the lower
material influences. The practice of rnediumship for good purposes, at rare
intervals, by virtuous mediums, intermediately ever careful to strengthen their
moral and spiritual natures by pure lives and holy aspirations, is one thing;
and the habitual practice, in a worldly, careless, undevout spirit, for gain,
is another; and this latter cannot be too strongly denounced, alike in the
highest interests of the mediums and of the sitters who employ them.
“Evil
communications corrupt good manners,” is an eternal truth, trite and hackneyed
though it be, and no evil communications are so evil as those subtle influences
that radiate from the low, bestial elementaries who crowd the séance of
immoral, or more or less demoralized mediums, too weak and low to make
themselves heard or seen, but strong enough in their intensely material
tendencies, to diffuse a moral poison into the mental atmosphere of all
present.
That men,
bewildered amidst the crumbling ruins of effete religions, should madly grasp
at every clue by which there seems some faint hope of penetrating the
cloud-covered labyrinth of the mystery of the universe, is neither wonderful
nor reprehensible; but it is not through mediums, the prey of every idle spook
and elementary, that the great
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truth is to be
reached, but by that rigorous course of study, self-discipline and
self-purification which is taught in the temple of occultism to which theosophy
is in the present day the high road.
II.
What constitutes
real knowledge? The question lies at the very threshold of occult study. It is,
in actual practice, the first put before a regular student of occultism who is
taken in hand by the teachers of the occult world. And the student is taught—or
is led to see—that there are two kinds of knowledge, the real and the unreal;
the real concerned with eternal verities and primal causes, the unreal with
illusory effects. So far the statement seems to deal with abstractions too
vague to challenge denial. Each school of thinkers will admit as much,
reserving to itself the assumption that the illusory effects are those
considerations which have fascinated its rivals; the eternal verities its own
conclusions. But we no sooner come to a clear under standing as to what mental
presentiments must be classed as illusory effects, than we find the first
proposition of occult philosophy at war with the whole current practice of the
world at large, as regards all classes of scientific investigation. All
physical science and a good deal of what the western world is pleased to call
metaphysical speculation, rests on the crude and superficial belief that the
only way in which ideas can enter the mind, is through the channels of the
senses. The physicist devotes all his efforts to the careful elimination from
the mass of materials on which he builds up his conclusions, of everything
except that which he conceives to be real fact—and it is exactly that which he
conceives to be real fact, anything clearly appealing to the senses—which the
profound philosophy of eastern occultism deliberately condemns at starting, as,
in its nature, illusory effect, transitory secondary consequence of the real
underlying fact. And in acting thus, does occult philosophy make an arbitrary
choice between rival methods, as a chemist might select one or other of two
different methods of analysis? Not at all. Real philosophy cannot make any
choice arbitrarily; there is but one eternal verity, and, in pursuit of that,
thought is forced to travel along one road. The knowledge which appeals to the
senses cannot but deal with illusory effects, for all the forms of thus world
and its material combinations are but pictures in the great dissolving view of
evolution; there is no eternity in any of them. By mere inference from physical
facts, science, proceeding on
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its own methods,
will recognize that there was a time before any of the life germs on this
earth, whatever they may be, had settled into the forms in which they manifest
themselves now. Assuredly there will come a time when all these forms will
disappear in the progress of cosmic change. What preceded them, provoking their
evolution from fiery nebulæ what traces will they leave behind? From nothing
they came, into nothing they will return—according to the doubly irrational
reply which is the only logical inference from the physical philosophy which makes
them the real facts, the only basis of real knowledge.
It must be
remembered of course that the unreal knowledge proceeding from the observation
of illusory, because transitory and secondary effects, hangs together
satisfactorily as regards the short chain it is able to construct. This it is
which leads so many, in many respects powerful, minds, to blind contentment
with it. Some of the laws of matter can be detected, if not understood, by mere
observation of matter. But it is obvious that the something out of which matter
proceeded, the something into which it will return, cannot be observed by
material senses. In what other way can observation be extended beyond the range
of material senses? Only if it can be so extended, is any knowledge attainable by
man which has to do with eternal verities and primal causes; which is real, as
distinguished from the transitory and the unreal. Promptly, in ignorance of the
methods by which observation can be extended beyond the range of the senses,
the physicist declares: Concerning the hypothetical eternal verities you can
only dream and indulge in illusory conjecture—all mere brain-spun fancy. Thus
the world at large, not content with hugging illusions and calling them
realities, spurns the reality and denounces it as illusion.
But can the eternal
verity be reached? Even if hard facts be acknowledged as illusion so far as
they are transitory, is not that which is exempt from change removed from
observation? Must we not follow up the theoretical admission of the possibility
of real knowledge, by the practical admission that no human being can ever have
anything to do with it? Now the consistent materialist who honestly believes
that a man is simply a structure of gas, phosphates, and chemical elements,
functioning entirely within itself, would have to be answered by reference to
facts, which it is unnecessary to rehearse, in dealing with controversialists
who recognize at all events that the living body includes a spiritual
principle, and that the spiritual principle is capable
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of a life apart
from the body when the body itself is dead. There can be no difficulty for a
spiritualist in the way of the conception that, if the spirit of a man lives,
observes, thinks, and communicates its impressions, after the body is burned or
buried, so, under peculiar conditions, that same spirit may separate itself
from the body temporarily during life, and may thus come into such relation
with the world of spirit as to take direct cognizance of its phenomena. Now it
is quite clear that, relatively to our own at all events, such a world is a
world of eternal verities. We know that this world is fleeting and transitory.
It is readily conceivable, and all analogies suggest the conclusion, which
every sort of spiritual statement confirms, that the world of Spirit is more
durable. That knowledge is real which lasts, and that is unreal which passes away—as
in the case of an initiated adept who brings back upon earth with him the clear
and distinct recollection, correct to a detail, of facts gathered, and the
information obtained in the invisible sphere of realities; the spirit of man,
which comes into direct and conscious relations with the world of spirit,
acquires real knowledge; while the spirit of man which lives imprisoned in the
body and is merely fed through the senses with crumbs of knowledge, possesses
the unreal only.
But when the
imprisoned spirit does not itself rise into direct relations with the world of
spirit, but is visited by an emanation from the world of spirit—or by a spirit,
to work with the spiritualistic hypothesis for a moment—is it entitled to
assume that it is coming into possession of real knowledge? Surely not; for
though discussing spiritual things it is acquiring its knowledge in no way
which essentially differs from the method by which mere knowledge of the purely
physical sort, knowledge of illusory effects, is acquired. The spiritualist,
even when himself a medium receiving communications, is taking in knowledge
just as unreal, just as untrustworthy, and liable to be distorted by an
erroneous observation as that which is dealt with by the wholly unspiritual
observer of matter.
Who possesses the
real knowledge as contradistinguished from the unreal? the student of occultism
is asked, and he is taught to reply— that which we have shown to be the only possible
reply adepts alone possess the real knowledge, their minds alone being en
rapport with the universal mind.” Now, according to the teaching of the adepts,
spiritualists, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are mistaken when they
think themselves in contact with the spirits of departed
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friends, or with
benevolent beings of another sphere; and to those who know something of who and
what the adepts are, that is conclusive as to the fact. But the fact being so,
every conception of spiritualism which conflicts with it must be
explainable—every incident of spiritualism must be susceptible of transfer to
some group of phenomena which can be shown to be something different from what
spiritualists imagine it. While the phenomena of spiritualism are thrown off in
all directions so freely, it is nearly impossible to follow them up in every
case, and, as regards the general subject, it is best to try and explain why
the phenomena of spiritualism cannot be what spiritualists think them, rather
than why each in turn is actually something else. First then as regards
automatic writing; we need not go further than personal experience to show that
the production through a medium’s arm, of handwriting, the facsimile of that
produced in life by an alleged spirit, is no proof of the alleged spirit’s
identity at all, or even of its individuality. A certain Russian lady who was
afflicted or gifted, whichever way the reader likes to put it, with medium-ship
in her youth, was “controlled” for about six years by a “spirit” who came
evening after evening and wrote reams through the child’s arm in the usual
automatic way. The spirit professed to be that of an old lady who had lived in
a part of Russia far away from that in which she was then manifesting herself.
She gave many details of her life and family and told how her son had committed
suicide. Sometimes the son came himself, “in spirit,” and controlled the little
medium’s arm and gave long accounts of his remorse and sufferings consequent on
the crime of self-murder. The old lady was eloquent on the subject of heaven
and its inhabitants, including the Virgin Mary. Needless to say that she was
garrulous concerning the circumstances of her own death and the interesting
ceremony of the last sacrament. But she also wrote of worldly matters. She gave
a detailed account of a petition she had presented to the Emperor Nicholas, and
the text of it, word for word. She wrote partly in Russian, partly in German,
which the child-medium knew very slightly at the time. Eventually one of the
young lady’s relatives went to the place where the spirit had lived. Yes; she
was well remembered; she had been troubled by a dissolute son who committed
suicide; she had gone away to Norway where it was believed she had died, and so
on. All the automatic communications were verified, in short, and the petition
was turned up in the archives of the Home
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Office at St.
Petersburg. The handwriting was perfectly reproduced. Now what better
identification could a spirit have? Would not a spiritualist say of such an
experience, “I know that the spirits of dead persons can communicate and prove
their continued individuality”? A year after the identification of the deceased
person at the place where she had lived, and of the petition, there came
to—,where the young medium and her relations were living, an officer who proved
to be the nephew of the “spirit.” He chanced to show the child a miniature. She
recognized it as that of the spirit. Explanations ensued, and it turned out
that the officer’s aunt was not dead at all, nor was her son. In all other
respects the mediumistic communications were perfectly well substantiated. The
son had attempted to commit suicide, but the bullet with which he had shot
himself had been extracted and his life had been saved.
Now, without going
further, this story as a mere statement of facts is enough to answer the
spiritualists’ contention as to automatic writing. It shows that, without the
instrumentality of any deceased person’s “spirit” at all, automatic writing
attributed by spiritualists to the agency of such spirits may take place; therefore,
that no weight can be attached to the experiences on which the spiritualist
relies. But we may go somewhat further and endeavour to account for the Russian
story at any rate by the occult “hypothesis” as some of our readers will no
doubt regard it. Who or what was the intelligence writing through the hand of
the Russian child-medium? The devil? as the priests of the Greek Church
contended; some lying spirit? as the spiritualists might suggest; the
elementaries? as some readers of occult literature might conceive. No; it was
the fifth principle of the medium herself, her animal or physical soul, the
portion of the universal Proteus, and it acted as the soul of the clairvoyant
acts during the sleep of the body. The officer who ultimately showed the miniature
had been acquainted with the family several years previously. The medium had
seen the picture when quite a young child, but had for gotten it utterly. She
had also played with various things that had belonged to the “spirit,” and had
been in her nephew’s possession.
Preserving
faithfully the memory of all it saw and heard in the “astral light,” or in the
“soul of things”—many readers will, no doubt, comprehend the allusion here to
Denton’s book of that name—while playing with the miniature and other trifles,
the young medium’s inner self years afterwards, owing to some associations of
memory, began
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unconsciously
reproducing these pictures. Little by little the inner self, or fifth
principle, was drawn into the current of those personal or individual
associations and emanations, and once the mediumistic impulse given, nothing
would arrest its progress. The facts accurately observed by the “flying soul”
were inextricably mixed up with pure fancy, derived from the teaching to which
the medium had been subjected, and hence the account of heaven and the Virgin
Mary.
Mutatis mutandis, a
similar explanation would, in all probability, meet the case not merely of
automatic writing, but also of the guiding or protecting spirit who mentally
impresses the medium, and has been seen by seers and seeresses. That the
teaching of this intelligence generally confirms the spiritualistic doctrine of
progression from place to place and so forth, is a strong indication that it is
really an emanation from the medium’s own mind; and the fact that the supposed
spirit has been seen by clairvoyant mediums cannot be taken as proof of its
objective existence. The pictures in the astral light present all the
appearance of reality to those who can discern them, and the appearance of the
“spirit” we have spoken of was as real to our child-medium as that of any
spirit ever materialized in the wonderful se’ance-room of the Eddy brothers in
America, though the good lady herself was all the while quietly attending to
her knitting, with the breadth of Europe between her and the family circle
which she had unconsciously entered as a spectral guest.
The difficulty of
distinguishing between the creations of the seer’s brain and spectral or
spiritual phenomena really external to himself appears to be the cause of the
confusion into which untrained, uninitiated observers fall when natural
mediumistic gifts enable them to cross the threshold of the astral world and
awake to a perception of the wonders hanging like an aura around the physical
planet. From Socrates to Swedenborg, from Swedenborg to the latest clairvoyant,
no uninitiated seer has ever seen quite correctly. But whatever confusing
influences have been brought to bear on natural seers of past times, none have
been beset with the artificial bewilderments that cloud the faculties of the
modern spiritualistic medium. A mass of prepossessions occupy his mind at
starting; every observation he makes is twisted into the mould of an elaborate,
predetermined theory; and every picture presented to his finer senses is
distorted to suit the expectations of his fancy and coloured to the complexion
of a previously formulated creed. The spiritualist may honestly believe himself
a seeker after truth, but
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the spiritualist
who is himself in any degree a medium is fascinated by the creations of his
faith and borne away on an induced current into a phantasmagorial world peopled
with his own imaginings. Their apparent reality confirms the conjectures from
which they spring, and all suggestions which claim a reconsideration of their
character seem almost a blasphemy to their eager devotee, But to the student of
occult philosophy there is a grander beauty in the consistent teaching of
adeptship than in the startling excitement of mediumistic revelation, while
over it all there shines for him the solemn light of absolute truthfulness.
Mediumship may give sudden glimpses of unsuspected wonder, as bits of a strange
landscape may be momentarily revealed by lightning, but the science of
adeptship casts the steady light of day upon the whole scene. Surely the
spiritualists, who have at least shot leagues ahead in intelligence of the mere
materialistic moles of their purblind generation in so far as they recognize
that there is a landscape to be seen if it can only be lighted up, will not
deliberately prefer to guess at its features by the help of occasional flashes
from the fitful planes of mediumship, but will accept the aid of that nobler
illumination which the elevated genius and untiring exertion of occult sages of
the east have provided for those whose spiritual intuitions enable them to
appreciate its sublimity and confide their aspirations to its guidance.
III
What reply could we
give to one who is in no way satisfied with our explanations of spiritualistic
phenomena, who still clings to the theories of spiritualists and rejects the
facts of the occultists?
But one may,
naturally enough, say that this is begging the question, and that he sees no
reason why the doctrines propounded by the latter should be any more accepted
as facts than those espoused by the former.
Let us see how the
case stands. Suppose a number of people go to see a conjurer’s performance; all
manner of wonderful tricks are exhibited; the more intelligent of the
spectators begin evolving hypotheses to explain how these are performed; night
after night the performances, though often a good deal varied in details, are
repeated. The most intelligent of the spectators also return, night after
night, more and more intent on discovering time rationale of the wonders they
witness. They gradually work out what appears to be a fairly consistent theory
of all that so astonishes them, and, getting into conver-
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sation with some of
the performers, find that these to a great extent confirm their conclusions.
Thereupon they feel convinced that their views are correct, and accept their
theories as facts But for all that they are still before the footlights; they
have never been behind the curtain; they have never actually seen how the
surprising results they witness are really brought about, and these so-called
facts of theirs are still merely theories.
But now some of the
spectators become acquainted with people who do habitually go behind the
scenes, who have examined the whole apparatus, who can make the performers play
whatever tricks they like, and who can, with their apparatus perform precisely
the same, and other even more astonishing feats, and these men tell the
ingenious spectators that their theories are quite wrong, and that the facts of
the case are so and so.
Now, surely it will
be admitted that it is neither begging the question nor presumption on the part
of those who have the entree behind the scenes, but the simple truth, when they
assert that their knowledge represents facts while the conclusions of the
ordinary spectators are only theories.
Such precisely are
the relative positions of the spiritualists and the occultists; meaning, of
course, by these latter, not the humble lay disciples who indite these papers,
but their pastors, masters and living spiritual guides.
“But how am I to
know,” a spiritualist may enquire, “that these Masters of yours can really go
behind the scenes? You say so; but what proof is there of this?”
Now, in the first
place, it is a fact, and this everyone may prove for himself, that each and all
who will lead the life can satisfy themselves that the Masters really can do
this, and thus become entirely independent alike of our and all other persons’
testimony.
The fact is that,
as we know, the Masters possess the power of controlling absolutely all the
elementals and elementaries to whom, with some exceptions, are due the
objective phenomena, not the work, unconscious or conscious, of the medium
himself, of the séance-room. And it is the possession and exhibition of this
power which makes us consider their assertion that they have been behind the
scenes and do know all about it, proved, and that induces us to accept their
statements of what takes place and is done as fact.
It will be borne in
mind that we have never denied that communica-
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tion in a certain
sense can be established between men and real spirits of deceased persons. What
we have maintained is that, except in certain cases, of which hereafter, only
shells, not true spirits, can appear or operate in the séance-room.
We said of the
spirit in our first “Fragment”: “It can be visited in spirit by men; it cannot
descend into our grosser atmosphere and reach us. It attracts; it cannot be
attracted.”
Nor have we ever
disputed that there was a state, out of which the spiritualist’s conceptions of
the Summer Land have no doubt arisen, in which the spirits of those who have
passed away receive the reward of their deserts. To this state, known to
Tibetan occultists as the Devachan, we especially alluded in that first paper
when we said, “nor during the temporary period of its enjoyment in its
newly-evolved Ego-hood of the fruits of its good deeds.”
Therefore, we are
far from desiring to contest a correspondent’s assertion that by magnetic
action he has succeeded in placing some of the incorporeal principles of
certain sensitives en rapport, if not, as he says, with the world of spirit—a
very large world indeed—at any rate with certain spiritual entities.
It is quite certain
that in the case of pure sensitives this can be accomplished, but what we
contend is that the information thus obtained will never be reliable. For this
there are several reasons. In the first place the principles that cognize in
such a case are different from those that give outward expression to the
matters cognized, and in the case of no untrained seer can the transfer of the
impressions from the spiritual faculties which record, to the more physical
faculties which publish, be perfectly effected. Even supposing both sensitive
and magnetizer to be absolutely free from all preconceived ideas about, or
expectations in regard to, the subjects investigated, still in the mere
transfer of the observations from one to the other class of faculties, mistakes
and misconceptions must occur.
But further, it is
not too much to say that it is quite impossible for the spiritual faculties of
any untrained seer even to record correctly in the first instance. Even our
physical powers of observation require careful training before they will serve
us faithfully. See how utterly unable young children are, as a rule, to judge
distances; and just as the physical faculties are untrained in the child, so
are the spiritual faculties untrained in the magnetic sensitive. No doubt in
the course of years, if their health and circumstances permit their constantly
explor-
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ing the unseen
world, even such untrained sensitives may acquire for themselves a certain
amount of experience and training, and become capable of comparatively accurate
observation; but such sensitives have been few, and even the very best have
fallen far short of accuracy. So that under the most exceptionally favourable
conditions you have first an imperfect record; and, second, a more or less
erroneous presentation of that imperfect record.
But in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred, either or both sensitive and magnetizer have well-defined
preconceptions of what they think ought to be the case, and then, however
honest and conscientious both may be, these preconceptions will more or less
colour the evidence given. Indeed, so certainly is this the case that, broadly
speaking, there is twice the probability of error in the case of a magnetized
sensitive to what there is in the case of a seer who, without the intervention
of a magnetizer, can by “hypnotism” of one kind or another, unaided, place
himself en rapport with spiritual entities. Thus a Swedenborg would be much
less likely to err than the best sensitive requiring the intervention of a
magnetizer to awaken the super-sensuous faculties.
But there is yet
another source of error. Even the best and purest sensitive can only be placed
en rapport with a particular spiritual entity, and can only know, see and feel
what that particular entity knows, sees and feels. Now no spiritual entity in
Devachan, or while hibernating prior to passing out of this earth’s attraction,
is in a position to generalize; and it is, broadly speaking, only with such
that a sensitive can be placed en rapport. It lives in a paradise or dream of
its own creating, and it is utterly unable to give any idea of how others are
faring. Each individual spirit in Devachan dreams its own dream, lives in its
own Summer Land (but it is a state, not a land), surrounded by all the people
and things it loves and longs for. But these are ideal, and the very people by
whom it believes itself surrounded may be each dreaming his own dream in his
own ideal paradise; or some of them may be still on earth or even passing
through the remorseless wheels of annihilation. And through the veils that
surround each spirit’s dream of felicity there is no peeping down to earth, a
glimpse of which would necessarily mingle some bitterness with the cup of
happiness; nor is there any conscious communication with the flying souls that
come, as it were, to learn where the spirits are, what they are doing, and what
they think, feel and see.
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What, then, is
being en rapport? It is simply an identity of molecular vibration between the
astral part of the incarnated sensitive and the astral part of the disincarnate
personality. The spirit of the sensitive gets “odylized,” so to speak, by the
aura of the spirit, whether the latter be hibernating in the earthly region or
dreaming in the Devachan; identity of molecular vibration is established, and
for a brief space the sensitive becomes the departed personality and writes in
its handwriting, uses its language and thinks its thoughts. At such times
sensitives may believe that those with whom they are for the moment en rapport
descend to earth and communicate with them, whereas, in reality, it is merely
their own spirits, which, being correctly attuned to those others, are for the
time blended with them.
Many of the
subjective spiritual communications are genuine, where the sensitive is
pure-minded; but they only reflect in each case the ideas of a single spirit,
unable to see beyond the limits of its own mental chrysalis or ideal paradise;
further, it is impossible for the un initiated sensitive to observe and record
altogether correctly what it does see and hear during its amalgamation; it is
equally impossible for the sensitive to transfer intact the impressions
recorded by the super-sensuous faculties to the senses through which alone they
can be communicated to the world, and such communications will be still further
vitiated by any preexisting conceptions or beliefs inhering in the minds of
either sensitive or magnetizer or both.
But our critic says
that, having compared the descriptions of things spiritual given to him by
different sensitives when in trance, he found a general harmony, “each and all
describing worlds or spheres more beautiful than this, peopled by forms in
human shape, exhibiting a higher average intelligence.” But what else could he
expect, lie a pure-minded, educated European of the present day, dealing also
with pure, more or less educated sensitives? If he had tried a native
Australian sensitive and had studiously kept his own mind passive, he would
have heard a very different story. Nay, though a certain skeleton of truth—but
partial truth—runs through all genuine communications, he will find the widest
discrepancies in details between the so-called facts elicited by himself and
those elicited by equally good observers with equally pure mediums in France,
Germany and America.
It is unnecessary,
however, to press this point further now; all we desire for the moment to make
clear is that while we in no way dispute the genuineness of this class of
communications, for the above reasons
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we know them to be
necessarily unreliable, necessarily more or less incorrect and inaccurate.
And now as to
automatic handwriting of a high class, we would remark that it may possibly be
that there is really a distinct spiritual entity impressing the writer’s mind.
In other words, there may, for all we know, be some spirit with whom his
spiritual nature becomes habitually, for the time, thoroughly harmonized, and
whose thoughts, language, etc., become his for the time, the result being that
this spirit seems to communicate with him. All we said before was that a
similar explanation to that we had offered of the facts of a certain case would
in all probability meet a certain correspondent’s case. But if he feels
confident that this explanation does not fit his case, then it is possible,
though by no means probable, that he habitually passes into a state of rapper!
with a genuine spirit, and, for the time, is assimilated therewith, thinking,
to a great extent, if not entirely, the thoughts that spirit would think, and
writing in its handwriting.
But even so, it
should not be thought that such a spirit is consciously communicating with the
medium, or knows in any way, anything of him or any other person or thing on
earth. It is simply that, the rapport established, he becomes for the nonce
assimilated with that other personality, and thinks, speaks and writes as it
would have done on earth.
As for the figure
of the fine, intelligent and benevolent-looking man, seen repeatedly by the
seers and seeresses, this may well be a real astral picture of the earth-life
form of that very spirit, drawn into the aura of our correspondent by the
synchronism of his and that spirit’s nature.
Many other
explanations are possible; the variety of the causes of phenomena is great, and
one need be an adept and actually look into and examine what transpires in
order to be able to explain in each case what really underlies it; but this
much is certain, that no good benevolent person who passed away upwards of a
century ago can possibly be visiting here on earth and advising and comforting
a medium. The molecules of his astral nature may from time to time vibrate in
perfect unison with those of the spirit of some such a person now in Devachan,
and the result may be that he appears to be in communication with that spirit
and to be advised by him, and clairvoyants may see in the astral light a
picture of the earth-life form of that spirit, but, so far as we have as yet
been instructed, this is the nearest approach to the ordinary spiritualistic
hypothesis that is possible.
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No doubt had a
“guide,” to which a certain correspondent refers, not departed from this earth
so very long ago, another explanation, to which we will refer later, more in
consonance with spiritualistic views, would have been possible, though
extremely improbable.
To take up again
another point, even despite their unobjectionable character, teachings may come
from mere reliquiæ of men or personalities not sufficiently spiritual for
further progress. In our first “Fragment” we distinctly said, “All elementaries
are by no means actively wicked all round . . . when, speaking through a still
pure medium the better and less degraded side of their nature comes out, and it
is quite possible for elementaries to have a perfect intellectual knowledge and
appreciation of virtue and purity, and enlightened conceptions of truth, and
yet be innately vicious in their tendencies.”
It is perfectly
possible that the admirable teachings referred to by a critic may have come
from a high class, though still lost personality, too intellectual to show in
its true colours before him and his friend, and yet capable of playing a very
different part in a less pure circle.
But it is far more
likely that the medium’s spirit really came en rapport with some spiritual
entity in Devachan, the thoughts, knowledge and sentiments of which formed the
substance, while the medium’s own personality and preexisting ideas more or
less governed the form of the communication. We attach no special importance to
the particular form of words in which the message was given. This may be the
medium’s share of the communication, when for the moment he identifies his
spiritual nature with that of the spiritual entity.
But, as a broad
rule, such appearances only take place within a few minutes after, or shortly
before, the physical death. Of course we mean the real death; the last portion
of the frame that dies is the brain—which is often alive and thronged with
images long after, or, at any rate, for many hours and days after life has been
pronounced to be extinct. It is true that the period intervening between death
and the entry into the gestation state, varies in the case of persons dying a
natural death, from a few hours to a few years, but it is quite abnormal for
the spirit to appear during this period, except within a very short period
after death. Putting aside the case of adepts and those trained by them to that
end, the Ego within a few moments after death, sinks into a state of
unconsciousness from which it does not recover until the struggle between the
higher and lower nature has been fought out; and there remains inside the
sphere of the earth’s attraction—Kâma Loka,
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the Region of
Desire—only the shell, either (in the rarer case of personalities doomed to
annihilation) a two and a half principle shell, or (in the case in which the
higher principles have triumphed, and have passed on, taking with them the
better portions of the fifth principle) a one and a half principle shell, soon
to disintegrate.
Even when a
“spirit” appears “a few days after death,” it is really an unconscious
appearance. The spirit sunk in its post-mortem trance (of course, for all its
comparative ethereality and non-corporeality, a space-occupying and material
entity) is borne about by magnetic currents, swayed here and there like dead
leaves whirling in the bosom of a stream. Thus carried, it may pass within the
range of vision of some seer, or its reflection in the astral light may be
caught by the inner eye of a clairvoyant. The spirit itself will have no more
consciousness of such an appearance than a person passing through a room in
which, unknown to him, there happens to be a mirror, is of having cast a
reflection therein. Usually the position and aspect of the forms indicate
unmistakably the unconsciousness of the spirit, but this is not invariable; the
mental activity of the spirit may revive in a succession of dreams, restoring a
subjective consciousness, while objective unconsciousness still prevails, and
in such cases the form may assume a conscious and animated, or even
transfigured appearance; all depends on the character and intensity of the
dreams, and these again depend upon the degree of the spirituality and purity
of the deceased.
It is not at all
necessary (nor indeed, is it possible under our present hypothesis) that any
real conscious communication should pass between the dormant spirit and the
seer. It is sufficient for the latter to come into direct rapport with the
spirit or its astral image, to think precisely what the spirit, if still conscious
and in earth-life, would have thought.
In the case of
communication through magnetic sensitives, the magnetizer, tenderly attached to
the deceased, by the exertion of his magnetic power unconsciously places the
sensitive en rapport with the spirit of the deceased with which for the time
the spirit of the sensitive is more or less perfectly identified, leading to an
idea of seeing the deceased, as he was wont to appear when on earth, and
receiving from him messages or indications, of which the sensitive really
became cognizant when the two spirits were for the moment blended.
Transfigurations,
under the same conditions, are less doubtful in character, and there are three
ways of explaining them:
Firstly: the
mesmeric action of the magnetizer places the sensitive’s
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spirit en rapport
with that of his dearly-loved deceased friend. Then, what! for the time the identity
of the two is established, the nature of the deceased taken on by the
sensitive, being much more spiritual and powerful than the sensitive’s own, and
his physical constitution being of such a nature as to admit such changes, the
body of the subject begins at once to exhibit an analogous change,
corresponding to the change undergone by his spiritual nature in consequence of
the amalgamation.
Secondly: the
transfiguration may be due to the intensity and clearness of the deceased
friend’s face in the operator’s thought. That face being so strongly impressed
on his memory, it is but natural that his memory, owing to its intensified
activity during such séances, should be throwing off an unusual amount of
energy, and solidifying, so to say, the familiar image on the etheric waves of
his aura. Thus, unknown to himself, he may rouse it up into sympathetic action
which, transforming the image from a subjective into an objective picture,
finally causes it to move on, guided by the current of attraction, until it
settles upon, and so is found reflected in the medium’s face. The images we
find in the endless galleries of space, nailed on to the indestructible walls
of Akâsha, are but lifeless and empty masks after all, the pictorial records of
our thoughts, words, and deeds. In a case recently referred to by a
correspondent, the invisible reality in the magnetizer’s aura threw an
objective adumbration on the plastic features of his sensitive, and the
phenomenon was produced.
Thirdly: thought,
memory and will are the energies of the brain, and, like all other forces of
nature—to use the language of modern science—have two general forms, the
potential and the kinetic form of energy. Potential thought clairvoyantly
discerns and chooses its subject in the astral light; the will becomes the
motor power that causes it to move, that directs and guides it whithersoever it
likes, and it is thus that the adept produces his occult phenomena, whether of
a physical or spiritual character. But the latter can also occur without any
intervention of an intelligent will. The passive condition of the medium leaves
him an easy prey to the pranks of the elementaries, as well as to those
semi-intelligent elemental beings ever basking and masquerading in the sidereal
light, and such a phenomenon may as easily occur of itself, simply owing to
surrounding favourable conditions. The sidereal image of a person we think of
will remain pale and quiescent in its indelible impression on the ether, until
its atoms
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are propelled into
action by the strong magnetic attraction which emanates from the molecular
tissues of the medium, saturated as they are with the mesmerizer’s thought full
of the image. Hence the phenomenon of transfiguration.
These transfigurations
are rare, but we have known of a good many instances, and some very remarkable
ones will be found recorded in Colonel Olcott’s work, entitled People from the
Other World.
The above probably
explains all the features of the particular case referred to; but to enable us
to assert positively in any case that the occurrence was brought about in this
or that way, it is essential that we should be acquainted with every single
detail. So long as we only have the barest outlines to deal with, all we can
pretend to offer are more or less probable solutions.
A critic tells us
that even if we explain one or two cases, he still finds an unbroken line of
stubborn facts opposing our explanations, behind which he is unable to
penetrate. We can only promise that if he will furnish us with accurate details
of all cases within his personal knowledge which, in his opinion, are not
explicable by the occult doctrines, we will show him that they are so
explicable or abandon the field.
But we must lay
down two conditions. First, we will only accept cases of which he has a
complete personal knowledge; we will not accept cases picked up out of books
and papers. Our critic is a reliable, philosophical observer, from whom we are
sure to get facts carefully observed and accurately recorded. With these we can
have no difficulty in dealing. But as for cases recorded here there and every
where, many are, to our knowledge, pure inventions, while many more, although
recorded in good faith, have been so transformed in the process of observation
and record that it would be hopeless to discuss them.
Secondly, he must
not be surprised if, in the course of our explanations, all kinds of new facts
not hitherto touched on are brought to notice. The subject is a vast one. There
are wheels within wheels, laws within laws, exceptions to all these. Hitherto
we have purposely only endeavoured to convey a general conception of the more
important features of the truth. If exact accuracy of detail is required, every
one of our general laws will require certain provisoes and limitations, To
detail only what we know in regard to these spiritual phenomena would occupy
several complete numbers of The Theosophist, and if our
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explanation had to
include the whole system of elementals—future men during a coming cycle—and
other obscure powers and forces which cannot even be mentioned, several octavo
volumes would be needed to contain it.
The same critic
says:
If the proof call
only be obtained by a practical renunciation of the world, a severance of all
human ties, affections and responsibilities, of what use is it to humanity?
Only one in a million may avail themselves of it, and how many of time
remaining nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine,
would have faith in his testimony.
We are compelled to
point out that he is in error in his premisses, and that his conclusions, even
were these premisses correct, are untenable. For even admit that only one in a
million would consent to avail themselves of the opportunity afforded for
obtaining proof, would this be any reason for the remaining nine hundred and
ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine refusing to accept their
evidence? Is this so in practice? Certainly not! At the present time not more
than one in a million (if so many) are willing to avail themselves of the
opportunity of obtaining for themselves proof of the facts of astronomy. Yet
the remainder accept these facts, perfectly satisfied with the knowledge that
anyone who chooses to go through the necessary training and study can acquire
that proof, and that all who have gone through that training are agreed as to
the sufficiency of the proof.
Astronomy is a
science with the name and general bearing of which all fairly educated men are
familiar. Occultism is a science which has hitherto been veiled in the most
profound secrecy, and of which, so far, none but occultists have possessed any
knowledge. But once let mankind be familiarized with the idea, let it become
known that any one who chooses to make the necessary sacrifices can obtain the
proofs, and that those who have obtained the proofs consider them conclusive,
and the mass of mankind will be quite content to accept the facts, even on the
testimony of the one in a million who does undertake the verification of the
assertions of his predecessors.
But our
correspondent’s assumptions are erroneous; a practical renunciation of the
world in the sense in which the apostle exhorted all Christians to be in the
world but not of the world is doubtless essential, but it is by no means
requisite to sever all human ties and affections, nor can it ever be permitted,
much less required, to abjure human responsibilities. These latter may change
in character, and
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may—indeed
must—-with increased knowledge and power, assume a wider reach, and the
affections must broaden and become more cosmopolitan, but it is
self-abnegation, not selfishness, and a devotion to the welfare of others, that
smoothes the path to adeptship.
Again, as regards
the freedom from error claimed for the teachings of occultism, it is needless
to point out the difference between empiricism and science, and the uninitiated
are empiricists, the occultists, scientists. This will be obvious at once when
it is borne in mind that, for thousands of years, hundreds of initiates have
been exploring the unseen world; that the results of their explorations have
been recorded and collected, and discrepancies eliminated by fresh
verifications; that the facts ascertained have been generalized, and the laws
governing them deduced therefrom, and the correctness of these deductions
verified by experiment. Occultism is, therefore, in every sense of the word an
exact science, while the teachings of the very ablest untrained seer who has
worked single-handed can only be empiric.
When in our first
article we said we know (an expression to which a critic, perhaps rightly,
takes objection) we only said this in the sense that, talking to people
ignorant of mathematics, we should say that we know that the curve described by
the moon in space is a form of an epicycloid represented by such and such an equation—not
meaning thereby that we had ourselves investigated this somewhat abstruse
problem, but that we were aware of the method by which this was solved, and
knew that numerous competent mathematicians had so solved it, and had all
arrived at the same solution. Surely those ignorant alike of mathematics and of
the work of mathematician could by no means as reasonably say in reply, that
they knew that the orbit of the moon was something wholly different it is not
our experiences, though these collectively are considerable, on which we rely,
as our critic seems to fancy. For all we know, his experiences may exceed ours,
and, be this as it may, we should certainly never have presumed to traverse
authoritatively his views on the strength of our own experiences or knowledge.
What we rely on are the generalized results of the experiences during a vast
period of time of a large body of trained psychists who have ever made the
attainment of truth, in matters spiritual, the foremost object of their desire,
and the promotion, though in secret, of the welfare of mankind their primary
duty.
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And now, having
attempted to answer certain objections to our previous ‘‘Fragments,’’ we think
it might be well to develop a little further one doctrine that we broached in
our first paper, and explain more in detail why we are so strongly opposed to
habitual mediumism.
Broadly speaking,
the objective phenomena of spiritualists (of subjective communications we have
already spoken) are the work of, or at any rate result from, the activities or
intervention of elementals, half intelligent nature forces, entities which in a
far distant cycle, after passing through all the lower objective kingdoms will
ultimately he born as men; and elementaries or shells. These shells are of two
kinds: first, those belonging to men whose sixth and seventh principles having
attracted to themselves the quintessence, as it were, of the fifth also, have
moved on to fresh developments. These shells consist of the fourth, and only a
portion of the fifth principles. Half or more of the personal memory is gone
and the more animal or material instincts only survive. This relic, this dross
left behind in the crucible when the refined gold was taken, is commonly the
‘‘angel guide’’ of the average medium. Such entities, of course, only survive
for a time; gradually all consciousness departs and they disintegrate. Only highly
mediumistic natures attract these, and only certain of these. The purer the
personality the less their vitality, the shorter their period of survival, and
time less the chance of their contributing to mediumistic displays. The more
full of blemishes, the more disfigured by sins and animal desires, the
personality, the greater the vitality of its reliquiæ the longer their
survival, and the greater the chance of their finding their way into the
séance-room. The man, as a whole, may have been a good man, good may have
actively predominated in him, and yet the worse portions of his nature, his
lower and more animal instincts standing now alone and unneutralized by all the
better portions of his character, may be evil enough.
It is impossible
that any real good can come of intercourse even with this class of shell; it
will not be actively wicked, it is too imperfect and weak for that, but yet its
influence in the long run cannot be elevating. But, besides this, it is wrong
to encourage such shells into activity or convey to them a fresh impulse such
as they often obtain through mediums, since a strong sympathy continues to
subsist between the departed personality and its reliquiæ, and any excitement
of these latter, any galvanization of them with a fictitious renewed life, such
as results from mediums dealing with them, distinctly disturbs
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the gestation of
the personality, hinders the evolution of its new Ego-hood, and delays thereby
its entry into the state of felicity (Devachan) in which, in its new Ego-hood,
it reaps the fruits of its good deeds, prior to reincarnation and rebirth here,
if it has not completed its appointed tale of earth-lives, or in the next
superior planet.
But the other kind
of elementary is far more dangerous as a rule to deal with. In this case the
man has been weighed in the balance and found wanting—his personality has to be
blotted out—the fourth and fifth principles are intact; and more than this, the
fifth will have assimilated all that there may he left of personal recollection
and perception of its personal individuality in the sixth. This second class of
shell is in every way more enduring, more active, and in the majority of cases,
distinctly wicked. No doubt it can stiffer no injury from its intercourse with
men, but these latter must inevitably deteriorate in consequence of association
with shells of this class. Fortunately these are not, comparatively speaking,
very numerous; of course, absolutely, there have been millions of millions of
such, but, to the credit of human nature be it said that the personalities that
have to be absolutely blotted out form but a fractional percentage of the
whole.
Moreover, shells of
this nature do not remain for any great length of time in the atmosphere of
this earth, but like straws floating near a whirlpool, get caught up by and
dragged down in that terrible maelstrom which hurries off the failures towards
disintegration, to the planet of matter and death—the mental as well as time
physical satellite of our earth!
As for the
elementals, rudimentary men no doubt, but more embryonic even than the spirit
that sleeps in the mineral, these, though capable of becoming powerful forces
in association with shells, under the spells of sorcerers and under the
guidance of adepts, are, as a rule, irresponsible, purblind, neutral entities,
taking moral and mental character and colour from the active and more developed
spiritual entity with or under whose control they work; but even these, though
themselves incapable of being injured, may become very dangerous to mediums
with any inherent evil tendencies.
Here then in
elementals and elementaries are to he found the majority probably of the
performers of the physical phenomena of spiritualists. Association with no one
of these three classes can possibly benefit mankind as a whole. The variety of
natures is so infinite that we do not assert that in no case has any human
being benefited by inter-
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course with any
individual specimen of either class. But we do say that, broadly speaking,
nothing but harm can be expected from association with such. Further, in the
case of one of the three classes, mediumistic intercourse inflicts a distinct
injury upon innocent beings.
But though
elementaries and elementals constitute a large proportion of the performers,
there are other classes of actors. We do not pretend—we are not permitted—to
deal exhaustively with the question at present, but we may refer to one of the
most important classes of entities who can participate in objective phenomena
other than elementaries and elementals.
This class
comprises the spirits of conscious sane suicides. They are spirits and not
shells, because there is not in their case, at any rate until later, a total
and permanent divorce between the fourth and fifth principles on the one hand
and the sixth and seventh on the other. The two are divided, they exist apart,
but a line of connection still unites them, they may yet reunite, and the
sorely threatened personality avert its doom; the fifth principle still holds
in its hands the clue by which, traversing the labyrinth of earthly sins and
passions, it may regain the sacred penetralia. But for the time, though really
a spirit, and therefore so designated, it is practically not far removed from a
shell.
This class of
spirit can undoubtedly communicate with men, but as a rule its members have to
pay dearly for exercising the privilege, while it is scarcely possible for them
to do otherwise than lower and debase the moral nature of those with and
through whom they have much communication. It is merely, broadly speaking, a
question of degree; of much or little injury resulting from such communication
the cases in which real, permanent good can arise are too absolutely
exceptional to require consideration.
Understand how the
case stands. The unhappy being revolting against the trials of life—trials, the
results of it own former actions, trials, heaven’s merciful medicine for the
mentally and spiritually diseased—determines, instead of manfully taking arms
against a sea of troubles, to let the curtain drop, and, as it fancies, end
them.
It destroys the
body, but finds itself precisely as much alive mentally as before. It had an
appointed life-term determined by an intricate web of prior causes, which its
own willful sudden act cannot shorten. That term must run out its appointed
sands. You may smash the
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lower half of the
hour-glass so that the impalpable sand shooting from the upper bell is
dissipated by the passing aerial currents as it issues, but that stream will
run on, unnoticed though it remain, until the whole store in that upper
receptacle is exhausted.
So you may destroy
the body, but not the appointed period of sentient existence, foredoomed,
because simply the effect of a plexus of causes, to intervene before the
dissolution of the personality; this must run on for its appointed period.
This is so in other
cases; for example, those of the victims of accident or violence—they, too,
have to complete their life-term, and of these, too, we may speak on another
occasion; but here it is sufficient to notice that, whether good or bad, their
mental attitude at the time of death alters wholly their subsequent position.
They, too, have to wait on within the Region of Desires until their wave of
life runs on to and reaches its appointed shore; but they wait on, wrapped in dreams
soothing and blissful or the reverse, according to their mental and moral state
at and prior to the fatal hour, but nearly exempt from further material
temptations, and, broadly speaking, incapable, except just at the moment of
real death, of communicating suo motu with mankind though not wholly beyond the
possibility of reach of the higher forms of the “accursed science,” necromancy.
The question is a profoundly abstruse one. It would be impossible to explain
within the brief space still remaining to us how the conditions immediately
after death in the case of the man who deliberately lays down (not merely
risks) his life from altruistic motives in the hope of saving those of others,
and of him who deliberately sacrifices his life from selfish motives in the
hopes of escaping trials and troubles which loom before him, differ so entirely
as they do. Nature or Providence, Fate or God being merely a self—adjusting
machine, it would at first sight seem as if the results must be identical in
both cases. But machine though it be, we must remember that it is a machine sui
geueris:
Out of himself he
span
Th’ eternal web of
right and wrong,
And ever feels the subtlest thrill,
The slenderest thread along !
—a machine compared
with whose perfect sensitiveness and adjustment the highest human intellect is
but a coarse clumsy replica.
And we must
remember that thoughts and motives are material, and at times marvellously
potent material forces, and we may then begin
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to comprehend why
the hero sacrificing his life on pure altruistic grounds, sinks as his
life-blood ebbs away into a sweet dream, wherein
All that he wishes
and all that he loves
Come smiling around Ins sunny way,
only to wake into
active or objective consciousness when reborn in the Region of Happiness, while
the poor, unhappy and misguided mortal who, seeking to elude fate, selfishly
loosens the silver string and breaks the golden bowl, finds himself terribly
alive and awake, instinct with all the evil cravings and desires that
embittered his world-life, without a body in which to gratify them, and capable
of only such partial alleviation as is possible by more or less vicarious
gratification, and this only at the risk of the complete rupture with his sixth
and seventh principles, and consequent ultimate annihilation after prolonged
periods of suffering.
Let it not be
supposed that there is no hope for this class—the sane, deliberate suicide. If,
bearing steadfastly his cross, he suffers his punishment patiently, striving
against carnal appetites—still alive in him in all their intensity, though, of
course, each in proportion to the degree to which it had been indulged in
earth-life—if, we say, he bears this humbly, never allowing himself to be
tempted here or there into unlawful gratifications of unholy desires then, when
his fated death—hour strikes, his four higher principles reunite, and in the
final separation that then ensues all may be well with him, and he may pass on
to the gestation period and its subsequent developments.
Till the
predestined death-knell rings he has his chance; he may wipe out in suffering
and repentance many a sad black score from the page of Karma, but—and this is
the point we desire to impress upon spiritualists—he may add a hundred fouler
ones to the sad blots already damning the record.
It is not merely
for the sake of the mediums, not merely “for the sake of those that sit at meat
with these,” but, above all, for the sake of these miserable half-lost brothers
and sisters that we appeal.
Suddenly cut short
in careers always more or less deeply befouled in all sane suicides—and we
speak only of these, for insane suicides are but victims—by one of the
deadliest sins, rage, hatred, lust or greed, they awake to find themselves
haunted by their besetting sin in all its intensity. Around them are mediums,
many of them throwing themselves open to what they idly dream to be angel
guides. They have but to obsess these only too willing partners, to share in
their evil
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gratifications, or
collecting out of their aura and loosely coherent physical organizations, and
from even fouler sources, the tombs and shambles, materials to form a fragile
physical organization of their own, revel with their mediums in all imaginable
iniquity. These are the incubi and succubæ of rnediæval times, these are the
“spirit wives” and “husbands” of modern days, and these, when merely obsessing
and not assuming a separate objective form, are the demons of drunkenness,
gluttony, hatred and malice, the memorials of whose fiendish excesses crowd the
sad records alike of the present and the past.
Evil to begin with,
and separated (though not as yet irrevocably) from their sixth and seventh
principles, and such restraining influence as these may have insensibly
exercised, these spirits too often pass from bad to worse, develop into true
psychic vampires, driving victim after victim to destruction, inciting to and
glorying in, the foulest, the most incredible crimes, to be swept at last, when
the appointed death-hour strikes, on the flood-tide of their own enormities,
far out of the earth’s aura into regions where annihilation alone drops the
curtain on æons of unimaginable misery.
And many of these,
veritable fiends as they become, were not so very, very had in this
life—’’shady lots,” perhaps, in modern phraseology, with some rebellious,
bitter, angry taint in the character which led them to suicide, but, after all,
very far removed from the demons which they eventually become; and this awful
and incredible development devil-wards which they underwent, though indirectly
facilitated by the separation of their highest principles, was primarily and
almost exclusively due to the temptations, the facilities for the gratification
of their worst desires, held out to them by mediums, recognized as such or not,
of the low physical-manifestation type.
Alas! for the great
hulk of such mediums. Alas! for too many of their spiritualistic admirers and
associates. Little do they dream that two-thirds of all the most monstrous
crimes in the world have their origin in this low physical mediumistic
capacity. Unrecognized as such, hundreds of miserable mediums perish on the
scaffold, declaring, and declaring truly, that they were egged on to the crimes
for which they suffer by a devil, in reality an obsessing spirit, mostly of
this class. In thousands and thousands of cases the gross sins, drunkenness,
gluttony, lewdness, bestiality in all its forms, which spread desolation to
innumerable happy hearths and plunge in misery and
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disgrace countless
happy households, are all really traceable to this same class of spirit,
deriving alike the intensity of its evil desires and the power to do harm, from
that fatal capacity for mediumship of the low class favourable to physical
manifestations.
And this
mediuinship is a plant that, like a noxious weed, under encouraging influences,
spreads as time runs on. Do the spiritualists who deal so complacently with,
nay, who so greedily run after, these physical-manifestation mediums, reflect
on, or at all realize, what they are doing? It is not merely that both they
themselves and the mediums are running a fearful risk of moral shipwreck
through this intercourse—this can to a certain extent be guarded against,
though it too seldom is, by perfect purity of word thought and deed; and again
the medium may, though this, too, is rare, be naturally so well-disposed that
the obsessing spirit, if not already rabidly evil, may do little harm; but what
is alike beyond control of medium and his or her supporters is diffusion, as
the mediumship is developed, of mediumistic germs through the âkâshic
atmosphere, which, finding here and there appropriate soils in the weakest and
most sensual natures, will produce later a crop of more degraded mediums,
destined certainly to include many of the vilest sinners, if not several of the
deepest-dyed criminals of the age.
This form of
mediumship is a deadly weed, and so far from being encouraged into
reproduction—and that is what the spiritualists as a body do—it should be
starved out by disuse whenever and wherever it is recognized. Unfortunately, it
will always exist, springing up sporadically here and there; and, though
dwarfed in habit, contributing largely to the loathsome annals of sin and
crime; but it is truly monstrous to aid the propagation of this curse in all
intensified form, by aiding and abetting the development and function of
prominent specimens.
Let none who do
this dream that they can escape the consequences. All who share in transactions
by which sin and misery are multiplied for others must share the recoil. They
may act in ignorance, in good faith, and so escape the moral taint—the most
grievous of the Consequences of evil—but they can by no means escape the other
consequences, and they will have to brave in coming lives the angry buffets of
a retributive justice, which, though sleeping during the present, never sleeps
during a second life.
NOTES ON SOME
ARYAN-ARHAT
ESOTERIC TENETS*
———
[Vol. III. No. 4,
January, 1882.]
NOTES
THE Tibetan
esoteric Buddhist doctrine teaches that Prakriti is cosmic matter, out of which
all visible forms are produced; Akâsha is also cosmic matter, but still more
imponderable, its spirit, as it were; Prakriti being the body or substance, and
Akâsha-Shakti its soul or energy.
Prakriti, Svabhâvat
or Akâsha is Space, as the Tibetans have it; Space filled with whatsoever
substance or no substance at all, i.e., with substance so imponderable as to be
only metaphysically conceivable. Brahman, then, would be the germ thrown into
the soil of that field, and Shakti, that mysterious energy or force which
develops it, and which is called by the Buddhist Arahats of Tibet, Fohat.
“That which we call
Form (Rupa) is not different from that which we call Space (Shûnyatâ) . . .
Space is not different from Form. Form is the same as Space; Space is the same
as Form. And so with the other Skandhas, whether Vedanâ, or Sanjua, or Sanskâra
or Vijnana they are each the same as their opposite.” (Book of Sin-king or the
“Heart Sûtra.” Chinese translation of the Maha-Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya-Sutra;
chapter on the “Avalokiteshvara,” or Manifested Buddha.)
So that, the Aryan
and Tibetan or Arhat doctrines agree perfectly in substance, differing but in
names given and the way of putting it, a distinction resulting from the fact
that the Vedântin Brâhmans believe in Parabrahman, a deific power, impersonal
though it may be, while the Buddhists entirely reject it.
APPENDICES.
I.
The country called
Si-dzang by the Chinese, and Tibet by Western geographers, is mentioned in the
oldest books preserved in the province
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* The following
area collection of notes and appendices on an article, entitled ‘The
Aryan-Arhat Esoteric Tenets on the sevenfold Principle in Man,”
by T. Suhba Row, BA., B.L.—EDS.
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of Fo-kien (the
chief headquarters of the aborigines of China) as the great seat of occult
learning in the archaic ages. According to these records, it was inhabited by
the ‘‘Teachers of Light,’’ the ‘‘Sons of Wisdom” and the “Brothers of the Sun.”
The Emperor Vu, the “Great” (2207 B.C.), a pious mystic, is credited with having
obtained his occult wisdom and the system of theocracy established by him—for
he was the first one to unite in China ecclesiastical power with temporal
authority—from Si-dzang. That system was the same as with the old Egyptians and
the Chaldees—that which we know to have existed in the Brâhmanical period in
India, and to exist now in Tibet—namely, all the learning, power, the temporal
as well as the secret wisdom were concentrated within the hierarchy of the
priests and limited to their caste. Who were the aborigines of Tibet is a
question which no ethno- grapher is able to answer correctly at present. They
practise the Bhon religion, their sect was pre-buddhistic and anti-buddhistic,
and they are to he found mostly in the province of Kam—that is all that is
known of them. But even that would justify the supposition that they are the
greatly degenerated descendants of mighty and wise fore-fathers. Their ethnical
type shows that they are not pure Turanians, and their rites—now those of
sorcery, incantations, and nature—worship—remind one far more of the popular
rites of the Babylonians, as found in the records preserved on the excavated
cylinders, than, as alleged by some, of the religious practices of the Chinese
sect of Tao-sse—a religion based upon pure reason and spirituality. Generally,
little or no difference is made even by the Kyelang missionaries who mix
greatly with these people on the borders of British Lahoul— and ought to know
better—between the Bhons and the two rival Buddhist sects, the Yellow Caps and
the Red Caps. The latter of these have opposed the reform of Tzong-ka-pa from
the first, and have always adhered to old Buddhism, so greatly mixed up now
with the practices of the Bhons. Were our Orientalists to know more of them,
and compare the ancient Babylonian Bel or Baal worship with the rites of the
Bhons, they would find an undeniable connection between the two. It is out of
the question to begin an argument here to prove the origin of the aborigines of
Tibet as connected with one of the three great races which superseded each
other in Babylonia, whether we call them the Akkadians (invented by F.
Lenormant), or the primitive Turanians, Chaldees and Assyrians. Be it as it
may, there is reason to call the Trans-Himalayan esoteric doctrine Chaldæo-Tibetan
And,
477————————————————NOTES ON SOME ARYAN-ARHAT ESOTERIC TENETS.
when we remember
that the Vedas came—agreeably to all traditions— from the Mansarova Lake in
Tibet, and the Brâhmans themselves from the far north, we are justified in
looking on the esoteric doctrines of every people who once had or still have
them, as having proceeded from one and the same source, and to thus call it the
“Aryan-Chaldæo-Tibetan” doctrine, or Universal Wisdom Religion. “Seek for the
Lost Word among the hierophants of Tartary, China and Tibet,” was the advice of
Swedenborg, the seer.
II.
The Vedas,
Brâhmanism, and along with these Sanskrit, were importations into what we now
regard as India. They were never indigenous to its soil. There was a time when
the ancient nations of the West included under the generic name of India many
of the countries of Asia now classified under other names. There was an Upper,
a Lower, and a Western India, even during the comparatively late period of
Alexander; and Persia, Iran, is called Western India in some ancient classics,
and the countries now named Tibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary were considered
as forming part of India. When we say, therefore, that India has civilized the
world and was the Alma Mater of the civilizations, arts and sciences of all
other nations (Baby- lonia, and perhaps even Egypt, included), we mean archaic,
prehistoric India, India of the time when the great Gobi was a sea, and the
lost Atlantis formed part of an unbroken continent which began at the Himalayas
and ran down over Southern India, Ceylon, Java, to far-away Tasmania.
III.
To ascertain such
disputed questions [as to whether or not the Tibetan adepts are acquainted with
the “esoteric doctrine taught by the residents of the sacred Island”), we have
to look into and study well the Chinese sacred and historical records—a people
whose era begins nearly 4,600 years back (2697 B.C.). A people so accurate—by
whom some of the most important “inventions” of modern Europe and its so much
boasted modern science (such as the compass, gun powder, porcelain, paper,
printing, etc.), were anticipated, known, and practised thousands of years
before these were rediscovered by the Europeans—ought to receive some trust for
their records.
From Lao-tze down
to Hiouen-Thsang their literature is filled with allusions and references to
that Island and the wisdom of the Himâ-
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A MODERN PANARION.
layan adepts. In
the Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the chinese, by the Rev. Samuel Beal,
there is a chapter “On the Tian-Ta’i School of Buddhism” (pp. 244-258), which
our opponents ought to read. Translating the rules of that most celebrated and
holy school and sect in China founded by Chin-che-chay, called the wise one, in
the year of our era, on coming to the sentence, “That which relates to the one
garment (seamless) worn by the Great Teachers of the Snowy Mountains, the
school of the Haimavatas” (p. 256), the European translator places after it a
sign of interrogation, as well he may. The statistics of the school of the
Haimavatas or of our Himâlayan Brother-hood, are not to be found in the General
Census Records of India. Further, Mr. Beal translates a rule relating to “the
great professors of the higher order who live in mountain depths remote from
men,’’ the Aranyakas, or hermits.
So, with respect to
the traditions concerning this Island, and apart from the (to them) historical
records of it preserved in the Chinese and Tibetan Sacred Books, the legend is
alive to this day among the people of Tibet. The fair Island is no more, but
the country where it once bloomed remains there still, and the spot is well
known to some of the “Great Teachers of the Snowy Mountains,” however much
convulsed and changed its topography may have been by the awful cataclysm.
Every seventh year these teachers are believed to assemble in Schambha-la, the
“happy land.” According to the general belief it is situated in the north-west
of Tibet. Some place it within the unexplored central regions, inaccessible
even to the fearless nomadic tribes; others hem it in between the range of the
Gangdisri Mountains and the northern edge of the Gobi Desert, south and north,
and the more populated regions of Khoondooz and Kashmir, of the Gya-Pheling
(British India) and China, west and east, which affords to the curious mind a
pretty large latitude to locate it in. Others still place it between Namur Nur
and the Kuen-Lun Mountains—but one and all firmly believe in Scham-bha-la, and
speak of it as a fertile, fairy-like land, once an island, now an oasis of
incomparable beauty, the place of meeting of the inheritors of the esoteric
wisdom of the god-like inhabitants of the legendary Island.
In connection with
the archaic legend of the Asian Sea and the Atlantic Continent, is it not
profitable to note a fact known to all modern geologists—that the Himalayan
slopes afford geological proof that the substance of those lofty peaks was once
a part of an ocean floor?
479—————————————NOTES ON SOME ARYAN-ARHAT ESOTERIC TENETS.
IV.
We have already
pointed out that, in our opinion, the whole difference between the Buddhistic
and Vedântic philosophies was that the former was a kind of rationalistic
Vedântism, while the latter might be regarded as transcendental Buddhism. If
the Aryan esotericism applies the term Jivâtma to the seventh principle, the
pure, and per se unconscious, spirit—it is because the Vedânta postulating
three kinds of existence—(1) the Paramârthika, the true, the only real one; (2)
the Vyavahârika, the practical; and (3) the Pratibhâshika, the apparent or
illusory life—makes the first Life or Jiva, the only truly existent one. Brahma
or the One Self is its only representative in the universe, as it is the
universal Life, while the other two are but its ‘‘phenomenal appearances,”
imagined and created by ignorance, and complete illusions suggested to us by
our blind senses. The Buddhists, on the other hand, deny either subjective or
objective reality even to that one Self-Existence. Buddha declares that there
is neither Creator nor an Absolute Being. Buddhist rationalism was ever too
alive to the insuperable difficulty of admitting one absolute consciousness, as
in the words of Flint—”wherever there is consciousness there is relation, and
wherever there is relation there is dualism.” The One Life is either absolute
and unconditioned (Mukta) and can have no relation to anything nor to anyone;
or it is bound and conditioned (Baddha), and then it cannot be called the
Absolute; the limitation, moreover, necessitating another deity as powerful as
the first to account for all the evil in this world. Hence, the Arahat secret
doctrine on cosmogony admits but of one absolute, indestructible, eternal and
uncreated Unconsciousness (so to translate), of an element (the word being used
for want of a better term) absolutely independent of everything else in the
universe; a something ever present or ubiquitous, a Presence which ever was,
is, and will be, whether there is a God, gods, or none; whether there is a
universe or no universe; existing during the eternal cycles of Mahâ Yugas,
during Pralayas and during the periods of Manvantara; and this is Space, the
field for the operation of the eternal Forces and natural Law, the basis (as
our correspondent rightly calls it) upon which take place the eternal
intercorrelations of Akâsha-Prakriti, guided by the unconscious regular
pulsations of Shakti—the breath or power of a conscious Deity, the theists
would say—the eternal energy of an eternal, unconscious Law, say the Buddhists.
Space then, or Fan Bar-nang (Mahâ Shûnyatâ) or, as it is called by Lao-tze, the
“Emptiness,” is the nature
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A MODERN PANARION.
of the Buddhist
Absolute. (See Confucius’ Praise of the Abyss.) The word Jiva, then, could
never be applied by the Arahats to the seventh principle, since it is only
through its correlation or contact with matter that Fohat (the Buddhist active
energy) can develop active conscious life; and since to the question “How can
unconsciousness generate consciousness?”—the answer would be: “Was the seed
which generated a Bacon or a Newton
self-conscious?”
THE THOUGHTS OF THE
DEAD*
————
[Vol. III. No. 4,
January, 1882.]
A MAN dies of a
contagious disease; months after his death, aye, years—a bit of clothing, an
object touched by him during his sickness, may communicate the disease to a
person more physiologically sensitive than the persons around him, while having
no effect upon the latter. And why should not an idea, a thought exercise the
same influence? Thought is no less material nor objective than the imponderable
and mysterious germs of various infectious diseases, the causes of which are
such a puzzle for science. Since the mind of a living person can so influence
another mind that the former can force the latter to think and believe whatever
it will—in short, can psychologize that other mind, so can the thought of a
person already dead. Once generated and sent out, that thought will live upon
its own energy. It has become independent of the brain and mind which gave it
birth. So long as its concentrated energy remains undissipated, it can act as a
potential influence when brought into contact with the living brain and nervous
system of a person susceptibly predisposed. The unhealthy action thus provoked
may lead the sensitive into a temporary insanity of self-delusion, that quite
clouds the sense of his own individuality. The morbid action thus once set up,
the whole floating group of the dead man’s thoughts rushes into the sensitive’s
brain, and he can give what seems test after test of the presence of the
deceased and convince the predisposed investigator that the individuality of
the “control,” “guide,” or communicating intelligence is thoroughly
established.
——————————————————————
* The above is a
Note appended to an article, entitled “Lakshmibai the Authentic Story of a Bhût
by Piarai Lall Chachondia.
DREAMLAND AND
SOMNAMBULISM
———
[Vol. III. No. 4,
January, 1882.]
[To the Editor.
(1) ARE dreams
always real? If so, what produces them? If not real, may they not nevertheless
have in themselves some deep significance?
(2) Can you tell me
something about antenatal states of existence and the transmigration of the
soul?
(3) Can you give me
anything that is worth knowing about psychology as suggested by this article?*
Yours most
fraternally and obediently,
JEHANGIR CURSETJI
TARACHAND.
Bombay, Nov. 10th,
1882.]
To put our
correspondent’s request more exactly, he desires The Theosophist to cull into
the limits of a column or two the facts embraced within the whole range of all
the sublunar mysteries with “full explanations.” These would embrace:
(1) The complete
philosophy of dreams, as deduced from their physiological, biological,
psychological and occult aspects.
(2) The Buddhist
Jâtakas (rebirths and migrations of our Lord Shâkya Muni), with a philosophical
essay upon the transmigrations of the 387,000 Buddhas who ‘‘turned the wheel of
faith,’’ during the successive revelations to the world of the 125,000 other Buddhas,
the saints who can “overlook and unravel the thousand-fold knotted threads of
the moral chain of causation,” throwing in a treatise upon the Nidânas the
chain of twelve causes with a complete list of their two millions of results,
and copious appendices by some Arhats, “who have attained the stream which
flows into Nirvana.”
(3) The compounded
reveries of the world-famous psychologists; from the Egyptian Hermes and his
Book of the Dead; Plato’s definition of the Soul, in Timæus; and so on, down to
Drawing-Room Nocturnal chats with a Disembodied Soul, by the Rev. Adramelech
Romeo Tiberius Toughskin from Cincinnati. Such is the modest task proposed.
——————————————————————
* A dream-story
from Chambers’ Journal.
483———————————————————DREAMLAND AND SOMNAMBULISM.
Our physical senses
are the agents by means of which the astral spirit, or “conscious something”
within, is brought, by contact with the external world, to a knowledge of
actual existence; while the spiritual senses of the astral man are the media,
the telegraphic wires by means of which he communicates with his higher
principles, and obtains therefrom the faculties of clear perception of, and
vision into, the realms of the invisible world. The Buddhist philosopher holds
that by the practice of the Dhyânas one may reach “the enlightened condition of
mind, which exhibits itself by immediate recognition of sacred truth, so that
on opening the Scriptures [or any books whatsoever?] their true meaning at once
flashes into the heart.” (Beal’s Catena,
p. 255.)
In dreaming, or in
somnambulism, the brain is asleep only in parts, and is called into action
through the agency of the external senses, owing to some peculiar cause; a word
pronounced, a thought, or picture lingering dormant in one of the cells of memory,
and awakened by a sudden noise, the fall of a stone, suggesting instantaneously
to this half-dreamy fancy of the sleeper walls of masonry, and so on. When one
is suddenly startled in his sleep without becoming fully awake, he does not
begin and terminate his dream with the simple noise which partially awoke him,
but often experiences in his dream a long train of events concentrated within
the brief space of time the sound occupies, and to be attributed solely to that
sound. Generally dreams are induced by the waking associations which precede
them. Some of them produce such an impression that the slightest idea in the
direction of any subject associated with a particular dream may bring its
recurrence years after.
Tartini, the famous
Italian violinist, composed his “Devil’s Sonata” under the inspiration of a
dream. During his sleep he thought the devil appeared to him and challenged him
to a trial of skill upon his own private violin, brought straight from the
infernal regions; which challenge Tartini accepted. When he awoke, the melody
of the ‘‘Devil’s Sonata’’ was so vividly impressed upon his mind that he there
and then noted it down; but on getting as far as the finale all further
recollection of it was suddenly obliterated, and he had to lay aside the
incomplete piece of music. Two years later he dreamt the very same thing, and
in his dream tried to make himself recollect the finale upon awaking. The dream
was repeated owing to a blind street- musician fiddling on his instrument under
the artist’s window.
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A MODERN PANARION.
Coleridge in a like
manner composed his poem, ‘‘ Kublai—Khan,” in a dream. On awaking, he found the
now—famous lines so vividly impressed upon his mind that he wrote them down.
‘rise dream was due to the poet falling asleep in Ins chair while reading the
following words in Purchas’ Pilgrimage: “Here the Khan Kublai commanded a
palace to he built ..... enclosed within a wall.”
The popular belief,
that among the vast number of meaningless dreams there are some in which
presages are frequently given of coming events, is shared by many Well—informed
persons, but not at all by science. Yet there are numberless instances of
well-attested dreams which were verified by subsequent events, and which,
therefore, may be termed prophetic. The Greek and Latin classics teens with
records of remarkable dreams, some of which have become historical. Faith in
the spiritual nature of dreaming was as widely disseminated among the Pagan
philosophers as among the Christian fathers of the church, nor is belief in
soothsaying and interpretations of dreams (oneiromancy limited to the heathen
nations of Asia, since the Bible is full of them. This is what Eliphas Levi,
the great modern Kabalist, says of such divinations, visions and prophetic
dreams, in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (i. 356, 357):
Somnambulism,
premonitions and second sight are but a disposition, whether accidental or
habitual, to dream, awake, or during a voluntary, self-induced, or yet natural
sleep; i.e., to perceive [and guess by intuition] the analogical reflections of
the astral light .....The paraphernalia and instruments of divinations are
simply means for [magnetic] communications between the divinator and him who
consults him they serve to fix and concentrate two wills [ in the same
direction] upon the same sign or object ; the queer, complicated, moving
figures helping to collect the reflections of the astral fluid. Thus one is
enabled at times to see in the grounds of a coffee cup, or in the clouds, in
the white of an egg, etc., fantastic forms having their existence only in the
translucid [or the seer’s imagination]. Vision-seeing in the water is produced by
the fatigue of the dazzled optic nerve, which ends by ceding its functions to
the translucid, and calling forth a cerebral illusion, which makes the simple
reflections of the astral light appear as real images. Thus the fittest persons
for thus kind of divination are those of a nervous temperament whose sight is
weak and imagination vivid, children being the best of all adapted for it. But
let no one misinterpret the nature of the function attributed by us to
imagination in the art of divination. We see through our imagination doubtless,
and that is the natural aspect of the miracle; but we see actual and true
things, and it is in this that lies the marvel of the natural phenomenon. We
appeal for corroboration of what we say to the testimony of all the adepts.
ARE DREAMS BUT IDLE
VISIONS?
————
[Vol. III. No. 4,
January, 1882.]
“DREAMS are
interludes which fancy makes,” Dryden tells us—perhaps to show that even a poet
will make occasionally his muse sub-servient to sciolistic prejudice.
The instance of
prevision in dream given above [in a letter addressed to The Theosophist] is
one of a series of what may be regarded as exceptional cases in dream-life, the
generality of dreams being, indeed, but “interludes which fancy makes.” It is
the policy of materialistic, matter-of-fact science to superbly ignore such
exceptions, on the ground, perchance, that the exception confirms the rule—or,
we rather think, to avoid the embarrassing task of explaining such exceptions.
Indeed, if one single instance stubbornly refuses classification, with “strange
coincidences”—so much in favour with sceptics—then prophetic, or verified,
dreams would demand an entire remodeling of physiology; as in regard to
phrenology, the recognition and acceptance by science of prophetic dreams (hence
the recognition of the claims of theosophy and spiritualism) would, it is
contended, “carry with it a new educational, social, political, and theological
science.” Result: Science will never recognize either dreams, spiritualism, or
occultism.
Human nature is an
abyss, which physiology (and indeed modern science in general) has sounded less
deeply than some who have never heard the word physiology pronounced. Never are
the high censors of the Royal Society more perplexed than when brought face to
face with that insolvable mystery—man’s inner nature. The key to it is—man’s
dual being. It is that key that they refuse to use, well aware that if once the
door of the adytum be flung open they will be forced to drop one by one their
cherished theories and final conclusions—more than once proved to have been no
better than hobbies, starting from false or incomplete premisses. If we must
remain satisfied with the half explanations of physiology as regards
meaningless dreams, how account in such case for the numerous facts of verified
dreams?
486——————————————————————A M0DERN PANARION.
To say that man is
a dual being, that in man (to use the words of Paul) “there is a natural body,
and there is a spiritual body”; and that, therefore, he must of necessity have
a double set of senses—is tantamount in the opinion of the educated sceptic to
uttering an unpardonable and most unscientific fallacy. Yet it has to be
uttered, science notwithstanding.
Man is undeniably
endowed with a double set of senses; with natural or physical senses (these to
be safely left to physiology to deal with); and with sub-natural or spiritual
senses (belonging entirely to the province of psychological science). The word
“sub,” let it be well understood, is used here in a sense diametrically opposite
to that given to it—in chemistry, for example. In our case it is a prefix, as
in “sub-tonic” or “sub-bass” in music. Indeed, as the aggregate sound of nature
is shown to be a single definite tone, a key-note vibrating from and through
eternity; having an undeniable existence per se, yet possessing an appreciable
pitch only for “the acutely fine ear”* so the definite harmony or disharmony of
man’s external nature is seen by the observant to depend wholly on the
character of the key-note struck for the outer by the inner man. It is the
spiritual Ego or Self that serves as the fundamental base, determining the tone
of the whole life of man—that most capricious, uncertain and variable of all
instruments, which more than any other needs constant tuning; it is its voice
alone, which like the sub-bass of an organ, underlies the melody of his whole
life, whether its tones are sweet or harsh, harmonious or wild, legato or
pizzicato.
Therefore, we say,
man, in addition to the physical, has also a spiritual brain. if the former is
wholly dependent for the degree of its receptivity on its own physical
structure and development, it is, on the other hand, entirely subordinate to
the latter, inasmuch as it is the spiritual Ego alone (according as it leans
more towards its two highest principles,† or towards its physical shell) that
can impress more or less vividly the outer brain with the perception of things
purely spiritual or immaterial. Hence it depends on the acuteness of the mental
feelings of the inner Ego, on the degree of spirituality of its faculties, to
transfer the impression of the scenes its semi-spiritual brain perceives, the
words it hears, and what it feels, to the sleeping physical
——————————————————————
* This tone is held
by the specialists to be the middle F of the piano.
† The sixth
principle, or spiritual soul, and the seventh—the purely spiritual principle,
the Spirit or Parabrahman, the emanation from the unconscious Absolute.
(See “Fragments of Occult Truth,” Theosophist, October, 1881.)
487————————————————————ARE
DREAMS BUT IDLE VISIONS?
brain of the outer
man. The stronger the spirituality of the faculties of the latter, the easier
it will be for the Ego to awake the sleeping hemispheres, rouse into activity
the sensory ganglia and the cerebellum, and impress the former (always in full
inactivity and rest during the deep sleep of man) with the vivid picture of the
subject so transferred. In a sensual, unspiritual man, in one whose mode of
life and animal proclivities and passions have entirely disconnected his fifth
principle or animal, astral Ego from its higher spiritual soul; as also in him
whose hard, physical labour has so worn out the material body as to render him
temporarily insensible to the voice and touch of his astral soul—in both cases
during sleep the brain remains in a com- plete state of an or full inactivity.
Such persons rarely, if ever, have any dreams at all, least of all “visions
that come to pass.” In the former, as the waking time approaches, and his sleep
becomes lighter, the mental changes as they begin to occur will constitute
dreams in which intelligence will play no part; his half-awakened brain
suggesting but pictures which are only the hazy grotesque reproductions of his
wild habits in life; while in the latter (unless strongly preoccupied with some
exceptional thought) his ever-present instinct of active habits will not permit
him to remain in that state of semi- sleep during which, as consciousness
begins to return, dreams of various kinds are seen, but will arouse him at once
without any interlude to full wakefulness. On the other hand, the more
spiritual a man, the more active his fancy, the greater is the probability of
his receiving in vision correctly the impressions conveyed to him by his
all-seeing, ever-wakeful Ego. The spiritual senses of the latter, unimpeded as
they are by the interference of the physical senses, are in direct intimacy
with his highest spiritual principle. This principle (though per se a
quasi-unconscious part of the utterly unconscious, because utterly immaterial,
Absolute*) having in itself the inherent capabilities of
——————————————————————
* To this teaching
every kind of exception will be taken by the theists and various objections
raised by the spiritualists. It is evident that we cannot be expected to give,
within the narrow limits of a short article, a full explanation of this highly
abstruse and esoteric doctrine. To say that the Absolute consciousness is
“unconscious’’ of its consciousness (hence to the limited intellect of man most
be ‘Absolute Unconsciousness ‘‘) seems like speaking of a square triangle. We
hope to develop the proposition more fully in one of the forthcoming numbers of
“Fragments of Occult Truth,’’ of which we may publish a series. We will then
prove, perhaps, to the satisfaction of the non-prejudiced that the Absolute, or
thee Unconditioned, and (especially) the Unrelated, is a mere fanciful
abstraction, a fiction, unless we view it from the standpoint, and in the light
of, the more educated pantheist. To do so, we will have to regard the Absolute
merely as the aggregate of all intelligences, the totality of all existences,
incapable of manifesting itself except through the inter relationship of its
parts, as it is absolutely incognizable and non-existent outside its phenomena.
and depends entirely on its ever-correlating forces, dependent in their turn on
the One Great Law.
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A MODERN PANARION.
omniscience,
omnipresence, and omnipotence, as soon as its pure essence comes in contact
with pure sublimated and (to us) imponderable matter, imparts these attributes
in a degree to the as pure astral Ego. Hence highly spiritual persons will see
visions and dreams during sleep and even in their hours of wakefulness. These
are the sensitives, the natural-born seers, now loosely termed “spiritual
mediums,” there being no distinction made between a subjective seer, a
“neurypnological” subject, and even an adept—one who has made himself
independent of his physiological idiosyncracies and has entirely subjected the
outer to the inner man. Those less spiritually endowed will see such dreams
only at rare intervals; the accuracy of the dreams depending on the intensity
of the dreamer’s feeling in regard to the perceived object.
Thus, in this
question of verified dreams, as in so many others, modern science stands before
an unsolved problem, the insolvable nature of
which has been created by her own materialistic stubbornness, and her
time-cherished routine-policy. For, either man is a dual being, with an inner
Egos—* this Ego being the “real’’ man, distinct from, and independent of, the
outer man proportionally to the prevalency or weakness of the material body; an
Ego, the scope of whose senses stretches far beyond the limit granted to the
physical senses of man; an Ego which survives the decay of its external
covering, at least for a time, even when an evil course of life has made it
fail to achieve a perfect union with its spiritual higher Self, i.e., to blend
its individuality with it (the personality gradually fading out in each
case)—or the testimony of millions of men embracing several thousands of
years—the evidence furnished in our own century by hundreds of the most
educated men, often by the greatest lights of science—all this evidence, we
say, goes for naught. With the exception of a handful of scientific
authorities—surrounded by an eager crowd of sceptics and sciolists, who, having
never seen anything, claim, therefore, the right of denying everything—the
world stands condemned as a gigantic lunatic asylum! It has, however, a special
department in it. It is reserved for those who, having proved the soundness of their
minds, must of necessity be regarded a impostors and liars.
Has then the
phenomenon of dreams been so thoroughly studied by
——————————————————————
* Whether with one
solitary Ego, or Soul, as the spiritualists affirm, or with several—i.e.,
composed of seven principles, as eastern esotericism teaches—is not the
question at issue for the present. Let us first prove by bringing our joint
experience to bear, that there is in man something beyond Büchner’s force and
matter.
489———————————————————ARE DREAMS BUT IDLE VISIONS?
materialistic
science, that she has nothing more to learn, since she speaks in such
authoritative tones upon the subject? Not in the least. The phenomena of
sensation and volition, of intellect and instinct, are, of course, all
manifested through the channels of the nervous centres, the most important of
which is the brain. The peculiar substance through which these actions take
place has two forms, the vesicular and the fibrous, of which the latter is held
to be simply the propagator of the impressions sent to or from the vesicular
matter. Yet while this physiological office is distinguished, or divided by
science into three kinds—the motor, sensitive and connecting—the mysterious
agency of intellect remains as mysterious and as perplexing to the great modern
physiologists as it was in the days of Hippocrates. The scientific suggestion
that there may be a fourth series associated with the operations of thought has
not helped towards solving the problem; it has failed to shed even the slightest
ray of light on the unfathomable mystery. Nor will they ever fathom it unless
our men of science accept the hypothesis of Dual Man.
SPIRITUALISM AND
OCCULT TRUTH
————
[Vol. II No. 5,
February, 1882.]
The Spiritualist of
Nov. 18th takes notice of the article published in The Theosophist for October
under the heading “Fragments of Occult Truth,”
but it does not quite appreciate the objects with which that article was put
forward, and still less the importance of its contents. To make further
explanations intelligible to our own readers, however, we must first represent
The Spiritualist’s present remarks, which, under the heading of
“Speculation-Spinning,” are as follows:
The much-respected
author of the best standard text-book on Chemistry in the English language, the
late Prof. W. Allen Miller, in the course of a lecture at the Royal
Institution, set forth certain facts, but expressed an objection to make known
a speculative hypothesis which apparently explained the causes of the facts, he
said that tempting but inadequately proved hypotheses, when once implanted in
the mind, were most difficult to eradicate; they sometimes stood in the way of
the discovery of truth, they often promoted experiments in a wrong direction,
and were better out of the heads than in the heals of young students of
science.
The man who
prosecutes original research must have some speculation in his head as he tries
each new experiment. Such experiments are questions put to Nature, and her
replies commonly dash to the ground one such speculation after another, but
gradually guide the investigator into the true path, and reveal the previously
unknown law, which can thenceforth be safely used in the service of man kind
for all time.
Very different is
the method of procedure among some classes of psychologists. With them a
tempting and plausible hypothesis enters the mind, but instead of considering
it to be mischievous to propagate it as possessing authority before it is
verified, it is thought clever to do so; the necessity for facts and proof is
ignored, and it may be that a church or school of thought is set up, which
people-are requested to join in order that they may fight for the new dogma.
Thus unproved speculations are forced upon the world with trumpet tongues by
one class of people, instead of being tested, and, in most eases, nipped in the
bud, according to the method of the man of science.*
The religious
periodicals of the day abound with articles consisting of nothing
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* We do not want to
he cruel, but where can one find ‘‘ unproved speculations ‘‘ more unproved, or
that would be nipped in the bud’’ by the man of science’’ with a more ready
hand than those that are weekly expressed in The Spiritualist?
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but speculations
advanced by the authors as truths and as things to be upheld and fought over.
Rarely is the modest statement made, “This may explain some points which are
perplexing us, but until the verity of the hypothesis has been firmly
demonstrated by facts, you must be careful not to let it rest in your mind as
truth.” By “facts” we do not necessarily mean physical facts, for there are
demonstrable truths outside the realm of physics.
The foregoing ideas
have often occurred to us while reading the pages of The Theosophist, and have
been revived by an interesting editorial article in the last number of that
journal, in which the nature of the body and spirit of man is definitely mapped
out in seven clauses.* There is not one word of attempt at proof; and the
assertions can only carry weight with those who derive their opinions from the
authoritative allegations of others, instead of upon evidence which they have
weighed and examined for themselves; and the remarkable point is that the
writer shows no signs of consciousness that any evidence is necessary. Had the
scientific method been adopted, certain facts or truths would have been made to
precede each of the seven clauses, coupled with the claim that those truths
demonstrated the assertions in the clauses, and negatived all hypotheses at
variance therewith.
Endless
speculation-spinning is a kind of mental dissipation, which does little good to
the world or to the individuals who indulge therein, and has sometimes had in
Europe a slight tendency to impart to the latter signs of Pharisaical
self-consciousness of their being advanced religionists and philosophers,
living in a diviner air than those who work to base their opinions on
well-verified truths. If the speculators recognized their responsibility and
imitated the example set them by the great and good Prof. Allen Miller,
nine-tenths of their tune would be set at liberty for doing good work in the
world, the wasting of oceans of printing ink would be avoided, and mental
energy which might be devoted to high uses would no longer run to waste. The
minds of habitual dreamers and speculators may he compared to windmills
incessantly at work grinding nothing.†
Just at present
there is far too much mental speculation afloat, and far too few people putting
good ideas into practical form. Here in London, within the past year, grievous
iniquities which might have been prevented, and grievous wrongs which might
have been redressed, have abounded, and too few people have been at work
ameliorating the sorrows and the sins immediately around them.
Now we do not want
to discuss these questions with The Spiritualist in the way that rival
religious sects might debate their differences. There can be no sectarianism in
truth-seeking, and when we regard the spiritualists as seriously mistaken in
many of the most important of the conclusions to which they have come, they
must certainly be recognized as truth-seekers like ourselves. As a body,
indeed, they are entitled to all possible honour for having boldly pursued
their
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* The Theosophist,
pp. 18, 19, October, 1881.
† Verily so. For
over thirty years have the dreamers and speculators upon the rationale of ‘‘
spiritual ‘‘ phenomena set their windmills to work night and day, and yet,
hitherto, mortals and helping Spirits have ground out for the world but—husks.
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experiences to
unpopular conclusions, caring more for what presented itself to them as the
truth than for the good opinion of society at large. The world laughed at them
for thinking their communications some thing beyond fraudulent tricks of
impostors, for regarding the apparitions of their cabinets as visitors from
another world. They knew quite well that the communications in a multitude of
cases were no more frauds than they were baked potatoes, that people who called
them such were talking utter folly, and in the same way that whatever the
materialized “spirits” were, they were not in anything like all cases, even if
they might be in some, the pillows and nightgowns of a medium’s assistant. So
they held on gallantly, and reaped a reward which more than compensated them
for the silly success of ignorant outsiders, in the consciousness of being in
contact with superhuman phenomena, and in the excitement of original
exploration. Nothing that has ever been experienced in connection with such
excitement by early navigators in unknown seas, can even have been comparable
to the solemn interest which spiritual enquirers (of the cultivated kind) must
have felt at first as they pushed off in the frail canoe of medium-ship, out
into the ocean of the unknown world. And if they had realized all its perils
one might almost applaud the courage with which they set sail, as warmly as
their indifference to ridicule. But the heretics of one age sometimes become
the orthodox of the next, and, so apt is human nature to repeat its mistakes,
that the heirs of the martyrs may sometimes develop into the persecutors of a
new generation. This is the direction in which modern spiritualism is tending,
and that tendency, of all its characteristics, is the one we are chiefly
concerned to protest against. The conclusions of spiritualism, in accurate and
premature as they are, are settling into the shape of orthodox dogma; while the
facts of the great enquiry, numerous as they are, are still chaotic and
confused, their collectors insist on working them up into specific doctrines
about the future state, and they are often as intolerant of any dissent from
these doctrines as the old fashioned religionists were of them.
In fact, they have
done the very thing which The Spiritualist, with an inaptitude born of complete
misapprehension of what occult science really is, now accuses us of having
done—they have given themselves wholly over to “speculation-spinning.” It is
fairly ludicrous to find this indictment laid at our door on account of our
“Fragments.” The argument of that paper was to the effect that spiritualists
should not
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jump to
conclusions, should not weave hasty theories, on the strength of séance-room
experiments. Such and such appearances may present themselves; beware of
misunderstanding them. You may see an apparition standing before you which you
know to be perfectly genuine, that is to say, no trumpery imposture by a
fraudulent medium, and it may wear the outward semblance of a departed friend,
but do not on that account jump to the conclusion that it is the spirit of your
departed friend, do not spin speculations from the filmy threads of any such
delusive fabric. Listen first to the wisdom of the ancient philosophies in
regard to such appearances, and permit us to point out the grounds on which we
deny what seems to be the plain and natural inference from the facts. And then
we proceeded to explain what we have reason to know is the accepted theory of
profound students of the ancient philosophy. We were repeating doctrines as old
as the pyramids, but The Spiritualist not having hitherto paid attention to
them, seems really to imagine that we have thrown them off on the spur of the
moment as a hypothesis, as Figuier does with his conjectures in The Day after
Death or Jules Verne with his, in his Voyage Round the Moon. We cannot, it is
true, quote any printed edition of the ancient philosophies, and refer the
reader to chapter and verse, for an article on the seven principles; but
assuredly all profound students of mystic literature will recognize the
exposition on which we ventured, as supported, now in one way, now in another,
by the cautiously obscure teaching of occult writers. Of course, the conditions
of occult study are so peculiar that nothing is more difficult than to give
one’s “authorities’’ for any statement connected with it, but none the less is
it really just as far from being ‘‘up in a balloon’’ as any study can be. It
has been explained repeatedly that the continuity of occult knowledge amongst
initiated adepts is the attribute about it which commends their
explanations—absolutely to the acceptance of those who come to understand what
initiation means, and what kind of people adepts are. From Swedenborg onwards
there have been many seers who profess to gather their knowledge of other
worlds from actual observation, but such persons are isolated, and subject to
the delusions of isolation. Any intelligent man will have an intuitive
perception of this, expressing itself in a reluctance on his part to surrender
himself entirely to the assurances of any such clairvoyants. But in the case of
regularly initiated seers it must be remembered that we are dealing with a
long—an extraordinarily long—series of persons who, warned of the con-
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fusing
circumstances into which they pass when their spiritual perceptions are trained
to range beyond material limits, are so enabled to penetrate to the actual
realities of things, and who constitute a vast organized body of seers, who
check each other’s conclusions, test each other’s discoveries and formulate
their visions into a science of spirit as precise and entirely trustworthy as,
in their humble way, are the conclusions, as far as they go, of any branch of
physical science. Such initiates are in the position, as regards spiritual
knowledge, that the regularly taught professor of a great university is in, as
regards literary knowledge, and anyone can appreciate the superior claims of
instruction which might be received from him, as compared with the crude and
imperfect instruction which might be offered by the merely self-taught man. The
initiate’s speculations, in fact, are not spun at all; they are laid out before
him by the accumulated wisdom of ages, and he has merely followed, verified and
assimilated them.
But, it may be
argued, if our statement about the teachings of this absolutely trustworthy
occult science claims to be something more than assertion and hypothesis, it is
an assertion, and, for the world at large, an hypothesis, that any such
continuously—taught body of initiates is anywhere in existence. Now, in
reference to this objection, there are two observations to be made. Firstly,
that there is a large mass of writings to be consulted on the subject and just
as spiritualists say to the outer world, “if you read the literature of
spiritualism, you will know how preposterous it is to continue denying or
doubting the reality of spiritual phenomena,” so we say to spiritualists, ‘‘if
you will only read the literature of occultism it will be very strange if you
still doubt that the continuity of initiation has been preserved.” Secondly, we
may point out that you may put the question about the existence of initiates
altogether aside, and yet find in the philosophy of occultism, as expounded by
those who do labour under the impression that they have received their teaching
from competent instructors, such inherent claims to intellectual adoption, that
it will be strange if you do not begin to respect it as an hypothesis. We do
not say that the “Fragments” given in our October number constitute a
sufficiently complete scheme of things to command conviction, in this way, on
their own intrinsic merits, but we do say that even taken by themselves they do
not offend intuitive criticism in the way that the alternative spiritual theory
does. By degrees, as we are enabled to bring out more ore from the mine which
yielded the “Fragments,” it will be found that every
495———————————————————SPIRITUALISM AND OCCULT TRUTH.
fresh idea
presented for consideration fits in with what has gone before, fortifies it,
and is fortified by it in turn. Thus, is it not worth notice that even some
notes we published in our December number in answer to enquiries about
creation, help the mind to realize the way in which, and the materials with
which, the elementaries in the one case, in the other the automatically acting
Kâma Rûpa of the medium, may fashion the materialized apparition which the
spiritualist takes for the spirit of his departed friend? It sometimes happens
that a materialized spirit will leave behind as a memento of his visit some
little piece cut from his spiritual (?) drapery. Does the spiritualist believe
that the bit of muslin has come from the region of pure spirit from which the
disembodied soul descends? Certainly no philosophically minded spiritualist
would, but if as regards the drapery such a person would admit that this is
fashioned from the cosmic matter of the universe by the will of the spirit
which makes this manifest (accepting our theory so far), does it not rationally
follow that all the ‘‘material’’ of the materialized visitor must probably be
also so fashioned? And in that case, if the will of a spirit without form can
produce the particular form which the sitter recognizes as his dead friend,
does he not do this by copying the features required from some records to
which, as a spirit, he has access; and, in that case again, is it not clear
that some other spirit would equally have that power? Mere reflection, in fact,
on the principles of creation will lead one straight to a comprehension of the
utter worthlessness of resemblance in a materialized spirit, as a proof of
identity.
Again, the facts of
spiritual experience itself fortify the explanation we have given. Is it not
the case that most spiritualists of long experience—omitting the few
circumstanced in the very peculiar way that “M.A. Oxon.” is, who are not in
pursuit of dead friends at all— are always reduced sooner or later to a state
of absolute intellectual exasperation by the unprogressive character of their
researches. How is it that all these twenty years that spiritualists have been
conversing with their departed friends their knowledge of the conditions of
life in the next world is either as hazy still as the rambling imagination of a
pulpit orator, or, if precise at all, grotesquely materialistic in its
so-called spirituality? If the spirits were what the spiritualists think them,
is it not obvious that they must have made the whole situation more
intelligible than it is—for most people—whereas, if they are, what we affirm
that they are really, is it not obvious that all they could do is exactly what
they have done?
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But, to conclude
for the present, surely there need be no hostility, as some spiritual writers
seem to have imagined, between the spiritualists and ourselves, merely because
we bring for their consideration a new stock of ideas—new, indeed, only as far
as their application to modern controversies is concerned, old enough as
measured by the ages that have passed over the earth since they were evolved. A
gardener is not hostile to roses because he prunes his bushes and proclaims the
impropriety of letting bad shoots spring up from below the graft. With the
spiritualists, students of occultism must always have bonds of sympathy which
are unthought of in the blatant world of earth-bound materialism and
superstitious credulity. Let them give us a hearing; let them recognize us as
brother-worshippers of truth, even though found in unexpected places. They
cannot prove so oblivious of their own traditions as to refuse audience to any
new plea, because it may disturb them in a faith they find comfortable. Surely
it was not to be comfortable that they first refused to swim with the stream in
matters of religious thought, and deserted the easy communion of respectable
orthodoxy. Will spiritualism conquer incredulity only to find itself already
degraded into a new church, sinking, so to speak, into arm chairs in its second
childhood, and no longer entitled to belief or vigorous enough for further
progress? It is not a promising sign about a religious philosophy when it looks
too comfortable, when it promises too indulgent an asylum for our speckled
souls with houris of the Mohammedan Elysium, or the all too homelike society of
the spiritualist’s “Summer-land.” We bring our friends and brethren in
spiritualism no mere feather-headed fancies, no light-spun speculation, when we
offer them some toil-won fragments of the mighty mountain of occult knowledge,
at the base of whose hardly accessible heights we have learned to estimate
their significance and appreciate their worth. Is it asked why we do not spread
out the whole scroll of this much-vaunted philosophy for their inspection at
once, and so exhibit clearly its all-sufficing coherence? That question at
least will hardly be asked by thoughtful men who realize what an all-sufficient
philosophy of the universe must be. As well might Columbus have been expected
to bring back America in his ships to Spain. “Good friends, America will not
come,” he might have said, “but it is there across the waters, and if you
voyage as I have done, and the waves do not smother you, mayhap you will find
it too.”
REINCARNATION IN
TIBET
—————
[Vol. III. No. 6,
March, 1882.]
So little is known
by Europeans of what is going on in Tibet, and even in the more accessible
Bhûtan, that an Anglo-Indian paper—one of those which pretend to know, and
certainly discuss every imaginable subject, whether they really know anything
of it or not—has actually come out with the following scrap of valuable
information:
It may not be
generally known that the Deb Râjâ of Bhütan, who died in June last, but whose
decease has been kept dark till the Present moment, probably to prevent disturbances,
is our old and successful opponent of 1864-5.
The Bhûtan
Government consists of a spiritual chief, called the Dharm Râjâ, an incarnation
of Buddha [?!! ] who never dies, and a civil ruler called the Deb Râjâ in whom
is supposed to centre all authority.
A more ignorant
assertion could hardly have been made. It may be argued that Christian writers
believe even less in Buddha’s reincarnations than the Buddhists of Ceylon, and,
therefore, trouble themselves very little whether or not they are accurate in
their statements. But in such a case, why touch the subject at all? Large sums
are annually spent by Governments to secure old Asiatic manuscripts and learn
the truth about old religions and peoples, and it is not showing respect for
either science or truth to mislead people interested in them by a flippant and
contemptuous treatment of facts.
On the authority of
direct information received at our Headquarters, we will try to give a more
correct view of the situation than has hitherto been had from books. Our
informants are firstly, some very learned Lamas; secondly, European gentleman
and traveller, who prefers not to give his name; and thirdly, a highly educated
young Chinaman, brought up in America, who has since preferred to the luxuries
of worldly life and the pleasures of western civilization, the comparative
privations of a religious and contemplative life in Tibet. Both of the
last-named gentlemen are Fellows of the Theosophical Society. A
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message from our
“celestial” brother, who never lose an opportunity of corresponding with us,
has been just received by Darjeeling.
In the present
article, beyond contradicting the queer notion of the Bhûtanese Dharma Râjâ
being “a incarnation of Buddha,” we will only point out a few absurdities, in
which some prejudiced writers have indulged.
It certainly has
never been known—at any rate in Tibet—that the spiritual chief of the Bhûtanese
is “an incarnation of Buddha, who never dies.” The Dug-pa,* or Red Caps, belong
to the old Nyang-na-pa sect, who resisted the religious reform introduced by
Tsong-kha-pa between the latter part of the fourteenth and the beginning of the
fifteenth centuries. It was only after a lama came to them from Tibet in the
tenth century and converted them from the old Buddhist faith (so strongly mixed
up with the Bhon practices of the aborigines) into the Shammar sect, that the
Bhûtanese, in opposition to the reformed Gyelukpas, set up a regular system of
reincarnations. It is not Buddha, however, or Sang-gyas, as he is called by the
Tibetans, who incarnates himself in the Dharma Râjâ, but quite another
personage; one of whom we will speak about later on.
Now what do the
Orientalists know of Tibet, its civil administration, and especially its
religion and its rites? Only what they have learned from the contradictory, and
in every case imperfect, statements of a few Roman Catholic monks, and of two
or three daring lay travellers, who, ignorant of the language, could scarcely
be expected to give us even a bird’s-eye view of the country. The missionaries
who introduced themselves stealthily into Lhassa † in 1719, were suffered to
remain there but a short time and were finally forcibly expelled from Tibet.
The letters of the Jesuits Desideri, and Johann Grueber, and especially of Fra
della Penna, teem with the greatest absurdities.‡ Certainly as superstitious,
and apparently far more so than the ignorant Tibetans themselves, on whom they
father every iniquity, one has but to read these letters to recognize in them
that spirit of odium theologicum
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* The term Dug-pa
in Tibet is depreciatory. They themselves pronounce it Dog-pa, Irons from the
root to ‘bind’’ (religious binders to the old faith); while the paramount sect
(the Gyeluk-pa, Yellow caps) and the people use the word in the sense of
mischief-makers, “sorcerers.” The Bhûtanese are generally called Dug-pa
throughout Tibet and even in some parts of Northern India.
† Out of twelve
capuchin friars who, under the leadership of Father della Penna, established a
mission at Lhassa, nine died shortly after, and only three returned home to
tell the tale. (See Tibet, by Clements R. Markham.)
‡ See Appendix to
Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet. By Clements R. Markham,
C.B., F.R.S.; Trübner and co., London.
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IN TIBET.
felt by every
Christian, and especially Catholic missionaries for the “heathen” and their
creeds; a spirit which blinds one entirely to a sense of justice. And when
could any better opportunity have been found to ventilate their monkish
ill-humour and vindictiveness than in the matter of Tibet, the very land of
mystery, mysticism and seclusion? Beside these few prejudiced “historians,” but
five other men of Europe have ever stepped into Tibet. Of these five, Bogle,
Hamilton, and Turner penetrated no farther than its borderlands; Manning (the
only European who is known to have set his foot into Lha-ssa* died without
revealing its secrets, for reasons suspected, though never admitted, by his
only surviving nephew, a clergyman, and Csoma di Körös, never went beyond
Zanskar and the lamasery of Phäg-dal.†
The regular system
of the Lamaic incarnations of Sang-gyas, or Buddha, began with Tsong-kha-pa.
This reformer it not the incarnation of one of the five celestial Dhyâns, or
heavenly Buddhas, as is generally supposed, who are said to have been created
by Shâkya Muni after he had risen to Nirvana, but that of Amita, one of the
Chinese names for Buddha. The records preserved in the Gon-pa (lamasery) of
Tda-shi Hlum-po (pronounced in English Teshu Lumbo) show that Sang-gyas
incarnated himself in Tsong-kha-pa, in consequence of the great degradation his
doctrines had fallen into. Until then there had been no other incarnations than
those of the five celestial Buddhas and of their Bodhisattvas, each of the
former having created (read, over shadowed with his spiritual wisdom) five of
the last-named—there were, and now are in all, but thirty incarnations, five
Dhyâns and twenty-five Bodhisattvas. It was because, among many other reforms,
Tsong-kha-pa forbade necromancy (which is practised to this day with the most
disgusting rites by the Bhons, the aboigines of Tibet, with whom the Red Caps,
or Shammars, have always fraternized), that the latter resisted his authority.
This act was followed by a split between the two sects. Separating entirely
from the Gyalukpas, the Dugpas (Red Caps) from the first in a great minority,
settled in various parts
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* We speak of the
present century. It is very dubious whether the two missionaries, Huc and
Gabet, ever entered kha-ssa. The Lamas deny it.
† We are well aware
that the name is generally written Pugdal, but it is erroneous to do so. Pugdal
means nothing, and the Tibetans do not give meaningless names to their sacred
buildings. We do not know how Csoma di Koros spells it, but, as in the case of
Pho-ta-la of Lha-ssa loosely spelt Potala—the lamasery of Phag-dal derives its
name from Phag-pa (phag, eminent in holiness, buddha-like, spiritual; and pha,
man, father) the title of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva who incarnates
himself in the Dalai-Lamas of Lha-ssa. The valley of the Ganges, where Buddha
preached and lived, is also called Phag-yul, the holy, spiritual land ; the
word Phag coming from the one root; pha or pho being the corruption of Fo )or
Buddha) as the Tibetan alphabet contains no letter F.
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of Tibet, chiefly
on its borderlands, and principally in Nepaul and Bhûtan. But, while they
retained a sort of independence at the monastery of Sakya-Djong, the Tibetan
residence of their spiritual (?) chief, Gong-sso Rimbo-chay, the Bhûtanese have
been from their beginning the tributaries and vassals of the Dalai-Lamas. In
his letter to Warren Hastings in 1774, the Tda-shi Lama, who calls the
Bhûtanese “a rude and ignorant race,” whose “Deb Râjah is dependent upon the
Dalai Lama,” omits to say that they are also the tributaries of his own state,
and have been so for over three centuries and a half. The Tda-shi Lamas have
always been more powerful and more highly considered than the Dalai-Lamas. The
latter are the creation of the Tda-shi Lama, Nabang-Lob-Sang, the sixth
incarnation of Tsoug-kha-pa—himself an incarnation of Amitabha, or Buddha. This
hierarchy was regularly installed at Lha-ssa, but it originated only in the
latter half of the seventeenth century.*
In Mr. C. R.
Markham’s highly interesting work above noticed, the author has gathered every
scrap of information that had ever been brought to Europe about that terra
incognita. It contains one passage, which, to our mind, sums up in a few words
the erroneous views taken by the Orientalists of Lamaism in general, and of its
system of perpetual reincarnation especially. This passage runs as follows:
It was indeed at
about the period of Hiuen-Thsang’s journey that Buddhism first began to find
its way into Tibet, both from the direction of China and that of India; but it
came in a very different form from that in which it reached Ceylon several
centuries earlier. Traditions, metaphysical speculations, and new dogmas, had
overlaid the original Scriptures with an enormous collection of more recent
revelation. Thus Tibet received a vast body of truth, and could only assimulate
a portion for the establishment of popular belief. Since the original
Scriptures had been conveyed into Ceylon by the son of Asoka, it had been
revealed to the devout Buddhists of India that their Lord had created the five
Dhyâni or celestial Buddhas, and that each of these had created five
Boddhisatwas, or beings in the course of attaining Buddhahood. The Tibetans
took firm hold of this phase of the Buddh- istic creed, and their distinctive
belief is that the Boddhisatwas continue to remain in existence for the good of
mankind by passing through a succession of human beings from the cradle to the
grave. This characteristic of their faith was gradually
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* Says Mr. Markham
in Tibet (p. xvii. preface): “Gedun-tubpa. another great reformer, was
contemporary with Tsong-kha-pa, having been born in 1339, and dying in 1474
[having thus lived 135 years]. He built the monastery at Teshu Lumbo [Tda-shi
Hium-po] in 1445, and it was in the person of this perfect Lama, as he was
called, that the system of perpetual incarnation commenced. He was himself the
incarnation of Boddhisatwa Padma Pani, and on his death he relinqoished the
attainment of Buddhahood that he might be born again and again for the benefit
of mankind. When he died his successor was found as an infant by the possession
of certain divine marks.’’
501————————————————————REINCARNATION IN TIBET.
developed, and it
was long before it received its present form; * but the succession of incarnate
Boddhisatwas was the idea towards which the Tibetan mind tended from the first.
At the same time,
as Max Muller says:
The most important
element of the Buddhist reform has always been its social and moral code, not
its metaphysical theories. That moral code, taken by itself, is one of the most
perfect which the world has over known; and it was this blessing that the
introduction of Buddhism brought into Tibet. †
The “blessing” has
remained and spread all over the country, there being no kinder, purer-minded,
more simple or sin-fearing nation than the Tibetans, missionary-slanders
notwithstanding.‡ But yet, for all that, the popular Lamaism, when compared
with the real esoteric, or Arahat Buddhism of Tibet, offers a contrast as great
as the snow trodden along a road in the valley, to the pure and undefiled mass
which glitters on the top of a high mountain peak.§ A few of such mistaken
notions about the latter, we will now endeavour to correct as far as it is
compatible to do so.
Before it can be
clearly shown how the Bhûtanese were forcibly brought into subjection, and
their Dharma Râjâ made to accept the “incarnations” only after these had been
examined into, and recognized at Lha-ssa, we have to throw a retrospective
glance at the state of the Tibetan religion during the seven centuries which
preceded the
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* Its “present” is
its earliest form, as we will try to show further on. A correct analysis of any
religion viewed from its popular aspect only becomes impossible—least of all
Lamaism, or esoteric Buddhism as disfigured by the untutored imaginative
fervour of the populace. There is a vaster difference between the Lamaism of
the learned classes of the clergy and the ignorant masses of their parishioners
than there is between the christianity of a Bishop Berkeley and that of a
modern Irish peasant. Hitherto Orientalists have made themselves superficially
acquainted only with the beliefs and rites of popular Buddhism in Tibet,
chiefly through the distorting glasses of missionaries, which throw out of
focus every religion but their own. The same course has been followed in
respect to sinhalese Buddhism, the missionaries having, as colonel Olcott
observes in the too brief preface to his Buddhist catechism, for many years
been taunting the sinhalese with the “puerility and absurdity of their
religion” when, in point of fact, what they talk of is not orthodox Buddhism at
all. Buddhist folklore and fairy stories are the accretions of twenty-six
centuries.
† Introduction to
the Science of Religion, p. xiv.
‡ The reader has
not to compare in Mr. Markham’s Tibet the warm, impartial and frank praises
bestowed by Bogle and Turner on the Tibetan character and moral standing and
the enthusiastic eulogies of Thomas Manning to the address of the Dalai-Lama
and his people, with the three letters of the three Jesuits in the “Appendix,”
to enable himself to form a decisive opinion, while the former three gentlemen,
impartial narrators, having no object to distort truth, hardly and sufficient
adjectives to express their satisfaction with the Tibetans, the three “men of
God” pick no better terms for the Dalai-Lamas and the Tibetans than “their
devilish God the Father,” “vindictive devils,’ “fiends who know how to
dissemble,’’ who are “cowardly, arrogant, and proud,” “dirty and immoral.”
etc., all in the same strain for the sake of truth and christian charity!
§ As Father
Desideri has it in one of his very few correct remarks about the Lamas of
Tibet, “though many may know how to read their mysterious books, not one can
explain them “—an observation by the by, which might be applied with as much
justice to the christian as to the Tibetan clergy. (see Tibet, p. 306.)
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A MODERN PANARION.
reform. As said
before, a Lama had come to Bhûtan from Kam----that province which had always
been the stronghold and the hot-bed of the Shammar or Bhon rites*—between the
ninth and tenth centuries, and had converted them into what he called Buddhism.
But in those days, the pure religion of Shâkya Muni had already commenced
degenerating into that Lamaism, or rather fetichism, against which four
centuries later Tsong-kha-pa arose with all his might. Though three centuries
had only passed since Tibet had been converted (with the exception of a handful
of Shammars and Bhons), yet esoteric Buddhism had crept far earlier into the
country. It had begun superseding the ancient popular rites ever since the time
when the Brâhrnans of India, getting again the upper hand over Asoka’s
Buddhism, were silently preparing to oppose it, an opposition which culminated
in their finally and entirely driving the new faith out of the country. The
brotherhood or community of the ascetics known as the Byang-tsiub—the “Accom
plished” and the “Perfect”—existed before Buddhism spread in Tibet, and was
known, and so mentioned in the pre-buddhistic books of China as the fraternity
of the “great teachers of the snowy mountains.”
Buddhism was
introduced into Bod-yul in the beginning of the seventh century by a pious
Chinese princess, who had married a Tibetan king,† who was converted by her
from the Bhon religion into Buddhism, and had become since then a pillar of the
faith in Tibet, as Asoka had been nine centuries earlier in India. It was he
who sent his minister (according to European Orientalists), his own brother,
the first Lama in the country (according to Tibetan historical records) to
India. This brother minister returned ‘with the great body of truth contained
in the Buddhist canonical Scriptures; framed the Tibetan alphabet from the
Devanâgari of India, and commenced the translation of the canon from Sanskrit
(which had previously been translated from Pâli, the old language of Magadha)
into the language of the country.” (See Markham’s Tibet.) ‡
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* The Shammar sect
is not, as wrongly supposed, a kind of corrupted Buddhism, but an offshoot of
the Bhon religion, itself a degenerated remnant of the chaldæan mysteries of
old, now a religion entirely based upon necromancy, sorcery and soothsaying.
The introduction of Buddha’s name in it means nothing.
† A widely-spread
tradition tells us that after ten years of married life she renounced it, with
her husband’s consent, and in the garb of a nun (a Ghelung-ma, or Ani) she
preached Buddhism all over the country, as, several centuries earlier, the
Princess Sanghamitta, Asoka’s daughter, preached it in India and ceylon.
‡ But what he does
not say (for none of the writers he derives his information from knew it) is
that this princess is the one who is believed to have reincarnated herself since
then in a succession of female Lamas or Rim ani— precious nuns. Durjiay Pan-mo
of whom Bogle speaks (his Tda-shi Lama’s half-sister), and the superior of the
nunnery on the Lake Yam-dog-ccho or Piate-Lake was one of such reincarnations.
503————————————————————REINCARNATION IN TIBET.
Under the old rule
and before the reformation, the high Lamas were often permitted to marry, so as
to incarnate themselves in their own direct descendants—a custom which
Tsong-kha-pa abolished, strictly enjoining celibacy on the Lamas. The Lama
Enlightener of Bhûtan had a son whom he had brought with him. In this son’s
first male child born after his death, the Lama had promised the people to
reincarnate him self. About a year after the event—so goes the religious legend—the
son was blessed by his Bhûtanese wife with triplets, all the three boys! Under
this embarrassing circumstance, which would have floored any other casuists,
the Asiatic metaphysical acuteness was fully exhibited. The spirit of the
deceased Lama, the people were told, incarnated him self in all the three boys.
One had his Om, the other his Han, the third his Hoong; or in Sanskrit, Buddha,
divine mind ; Dharma, matter or animal soul; and Sangha, the union of the
former two in our phenomenal world. It is this pure Buddhist tenet which was
degraded by the cunning Bhûtanese clergy to serve the better their ends. Thus
their first Lama became a triple incarnation, three Lamas, one of whom, they
say, got his “body,” the other his “heart,” and the third his “word” or
“wisdom.” This hierarchy lasted with power undivided until the fifteenth
century, when a Lama named Dukpa Shab-tung, who had been defeated by the
Gyalukpas of Gay-don Toob-pa Bhûtan at the head of his army of monks.
Conquering the whole country, he proclaimed himself their first Dharma Râjâ, or
Lama Rimbochay—thus starting a third “Gem” in opposition to the two Gyalukpa
“Gems.” But this “Gem” never rose to the eminence of a Majesty, least of all
was he ever considered a “Gem of Learning” or wisdom. He was defeated very soon
after his proclamation by Tibetan soldiers, aided by Chinese troops of the
Yellow Sect, and forced to come to terms. One of the clauses was the permission
to reign spiritually over the Red Caps in Bhûtan, provided he consented to reincarnate
himself in Lha-ssa after his death, and make the law hold good for ever. No
Dharma Râjâ since then was ever proclaimed or recognized, unless he was born
either at Lha-ssa or on the Tda-shi Hlum-po territory. Another clause was to
the effect that the Dharma Râjâs should never permit public exhibitions of
their rites of sorcery and necromancy, and the third that a sum of money should
be
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* The builder and
founder of Tda-shi Hlum (Teshu-lumbo) called the Perfect Lama,’’ or Panchhen—the
“Precious Jewel ‘‘—from the words, Pan-chhen great teacher, and Rim_bochay
priceless jewel. While the Dalai-Lama is only Gyalba Rim-bochay, or “Gem of
Kingly Majesty,” the Tda-shi Lama of Tzi-gadze is Panchhen Rim-bochay or the
Gem of Wisdom and Learning.
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A MODERN PANARION.
paid yearly for the
maintenance of a lamasery, with a school attached where the orphans of Red Caps
and the converted Shammars should be instructed in the “Good Doctrine” of the
Gyalukpas. That the latter must have had some secret power over the Bhûtanese,
who are among the most inimical and irreconcilable of their Red-capped enemies,
is proved by the fact that Lama Duk-pa Shab-tung was reborn at Lha-ssa, and
that to this day the reincarnated Dharma Râjâ are sent and installed at Bhûtan
by the Lha-ssa and Tzi-gadze authorities. The latter have no concern in the
administration save their spiritual authority, and leave the temporal
government entirely in the hands of the Deb-Râjâ and the four Pen-lobs, called
in Indian official papers Penlows, who in their turn are under the immediate
authority of the Lha-ssa officials.
From the above it
will be easily understood that no Dharma Râjâ was ever considered as an
incarnation of Buddha. The expression that the latter “never dies” applies but
to the two great incarnations of equal rank—the Dalai and the Tda-shi Lamas.
Both are incarnations of Buddha, though the former is generally designated as
that of Avalokiteshvara, the highest celestial Dhyân. For him who under stands
the puzzling mystery by having obtained a key to it, the Gordian knot of these
successive reincarnations is easy to untie. He knows that Avalokiteshvara and
Buddha are one as Amita-pho* (pronounced Fo) or Amita-Buddha is identical with
the former. What the mystic doctrine of the initiated Phag-pa or “saintly men”
(adepts) teaches upon this subject, is not to be revealed to the world at
large.
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* In Tibet pho and
pha—pronounced with a soft labial breath-like sound—means at the same time
“man, father.” So Phayul is native land; Pho-nya, angel, messenger of good
news; Pha-me, ancestors, etc.,
THE END
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