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The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
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A MASTER-KEY
TO THE
MYSTERIES OF
ANCIENT AND MODERN
SCIENCE AND
THEOLOGY.
BY
H. P. BLAVATSKY,
CORRESPONDING
SECRETARY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
"Cecy est un
livre de bonne Foy." -- MONTAIGNE.
VOL. I. -- SCIENCE.
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE
THE present edition
is a faithful reprinting of Isis Unveiled as originally published in New York
in 1877.
The Index has been
considerably enlarged, and an Appendix added, containing a Bibliographical
Index of works and authors quoted and two articles by HPB on the writing of
Isis Unveiled: "Theories about Reincarnation and Spirits" (1886) and
"My Books" (1891).
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THE AUTHOR
Dedicates these
Volumes
TO THE
THEOSOPHICAL
SOCIETY,
WHICH WAS FOUNDED
AT NEW YORK, A.D. 1875,
TO STUDY THE
SUBJECTS ON WHICH THEY TREAT.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
---------------------
[[PUBLISHER'S
NOTE]]
PREFACE ... v
BEFORE THE VEIL.
Dogmatic
assumptions of modern science and theology ... ix
The Platonic philosophy
affords the only middle ground ... xi
Review of the
ancient philosophical systems ... xv
A Syriac manuscript
on Simon Magus ... xxiii
Glossary of terms
used in this book ... xxiii
---------------------
Volume First.
THE
"INFALLIBILITY" OF MODERN SCIENCE.
---------------------
CHAPTER I.
OLD THINGS WITH NEW
NAMES.
The Oriental Kabala
... 1
Ancient traditions
supported by modern research ... 3
The progress of
mankind marked by cycles ... 5
Ancient cryptic
science ... 7
Priceless value of
the Vedas ... 12
Mutilations of the
Jewish sacred books in translation ... 13
Magic always
regarded as a divine science ... 25
Achievements of its
adepts and hypotheses of their modern detractors ... 25
Man's yearning for
immortality ... 37
CHAPTER II.
PHENOMENA AND
FORCES.
The servility of
society ... 39
Prejudice and
bigotry of men of science ... 40
They are chased by
psychical phenomena ... 41
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Lost arts ... 49
The human will the
master-force of forces ... 57
Superficial
generalizations of the French savants ... 60
Mediumistic
phenomena, to what attributable ... 67
Their relation to
crime ... 71
CHAPTER III.
BLIND LEADERS OF
THE BLIND.
Huxley's derivation
from the Orohippus ... 74
Comte, his system
and disciples ... 75
The
Borrowed robes ...
89
Emanation of the
objective universe from the subjective ... 92
CHAPTER IV.
THEORIES RESPECTING
PSYCHIC PHENOMENA.
Theory of de
Gasparin ... 100
[[Theory]] of Thury
... 100
[[Theory]] of des
Mousseaux, de Mirville ... 100
[[Theory]] of
Babinet ... 101
[[Theory]] of
Houdin ... 101
[[Theory]] of MM.
Royer and Jobart de Lamballe ... 102
The twins --
"unconscious cerebration" and "unconscious ventriloquism"
... 105
Theory of Crookes
... 112
[[Theory]] of
Faraday ... 116
[[Theory]] of
Chevreuil ... 116
The Mendeleyeff
commission of 1876 ... 117
Soul blindness ...
121
CHAPTER V.
THE ETHER, OR
"ASTRAL LIGHT."
One primal force,
but many correlations ... 126
Tyndall narrowly
escapes a great discovery ... 127
The impossibility
of miracle ... 128
Nature of the
primordial substance ... 133
Interpretation of
certain ancient myths ... 133
Experiments of the
fakirs ... 139
Evolution in Hindu
allegory ... 153
CHAPTER VI.
PSYCHO-PHYSICAL
PHENOMENA.
The debt we owe to
Paracelsus ... 163
Mesmerism -- its
parentage, reception, potentiality ... 165
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"Psychometry"
... 183
Time, space,
eternity ... 184
Transfer of energy
from the visible to the invisible universe ... 186
The Crookes
experiments and Cox theory ... 195
CHAPTER VII
THE ELEMENTS,
ELEMENTALS, AND ELEMENTARIES.
Attraction and
repulsion universal in all the kingdoms of nature ... 206
Psychical phenomena
depend on physical surroundings ... 211
Observations in
Music in nervous
disorders ... 215
The
"world-soul" and its potentialities ... 216
Healing by touch,
and healers ... 217
"Diakka"
and Porphyry's bad demons ... 219
The quenchless lamp
... 224
Modern ignorance of
vital force ... 237
Antiquity of the
theory of force-correlation ... 241
Universality of
belief in magic ... 247
CHAPTER VIII.
SOME MYSTERIES OF
NATURE.
Do the planets
affect human destiny? ... 253
Very curious
passage from Hermes ... 254
The restlessness of
matter ... 257
Prophecy of
Nostradamus fulfilled ... 260
Sympathies between
planets and plants ... 264
Hindu knowledge of
the properties of colors ... 265
"Coincidences"
the panacea of modern science ... 268
The moon and the
tides ... 273
Epidemic mental and
moral disorders ... 274
The gods of the
Pantheons only natural forces ... 280
Proofs of the
magical powers of Pythagoras ... 283
The viewless races
of ethereal space ... 284
The "four
truths" of Buddhism ... 291
CHAPTER IX.
CYCLIC PHENOMENA.
Meaning of the
expression "coats of skin" ... 293
Natural selection
and its results ... 295
The Egyptian
"circle of necessity" ... 296
Pre-Adamite races
... 299
Descent of spirit
into matter ... 302
The triune nature
of man ... 309
The lowest
creatures in the scale of being ... 310
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Elementals
specifically described ... 311
Proclus on the
beings of the air ... 312
Various names for
elementals ... 313
Swedenborgian views
on soul-death ... 317
Earth-bound human
souls ... 319
Impure mediums and
their "guides" ... 325
Psychometry an aid
to scientific research ... 333
CHAPTER X.
THE INNER AND OUTER
MAN.
Pere Felix arraigns
the scientists ... 338
The "Unknowable"
... 340
Danger of
evocations by tyros ... 342
Lares and Lemures
... 345
Secrets of Hindu
temples ... 350
Reincarnation ...
351
Witchcraft and
witches ... 353
The sacred soma
trance ... 357
Vulnerability of
certain "shadows" ... 363
Experiment of
Clearchus on a sleeping boy ... 365
The author
witnesses a trial of magic in
Case of the
Cevennois ... 371
CHAPTER XI.
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND
PHYSICAL MARVELS.
Invulnerability
attainable by man ... 379
Projecting the
force of the will ... 380
Insensibility to
snake-poison ... 381
Charming serpents
by music ... 383
Teratological
phenomena discussed ... 385
The psychological
domain confessedly unexplored ... 407
Despairing regrets
of Berzelius ... 411
Turning a river
into blood a vegetable phenomenon ... 413
CHAPTER XII.
THE
"IMPASSABLE CHASM."
Confessions of
ignorance by men of science ... 417
The Pantheon of
nihilism ... 421
Triple composition
of fire ... 423
Instinct and reason
defined ... 425
Philosophy of the
Hindu Jains ... 429
Deliberate
misrepresentations of Lempriere ... 431
Man's astral soul
not immortal ... 432
The reincarnation
of Buddha ... 437
Magical sun and
moon pictures of Thibet ... 441
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Vampirism -- its
phenomena explained ... 449
Bengalese jugglery
... 457
CHAPTER XIII.
REALITIES AND
ILLUSION.
The rationale of
talismans ... 462
Unexplained
mysteries ... 466
Magical experiment
in
Chibh Chondor's
surprising feats ... 471
The Indian
tape-climbing trick an illusion ... 473
Resuscitation of
buried fakirs ... 477
Limits of suspended
animation ... 481
Mediumship totally
antagonistic to adeptship ... 487
What are
"materialized spirits"? ... 493
The Shudala Madan
... 495
Philosophy of
levitation ... 497
The elixir and
alkahest ... 503
CHAPTER XIV.
EGYPTIAN WISDOM.
Origin of the
Egyptians ... 515
Their mighty
engineering works ... 517
The ancient land of
the Pharaohs ... 521
Antiquity of the
Nilotic monuments ... 529
Arts of war and
peace ... 531
Mexican myths and
ruins ... 545
Resemblances to the
Egyptian ... 551
Moses a priest of
Osiris ... 555
The lessons taught
by the ruins of
The Egyptian Tau at
CHAPTER XV.
Acquisition of the
"secret doctrine" ... 575
Two relics owned by
a Pali scholar ... 577
Jealous
exclusiveness of the Hindus ... 581
Lydia Maria Child
on Phallic symbolism ... 583
The age of the
Vedas and Manu ... 587
Traditions of
pre-diluvian races ... 589
Atlantis and its
peoples ... 593
Peruvian relics ...
597
The
Thibetan and
Chinese legends ... 600
The magician aids,
not impedes, nature ... 617
Philosophy,
religion, arts and sciences bequeathed by Mother India to posterity ... 618
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-----------------------
THE work now
submitted to public judgment is the fruit of a somewhat intimate acquaintance
with Eastern adepts and study of their science. It is offered to such as are
willing to accept truth wherever it may be found, and to defend it, even
looking popular prejudice straight in the face. It is an attempt to aid the
student to detect the vital principles which underlie the philosophical systems
of old.
The book is written
in all sincerity. It is meant to do even justice, and to speak the truth alike
without malice or prejudice. But it shows neither mercy for enthroned error,
nor reverence for usurped authority. It demands for a spoliated past, that
credit for its achievements which has been too long withheld. It calls for a
restitution of borrowed robes, and the vindication of calumniated but glorious
reputations. Toward no form of worship, no religious faith, no scientific
hypothesis has its criticism been directed in any other spirit. Men and
parties, sects and schools are but the mere ephemera of the world's day. TRUTH,
high-seated upon its rock of adamant, is alone eternal and supreme.
We believe in no
Magic which transcends the scope and capacity of the human mind, nor in
"miracle," whether divine or diabolical, if such imply a transgression
of the laws of nature instituted from all eternity. Nevertheless, we accept the
saying of the gifted author of Festus, that the human heart has not yet fully
uttered itself, and that we have never attained or even understood the extent
of its powers. Is it too much to believe that man should be developing new
sensibilities and a closer relation with nature? The logic of evolution must
teach as much, if carried to its legitimate conclusions. If, somewhere, in the
line of ascent from vegetable or ascidian to the noblest man a soul was
evolved, gifted with intellectual qualities, it cannot be unreasonable to infer
and believe that a faculty of perception is also growing in man, enabling him
to descry facts and truths even beyond our ordinary ken. Yet we do not hesitate
to accept the assertion of Biffe, that "the essential is forever the same.
Whether we cut away the marble inward that hides the statue in the
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block, or pile
stone upon stone outward till the temple is completed, our NEW result is only
an old idea. The latest of all the eternities will find its destined other
half-soul in the earliest."
When, years ago, we
first travelled over the East, exploring the penetralia of its deserted
sanctuaries, two saddening and ever-recurring questions oppressed our thoughts:
Where, WHO, WHAT is GOD? Who ever saw the IMMORTAL SPIRIT of man, so as to be
able to assure himself of man's immortality?
It was while most
anxious to solve these perplexing problems that we came into contact with
certain men, endowed with such mysterious powers and such profound knowledge
that we may truly designate them as the sages of the Orient. To their
instructions we lent a ready ear. They showed us that by combining science with
religion, the existence of God and immortality of man's spirit may be
demonstrated like a problem of
In our studies,
mysteries were shown to be no mysteries. Names and places that to the Western
mind have only a significance derived from Eastern fable, were shown to be
realities. Reverently we stepped in spirit within the temple of Isis; to lift
aside the veil of "the one that is and was and shall be" at Sais; to
look through the rent curtain of the Sanctum Sanctorum at Jerusalem; and even
to interrogate within the crypts which once existed beneath the sacred edifice,
the mysterious Bath-Kol. The Filia Vocis -- the daughter of the divine voice --
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responded from the
mercy-seat within the veil,* and science, theology, every human hypothesis and
conception born of imperfect knowledge, lost forever their authoritative
character in our sight. The one-living God had spoken through his oracle --
man, and we were satisfied. Such knowledge is priceless; and it has been hidden
only from those who overlooked it, derided it, or denied its existence.
From such as these
we apprehend criticism, censure, and perhaps hostility, although the obstacles
in our way neither spring from the validity of proof, the authenticated facts
of history, nor the lack of common sense among the public whom we address. The
drift of modern thought is palpably in the direction of liberalism in religion
as well as science. Each day brings the reactionists nearer to the point where
they must surrender the despotic authority over the public conscience, which
they have so long enjoyed and exercised. When the Pope can go to the extreme of
fulminating anathemas against all who maintain the liberty of the Press and of
speech, or who insist that in the conflict of laws, civil and ecclesiastical,
the civil law should prevail, or that any method of instruction solely secular,
may be approved;** and Mr. Tyndall, as the mouth-piece of nineteenth century
science, says, ". . . the impregnable position of science may be stated in
a few words: we claim, and we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of
cosmological theory"*** -- the end is not difficult to foresee.
Centuries of
subjection have not quite congealed the life-blood of men into crystals around
the nucleus of blind faith; and the nineteenth is witnessing the struggles of
the giant as he shakes off the Liliputian cordage and rises to his feet. Even
the Protestant communion of England and America, now engaged in the revision of
the text of its Oracles, will be compelled to show the origin and merits of the
text itself. The day of domineering over men with dogmas has reached its
gloaming.
Our work, then, is
a plea for the recognition of the Hermetic philosophy, the anciently universal
Wisdom-Religion, as the only possible key to the Absolute in science and
theology. To show that we do not at all conceal from ourselves the gravity of
our undertaking, we may say in advance that it would not be strange if the
following classes should array themselves against us:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lightfoot assures
us that this voice, which had been used in times past for a testimony from
heaven, "was indeed performed by magic art" (vol. ii., p. 128). This
latter term is used as a supercilious expression, just because it was and is
still misunderstood. It is the object of this work to correct the erroneous
opinions concerning "magic art."
** Encyclical of
1864.
*** "Fragments
of Science."
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The Christians, who
will see that we question the evidences of the genuineness of their faith.
The Scientists, who
will find their pretensions placed in the same bundle with those of the Roman
Catholic Church for infallibility, and, in certain particulars, the sages and
philosophers of the ancient world classed higher than they.
Pseudo-Scientists
will, of course, denounce us furiously.
Broad Churchmen and
Freethinkers will find that we do not accept what they do, but demand the
recognition of the whole truth.
Men of letters and
various authorities, who hide their real belief in deference to popular
prejudices.
The mercenaries and
parasites of the Press, who prostitute its more than royal power, and dishonor
a noble profession, will find it easy to mock at things too wonderful for them
to understand; for to them the price of a paragraph is more than the value of
sincerity. From many will come honest criticism; from many -- cant. But we look
to the future.
The contest now
going on between the party of public conscience and the party of reaction, has
already developed a healthier tone of thought. It will hardly fail to result
ultimately in the overthrow of error and the triumph of Truth. We repeat again
-- we are laboring for the brighter morrow.
And yet, when we
consider the bitter opposition that we are called upon to face, who is better
entitled than we upon entering the arena to write upon our shield the hail of
the Roman gladiator to Caesar: MORITURUS TE SALUTAT!
New York,
September, 1877.
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Joan. -- Advance
our waving colors on the walls! -- King Henry VI. Act IV.
"My life has
been devoted to the study of man, his destiny and his happiness." -- J. R.
BUCHANAN, M.D., Outlines of Lectures on Anthropology.
IT is nineteen
centuries since, as we are told, the night of Heathenism and Paganism was first
dispelled by the divine light of Christianity; and two-and-a-half centuries
since the bright lamp of Modern Science began to shine on the darkness of the
ignorance of the ages. Within these respective epochs, we are required to
believe, the true moral and intellectual progress of the race has occurred. The
ancient philosophers were well enough for their respective generations, but
they were illiterate as compared with modern men of science. The ethics of
Paganism perhaps met the wants of the uncultivated people of antiquity, but not
until the advent of the luminous "Star of Bethlehem," was the true
road to moral perfection and the way to salvation made plain. Of old,
brutishness was the rule, virtue and spirituality the exception. Now, the
dullest may read the will of God in His revealed word; men have every incentive
to be good, and are constantly becoming better.
This is the
assumption; what are the facts? On the one hand an unspiritual, dogmatic, too
often debauched clergy; a host of sects, and three warring great religions;
discord instead of union, dogmas without proofs, sensation-loving preachers,
and wealth and pleasure-seeking parishioners' hypocrisy and bigotry, begotten
by the tyrannical exigencies of respectability, the rule of the day, sincerity
and real piety exceptional. On the other hand, scientific hypotheses built on
sand; no accord upon a single question; rancorous quarrels and jealousy; a
general drift into materialism. A death-grapple of Science with Theology for
infallibility -- "a conflict of ages."
At Rome, the
self-styled seat of Christianity, the putative successor to the chair of Peter
is undermining social order with his invisible but omnipresent net-work of
bigoted agents, and incites them to revolutionize Europe for his temporal as
well as spiritual supremacy. We see him who calls himself the "Vicar of
Christ," fraternizing with the anti-Christian Moslem against another
Christian nation, publicly invoking the blessing of God upon the arms of those
who have for centuries withstood, with
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fire and sword, the
pretensions of his Christ to Godhood! At Berlin -- one of the great seats of
learning -- professors of modern exact sciences, turning their backs on the
boasted results of enlightenment of the post-Galileonian period, are quietly
snuffing out the candle of the great Florentine; seeking, in short, to prove
the heliocentric system, and even the earth's rotation, but the dreams of
deluded scientists, Newton a visionary, and all past and present astronomers
but clever calculators of unverifiable problems.*
Between these two
conflicting Titans -- Science and Theology -- is a bewildered public, fast
losing all belief in man's personal immortality, in a deity of any kind, and
rapidly descending to the level of a mere animal existence. Such is the picture
of the hour, illumined by the bright noonday sun of this Christian and
scientific era!
Would it be strict
justice to condemn to critical lapidation the most humble and modest of authors
for entirely rejecting the authority of both these combatants? Are we not bound
rather to take as the true aphorism of this century, the declaration of Horace
Greeley: "I accept unreservedly the views of no man, living or
dead"?** Such, at all events, will be our motto, and we mean that
principle to be our constant guide throughout this work.
Among the many
phenomenal outgrowths of our century, the strange creed of the so-called
Spiritualists has arisen amid the tottering ruins of self-styled revealed
religions and materialistic philosophies; and yet it alone offers a possible
last refuge of compromise between the two. That this unexpected ghost of
pre-Christian days finds poor welcome from our sober and positive century, is
not surprising. Times have strangely changed; and it is but recently that a
well-known Brooklyn preacher pointedly remarked in a sermon, that could Jesus
come back and behave in the streets of New York, as he did in those of
Jerusalem, he would find himself confined in the prison of the Tombs.*** What
sort of welcome, then, could Spiritualism ever expect? True enough, the weird
stranger seems neither attractive nor promising at first sight. Shapeless and
uncouth, like an infant attended by seven nurses, it is coming out of its teens
lame and mutilated. The name of its enemies is legion; its friends and
protectors are a handful. But what of that? When was ever truth accepted a
priori? Because the champions of Spiritualism have in their fanaticism
magnified its qualities, and remained blind to its imperfections, that gives no
excuse to doubt its reality. A forgery is impossible when we have no model to
forge after. The fanaticism of Spiritualists is itself
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See the last
chapter of this volume, p. 622.
**
"Recollections of a Busy Life," p. 147.
*** Henry Ward
Beecher.
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a proof of the
genuineness and possibility of their phenomena. They give us facts that we may
investigate, not assertions that we must believe without proof. Millions of reasonable
men and women do not so easily succumb to collective hallucination. And so,
while the clergy, following their own interpretations of the Bible, and science
its self-made Codex of possibilities in nature, refuse it a fair hearing, real
science and true religion are silent, and gravely wait further developments.
The whole question
of phenomena rests on the correct comprehension of old philosophies. Whither,
then, should we turn, in our perplexity, but to the ancient sages, since, on
the pretext of superstition, we are refused an explanation by the modern? Let
us ask them what they know of genuine science and religion; not in the matter
of mere details, but in all the broad conception of these twin truths -- so
strong in their unity, so weak when divided. Besides, we may find our profit in
comparing this boasted modern science with ancient ignorance; this improved
modern theology with the "Secret doctrines" of the ancient universal
religion. Perhaps we may thus discover a neutral ground whence we can reach and
profit by both.
It is the Platonic
philosophy, the most elaborate compend of the abstruse systems of old India,
that can alone afford us this middle ground. Although twenty-two and a quarter
centuries have elapsed since the death of Plato, the great minds of the world
are still occupied with his writings. He was, in the fullest sense of the word,
the world's interpreter. And the greatest philosopher of the pre-Christian era
mirrored faithfully in his works the spiritualism of the Vedic philosophers who
lived thousands of years before himself, and its metaphysical expression.
Vyasa, Djeminy, Kapila, Vrihaspati, Sumati, and so many others, will be found
to have transmitted their indelible imprint through the intervening centuries
upon Plato and his school. Thus is warranted the inference that to Plato and
the ancient Hindu sages was alike revealed the same wisdom. So surviving the
shock of time, what can this wisdom be but divine and eternal?
Plato taught justice
as subsisting in the soul of its possessor and his greatest good. "Men, in
proportion to their intellect, have admitted his transcendent claims." Yet
his commentators, almost with one consent, shrink from every passage which
implies that his metaphysics are based on a solid foundation, and not on ideal
conceptions.
But Plato could not
accept a philosophy destitute of spiritual aspirations; the two were at one
with him. For the old Grecian sage there was a single object of attainment:
REAL KNOWLEDGE. He considered those only to be genuine philosophers, or
students of truth, who possess the knowledge of the really-existing, in
opposition to the mere seeming; of
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the
always-existing, in opposition to the transitory; and of that which exists
permanently, in opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is developed and
destroyed alternately. "Beyond all finite existences and secondary causes,
all laws, ideas, and principles, there is an INTELLIGENCE or MIND [nous, the
spirit], the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all
other ideas are grounded; the Monarch and Lawgiver of the universe; the
ultimate substance from which all things derive their being and essence, the
first and efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty, and
excellency, and goodness, which pervades the universe -- who is called, by way
of preeminence and excellence, the Supreme Good, the God ([[ho theos]]) 'the
God over all' ([[ho epi pasi theos]])."* He is not the truth nor the
intelligence, but "the father of it." Though this eternal essence of
things may not be perceptible by our physical senses, it may be apprehended by
the mind of those who are not wilfully obtuse. "To you," said Jesus
to his elect disciples, "it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom
of God, but to them [the [[polloi]] ]it is not given; . . . therefore speak I
to them in parables [or allegories]; because they seeing, see not, and hearing,
they hear not, neither do they understand."**
The philosophy of
Plato, we are assured by Porphyry, of the Neoplatonic School was taught and
illustrated in the MYSTERIES. Many have questioned and even denied this; and
Lobeck, in his Aglaophomus, has gone to the extreme of representing the sacred
orgies as little more than an empty show to captivate the imagination. As
though Athens and Greece would for twenty centuries and more have repaired
every fifth year to Eleusis to witness a solemn religious farce! Augustine, the
papa-bishop of Hippo, has resolved such assertions. He declares that the
doctrines of the Alexandrian Platonists were the original esoteric doctrines of
the first followers of Plato, and describes Plotinus as a Plato resuscitated.
He also explains the motives of the great philosopher for veiling the interior
sense of what he taught.***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Cocker:
"Christianity and Greek Philosophy," xi., p. 377.
** Gospel according
to Matthew, xiii. 11, 13.
*** "The
accusations of atheism, the introducing of foreign deities, and corrupting of
the Athenian youth, which were made against Socrates, afforded ample justification
for Plato to conceal the arcane preaching of his doctrines. Doubtless the
peculiar diction or 'jargon' of the alchemists was employed for a like purpose.
The dungeon, the rack, and the fagot were employed without scruple by
Christians of every shade, the Roman Catholics especially, against all who
taught even natural science contrary to the theories entertained by the Church.
Pope Gregory the Great even inhibited the grammatical use of Latin as
heathenish. The offense of Socrates consisted in unfolding to his disciples the
arcane doctrine concerning the gods, which was taught in the Mysteries and was
a capital crime. He also was charged by Aristophanes with intro-
[[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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As to the myths,
Plato declares in the Gorgias and the Phaedon that they were the vehicles of
great truths well worth the seeking. But commentators are so little en rapport
with the great philosopher as to be compelled to acknowledge that they are
ignorant where "the doctrinal ends, and the mythical begins." Plato
put to flight the popular superstition concerning magic and daemons, and
developed the exaggerated notions of the time into rational theories and
metaphysical conceptions. Perhaps these would not quite stand the inductive
method of reasoning established by Aristotle; nevertheless they are
satisfactory in the highest degree to those who apprehend the existence of that
higher faculty of insight or intuition, as affording a criterion for
ascertaining truth.
Basing all his
doctrines upon the presence of the Supreme Mind, Plato taught that the nous,
spirit, or rational soul of man, being "generated by the Divine
Father," possessed a nature kindred, or even homogeneous, with the
Divinity, and was capable of beholding the eternal realities. This faculty of
contemplating reality in a direct and immediate manner belongs to God alone;
the aspiration for this knowledge constitutes what is really meant by
philosophy -- the love of wisdom. The love of truth is inherently the love of
good; and so predominating over every desire of the soul, purifying it and
assimilating it to the divine, thus governing every act of the individual, it
raises man to a participation and communion with Divinity, and restores him to
the likeness of God. "This flight," says Plato in the Theaetetus,
"consists in becoming like God, and this assimilation is the becoming just
and holy with wisdom."
The basis of this
assimilation is always asserted to be the preexistence of the spirit or nous.
In the allegory of the chariot and winged steeds, given in the Phaedrus, he
represents the psychical nature as composite and two-fold; the thumos, or
epithumetic part, formed from the substances of the world of phenomena; and the
thumoeides, the essence of which is linked to the eternal world. The present
earth-life is a fall and punishment. The soul dwells in "the grave which we
call the body," and in its incorporate state, and previous to the
discipline of education, the noetic or spiritual element is "asleep."
Life is thus a dream, rather than a reality. Like the captives in the
subterranean cave, described in The Republic, the back is turned to the light,
we perceive only the shadows of objects, and think them the actual realities.
Is not this
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] ducing the new god Dinos into the republic as
the demiurgos or artificer, and the lord of the solar universe. The
Heliocentric system was also a doctrine of the Mysteries; and hence, when
Aristarchus the Pythagorean taught it openly, Cleanthes declared that the
Greeks ought to have called him to account and condemned him for blasphemy
against the gods," -- ("Plutarch"). But Socrates had never been
initiated, and hence divulged nothing which had ever been imparted to him.
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the idea of Maya,
or the illusion of the senses in physical life, which is so marked a feature in
Buddhistical philosophy? But these shadows, if we have not given ourselves up
absolutely to the sensuous nature, arouse in us the reminiscence of that higher
world that we once inhabited. "The interior spirit has some dim and
shadowy recollection of its antenatal state of bliss, and some instinctive and
proleptic yearnings for its return." It is the province of the discipline
of philosophy to disinthrall it from the bondage of sense, and raise it into
the empyrean of pure thought, to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and
beauty. "The soul," says Plato, in the Theaetetus, "cannot come
into the form of a man if it has never seen the truth. This is a recollection
of those things which our soul formerly saw when journeying with Deity,
despising the things which we now say are, and looking up to that which REALLY
IS. Wherefore the nous, or spirit, of the philosopher (or student of the higher
truth) alone is furnished with wings; because he, to the best of his ability,
keeps these things in mind, of which the contemplation renders even Deity itself
divine. By making the right use of these things remembered from the former
life, by constantly perfecting himself in the perfect mysteries, a man becomes
truly perfect -- an initiate into the diviner wisdom."
Hence we may
understand why the sublimer scenes in the Mysteries were always in the night.
The life of the interior spirit is the death of the external nature; and the
night of the physical world denotes the day of the spiritual. Dionysus, the
night-sun, is, therefore, worshipped rather than Helios, orb of day. In the
Mysteries were symbolized the preexistent condition of the spirit and soul, and
the lapse of the latter into earth-life and Hades, the miseries of that life,
the purification of the soul, and its restoration to divine bliss, or reunion
with spirit. Theon, of Smyrna, aptly compares the philosophical discipline to
the mystic rites: "Philosophy," says he, "may be called the
initiation into the true arcana, and the instruction in the genuine Mysteries.
There are five parts of this initiation: I., the previous purification; II.,
the admission to participation in the arcane rites; III., the epoptic
revelation; IV., the investiture or enthroning; V. -- the fifth, which is
produced from all these, is friendship and interior communion with God, and the
enjoyment of that felicity which arises from intimate converse with divine
beings. . . . Plato denominates the epopteia, or personal view, the perfect
contemplation of things which are apprehended intuitively, absolute truths and
ideas. He also considers the binding of the head and crowning as analogous to
the authority which any one receives from his instructors, of leading others
into the same contemplation. The fifth gradation is the most perfect felicity
arising from hence, and, according to
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Plato, an
assimilation to divinity as far as is possible to human beings."*
Such is Platonism.
"Out of Plato," says Ralph Waldo Emerson, "come all things that
are still written and debated among men of thought." He absorbed the
learning of his times -- of Greece from Philolaus to Socrates; then of
Pythagoras in Italy; then what he could procure from Egypt and the East. He was
so broad that all philosophy, European and Asiatic, was in his doctrines; and
to culture and contemplation he added the nature and qualities of the poet.
The followers of
Plato generally adhered strictly to his psychological theories. Several,
however, like Xenocrates, ventured into bolder speculations. Speusippus, the
nephew and successor of the great philosopher, was the author of the Numerical
Analysis, a treatise on the Pythagorean numbers. Some of his speculations are
not found in the written Dialogues; but as he was a listener to the unwritten
lectures of Plato, the judgment of Enfield is doubtless correct, that he did
not differ from his master. He was evidently, though not named, the antagonist
whom Aristotle criticised, when professing to cite the argument of Plato
against the doctrine of Pythagoras, that all things were in themselves numbers,
or rather, inseparable from the idea of numbers. He especially endeavored to
show that the Platonic doctrine of ideas differed essentially from the
Pythagorean, in that it presupposed numbers and magnitudes to exist apart from
things. He also asserted that Plato taught that there could be no real
knowledge, if the object of that knowledge was not carried beyond or above the
sensible.
But Aristotle was
no trustworthy witness. He misrepresented Plato, and he almost caricatured the
doctrines of Pythagoras. There is a canon of interpretation, which should guide
us in our examinations of every philosophical opinion: "The human mind
has, under the necessary operation of its own laws, been compelled to entertain
the same fundamental ideas, and the human heart to cherish the same feelings in
all ages." It is certain that Pythagoras awakened the deepest intellectual
sympathy of his age, and that his doctrines exerted a powerful influence upon
the mind of Plato. His cardinal idea was that there existed a permanent
principle of unity beneath the forms, changes, and other phenomena of the
universe. Aristotle asserted that he taught that "numbers are the first
principles of all entities." Ritter has expressed the opinion that the
formula of Pythagoras should be taken symbolically, which is doubtless correct.
Aristotle goes on to associate these numbers with the "forms" and "ideas"
of Plato. He even declares that Plato said:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Thomas
Taylor: "Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries," p. 47. New York: J. W.
Bouton, 1875.
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"forms are
numbers," and that "ideas are substantial existences -- real
beings." Yet Plato did not so teach. He declared that the final cause was
the Supreme Goodness -- [[to agathon]] "Ideas are objects of pure
conception for the human reason, and they are attributes of the Divine
Reason."* Nor did he ever say that "forms are numbers." What he
did say may be found in the Timaeus: "God formed things as they first
arose according to forms and numbers."
It is recognized by
modern science that all the higher laws of nature assume the form of
quantitative statement. This is perhaps a fuller elaboration or more explicit
affirmation of the Pythagorean doctrine. Numbers were regarded as the best
representations of the laws of harmony which pervade the cosmos. We know too
that in chemistry the doctrine of atoms and the laws of combination are
actually and, as it were, arbitrarily defined by numbers. As Mr. W. Archer
Butler has expressed it: "The world is, then, through all its departments,
a living arithmetic in its development, a realized geometry in its
repose."
The key to the
Pythagorean dogmas is the general formula of unity in multiplicity, the one evolving
the many and pervading the many. This is the ancient doctrine of emanation in
few words. Even the apostle Paul accepted it as true. "[[Ex auton, kai di
auton, kai eis auton ta panta]]" -- Out of him and through him and in him
all things are. This, as we can see by the following quotation, is purely Hindu
and Brahmanical:
"When the
dissolution -- Pralaya -- had arrived at its term, the great Being -- Para-Atma
or Para-Purusha -- the Lord existing through himself, out of whom and through
whom all things were, and are and will be . . . resolved to emanate from his
own substance the various creatures" (Manava-Dharma-Sastra, book i.,
slokas 6 and 7).
The mystic Decad 1
+ 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 is a way of expressing this idea. The One is God, the Two,
matter; the Three, combining Monad and Duad, and partaking of the nature of
both, is the phenomenal world; the Tetrad, or form of perfection, expresses the
emptiness of all; and the Decad, or sum of all, involves the entire cosmos. The
universe is the combination of a thousand elements, and yet the expression of a
single spirit -- a chaos to the sense, a cosmos to the reason.
The whole of this
combination of the progression of numbers in the idea of creation is Hindu. The
Being existing through himself, Swayambhu or Swayambhuva, as he is called by
some, is one. He emanates from himself the creative faculty, Brahma or Purusha
(the divine male), and the one becomes Two; out of this Duad, union of the
purely intel-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Cousin:
"History of Philosophy," I., ix.
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lectual principle
with the principle of matter, evolves a third, which is Viradj, the phenomenal
world. It is out of this invisible and incomprehensible trinity, the Brahmanic
Trimurty, that evolves the second triad which represents the three faculties --
the creative, the conservative, and the transforming. These are typified by
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, but are again and ever blended into one. Unity,
Brahma, or as the Vedas called him, Tridandi, is the god triply manifested,
which gave rise to the symbolical Aum or the abbreviated Trimurty. It is but
under this trinity, ever active and tangible to all our senses, that the
invisible and unknown Monas can manifest itself to the world of mortals. When
he becomes Sarira, or he who puts on a visible form, he typifies all the
principles of matter, all the germs of life, he is Purusha, the god of the
three visages, or triple power, the essence of the Vedic triad. "Let the
Brahmas know the sacred Syllable (Aum), the three words of the Savitri, and read
the Vedas daily" (Manu, book iv., sloka 125).
"After having
produced the universe, He whose power is incomprehensible vanished again,
absorbed in the Supreme Soul. . . . Having retired into the primitive darkness,
the great Soul remains within the unknown, and is void of all form. . . .
"When having
again reunited the subtile elementary principles, it introduces itself into
either a vegetable or animal seed, it assumes at each a new form."
"It is thus
that, by an alternative waking and rest, the Immutable Being causes to revive
and die eternally all the existing creatures, active and inert" (Manu,
book i., sloka 50, and others).
He who has studied
Pythagoras and his speculations on the Monad, which, after having emanated the
Duad retires into silence and darkness, and thus creates the Triad can realize
whence came the philosophy of the great Samian Sage, and after him that of
Socrates and Plato.
Speusippus seems to
have taught that the psychical or thumetic soul was immortal as well as the
spirit or rational soul, and further on we will show his reasons. He also --
like Philolaus and Aristotle, in his disquisitions upon the soul -- makes of
aether an element; so that there were five principal elements to correspond
with the five regular figures in Geometry. This became also a doctrine of the
Alexandrian school.* Indeed, there was much in the doctrines of the
Philaletheans which did not appear in the works of the older Platonists, but
was doubtless taught in substance by the philosopher himself, but with his usual
reticence was not committed to writing as being too arcane for promiscuous
publication. Speusippus and Xenocrates after him, held, like their great
master, that the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Theol.
Arithme.," p. 62: "On Pythag. Numbers."
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anima mundi, or
world-soul, was not the Deity, but a manifestation. Those philosophers never
conceived of the One as an animate nature.* The original One did not exist, as
we understand the term. Not till he had united with the many -- emanated
existence (the monad and duad) was a being produced. The [[timion]], honored --
the something manifested, dwells in the centre as in the circumference, but it
is only the reflection of the Deity -- the World-Soul.** In this doctrine we
find the spirit of esoteric Buddhism.
A man's idea of
God, is that image of blinding light that he sees reflected in the concave
mirror of his own soul, and yet this is not, in very truth, God, but only His
reflection. His glory is there, but, it is the light of his own Spirit that the
man sees, and it is all he can bear to look upon. The clearer the mirror, the
brighter will be the divine image. But the external world cannot be witnessed
in it at the same moment. In the ecstatic Yogin, in the illuminated Seer, the
spirit will shine like the noonday sun; in the debased victim of earthly
attraction, the radiance has disappeared, for the mirror is obscured with the
stains of matter. Such men deny their God, and would willingly deprive humanity
of soul at one blow.
No GOD, NO SOUL?
Dreadful, annihilating thought! The maddening nightmare of a lunatic --
Atheist; presenting before his fevered vision, a hideous, ceaseless procession
of sparks of cosmic matter created by no one; self-appearing, self-existent,
and self-developing; this Self no Self, for it is nothing and nobody; floating
onward from nowhence, it is propelled by no Cause, for there is none, and it
rushes nowhither. And this in a circle of Eternity blind, inert, and --
CAUSELESS. What is even the erroneous conception of the Buddhistic Nirvana in
comparison! The Nirvana is preceded by numberless spiritual transformations and
metempsychoses, during which the entity loses not for a second the sense of its
own individuality, and which may last for millions of ages before the Final
No-Thing is reached.
Though some have
considered Speusippus as inferior to Aristotle, the world is nevertheless
indebted to him for defining and expounding many things that Plato had left
obscure in his doctrine of the Sensible and Ideal. His maxim was "The
Immaterial is known by means of scientific thought, the Material by scientific
perception."***
Xenocrates
expounded many of the unwritten theories and teachings of his master. He too
held the Pythagorean doctrine, and his system of numerals and mathematics in
the highest estimation. Recognizing but three degrees of knowledge -- Thought,
Perception, and Envisagement (or knowledge by Intuition), he made the former
busy itself with all that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plato:
"Parmenid.," 141 E.
** See Stoboeus'
"Ecl.," i., 862.
*** Sextus:
"Math.," vii. 145.
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which is beyond the
heavens; Perception with things in the heavens; Intuition with the heavens
themselves.
We find again these
theories, and nearly in the same language in the Manava-Dharma-Sastra, when
speaking of the creation of man: "He (the Supreme) drew from his own
essence the immortal breath which perisheth not in the being, and to this soul
of the being he gave the Ahancara (conscience of the ego) sovereign
guide." Then he gave to that soul of the being (man) the intellect formed
of the three qualities, and the five organs of the outward perception."
These three
qualities are Intelligence, Conscience, and Will; answering to the Thought,
Perception, and Envisagement of Xenocrates. The relation of numbers to Ideas
was developed by him further than by Speusippus, and he surpassed Plato in his
definition of the doctrine of Indivisible Magnitudes. Reducing them to their
ideal primary elements, he demonstrated that every figure and form originated
out of the smallest indivisible line. That Xenocrates held the same theories as
Plato in relation to the human soul (supposed to be a number) is evident,
though Aristotle contradicts this, like every other teaching of this
philosopher.* This is conclusive evidence that many of Plato's doctrines were
delivered orally, even were it shown that Xenocrates and not Plato was the
first to originate the theory of indivisible magnitudes. He derives the Soul
from the first Duad, and calls it a self-moved number.** Theophrastus remarks
that he entered and eliminated this Soul-theory more than any other Platonist.
He built upon it the cosmological doctrine, and proved the necessary existence
in every part of the universal space of a successive and progressive series of
animated and thinking though spiritual beings.*** The Human Soul with him is a
compound of the most spiritual properties of the Monad and the Duad, possessing
the highest principles of both. If, like Plato and Prodicus, he refers to the
Elements as to Divine Powers, and calls them gods, neither himself nor others
connected any anthropomorphic idea with the appellation. Krische remarks that
he called them gods only that these elementary powers should not be confounded
with the daemons of the nether world**** (the Elementary Spirits). As the Soul
of the World permeates the whole Cosmos, even beasts must have in them
something divine.***** This, also, is the doctrine of Buddhists and the
Hermetists, and Manu endows with a living soul even the plants and the tiniest
blade of grass.
The daemons,
according to this theory, are intermediate beings be-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"Metaph.," 407, a. 3.
** Appendix to
"Timaeus."
*** Stob.:
"Ecl.," i., 62.
**** Krische:
"Forsch.," p. 322, etc.
***** Clem.:
"Alex. Stro.," v., 590.
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tween the divine
perfection and human sinfulness,* and he divides them into classes, each
subdivided in many others. But he states expressly that the individual or
personal soul is the leading guardian daemon of every man, and that no daemon
has more power over us than our own. Thus the Daimonion of Socrates is the god
or Divine Entity which inspired him all his life. It depends on man either to
open or close his perceptions to the Divine voice. Like Speusippus he ascribed
immortality to the [[psuche]], psychical body, or irrational soul. But some
Hermetic philosophers have taught that the soul has a separate continued
existence only so long as in its passage through the spheres any material or
earthly particles remain incorporated in it; and that when absolutely purified,
the latter are annihilated, and the quintessence of the soul alone becomes
blended with its divine spirit (the Rational), and the two are thenceforth one.
Zeller states that
Xenocrates forbade the eating of animal food, not because he saw in beasts
something akin to man, as he ascribed to them a dim consciousness of God, but,
"for the opposite reason, lest the irrationality of animal souls might
thereby obtain a certain influence over us."** But we believe that it was
rather because, like Pythagoras, he had had the Hindu sages for his masters and
models. Cicero depicted Xenocrates utterly despising everything except the
highest virtue;*** and describes the stainlessness and severe austerity of his
character.**** "To free ourselves from the subjection of sensuous
existence, to conquer the Titanic elements in our terrestrial nature through
the Divine one, is our problem." Zeller makes him say: ***** "Purity,
even in the secret longings of our heart, is the greatest duty, and only
philosophy and the initiation into the Mysteries help toward the attainment of
this object."
Crantor, another
philosopher associated with the earliest days of Plato's Academy, conceived the
human soul as formed out of the primary substance of all things, the Monad or
One, and the Duad or the Two. Plutarch speaks at length of this philosopher,
who like his master believed in souls being distributed in earthly bodies as an
exile and punishment.
Herakleides, though
some critics do not believe him to have strictly adhered to Plato's primal
philosophy,****** taught the same ethics. Zeller presents him to us imparting,
like Hicetas and Ecphantus, the Pythagorean doctrine of the diurnal rotation of
the earth and the immobility of the fixed stars, but adds that he was ignorant
of the annual revolution of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plutarch:
"De Isid," chap. 25, p. 360.
** "Plato und
die Alt. Akademie."
***
"Tusc.," v., 18, 51.
**** Ibid. Cf. p.
559.
***** "Plato
und die Alt. Akademie."
****** Ed. Zeller:
"Philos. der Griech."
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earth around the
sun, and of the heliocentric system.* But we have good evidence that the latter
system was taught in the Mysteries, and that Socrates died for atheism, i.e.,
for divulging this sacred knowledge. Herakleides adopted fully the Pythagorean
and Platonic views of the human soul, its faculties and its capabilities. He
describes it as a luminous, highly ethereal essence. He affirms that souls
inhabit the milky way before descending "into generation" or
sublunary existence. His daemons or spirits are airy and vaporous bodies.
In the Epinomis is
fully stated the doctrine of the Pythagorean numbers in relation to created
things. As a true Platonist, its author maintains that wisdom can only be
attained by a thorough inquiry into the occult nature of the creation; it alone
assures us an existence of bliss after death. The immortality of the soul is
greatly speculated upon in this treatise; but its author adds that we can
attain to this knowledge only through a complete comprehension of the numbers;
for the man, unable to distinguish the straight line from a curved one will
never have wisdom enough to secure a mathematical demonstration of the
invisible, i.e., we must assure ourselves of the objective existence of our
soul (astral body) before we learn that we are in possession of a divine and
immortal spirit. Iamblichus says the same thing; adding, moreover, that it is a
secret belonging to the highest initiation. The Divine Power, he says, always
felt indignant with those "who rendered manifest the composition of the
icostagonus," viz., who delivered the method of inscribing in a sphere the
dodecahedron.**
The idea that
"numbers" possessing the greatest virtue, produce always what is good
and never what is evil, refers to justice, equanimity of temper, and everything
that is harmonious. When the author speaks of every star as an individual soul,
he only means what the Hindu initiates and the Hermetists taught before and
after him, viz.: that every star is an independent planet, which, like our
earth, has a soul of its own, every atom of matter being impregnated with the
divine influx of the soul of the world. It breathes and lives; it feels and
suffers as well as enjoys life in its way. What naturalist is prepared to
dispute it on good evidence? Therefore, we must consider the celestial bodies
as the images of gods; as partaking of the divine powers in their substance;
and though they are not immortal in their soul-entity, their agency in the
economy of the universe is entitled to divine honors, such as we pay to minor
gods. The idea is plain, and one must be malevolent indeed to misrepresent it.
If the author of Epinomis places these fiery gods higher than the animals,
plants, and even mankind, all of which, as earthly creatures, are assigned
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Plato und
die Alt. Akademie."
** One of the five
solid figures in Geometry.
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by him a lower
place, who can prove him wholly wrong? One must needs go deep indeed into the
profundity of the abstract metaphysics of the old philosophies, who would
understand that their various embodiments of their conceptions are, after all,
based upon an identical apprehension of the nature of the First Cause, its
attributes and method.
Again when the
author of Epinomis locates between these highest and lowest gods (embodied
souls) three classes of daemons, and peoples the universe with invisible
beings, he is more rational than our modern scientists, who make between the
two extremes one vast hiatus of being, the playground of blind forces. Of these
three classes the first two are invisible; their bodies are pure ether and fire
(planetary spirits); the daemons of the third class are clothed with vapory
bodies; they are usually invisible, but sometimes making themselves concrete
become visible for a few seconds. These are the earthly spirits, or our astral
souls.
It is these
doctrines, which, studied analogically, and on the principle of correspondence,
led the ancient, and may now lead the modern Philaletheian step by step toward
the solution of the greatest mysteries. On the brink of the dark chasm
separating the spiritual from the physical world stands modern science, with
eyes closed and head averted, pronouncing the gulf impassable and bottomless,
though she holds in her hand a torch which she need only lower into the depths
to show her her mistake. But across this chasm, the patient student of Hermetic
philosophy has constructed a bridge.
In his Fragments of
Science Tyndall makes the following sad confession: "If you ask me whether
science has solved, or is likely in our day to solve the problem of this
universe, I must shake my head in doubt." If moved by an afterthought, he
corrects himself later, and assures his audience that experimental evidence has
helped him to discover, in the opprobrium-covered matter, the "promise and
potency of every quality of life," he only jokes. It would be as difficult
for Professor Tyndall to offer any ultimate and irrefutable proofs of what he
asserts, as it was for Job to insert a hook into the nose of the leviathan.
To avoid confusion
that might easily arise by the frequent employment of certain terms in a sense
different from that familiar to the reader, a few explanations will be timely.
We desire to leave no pretext either for misunderstanding or misrepresentation.
Magic may have one signification to one class of readers and another to another
class. We shall give it the meaning which it has in the minds of its Oriental
students and practitioners. And so with the words Hermetic Science, Occultism,
Hierophant, Adept, Sorcerer, etc.; there has been little agreement of late as
to their meaning. Though the distinctions between the terms are very often
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insignificant --
merely ethnic -- still, it may be useful to the general reader to know just
what that is. We give a few alphabetically.
AETHROBACY, is the
Greek name for walking or being lifted in the air; levitation, so called, among
modern spiritualists. It may be either conscious or unconscious; in the one
case, it is magic; in the other, either disease or a power which requires a few
words of elucidation.
A symbolical
explanation of aethrobacy is given in an old Syriac manuscript which was
translated in the fifteenth century by one Malchus, an alchemist. In connection
with the case of Simon Magus, one passage reads thus:
"Simon, laying
his face upon the ground, whispered in her ear, 'O mother Earth, give me, I
pray thee, some of thy breath; and I will give thee mine; let me loose, O
mother, that I may carry thy words to the stars, and I will return faithfully
to thee after a while.' And the Earth strengthening her status, none to her
detriment, sent her genius to breathe of her breath on Simon, while he breathed
on her; and the stars rejoiced to be visited by the mighty One."
The starting-point
here is the recognized electro-chemical principle that bodies similarly
electrified repel each other, while those differently electrified mutually
attract. "The most elementary knowledge of chemistry," says Professor
Cooke, "shows that, while radicals of opposite natures combine most eagerly
together, two metals, or two closely-allied metalloids, show but little
affinity for each other."
The earth is a
magnetic body; in fact, as some scientists have found, it is one vast magnet,
as Paracelsus affirmed some 300 years ago. It is charged with one form of
electricity -- let us call it positive -- which it evolves continuously by
spontaneous action, in its interior or centre of motion. Human bodies, in
common with all other forms of matter, are charged with the opposite form of
electricity -- negative. That is to say, organic or inorganic bodies, if left
to themselves will constantly and involuntarily charge themselves with, and
evolve the form of electricity opposed to that of the earth itself. Now, what
is weight? Simply the attraction of the earth. "Without the attractions of
the earth you would have no weight," says Professor Stewart;* "and if
you had an earth twice as heavy as this, you would have double the
attraction." How then, can we get rid of this attraction? According to the
electrical law above stated, there is an attraction between our planet and the
organisms upon it, which holds them upon the surface of the ground. But the law
of gravitation has been counteracted in many instances, by levitations of
persons and inanimate objects; how account
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "The Sun and
the Earth."
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for this? The
condition of our physical systems, say theurgic philosophers, is largely
dependent upon the action of our will. If well-regulated, it can produce
"miracles"; among others a change of this electrical polarity from
negative to positive; the man's relations with the earth-magnet would then
become repellent, and "gravity" for him would have ceased to exist.
It would then be as natural for him to rush into the air until the repellent
force had exhausted itself, as, before, it had been for him to remain upon the
ground. The altitude of his levitation would be measured by his ability,
greater or less, to charge his body with positive electricity. This control
over the physical forces once obtained, alteration of his levity or gravity
would be as easy as breathing.
The study of
nervous diseases has established that even in ordinary somnambulism, as well as
in mesmerized somnambulists, the weight of the body seems to be diminished.
Professor Perty mentions a somnambulist, Koehler, who when in the water could
not sink, but floated. The seeress of Prevorst rose to the surface of the bath
and could not be kept seated in it. He speaks of Anna Fleisher, who being
subject to epileptic fits, was often seen by the Superintendent to rise in the
air; and was once, in the presence of two trustworthy witnesses (two deans) and
others, raised two and a half yards from her bed in a horizontal position. The
similar case of Margaret Rule is cited by Upham in his History of Salem
Witchcraft. "In ecstatic subjects," adds Professor Perty, "the
rising in the air occurs much more frequently than with somnambulists. We are
so accustomed to consider gravitation as being a something absolute and
unalterable, that the idea of a complete or partial rising in opposition to it
seems inadmissible; nevertheless, there are phenomena in which, by means of
material forces, gravitation is overcome. In several diseases -- as, for
instance, nervous fever -- the weight of the human body seems to be increased,
but in all ecstatic conditions to be diminished. And there may, likewise, be
other forces than material ones which can counteract this power."
A Madrid journal,
El Criterio Espiritista, of a recent date, reports the case of a young peasant
girl near Santiago, which possesses a peculiar interest in this connection.
"Two bars of magnetized iron held over her horizontally, half a metre
distant, was sufficient to suspend her body in the air."
Were our physicians
to experiment on such levitated subjects, it would be found that they are
strongly charged with a similar form of electricity to that of the spot, which,
according to the law of gravitation, ought to attract them, or rather prevent
their levitation. And, if some physical nervous disorder, as well as spiritual
ecstasy produce
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unconsciously to the
subject the same effects, it proves that if this force in nature were properly
studied, it could be regulated at will.
ALCHEMISTS. -- From
Al and Chemi, fire, or the god and patriarch, Kham, also, the name of Egypt.
The Rosicrucians of the middle ages, such as Robertus de Fluctibus (Robert
Fludd), Paracelsus, Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes), Van Helmont, and
others, were all alchemists, who sought for the hidden spirit in every
inorganic matter. Some people -- nay, the great majority -- have accused
alchemists of charlatanry and false pretending. Surely such men as Roger Bacon,
Agrippa, Henry Kunrath, and the Arabian Geber (the first to introduce into
Europe some of the secrets of chemistry), can hardly be treated as impostors --
least of all as fools. Scientists who are reforming the science of physics upon
the basis of the atomic theory of Demokritus, as restated by John Dalton,
conveniently forget that Demokritus, of Abdera, was an alchemist, and that the
mind that was capable of penetrating so far into the secret operations of
nature in one direction must have had good reasons to study and become a
Hermetic philosopher. Olaus Borrichias says, that the cradle of alchemy is to
be sought in the most distant times.
ASTRAL LIGHT. --
The same as the sidereal light of Paracelsus and other Hermetic philosophers.
Physically, it is the ether of modern science. Metaphysically, and in its
spiritual, or occult sense, ether is a great deal more than is often imagined.
In occult physics, and alchemy, it is well demonstrated to enclose within its
shoreless waves not only Mr. Tyndall's "promise and potency of every
quality of life," but also the realization of the potency of every quality
of spirit. Alchemists and Hermetists believe that their astral, or sidereal ether,
besides the above properties of sulphur, and white and red magnesia, or magnes,
is the anima mundi, the workshop of Nature and of all the cosmos, spiritually,
as well as physically. The "grand magisterium" asserts itself in the
phenomenon of mesmerism, in the "levitation" of human and inert
objects; and may be called the ether from its spiritual aspect.
The designation
astral is ancient, and was used by some of the Neoplatonists. Porphyry
describes the celestial body which is always joined with the soul as
"immortal, luminous, and star-like." The root of this word may be
found, perhaps, in the Scythic aist-aer -- which means star, or the Assyrian
Istar, which, according to Burnouf has the same sense. As the Rosicrucians
regarded the real, as the direct opposite of the apparent, and taught that what
seems light to matter, is darkness to spirit, they searched for the latter in
the astral ocean of invisible fire which encompasses the world; and claim to
have traced the equally invisible divine spirit, which overshadows every man
and is erroneously called soul, to the very throne of the Invisible and Unknown
God.
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As the great cause
must always remain invisible and imponderable, they could prove their
assertions merely by demonstration of its effects in this world of matter, by
calling them forth from the unknowable down into the knowable universe of
effects. That this astral light permeates the whole cosmos, lurking in its
latent state even in the minutest particle of rock, they demonstrate by the
phenomenon of the spark from flint and from every other stone, whose spirit
when forcibly disturbed springs to sight spark-like, and immediately disappears
in the realms of the unknowable.
Paracelsus named it
the sidereal light, taking the term from the Latin. He regarded the starry host
(our earth included) as the condensed portions of the astral light which
"fell down into generation and matter," but whose magnetic or
spiritual emanations kept constantly a never-ceasing intercommunication between
themselves and the parent-fount of all -- the astral light. "The stars
attract from us to themselves, and we again from them to us," he says. The
body is wood and the life is fire, which comes like the light from the stars
and from heaven. "Magic is the philosophy of alchemy," he says
again.* Everything pertaining to the spiritual world must come to us through
the stars, and if we are in friendship with them, we may attain the greatest
magical effects.
"As fire
passes through an iron stove, so do the stars pass through man with all their
properties and go into him as the rain into the earth, which gives fruit out of
that same rain. Now observe that the stars surround the whole earth, as a shell
does the egg; through the shell comes the air, and penetrates to the centre of
the world." The human body is subjected as well as the earth, and planets,
and stars, to a double law; it attracts and repels, for it is saturated through
with double magnetism, the influx of the astral light. Everything is double in
nature; magnetism is positive and negative, active and passive, male and
female. Night rests humanity from the day's activity, and restores the
equilibrium of human as well as of cosmic nature. When the mesmerizer will have
learned the grand secret of polarizing the action and endowing his fluid with a
bisexual force he will have become the greatest magician living. Thus the
astral light is androgyne, for equilibrium is the resultant of two opposing
forces eternally reacting upon each other. The result of this is LIFE. When the
two forces are expanded and remain so long inactive, as to equal one another
and so come to a complete rest, the condition is DEATH. A human being can blow
either a hot or a cold breath; and can absorb either cold or hot air. Every
child knows how to regulate
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "De Ente Spirituali,"
lib. iv.; "de Ente Astrorum," book i.; and opera omnia, vol. i., pp.
634 and 699.
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the temperature of
his breath; but how to protect one's self from either hot or cold air, no
physiologist has yet learned with certainty. The astral light alone, as the
chief agent in magic, can discover to us all secrets of nature. The astral
light is identical with the Hindu akasa, a word which we will now explain.
AKASA. -- Literally
the word means in Sanscrit sky, but in its mystic sense it signifies the
invisible sky; or, as the Brahmans term it in the Soma-sacrifice (the
Gyotishtoma Agnishtoma), the god Akasa, or god Sky. The language of the Vedas
shows that the Hindus of fifty centuries ago ascribed to it the same properties
as do the Thibetan lamas of the present day; that they regarded it as the
source of life, the reservoir of all energy, and the propeller of every change
of matter. In its latent state it tallies exactly with our idea of the
universal ether; in its active state it became the Akasa, the all-directing and
omnipotent god. In the Brahmanical sacrificial mysteries it plays the part of
Sadasya, or superintendent over the magical effects of the religious
performance, and it had its own appointed Hotar (or priest), who took its name.
In India, as in other countries in ancient times, the priests are the
representatives on earth of different gods; each taking the name of the deity
in whose name he acts.
The Akasa is the
indispensable agent of every Kritya (magical performance) either religious or
profane. The Brahmanical expression "to stir up the Brahma" -- Brahma
jinvati -- means to stir up the power which lies latent at the bottom of every
such magical operation, for the Vedic sacrifices are but ceremonial magic. This
power is the Akasa or the occult electricity; the alkahest of the alchemists in
one sense, or the universal solvent, the same anima mundi as the astral light.
At the moment of the sacrifice, the latter becomes imbued with the spirit of
Brahma, and so for the time being is Brahma himself. This is the evident origin
of the Christian dogma of transubstantiation. As to the most general effects of
the Akasa, the author of one of the most modern works on the occult philosophy,
Art-Magic, gives for the first time to the world a most intelligible and
interesting explanation of the Akasa in connection with the phenomena attributed
to its influence by the fakirs and lamas.
ANTHROPOLOGY. --
The science of man; embracing among other things:
Physiology, or that
branch of natural science which discloses the mysteries of the organs and their
functions in men, animals, and plants; and also, and especially,
Psychology, or the
great, and in our days, so neglected science of the
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soul, both as an
entity distinct from the spirit and in its relations with the spirit and body.
In modern science, psychology relates only or principally to conditions of the
nervous system, and almost absolutely ignores the psychical essence and nature.
Physicians denominate the science of insanity psychology, and name the lunatic
chair in medical colleges by that designation.
CHALDEANS, or
Kasdim. -- At first a tribe, then a caste of learned kabalists. They were the
savants, the magians of Babylonia, astrologers and diviners. The famous Hillel,
the precursor of Jesus in philosophy and in ethics, was a Chaldean. Franck in
his Kabbala points to the close resemblance of the "secret doctrine"
found in the Avesta and the religious metaphysics of the Chaldees.
DACTYLS (daktulos,
a finger). -- A name given to the priests attached to the worship of Kybele
(Cybele). Some archaeologists derive the name from [[daktulos]], finger,
because they were ten, the same in number as the fingers of the hand. But we do
not believe the latter hypothesis is the correct one.
DAEMONS. -- A name
given by the ancient people, and especially the philosophers of the Alexandrian
school, to all kinds of spirits, whether good or bad, human or otherwise. The
appellation is often synonymous with that of gods or angels. But some
philosophers tried, with good reason, to make a just distinction between the
many classes.
DEMIURGOS, or
Demiurge. -- Artificer; the Supernal Power which built the universe. Freemasons
derive from this word their phrase of "Supreme Architect." The chief
magistrates of certain Greek cities bore the title.
DERVISHES, or the
"whirling charmers," as they are called. Apart from the austerities
of life, prayer and contemplation, the Mahometan devotee presents but little
similarity with the Hindu fakir. The latter may become a sannyasi, or saint and
holy mendicant; the former will never reach beyond his second class of occult
manifestations. The dervish may also be a strong mesmerizer, but he will never
voluntarily submit to the abominable and almost incredible self-punishment
which the fakir invents for himself with an ever-increasing avidity, until
nature succumbs and he dies in slow and excruciating tortures. The most
dreadful operations, such as flaying the limbs alive; cutting off the toes,
feet, and legs; tearing out the eyes; and causing one's self to be buried alive
up to the chin in the earth, and passing whole months in this posture, seem
child's play to them. One of the most common tortures is that of
Tshiddy-Parvady.* It consists in suspending the fakir to one of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Or more commonly
charkh puja.
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mobile arms of a
kind of gallows to be seen in the vicinity of many of the temples. At the end
of each of these arms is fixed a pulley over which passes a rope terminated by
an iron hook. This hook is inserted into the bare back of the fakir, who
inundating the soil with blood is hoisted up in the air and then whirled round
the gallows. From the first moment of this cruel operation until he is either
unhooked or the flesh of his back tears out under the weight of the body and
the fakir is hurled down on the heads of the crowd, not a muscle of his face
will move. He remains calm and serious and as composed as if taking a
refreshing bath. The fakir will laugh to scorn every imaginable torture,
persuaded that the more his outer body is mortified, the brighter and holier
becomes his inner, spiritual body. But the Dervish, neither in India, nor in
other Mahometan lands, will ever submit to such operations.
DRUIDS. -- A sacerdotal
caste which flourished in Britain and Gaul.
ELEMENTAL SPIRITS.
-- The creatures evolved in the four kingdoms of earth, air, fire, and water,
and called by the kabalists gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines. They may
be termed the forces of nature, and will either operate effects as the servile
agents of general law, or may be employed by the disembodied spirits -- whether
pure or impure -- and by living adepts of magic and sorcery, to produce desired
phenomenal results. Such beings never become men.*
Under the general
designation of fairies, and fays, these spirits of the elements appear in the
myth, fable, tradition, or poetry of all nations, ancient and modern. Their
names are legion -- peris, devs, djins, sylvans, satyrs, fauns, elves, dwarfs,
trolls, norns, nisses, kobolds, brownies, necks, stromkarls, undines, nixies,
salamanders, goblins, ponkes, banshees, kelpies, pixies, moss people, good
people, good neighbors, wild women, men of peace, white ladies -- and many
more. They have been seen, feared, blessed, banned, and invoked in every
quarter of the globe and in every age. Shall we then concede that all who have
met them were hallucinated?
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Persons who
believe in the clairvoyant power, but are disposed to discredit the existence
of any other spirits in nature than disembodied human spirits, will be
interested in an account of certain clairvoyant observations which appeared in
the London Spiritualist of June 29, 1877. A thunder-storm approaching, the
seeress saw "a bright spirit emerge from a dark cloud and pass with
lightning speed across the sky, and, a few minutes after, a diagonal line of
dark spirits in the clouds." These are the Maruts of the "Vedas"
(See Max Muller's "Rig-Veda Sanhita").
The well-known and
respected lecturer, author, and clairvoyant, Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, has
published accounts of her frequent experiences with these elemental spirits.
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These elementals
are the principal agents of disembodied but never visible spirits at seances,
and the producers of all the phenomena except the subjective.
ELEMENTARY SPIRITS.
-- Properly, the disembodied souls of the depraved; these souls having at some
time prior to death separated from themselves their divine spirits, and so lost
their chance for immortality. Eliphas Levi and some other kabalists make little
distinction between elementary spirits who have been men, and those beings
which people the elements, and are the blind forces of nature. Once divorced
from their bodies, these souls (also called "astral bodies") of
purely materialistic persons, are irresistibly attracted to the earth, where
they live a temporary and finite life amid elements congenial to their gross
natures. From having never, during their natural lives, cultivated their
spirituality, but subordinated it to the material and gross, they are now
unfitted for the lofty career of the pure, disembodied being, for whom the
atmosphere of earth is stifling and mephitic, and whose attractions are all
away from it. After a more or less prolonged period of time these material souls
will begin to disintegrate, and finally, like a column of mist, be dissolved,
atom by atom, in the surrounding elements.
ESSENES -- from
Asa, a healer. A sect of Jews said by Pliny to have lived near the Dead Sea
"per millia saeculorum" -- for thousands of ages. Some have supposed
them to be extreme Pharisees; and others -- which may be the true theory -- the
descendants of the Benim-nabim of the Bible, and think they were
"Kenites" and "Nazarites." They had many Buddhistic ideas
and practices; and it is noteworthy that the priests of the Great Mother at
Ephesus, Diana-Bhavani with many breasts, were also so denominated. Eusebius,
and after him De Quincey, declared them to be the same as the early Christians,
which is more than probable. The title "brother," used in the early
Church, was Essenean: they were a fraternity, or a koinobion or community like
the early converts. It is noticeable that only the Sadducees, or Zadokites, the
priest-caste and their partisans, persecuted the Christians; the Pharisees were
generally scholastic and mild, and often sided with the latter. James the Just
was a Pharisee till his death; but Paul or Aher was esteemed a schismatic.
EVOLUTION. -- The
development of higher orders of animals from the lower. Modern, or so-called
exact science, holds but to a one-sided physical evolution, prudently avoiding
and ignoring the higher or spiritual evolution, which would force our
contemporaries to confess the superiority of the ancient philosophers and
psychologists over themselves. The ancient sages, ascending to the UNKNOWABLE,
made their starting-point from the first manifestation of the unseen, the
unavoidable, and from a strict logical reasoning, the absolutely necessary
creative Being,
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the Demiurgos of
the universe. Evolution began with them from pure spirit, which descending
lower and lower down, assumed at last a visible and comprehensible form, and
became matter. Arrived at this point, they speculated in the Darwinian method,
but on a far more large and comprehensive basis.
In the
Rig-Veda-Sanhita, the oldest book of the World* (to which even our most prudent
Indiologists and Sanscrit scholars assign an antiquity of between two and three
thousand years B.C.), in the first book, "Hymns to the Maruts," it is
said:
"Not-being and
Being are in the highest heaven, in the birthplace of Daksha, in the lap of
Aditi" (Mandala, i, Sukta 166).
"In the first
age of the gods, Being (the comprehensible Deity) was born from Not-being (whom
no intellect can comprehend); after it were born the Regions (the invisible),
from them Uttanapada."
"From
Uttanapad the Earth was born, the Regions (those that are visible) were born
from the Earth. Daksha was born of Aditi, and Aditi from Daksha" (Ibid.).
Aditi is the
Infinite, and Daksha is dakska-pitarah, literally meaning the father of gods,
but understood by Max Muller and Roth to mean the fathers of strength,
"preserving, possessing, granting faculties." Therefore, it is easy
to see that "Daksha, born of Aditi and Aditi from Daksha," means what
the moderns understand by "correlation of forces"; the more so as we
find in this passage (translated by Prof. Muller):
"I place Agni,
the source of all beings, the father of strength" (iii., 27, 2), a clear
and identical idea which prevailed so much in the doctrines of the
Zoroastrians, the Magians, and the mediaeval fire-philosophers. Agni is god of
fire, of the Spiritual Ether, the very substance of the divine essence of the
Invisible God present in every atom of His creation and called by the
Rosicrucians the "Celestial Fire." If we only carefully compare the
verses from this Mandala, one of which runs thus: "The Sky is your father,
the Earth your mother, Soma your brother, Aditi your sister" (i., 191,
6),** with the inscription on the Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes, we will find the
same substratum of metaphysical philosophy, the identical doctrines!
"As all things
were produced by the mediation of one being, so all things were produced from
this one thing by adaptation: 'Its father is the sun; its mother is the moon' .
. . etc. Separate the earth from the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Translated by Max
Muller, Professor of Comparative Philology at the Oxford University, England.
** "Dyarih vah
pita, prithivi mata somah bhrata Aditih svasa."
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fire, the subtile
from the gross. . . . What I had to say about the operation of the sun is
completed" (Smaragdine Tablet).*
Professor Max
Muller sees in this Mandala "at last, something like a theogony, though
full of contradictions."** The alchemists, kabalists, and students of
mystic philosophy will find therein a perfectly defined system of Evolution in
the Cosmogony of a people who lived a score of thousands of years before our
era. They will find in it, moreover, a perfect identity of thought and even
doctrine with the Hermetic philosophy, and also that of Pythagoras and Plato.
In Evolution, as it
is now beginning to be understood, there is supposed to be in all matter an
impulse to take on a higher form -- a supposition clearly expressed by Manu and
other Hindu philosophers of the highest antiquity. The philosopher's tree
illustrates it in the case of the zinc solution. The controversy between the
followers of this school and the Emanationists may be briefly stated thus: The
Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of "the Unknowable";
the Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved -- or, as the word means,
unwombed or born -- except it has first been involved, thus indicating that
life is from a spiritual potency above the whole.
FAKIRS. --
Religious devotees in East India. They are generally attached to Brahmanical
pagodas and follow the laws of Manu. A strictly religious fakir will go
absolutely naked, with the exception of a small piece of linen called dhoti,
around his loins. They wear their hair long, and it serves them as a pocket, as
they stick in it various objects -- such as a pipe, a small flute called vagudah,
the sounds of which throw the serpents into a cataleptic torpor, and sometimes
their bamboo-stick (about one foot long) with the seven mystical knots on it.
This magical stick, or rather rod, the fakir receives from his guru on the day
of his initiation, together with the three mantrams, which are communicated to
him "mouth to ear." No fakir will be seen without this powerful
adjunct of his calling. It is, as they all claim, the divining rod, the cause
of every occult phenomenon produced by them.*** The Brahmanical fakir is en-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As the perfect
identity of the philosophical and religious doctrines of antiquity will be
fully treated upon in subsequent chapters, we limit our explanations for the
present.
**
"Rig-Veda-Anhita," p. 234.
*** Philostratus
assures us that the Brahmins were able, in his time, to perform the most
wonderful cures by merely pronouncing certain magical words. "The Indian
Brahmans carry a staff and a ring, by means of which they are able to do almost
anything." Origenes states the same ("Contra Celsum"). But if a
strong mesmeric fluid -- say projected from the eye, and without any other
contact -- is not added, no magical words would be efficacious.
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tirely distinct
from the Mussulman mendicant of India, also called fakirs in some parts of the
British territory.
HERMETIST. -- From
Hermes, the god of Wisdom, known in Egypt, Syria, and Phoenicia as Thoth, Tat,
Adad, Seth, and Sat-an (the latter not to be taken in the sense applied to it
by Moslems and Christians), and in Greece as Kadmus. The kabalists identify him
with Adam Kadmon, the first manifestation of the Divine Power, and with Enoch.
There were two Hermes: the elder was the Trismegistus, and the second an
emanation, or "permutation" of himself; the friend and instructor of
Isis and Osiris. Hermes is the god of the priestly wisdom, like Mazeus.
HIEROPHANT. --
Discloser of sacred learning. The Old Man, the Chief of the Adepts at the
initiations, who explained the arcane knowledge to the neophytes, bore this
title. In Hebrew and Chaldaic the term was Peter, or opener, discloser; hence,
the Pope, as the successor of the hierophant of the ancient Mysteries, sits in
the Pagan chair of "St. Peter." The vindictiveness of the Catholic
Church toward the alchemists, and to arcane and astronomical science, is
explained by the fact that such knowledge was the ancient prerogative of the
hierophant, or representative of Peter, who kept the mysteries of life and
death. Men like Bruno, Galileo, and Kepler, therefore, and even Cagliostro,
trespassed on the preserves of the Church, and were accordingly murdered.
Every nation had
its Mysteries and hierophants. Even the Jews had their Peter -- Tanaim or
Rabbin, like Hillel, Akiba,* and other famous kabalists, who alone could impart
the awful knowledge contained in the Merkaba. In India, there was in ancient
times one, and now there are several hierophants scattered about the country,
attached to the principal pagodas, who are known as the Brahma-atmas. In Thibet
the chief hierophant is the Dalay, or Taley-Lama of Lha-ssa.** Among Christian
nations, the Catholics alone have preserved this "heathen" custom, in
the person of their Pope, albeit they have sadly disfigured its majesty and the
dignity of the sacred office.
INITIATES. -- In
times of antiquity, those who had been initiated into the arcane knowledge
taught by the hierophants of the Mysteries; and in our modern days those who
have been initiated by the adepts of mystic lore into the mysterious knowledge,
which, notwithstanding the lapse of ages, has yet a few real votaries on earth.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Akiba was a
friend of Aher, said to have been the Apostle Paul of Christian story. Both are
depicted as having visited Paradise. Aher took branches from the Tree of Knowledge,
and so fell from the true (Jewish) religion. Akiba came away in peace. See 2d
Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter xii.
** Taley means
ocean or sea.
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KABALIST, from ,
KABALA; an unwritten or oral tradition. The kabalist is a student of
"secret science," one who interprets the hidden meaning of the
Scriptures with the help of the symbolical Kabala, and explains the real one by
these means. The Tanaim were the first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared
at Jerusalem about the beginning of the third century before the Christian era.
The Books of Ezekiel, Daniel, Henoch, and the Revelation of St. John, are
purely kabalistical. This secret doctrine is identical with that of the
Chaldeans, and includes at the same time much of the Persian wisdom, or
"magic."
LAMAS. -- Buddhist
monks belonging to the Lamaic religion of Thibet, as, for instance, friars are
the monks belonging to the Popish or Roman Catholic religion. Every lama is
subject to the grand Taley-Lama, the Buddhist pope of Thibet, who holds his
residence at Lha-ssa, and is a reincarnation of Buddha.
MAGE, or Magian;
from Mag or Maha. The word is the root of the word magician. The Maha-atma (the
great Soul or Spirit) in India had its priests in the pre-Vedic times. The
Magians were priests of the fire-god; we find them among the Assyrians and
Babylonians, as well as among the Persian fire-worshippers. The three magi,
also denominated kings, that are said to have made gifts of gold, incense, and
myrrh to the infant Jesus, were fire-worshippers like the rest, and
astrologers; for they saw his star. The high priest of the Parsis, at Surat, is
called Mobed, others derived the word from Megh; Meh-ab signifying something
grand and noble. Zoroaster's disciples were called Meghestom, according to
Kleuker.
MAGICIAN. -- This
term, once a title of renown and distinction, has come to be wholly perverted
from its true meaning. Once the synonym of all that was honorable and reverent,
of a possessor of learning and wisdom, it has become degraded into an epithet
to designate one who is a pretender and a juggler; a charlatan, in short, or
one who has "sold his soul to the Evil One"; who misuses his
knowledge, and employs it for low and dangerous uses, according to the
teachings of the clergy, and a mass of superstitious fools who believe the
magician a sorcerer and an enchanter. But Christians forget, apparently, that
Moses was also a magician, and Daniel, "Master of the magicians,
astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers" (Daniel, v. II).
The word magician
then, scientifically speaking, is derived from Magh, Mah, Hindu or Sanscrit
Maha -- great; a man well versed in the secret or esoteric knowledge; properly
a Sacerdote.
MANTICISM, or
mantic frenzy. During this state was developed the gift of prophecy. The two
words are nearly synonymous. One was as honored as the other. Pythagoras and
Plato held it in high esteem, and
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Socrates advised
his disciples to study Manticism. The Church Fathers, who condemned so severely
the mantic frenzy in Pagan priests and Pythiae, were not above applying it to
their own uses. The Montanists, who took their name from Montanus, a bishop of
Phrygia, who was considered divinely inspired, rivalled with the manteis or
prophets. "Tertullian, Augustine, and the martyrs of Carthage, were of the
number," says the author of Prophecy, Ancient and Modern. "The
Montanists seem to have resembled the Bacchantes in the wild enthusiasm that
characterized their orgies," he adds. There is a diversity of opinion as
to the origin of the word Manticism. There was the famous Mantis the Seer, in
the days of Melampus and Proetus, King of Argos; and there was Manto, the daughter
of the prophet of Thebes, herself a prophetess. Cicero describes prophecy and
mantic frenzy by saying that "in the inner recesses of the mind is divine
prophecy hidden and confined, a divine impulse, which when it burns more
vividly is called furor" (frenzy, madness).
But there is still
another etymology possible for the word mantis, and to which we doubt if the
attention of the philologists was ever drawn. The mantic frenzy may, perchance,
have a still earlier origin. The two sacrificial cups of the Soma-mystery used
during the religious rites, and generally known as grahas, are respectively
called Sukra and Manti.*
It is in the latter
manti or manthi cup that Brahma is said to be "stirred up." While the
initiate drinks (albeit sparingly) of this sacred soma-juice, the Brahma, or
rather his "spirit," personified by the god Soma, enters into the man
and takes possession of him. Hence, ecstatic vision, clairvoyance, and the gift
of prophecy. Both kinds of divination -- the natural and the artificial -- are
aroused by the Soma. The Sukra-cup awakens that which is given to every man by
nature. It unites both spirit and soul, and these, from their own nature and
essence, which are divine, have a foreknowledge of future things, as dreams,
unexpected visions, and presentiments, well prove. The contents of the other
cup, the manti, which "stirs the Brahma," put thereby the soul in
communication not only with the minor gods -- the well-informed but not
omniscient spirits -- but actually with the highest divine essence itself. The
soul receives a direct illumination from the presence of its "god";
but as it is not allowed to remember certain things, well known only in heaven,
the initiated person is generally seized with a kind of sacred frenzy, and upon
recovering from it, only remembers that which is allowed to him. As to the
other kind of seers and diviners -- those who make a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See
"Aytareya Brahmanan," 3, I.
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profession of and a
living by it -- they are usually held to be possessed by a gandharva, a deity
which is nowhere so little honored as in India.
MANTRA. -- A
Sanskrit word conveying the same idea as the "Ineffable Name." Some
mantras, when pronounced according to magical formula taught in the
Atharva-Veda, produce an instantaneous and wonderful effect. In its general
sense, though, a mantra is either simply a prayer to the gods and powers of
heaven, as taught by the Brahmanical books, and especially Manu, or else a
magical charm. In its esoteric sense, the "word" of the mantra, or
mystic speech, is called by the Brahmans Vach. It resides in the mantra, which
literally means those parts of the sacred books which are considered as the
Sruti, or direct divine revelation.
MARABUT. -- A
Mahometan pilgrim who has been to Mekka; a saint, after whose death his body is
placed in an open sepulchre built on the surface, like other buildings, but in
the middle of the streets and public places of populated cities. Placed inside
the small and only room of the tomb (and several such public sarcophagi of
brick and mortar may be seen to this day in the streets and squares of Cairo),
the devotion of the wayfarers keeps a lamp ever burning at his head. The tombs
of some of these marabuts have a great fame for the miracles they are alleged
to perform.
MATERIALIZATION. --
A word employed by spiritualists to indicate the phenomenon of "a spirit
clothing himself with a material form." The far less objectionable term,
"form-manifestation," has been recently suggested by Mr.
Stainton-Moses, of London. When the real nature of these apparitions is better
comprehended, a still more appropriate name will doubtless be adopted. To call
them materialized spirits is inadmissible, for they are not spirits but
animated portrait-statues.
MAZDEANS, from
(Ahura) Mazda. (See Spiegel's Yasna, xl.) They were the ancient Persian nobles
who worshipped Ormazd, and, rejecting images, inspired the Jews with the same
horror for every concrete representation of the Deity. "They seem in
Herodotus's time to have been superseded by the Magian religionists. The Parsis
and Ghebers geberim, mighty men, of Genesis vi. and x. 8) appear to be Magian
religionists. . . . By a curious muddling of ideas, Zoro-Aster (Zero, a circle,
a son or priest, Aster, Ishtar, or Astarte -- in Aryan dialect, a star), the
title of the head of the Magians and fire-worshippers, or Surya-ishtara, the
sun-worshipper, is often confounded in modern times with Zara-tustra, the
reputed Mazdean apostle" (Zoroaster).
METEMPSYCHOSIS. --
The progress of the soul from one stage of existence to another. Symbolized and
vulgarly believed to be rebirths in animal bodies. A term generally
misunderstood by every class of European and
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American society,
including many scientists. The kabalistic axiom, "A stone becomes a plant,
a plant an animal, an animal a man, a man a spirit, and a spirit a god,"
receives an explanation in Manu's Manava-Dharma-Sastra, and other Brahmanical
books.
MYSTERIES. -- Greek
teletai, or finishings, as analogous to teleuteia or death. They were
observances, generally kept secret from the profane and uninitiated, in which
were taught by dramatic representation and other methods, the origin of things,
the nature of the human spirit, its relations to the body, and the method of
its purification and restoration to higher life. Physical science, medicine,
the laws of music, divination, were all taught in the same manner. The
Hippocratic oath was but a mystic obligation. Hippocrates was a priest of
Asklepios, some of whose writings chanced to become public. But the Asklepiades
were initiates of the AEsculapian serpent-worship, as the Bacchantes were of
the Dionysia; and both rites were eventually incorporated with the Eleusinia.
We will treat of the Mysteries fully in the subsequent chapters.
MYSTICS. -- Those
initiated. But in the mediaeval and later periods the term was applied to men
like Boehmen the Theosophist, Molinos the Quietist, Nicholas of Basle, and
others who believed in a direct interior communion with God, analogous to the
inspiration of the prophets.
NABIA. -- Seership,
soothsaying. This oldest and most respected of mystic phenomena, is the name
given to prophecy in the Bible, and is correctly included among the spiritual
powers, such as divination, clairvoyant visions, trance-conditions, and
oracles. But while enchanters, diviners, and even astrologers are strictly
condemned in the Mosaic books, prophecy, seership, and nabia appear as the
special gifts of heaven. In early ages they were all termed Epoptai, the Greek
word for seers, clairvoyants; after which they were designated as Nebim,
"the plural of Nebo, the Babylonian god of wisdom." The kabalist
distinguishes between the seer and the magician; one is passive, the other
active; Nebirah, is one who looks into futurity and a clairvoyant; Nebi-poel,
he who possesses magic powers. We notice that Elijah and Apollonius resorted to
the same means to isolate themselves from the disturbing influences of the
outer world, viz.: wrapping their heads entirely in a woolen mantle; from its
being an electric non-conductor we must suppose.
OCCULTIST. -- One
who studies the various branches of occult science. The term is used by the
French kabalists (See Eliphas Levi's works). Occultism embraces the whole range
of psychological, physiological, cosmical, physical, and spiritual phenomena.
From the word occult, hidden or secret; applying therefore to the study of the
Kabala, astrology, alchemy, and all arcane sciences.
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PAGAN GODS. -- This
term gods is erroneously understood by most of the reading public, to mean
idols. The idea attached to them is not that of something objective or
anthropomorphical. With the exception of occasions when "gods" mean
either divine planetary entities (angels), or disembodied spirits of pure men,
the term simply conveys to the mind of the mystic -- whether Hindu Hotar,
Mazdean Mage, Egyptian hierophant, or disciple of the Greek philosophers -- the
idea of a visible or cognized manifestation of an invisible potency of nature.
And such occult potencies are invoked under the appellation of various gods,
who, for the time being, are personating these powers. Thus every one of the
numberless deities of the Hindu, Greek, and Egyptian Pantheons, are simply
Powers of the "Unseen Universe." When the officiating Brahman invokes
Aditya -- who, in her cosmic character, is the goddess-sun -- he simply
commands that potency (personified in some god), which, as he asserts,
"resides in the Mantra, as the sacred Vach." These god-powers are allegorically
regarded as the divine Hotars of the Supreme One; while the priest (Brahman) is
the human Hotar who officiates on earth, and representing that particular Power
becomes, ambassador-like, invested with the very potency which he personates.
PITRIS. -- It is
generally believed that the Hindu term Pitris means the spirits of our direct
ancestors; of disembodied people. Hence the argument of some spiritualists that
fakirs, and other Eastern wonder-workers, are mediums; that they themselves
confess to being unable to produce anything without the help of the Pitris, of
whom they are the obedient instruments. This is in more than one sense
erroneous. The Pitris are not the ancestors of the present living men, but
those of the human kind or Adamic race; the spirits of human races which, on
the great scale of descending evolution, preceded our races of men, and were
physically, as well as spiritually, far superior to our modern pigmies. In
Manava-Dharma-Sastra they are called the Lunar ancestors.
PYTHIA, or Pythoness.
-- Webster dismisses the word very briefly by saying that it was the name of
one who delivered the oracles at the Temple of Delphi, and "any female
supposed to have the spirit of divination in her -- a witch," which is
neither complimentary, exact, nor just. A Pythia, upon the authority of
Plutarch, Iamblichus, Lamprias, and others, was a nervous sensitive; she was
chosen from among the poorest class, young and pure. Attached to the temple,
within whose precincts she had a room, secluded from every other, and to which
no one but the priest, or seer, had admittance, she had no communications with
the outside world, and her life was more strict and ascetic than that of a
Catholic nun. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a fissure in the ground,
through which arose intoxicating vapors, these subterranean
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exhalations penetrating
her whole system produced the prophetic mania. In this abnormal state she
delivered oracles. She was sometimes called ventriloqua vates,* the
ventriloquist-prophetess.
The ancients placed
the astral soul of man, [[psuche]], or his self-consciousness, in the pit of
the stomach. The Brahmans shared this belief with Plato and other philosophers.
Thus we find in the fourth verse of the second Nabhanedishtha Hymn it is said:
"Hear, O sons of the gods (spirits) one who speaks through his navel
(nabha) for he hails you in your dwellings!"
Many of the
Sanscrit scholars agree that this belief is one of the most ancient among the
Hindus. The modern fakirs, as well as the ancient gymnosophists, unite
themselves with their atman and the Deity by remaining motionless in
contemplation and concentrating their whole thought on their navel. As in
modern somnambulic phenomena, the navel was regarded as "the circle of the
sun," the seat of internal divine light.** Is the fact of a number of
modern somnambulists being enabled to read letters, hear, smell, and see,
through that part of their body to be regarded again as a simple
"coincidence," or shall we admit at last that the old sages knew
something more of physiological and psychological mysteries than our modern
Academicians? In modern Persia, when a "magician" (often simply a
mesmerizer) is consulted upon occasions of theft and other puzzling
occurrences, he makes his manipulations over the pit of his stomach, and so
brings himself into a state of clairvoyance. Among the modern Parsis, remarks a
translator of the Rig-vedas, there exists a belief up to the present day that
their adepts have a flame in their navel, which enlightens to them all darkness
and discloses the spiritual world, as well as all things unseen, or at a
distance. They call it the lamp of the Deshtur, or high priest; the light of
the Dikshita (the initiate), and otherwise designate it by many other names.
SAMOTHRACES. -- A
designation of the Fane-gods worshipped at Samothracia in the Mysteries. They
are considered as identical with the Kabeiri, Dioskuri, and Korybantes. Their
names were mystical -- denoting Pluto, Ceres or Proserpina, Bacchus, and
AEsculapius or Hermes.
SHAMANS, or
Samaneans. -- An order of Buddhists among the Tartars, especially those of
Siberia. They are possibly akin to the philosophers
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Pantheon:
"Myths," p. 31; also Aristophanes in "Voestas," i., reg.
28.
** The oracle of
Apollo was at Delphos, the city of the [[delphus]], womb or abdomen; the place
of the temple was denominated the omphalos or navel. The symbols are female and
lunary; reminding us that the Arcadians were called Proseleni, pre-Hellenic or
more ancient than the period when Ionian and Olympian lunar worship was
introduced.
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anciently known as
Brachmanes, mistaken sometimes for Brahmans.* They are all magicians, or rather
sensitives or mediums artificially developed. At present those who act as
priests among the Tartars are generally very ignorant, and far below the fakirs
in knowledge and education. Both men and women may be Shamans.
SOMA. -- This Hindu
sacred beverage answers to the Greek ambrosia or nectar, drunk by the gods of
Olympus. A cup of kykeon was also quaffed by the mysta at the Eleusinian
initiation. He who drinks it easily reaches Bradhna, or place of splendor
(Heaven). The soma-drink known to Europeans is not the genuine beverage, but
its substitute; for the initiated priests alone can taste of the real soma; and
even kings and rajas, when sacrificing, receive the substitute. Haug shows by his
own confession, in his Aytareya Brahmanan, that it was not the Soma that he
tasted and found nasty, but the juice from the roots of the Nyagradha, a plant
or bush which grows on the hills of Poona. We were positively informed that the
majority of the sacrificial priests of the Dekkan have lost the secret of the
true soma. It can be found neither in the ritual books nor through oral
information. The true followers of the primitive Vedic religion are very few;
these are the alleged descendants from the Rishis, the real Agnihotris, the
initiates of the great Mysteries. The soma-drink is also commemorated in the
Hindu Pantheon, for it is called the King-Soma. He who drinks of it is made to
participate in the heavenly king, because he becomes filled with it, as the
Christian apostles and their converts became filled with the Holy Ghost, and
purified of their sins. The soma makes a new man of the initiate; he is reborn
and transformed, and his spiritual nature overcomes the physical; it gives the
divine power of inspiration, and develops the clairvoyant faculty to the
utmost. According to the exoteric explanation the soma is a plant, but, at the
same time it is an angel. It forcibly connects the inner, highest
"spirit" of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical soma,
with his "irrational soul," or astral body, and thus united by the
power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature, and
participate during life in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven.
Thus the Hindu soma
is mystically, and in all respects the same that the Eucharistic supper is to
the Christian. The idea is similar. By
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* From the accounts
of Strabo and Megasthenes, who visited Palibothras, it would seem that the
persons termed by him Samanean, or Brachmane priests, were simply Buddhists.
"The singularly subtile replies of the Samanean or Brahman philosophers,
in their interview with the conqueror, will be found to contain the spirit of
the Buddhist doctrine," remarks Upham. (See the "History and Doctrine
of Buddhism"; and Hale's "Chronology," vol. iii, p. 238.)
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means of the
sacrificial prayers -- the mantras -- this liquor is supposed to be transformed
on the spot into real soma -- or the angel, and even into Brahma himself. Some
missionaries have expressed themselves very indignantly about this ceremony,
the more so, that, generally speaking, the Brahmans use a kind of spirituous
liquor as a substitute. But do the Christians believe less fervently in the
transubstantiation of the communion-wine into the blood of Christ, because this
wine happens to be more or less spirituous? Is not the idea of the symbol
attached to it the same? But the missionaries say that this hour of
soma-drinking is the golden hour of Satan, who lurks at the bottom of the Hindu
sacrificial cup.*
SPIRIT. -- The lack
of any mutual agreement between writers in the use of this word has resulted in
dire confusion. It is commonly made synonymous with soul; and the
lexicographers countenance the usage. This is the natural result of our
ignorance of the other word, and repudiation of the classification adopted by
the ancients. Elsewhere we attempt to make clear the distinction between the
terms "spirit" and "soul." There are no more important
passages in this work. Meanwhile, we will only add that "spirit" is
the [[nous]] of Plato, the immortal, immaterial, and purely divine principle in
man -- the crown of the human Triad; whereas,
SOUL is the
[[psuche]], or the nephesh of the Bible; the vital principle, or the breath of
life, which every animal, down to the infusoria, shares with man. In the
translated Bible it stands indifferently for life, blood, and soul. "Let
us not kill his nephesh," says the original text: "let us not kill
him," translate the Christians (Genesis xxxvii. 21), and so on.
THEOSOPHISTS. -- In
the mediaeval ages it was the name by which were known the disciples of
Paracelsus of the sixteenth century, the so-called fire-philosophers or
Philosophi per ignem. As well as the Platonists they regarded the soul
[[psuche]] and the divine spirit, nous, as a particle of the great Archos -- a
fire taken from the eternal ocean of light.
The Theosophical
Society, to which these volumes are dedicated by the author as a mark of
affectionate regard, was organized at New York in 1875. The object of its
founders was to experiment practically in the occult powers of Nature, and to
collect and disseminate among Christians information about the Oriental
religious philosophies. Later, it has determined to spread among the "poor
benighted heathen" such evi-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In their turn,
the heathen may well ask the missionaries what sort of a spirit lurks at the
bottom of the sacrificial beer-bottle. That evangelical New York journal, the
"Independent," says: "A late English traveller found a
simple-minded Baptist mission church, in far-off Burmah, using for the
communion service, and we doubt not with God's blessing, Bass's pale ale
instead of wine." Circumstances alter cases, it seems!
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dences as to the
practical results of Christianity as will at least give both sides of the story
to the communities among which missionaries are at work. With this view it has
established relations with associations and individuals throughout the East, to
whom it furnishes authenticated reports of the ecclesiastical crimes and
misdemeanors, schisms and heresies, controversies and litigations, doctrinal
differences and biblical criticisms and revisions, with which the press of
Christian Europe and America constantly teems. Christendom has been long and
minutely informed of the degradation and brutishness into which Buddhism,
Brahmanism, and Confucianism have plunged their deluded votaries, and many
millions have been lavished upon foreign missions under such false
representations. The Theosophical Society, seeing daily exemplifications of
this very state of things as the sequence of Christian teaching and example --
the latter especially -- thought it simple justice to make the facts known in
Palestine, India, Ceylon, Cashmere, Tartary, Thibet, China, and Japan, in all
which countries it has influential correspondents. It may also in time have
much to say about the conduct of the missionaries to those who contribute to
their support.
THEURGIST. -- From
[[theos]], god, and [[ergon]], work. The first school of practical theurgy in
the Christian period was founded by Iamblichus among the Alexandrian
Platonists; but the priests attached to the temples of Egypt, Assyria, and
Babylonia, and who took an active part in the evocations of the gods during the
Sacred Mysteries, were known by this name from the earliest archaic period. The
purpose of it was to make spirits visible to the eyes of mortals. A theurgist
was one expert in the esoteric learning of the Sanctuaries of all the great
countries. The Neoplatonists of the school of Iamblichus were called
theurgists, for they performed the so-called "ceremonial magic," and
evoked the "spirits" of the departed heroes, "gods," and
Daimonia ([[daimonia]], divine, spiritual entities). In the rare cases when the
presence of a tangible and visible spirit was required, the theurgist had to
furnish the weird apparition with a portion of his own flesh and blood -- he
had to perform the theopoea, or the "creation of gods," by a
mysterious process well known to the modern fakirs and initiated Brahmans of
India. This is what is said in the Book of Evocations of the pagodas. It shows
the perfect identity of rites and ceremonial between the oldest Brahmanic
theurgy and that of the Alexandrian Platonists:
"The Brahman
Grihasta (the evocator) must be in a state of complete purity before he
ventures to call forth the Pitris."
After having
prepared a lamp, some sandal, incense, etc., and having traced the magic
circles taught to him by the superior guru, in order to keep away bad spirits,
he "ceases to breathe, and calls the fire to his
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help to disperse
his body." He pronounces a certain number of times the sacred word, and
"his soul escapes from his body, and his body disappears, and the soul of
the evoked spirit descends into the double body and animates it." Then
"His (Grihasta's) soul reenters into his body, whose subtile particles
have again been aggregating, after having formed of their emanations an aerial
body to the spirit he evoked."
And now, that he
has formed for the Pitri a body with the particles the most essential and pure
of his own, the grihasta is allowed, after the ceremonial sacrifice is over, to
"converse with the souls of the ancestors and the Pitris, and offer them
questions on the mysteries of the Being and the transformations of the
imperishable."
"Then after
having blown out his lamp he must light it again, and set at liberty the bad
spirits shut out from the place by the magical circles, and leave the sanctuary
of the Pitris."*
The school of
Iamblichus was distinct from that of Plotinus and Porphyry, who were strongly
against ceremonial magic and practical theurgy as dangerous, though these two
eminent men firmly believed in both. "The theurgic or benevolent magic,
the Goetic, or dark and evil necromancy, were alike in preeminent repute during
the first century of the Christian era."** But never have any of the
highly moral and pious philosophers, whose fame has descended to us spotless of
any evil deed, practiced any other kind of magic than the theurgic, or
benevolent, as Bulwer-Lytton terms it. "Whoever is acquainted with the
nature of divinely luminous appearances [[phasmata]] knows also on what account
it is requisite to abstain from all birds (animal food), and especially for him
who hastens to be liberated from terrestrial concerns and to be established
with the celestial gods," says Porphyry.***
Though he refused
to practice theurgy himself, Porphyry, in his Life of Plotinus, mentions a
priest of Egypt, who, "at the request of a certain friend of Plotinus
(which friend was perhaps Porphyry himself, remarks T. Taylor), exhibited to
Plotinus, in the temple of Isis at Rome, the familiar daimon, or, in modern
language, the guardian angel of that philosopher."****
The popular,
prevailing idea was that the theurgists, as well as the magicians, worked
wonders, such as evoking the souls or shadows of the heroes and gods, and doing
other thaumaturgic works by supernatural powers.
YAJNA. -- "The
Yajna," say the Brahmans, exists from eternity, for
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Book of
Brahmanical Evocations," part iii.
** Bulwer-Lytton:
"Last Days of Pompeii," p. 147.
*** "Select
Works," p. 159.
**** Ibid., p. 92.
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it proceeded forth
from the Supreme One, the Brahma-Prajapati, in whom it lay dormant from
"no beginning." It is the key to the TRAIVIDYA, the thrice sacred
science contained in the Rig verses, which teaches the Yagus or sacrificial
mysteries. "The Yajna" exists as an invisible thing at all times; it
is like the latent power of electricity in an electrifying machine, requiring
only the operation of a suitable apparatus in order to be elicited. It is
supposed to extend from the Ahavaniya or sacrificial fire to the heavens,
forming a bridge or ladder by means of which the sacrificer can communicate
with the world of gods and spirits, and even ascend when alive to their
abodes.*
This Yajna is again
one of the forms of the Akasa, and the mystic word calling it into existence
and pronounced mentally by the initiated Priest is the Lost Word receiving
impulse through WILL-POWER.
To complete the
list, we will now add that in the course of the following chapters, whenever we
use the term Archaic, we mean before the time of Pythagoras; when Ancient,
before the time of Mahomet; and when Mediaeval, the period between Mahomet and
Martin Luther. It will only be necessary to infringe the rule when from time to
time we may have to speak of nations of a pre-Pythagorean antiquity, and will
adopt the common custom of calling them "ancient."
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Before closing this
initial chapter, we venture to say a few words in explanation of the plan of
this work. Its object is not to force upon the public the personal views or
theories of its author; nor has it the pretensions of a scientific work, which
aims at creating a revolution in some department of thought. It is rather a
brief summary of the religions, philosophies, and universal traditions of human
kind, and the exegesis of the same, in the spirit of those secret doctrines, of
which none -- thanks to prejudice and bigotry -- have reached Christendom in so
unmutilated a form, as to secure it a fair judgment. Since the days of the
unlucky mediaeval philosophers, the last to write upon these secret doctrines of
which they were the depositaries, few men have dared to brave persecution and
prejudice by placing their knowledge upon record. And these few have never, as
a rule, written for the public, but only for those of their own and succeeding
times who possessed the key to their jargon. The multitude, not understanding
them or their doctrines, have been accustomed to regard them en masse as either
charlatans or dreamers. Hence the unmerited contempt into which the study of
the noblest of sciences -- that of the spiritual man -- has gradually fallen.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Aitareya
Brahmanan," Introduction.
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In undertaking to
inquire into the assumed infallibility of Modern Science and Theology, the
author has been forced, even at the risk of being thought discursive, to make
constant comparison of the ideas, achievements, and pretensions of their
representatives, with those of the ancient philosophers and religious teachers.
Things the most widely separated as to time, have thus been brought into
immediate juxtaposition, for only thus could the priority and parentage of
discoveries and dogmas be determined. In discussing the merits of our
scientific contemporaries, their own confessions of failure in experimental
research, of baffling mysteries, of missing links in their chains of theory, of
inability to comprehend natural phenomena, of ignorance of the laws of the
causal world, have furnished the basis for the present study. Especially (since
Psychology has been so much neglected, and the East is so far away that few of
our investigators will ever get there to study that science where alone it is
understood), we will review the speculations and policy of noted authorities in
connection with those modern psychological phenomena which began at Rochester
and have now overspread the world. We wish to show how inevitable were their
innumerable failures, and how they must continue until these pretended
authorities of the West go to the Brahmans and Lamaists of the far Orient, and
respectfully ask them to impart the alphabet of true science. We have laid no charge
against scientists that is not supported by their own published admissions, and
if our citations from the records of antiquity rob some of what they have
hitherto viewed as well-earned laurels, the fault is not ours but Truth's. No
man worthy of the name of philosopher would care to wear honors that rightfully
belong to another.
Deeply sensible of
the Titanic struggle that is now in progress between materialism and the
spiritual aspirations of mankind, our constant endeavor has been to gather into
our several chapters, like weapons into armories, every fact and argument that
can be used to aid the latter in defeating the former. Sickly and deformed
child as it now is, the materialism of To-Day is born of the brutal Yesterday.
Unless its growth is arrested, it may become our master. It is the bastard
progeny of the French Revolution and its reaction against ages of religious
bigotry and repression. To prevent the crushing of these spiritual aspirations,
the blighting of these hopes, and the deadening of that intuition which teaches
us of a God and a hereafter, we must show our false theologies in their naked
deformity, and distinguish between divine religion and human dogmas. Our voice
is raised for spiritual freedom, and our plea made for enfranchisement from all
tyranny, whether of SCIENCE or THEOLOGY.
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THE VEIL OF ISIS.
---------------------
PART ONE. --
SCIENCE.
---------------------
CHAPTER I.
"Ego sum qui
sum." -- An axiom of Hermetic Philosophy.
"We commenced
research where modern conjecture closes its faithless wings. And with us, those
were the common elements of science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild
chimeras, or despair of as unfathomable mysteries." -- BULWER'S
"ZANONI."
THERE exists
somewhere in this wide world an old Book -- so very old that our modern
antiquarians might ponder over its pages an indefinite time, and still not
quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon which it is written. It is the
only original copy now in existence. The most ancient Hebrew document on occult
learning -- the Siphra Dzeniouta -- was compiled from it, and that at a time
when the former was already considered in the light of a literary relic. One of
its illustrations represents the Divine Essence emanating from ADAM* like a
luminous arc proceeding to form a circle; and then, having attained the highest
point of its circumference, the ineffable Glory bends back again, and returns
to earth, bringing a higher type of humanity in its vortex. As it approaches
nearer and nearer to our planet, the Emanation becomes more and more shadowy,
until upon touching the ground it is as black as night.
A conviction,
founded upon seventy thousand years of experience,** as they allege, has been
entertained by hermetic philosophers of all periods that matter has in time
become, through sin, more gross and dense than it was at man's first formation;
that, at the beginning, the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The name is used
in the sense of the Greek word [[anthropos]].
** The traditions
of the Oriental Kabalists claim their science to be older than that. Modern
scientists may doubt and reject the assertion. They cannot prove it false.
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human body was of a
half-ethereal nature; and that, before the fall, mankind communed freely with
the now unseen universes. But since that time matter has become the formidable
barrier between us and the world of spirits. The oldest esoteric traditions
also teach that, before the mystic Adam, many races of human beings lived and
died out, each giving place in its turn to another. Were these precedent types
more perfect? Did any of them belong to the winged race of men mentioned by Plato
in Phaedrus? It is the special province of science to solve the problem. The
caves of France and the relics of the stone age afford a point at which to
begin.
As the cycle
proceeded, man's eyes were more and more opened, until he came to know
"good and evil" as well as the Elohim themselves. Having reached its
summit, the cycle began to go downward. When the arc attained a certain point
which brought it parallel with the fixed line of our terrestrial plane, the man
was furnished by nature with "coats of skin," and the Lord God
"clothed them."
This same belief in
the pre-existence of a far more spiritual race than the one to which we now
belong can be traced back to the earliest traditions of nearly every people. In
the ancient Quiche manuscript, published by Brasseur de Bourbourg -- the Popol
Vuh -- the first men are mentioned as a race that could reason and speak, whose
sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once. According to Philo
Judaeus, the air is filled with an invisible host of spirits, some of whom are
free from evil and immortal, and others are pernicious and mortal. "From
the sons of EL we are descended, and sons of EL must we become again." And
the unequivocal statement of the anonymous Gnostic who wrote The Gospel according
to John, that "as many as received Him," i.e., who followed
practically the esoteric doctrine of Jesus, would "become the sons of
God," points to the same belief. (i., 12.) "Know ye not, ye are
gods?" exclaimed the Master. Plato describes admirably in Phaedrus the state
in which man once was, and what he will become again: before, and after the
"loss of his wings"; when "he lived among the gods, a god
himself in the airy world." From the remotest periods religious
philosophies taught that the whole universe was filled with divine and
spiritual beings of divers races. From one of these evolved, in the course of
time, ADAM, the primitive man.
The Kalmucks and
some tribes of Siberia also describe in their legends earlier creations than
our present race. These beings, they say, were possessed of almost boundless
knowledge, and in their audacity even threatened rebellion against the Great
Chief Spirit. To punish their presumption and humble them, he imprisoned them
in bodies, and
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so shut in their
senses. From these they can escape but through long repentance,
self-purification, and development. Their Shamans, they think, occasionally
enjoy the divine powers originally possessed by all human beings.
The Astor Library
of New York has recently been enriched by a facsimile of an Egyptian Medical
Treatise, written in the sixteenth century B.C. (or, more precisely, 1552
B.C.), which, according to the commonly received chronology, is the time when
Moses was just twenty-one years of age. The original is written upon the inner
bark of Cyperus papyrus, and has been pronounced by Professor Schenk, of
Leipsig, not only genuine, but also the most perfect ever seen. It consists of
a single sheet of yellow-brown papyrus of finest quality, three-tenths of a
metre wide, more than twenty metres long, and forming one roll divided into one
hundred and ten pages, all carefully numbered. It was purchased in Egypt, in
1872-3, by the archaeologist Ebers, of "a well-to-do Arab from
Luxor." The New York Tribune, commenting upon the circumstance, says: The
papyrus "bears internal evidence of being one of the six Hermetic Books on
Medicine, named by Clement of Alexandria."
The editor further
says: "At the time of Iamblichus, A.D. 363, the priests of Egypt showed
forty-two books which they attributed to Hermes (Thuti). Of these, according to
that author, thirty-six contained the history of all human knowledge; the last
six treated of anatomy, of pathology, of affections of the eye, instruments of
surgery, and of medicines.* The Papyrus Ebers is indisputably one of these
ancient Hermetic works."
If so clear a ray
of light has been thrown upon ancient Egyptian science, by the accidental (?)
encounter of the German archaeologist with one "well-to-do Arab" from
Luxor, how can we know what sunshine may be let in upon the dark crypts of
history by an equally accidental meeting between some other prosperous Egyptian
and another enterprising student of antiquity!
The discoveries of
modern science do not disagree with the oldest traditions which claim an
incredible antiquity for our race. Within the last few years geology, which
previously had only conceded that man could be traced as far back as the
tertiary period, has found unanswerable proofs that human existence antedates
the last glaciation of Europe -- over 250,000 years! A hard nut, this, for
Patristic Theology to crack; but an accepted fact with the ancient
philosophers.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Clement of
Alexandria asserted that in his day the Egyptian priests possessed forty-two
Canonical Books.
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Moreover, fossil
implements have been exhumed together with human remains, which show that man
hunted in those remote times, and knew how to build a fire. But the forward
step has not yet been taken in this search for the origin of the race; science
comes to a dead stop, and waits for future proofs. Unfortunately, anthropology
and psychology possess no Cuvier; neither geologists nor archaeologists are
able to construct, from the fragmentary bits hitherto discovered, the perfect
skeleton of the triple man -- physical, intellectual, and spiritual. Because
the fossil implements of man are found to become more rough and uncouth as
geology penetrates deeper into the bowels of the earth, it seems a proof to
science that the closer we come to the origin of man, the more savage and
brute-like he must be. Strange logic! Does the finding of the remains in the
cave of Devon prove that there were no contemporary races then who were highly
civilized? When the present population of the earth have disappeared, and some
archaeologist belonging to the "coming race" of the distant future
shall excavate the domestic implements of one of our Indian or Andaman Island
tribes, will he be justified in concluding that mankind in the nineteenth
century was "just emerging from the Stone Age"?
It has lately been
the fashion to speak of "the untenable conceptions of an uncultivated
past." As though it were possible to hide behind an epigram the
intellectual quarries out of which the reputations of so many modern
philosophers have been carved! Just as Tyndall is ever ready to disparage
ancient philosophers -- for a dressing-up of whose ideas more than one
distinguished scientist has derived honor and credit -- so the geologists seem
more and more inclined to take for granted that all of the archaic races were
contemporaneously in a state of dense barbarism. But not all of our best
authorities agree in this opinion. Some of the most eminent maintain exactly
the reverse. Max Muller, for instance, says: "Many things are still
unintelligible to us, and the hieroglyphic language of antiquity records but
half of the mind's unconscious intentions. Yet more and more the image of man,
in whatever clime we meet him, rises before us, noble and pure from the very
beginning; even his errors we learn to understand, even his dreams we begin to
interpret. As far as we can trace back the footsteps of man, even on the lowest
strata of history, we see the divine gift of a sound and sober intellect
belonging to him from the very first, and the idea of a humanity emerging
slowly from the depths of an animal brutality can never be maintained
again."*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Chips from
a German Work-shop," vol. ii., p. 7. "Comparative Mythology."
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SCIENCE.
As it is claimed to
be unphilosophical to inquire into first causes, scientists now occupy
themselves with considering their physical effects. The field of scientific
investigation is therefore bounded by physical nature. When once its limits are
reached, enquiry must stop, and their work be recommenced. With all due respect
to our learned men, they are like the squirrel upon its revolving wheel, for
they are doomed to turn their "matter" over and over again. Science
is a mighty potency, and it is not for us pigmies to question her. But the
"scientists" are not themselves science embodied any more than the
men of our planet are the planet itself. We have neither the right to demand,
nor power to compel our "modern-day philosopher" to accept without
challenge a geographical description of the dark side of the moon. But, if in
some lunar cataclysm one of her inhabitants should be hurled thence into the
attraction of our atmosphere, and land, safe and sound, at Dr. Carpenter's
door, he would be indictable as recreant to professional duty if he should fail
to set the physical problem at rest.
For a man of
science to refuse an opportunity to investigate any new phenomenon, whether it
comes to him in the shape of a man from the moon, or a ghost from the Eddy
homestead, is alike reprehensible.
Whether arrived at
by the method of Aristotle, or that of Plato, we need not stop to inquire; but
it is a fact that both the inner and outer natures of man are claimed to have
been thoroughly understood by the ancient andrologists. Notwithstanding the
superficial hypotheses of geologists, we are beginning to have almost daily
proofs in corroboration of the assertions of those philosophers.
They divided the
interminable periods of human existence on this planet into cycles, during each
of which mankind gradually reached the culminating point of highest
civilization and gradually relapsed into abject barbarism. To what eminence the
race in its progress had several times arrived may be feebly surmised by the
wonderful monuments of old, still visible, and the descriptions given by
Herodotus of other marvels of which no traces now remain. Even in his days the
gigantic structures of many pyramids and world-famous temples were but masses
of ruins. Scattered by the unrelenting hand of time, they are described by the
Father of History as "these venerable witnesses of the long bygone glory
of departed ancestors." He "shrinks from speaking of divine
things," and gives to posterity but an imperfect description from hearsay
of some marvellous subterranean chambers of the Labyrinth, where lay -- and now
lie -- concealed, the sacred remains of the King-Initiates.
We can judge,
moreover, of the lofty civilization reached in some
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periods of
antiquity by the historical descriptions of the ages of the Ptolemies, yet in
that epoch the arts and sciences were considered to be degenerating, and the
secret of a number of the former had been already lost. In the recent
excavations of Mariette-Bey, at the foot of the Pyramids, statues of wood and
other relics have been exhumed, which show that long before the period of the
first dynasties the Egyptians had attained to a refinement and perfection which
is calculated to excite the wonder of even the most ardent admirers of Grecian
art. Bayard Taylor describes these statues in one of his lectures, and tells us
that the beauty of the heads, ornamented with eyes of precious stones and
copper eyelids, is unsurpassed. Far below the stratum of sand in which lay the
remains gathered into the collections of Lepsius, Abbott, and the British
Museum, were found buried the tangible proofs of the hermetic doctrine of
cycles which has been already explained.
Dr. Schliemann, the
enthusiastic Hellenist, has recently found, in his excavations in the Troad,
abundant evidences of the same gradual change from barbarism to civilization,
and from civilization to barbarism again. Why then should we feel so reluctant
to admit the possibility that, if the antediluvians were so much better versed
than ourselves in certain sciences as to have been perfectly acquainted with
important arts, which we now term lost, they might have equally excelled in
psychological knowledge? Such a hypothesis must be considered as reasonable as
any other until some countervailing evidence shall be discovered to destroy it.
Every true savant admits
that in many respects human knowledge is yet in its infancy. Can it be that our
cycle began in ages comparatively recent? These cycles, according to the
Chaldean philosophy, do not embrace all mankind at one and the same time.
Professor Draper partially corroborates this view by saying that the periods
into which geology has "found it convenient to divide the progress of man
in civilization are not abrupt epochs which hold good simultaneously for the
whole human race"; giving as an instance the "wandering Indians of
America," who "are only at the present moment emerging from the stone
age." Thus more than once scientific men have unwittingly confirmed the
testimony of the ancients.
Any Kabalist well
acquainted with the Pythagorean system of numerals and geometry can demonstrate
that the metaphysical views of Plato were based upon the strictest mathematical
principles. "True mathematics," says the Magicon, "is something
with which all higher sciences are connected; common mathematics is but a
deceitful phantasmagoria, whose much-praised infallibility only arises from
this -- that
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materials,
conditions, and references are made its foundation." Scientists who
believe they have adopted the Aristotelian method only because they creep when
they do not run from demonstrated particulars to universals, glorify this
method of inductive philosophy, and reject that of Plato, which they treat as
unsubstantial. Professor Draper laments that such speculative mystics as
Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus should have taken the place "of the severe
geometers of the old museum."* He forgets that geometry, of all sciences
the only one which proceeds from universals to particulars, was precisely the
method employed by Plato in his philosophy. As long as exact science confines
its observations to physical conditions and proceeds Aristotle-like, it
certainly cannot fail. But notwithstanding that the world of matter is
boundless for us, it still is finite; and thus materialism will turn forever in
this vitiated circle, unable to soar higher than the circumference will permit.
The cosmological theory of numerals which Pythagoras learned from the Egyptian
hierophants, is alone able to reconcile the two units, matter and spirit, and
cause each to demonstrate the other mathematically.
The sacred numbers
of the universe in their esoteric combination solve the great problem and
explain the theory of radiation and the cycle of the emanations. The lower
orders before they develop into higher ones must emanate from the higher
spiritual ones, and when arrived at the turning-point, be reabsorbed again into
the infinite.
Physiology, like
everything else in this world of constant evolution, is subject to the cyclic
revolution. As it now seems to be hardly emerging from the shadows of the lower
arc, so it may be one day proved to have been at the highest point of the
circumference of the circle far earlier than the days of Pythagoras.
Mochus, the
Sidonian, the physiologist and teacher of the science of anatomy, flourished
long before the Sage of Samos; and the latter received the sacred instructions
from his disciples and descendants. Pythagoras, the pure philosopher, the
deeply-versed in the profounder phenomena of nature, the noble inheritor of the
ancient lore, whose great aim was to free the soul from the fetters of sense
and force it to realize its powers, must live eternally in human memory.
The impenetrable
veil of arcane secrecy was thrown over the sciences taught in the sanctuary.
This is the cause of the modern depreciating of the ancient philosophies. Even
Plato and Philo Judaeus have been accused by many a commentator of absurd
inconsistencies, whereas the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict
between Religion and Science," ch. i.
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design which
underlies the maze of metaphysical contradictions so perplexing to the reader
of the Timaeus, is but too evident. But has Plato ever been read
understandingly by one of the expounders of the classics? This is a question
warranted by the criticisms to be found in such authors as Stalbaum,
Schleirmacher, Ficinus (Latin translation), Heindorf, Sydenham, Buttmann,
Taylor and Burges, to say nothing of lesser authorities. The covert allusions
of the Greek philosopher to esoteric things have manifestly baffled these
commentators to the last degree. They not only with unblushing coolness suggest
as to certain difficult passages that another phraseology was evidently
intended, but they audaciously make the changes! The Orphic line:
"Of the song,
the order of the sixth race close" --
which can only be
interpreted as a reference to the sixth race evolved in the consecutive
evolution of the spheres,* Burges says: ". . . was evidently taken from a
cosmogony where man was feigned to be created the last."** -- Ought not
one who undertakes to edit another's works at least understand what his author
means?
Indeed, the ancient
philosophers seem to be generally held, even by the least prejudiced of our
modern critics, to have lacked that profundity and thorough knowledge in the
exact sciences of which our century is so boastful. It is even questioned
whether they understood that basic scientific principle: ex nihilo nihil fit.
If they suspected the indestructibility of matter at all, -- say these
commentators -- it was not in consequence of a firmly-established formula but
only through an intuitional reasoning and by analogy.
We hold to the
contrary opinion. The speculations of these philosophers upon matter were open
to public criticism: but their teachings in regard to spiritual things were
profoundly esoteric. Being thus sworn to secrecy and religious silence upon
abstruse subjects involving the relations of spirit and matter, they rivalled
each other in their ingenious methods for concealing their real opinions.
The doctrine of
Metempsychosis has been abundantly ridiculed by men of science and rejected by
theologians, yet if it had been properly understood in its application to the
indestructibility of matter and the immortality of spirit, it would have been
perceived that it is a sublime conception. Should we not first regard the
subject from the stand-point
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In another place,
we explain with some minuteness the Hermetic philosophy of the evolution of the
spheres and their several races.
** J. Burges:
"The Works of Plato," p. 207, note.
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HINDU.
of the ancients
before venturing to disparage its teachers? The solution of the great problem
of eternity belongs neither to religious superstition nor to gross materialism.
The harmony and mathematical equiformity of the double evolution -- spiritual
and physical -- are elucidated only in the universal numerals of Pythagoras,
who built his system entirely upon the so-called "metrical speech" of
the Hindu Vedas. It is but lately that one of the most zealous Sanskrit
scholars, Martin Haug, undertook the translation of the Aitareya Brahmana of
the Rig-Veda. It had been till that time entirely unknown; these explanations
indicate beyond dispute the identity of the Pythagorean and Brahmanical
systems. In both, the esoteric significance is derived from the number: in the
former, from the mystic relation of every number to everything intelligible to
the human mind; in the latter, from the number of syllables of which each verse
in the Mantras consists. Plato, the ardent disciple of Pythagoras, realized it
so fully as to maintain that the Dodecahedron was the geometrical figure
employed by the Demiurgus in constructing the universe. Some of these figures
had a peculiarly solemn significance. For instance four, of which the
Dodecahedron is the trine, was held sacred by the Pythagoreans. It is the
perfect square, and neither of the bounding lines exceeds the other in length,
by a single point. It is the emblem of moral justice and divine equity
geometrically expressed. All the powers and great symphonies of physical and
spiritual nature lie inscribed within the perfect square; and the ineffable
name of Him, which name otherwise, would remain unutterable, was replaced by
this sacred number 4 the most binding and solemn oath with the ancient mystics
-- the Tetractys.
If the Pythagorean
metempsychosis should be thoroughly explained and compared with the modern
theory of evolution, it would be found to supply every "missing link"
in the chain of the latter. But who of our scientists would consent to lose his
precious time over the vagaries of the ancients. Notwithstanding proofs to the
contrary, they not only deny that the nations of the archaic periods, but even
the ancient philosophers had any positive knowledge of the Heliocentric system.
The "Venerable Bedes," the Augustines and Lactantii appear to have
smothered, with their dogmatic ignorance, all faith in the more ancient
theologists of the pre-Christian centuries. But now philology and a closer
acquaintance with Sanskrit literature have partially enabled us to vindicate
them from these unmerited imputations. In the Vedas, for instance, we find
positive proof that so long ago as 2000 B.C., the Hindu sages and scholars must
have been acquainted with the rotundity of our globe and the Heliocentric
system. Hence, Pythagoras and Plato knew well this astronomical truth; for
Pythagoras obtained his knowledge
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in India, or from
men who had been there, and Plato faithfully echoed his teachings. We will quote
two passages from the Aitareya Brahmana:
In the
"Serpent-Mantra,"* the Brahmana declares as follows: that this Mantra
is that one which was seen by the Queen of the Serpents, Sarpa-rajni; because
the earth (iyam) is the Queen of the Serpents, as she is the mother and queen
of all that moves (sarpat). In the beginning she (the earth) was but one head
(round), without hair (bald), i.e., without vegetation. She then perceived this
Mantra which confers upon him who knows it, the power of assuming any form which
he might desire. She "pronounced the Mantra," i.e., sacrificed to the
gods; and, in consequence, immediately obtained a motley appearance; she became
variegated, and able to produce any form she might like, changing one form into
another. This Mantra begins with the words: "Ayam gauh pris'nir
akramit" (x., 189).
The description of
the earth in the shape of a round and bald head, which was soft at first, and
became hard only from being breathed upon by the god Vayu, the lord of the air,
forcibly suggests the idea that the authors of the sacred Vedic books knew the
earth to be round or spherical; moreover, that it had been a gelatinous mass at
first, which gradually cooled off under the influence of the air and time. So
much for their knowledge about our globe's sphericity; and now we will present
the testimony upon which we base our assertion, that the Hindus were perfectly
acquainted with the Heliocentric system, at least 2000 years B.C.
In the same
treatise the Hotar, (priest), is taught how the Shastras should be repeated,
and how the phenomena of sunrise and sunset are to be explained. It says:
"The Agnishtoma is that one (that god) who burns. The sun never sets nor
rises. When people think the sun is setting, it is not so; they are mistaken.
For after having arrived at the end of the day, it produces two opposite
effects, making night to what is below, and day to what is on the other side.
When they (the people) believe it rises in the morning, the sun only does thus:
having reached the end of the night, it makes itself produce two opposite
effects, making day to what is below, and night to what is on the other side.
In fact the sun never sets; nor does it set for him who has such a knowledge. .
. ."**
This sentence is so
conclusive, that even the translator of the Rig-Veda, Dr. Haug, was forced to
remark it. He says this passage contains "the denial of the existence of
sunrise and sunset," and that the author supposes the sun "to remain
always in its high position."***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* From the Sanskrit
text of the Aitareya Brahmanam. Rig-Veda, v., ch. ii., verse 23.
** Aitareya
Brahmanam, book iii., c. v., 44.
*** Ait. Brahm.,
vol. ii., p. 242.
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CALCULATIONS.
In one of the
earliest Nivids, Rishi Kutsa, a Hindu sage of the remotest antiquity, explains
the allegory of the first laws given to the celestial bodies. For doing
"what she ought not to do," Anahit (Anaitis or Nana, the Persian
Venus), representing the earth in the legend, is sentenced to turn round the
sun. The Sattras, or sacrificial sessions* prove undoubtedly that so early as
in the eighteenth or twentieth century B.C., the Hindus had made considerable
progress in astronomical science. The Sattras lasted one year, and were
"nothing but an imitation of the sun's yearly course. They were divided,
says Haug, into two distinct parts, each consisting of six months of thirty
days each; in the midst of both was the Vishuvan (equator or central day),
cutting the whole Sattras into two halves, etc."** This scholar, although
he ascribes the composition of the bulk of the Brahmanas to the period
1400-1200 B.C., is of opinion that the oldest of the hymns may be placed at the
very commencement of Vedic literature, between the years 2400-2000, B.C. He
finds no reason for considering the Vedas less ancient than the sacred books of
the Chinese. As the Shu-King or Book of History, and the sacrificial songs of
the Shi-King, or Book of Odes, have been proved to have an antiquity as early
as 2200, B.C., our philologists may yet be compelled before long to
acknowledge, that in astronomical knowledge, the antediluvian Hindus were their
masters.
At all events,
there are facts which prove that certain astronomical calculations were as
correct with the Chaldeans in the days of Julius Caesar as they are now. When
the calendar was reformed by the Conqueror, the civil year was found to
correspond so little with the seasons, that summer had merged into the autumn
months, and the autumn months into full winter. It was Sosigenes, the Chaldean
astronomer, who restored order into the confusion, by putting back the 25th of
March ninety days, thus making it correspond with the vernal equinox; and it
was Sosigenes, again, who fixed the lengths of the months as they now remain.
In America, it was
found by the Montezuman army, that the calendar of the Aztecs gave an equal
number of days and weeks to each month. The extreme accuracy of their
astronomical calculations was so great, that no error has been discovered in
their reckoning by subsequent verifications; while the Europeans, who landed in
Mexico in 1519, were, by the Julian calendar, nearly eleven days in advance of
the exact time.
It is to the
priceless and accurate translations of the Vedic Books, and to the personal
researches of Dr. Haug, that we are indebted for the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Ait. Brahm., book
iv.
** Septenary
Institutions; "Stone him to Death," p. 20.
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corroboration of
the claims of the hermetic philosophers. That the period of Zarathustra Spitama
(Zoroaster) was of untold antiquity, can be easily proved. The Brahmanas, to
which Haug ascribes four thousand years, describe the religious contest between
the ancient Hindus, who lived in the pre-Vedic period, and the Iranians. The
battles between the Devas and the Asuras -- the former representing the Hindus
and the latter the Iranians -- are described at length in the sacred books. As
the Iranian prophet was the first to raise himself against what he called the
"idolatry" of the Brahmans, and to designate them as the Devas
(devils), how far back must then have been this religious crisis?
"This
contest," answers Dr. Haug, "must have appeared to the authors of the
Brahmanas as old as the feats of King Arthur appear to English writers of the
nineteenth century."
There was not a
philosopher of any notoriety who did not hold to this doctrine of
metempsychosis, as taught by the Brahmans, Buddhists, and later by the
Pythagoreans, in its esoteric sense, whether he expressed it more or less
intelligibly. Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus, Synesius and Chalcidius, all
believed in it; and the Gnostics, who are unhesitatingly proclaimed by history
as a body of the most refined, learned, and enlightened men,* were all
believers in metempsychosis. Socrates entertained opinions identical with those
of Pythagoras; and both, as the penalty of their divine philosophy, were put to
a violent death. The rabble has been the same in all ages. Materialism has
been, and will ever be blind to spiritual truths. These philosophers held, with
the Hindus, that God had infused into matter a portion of his own Divine
Spirit, which animates and moves every particle. They taught that men have two
souls, of separate and quite different natures: the one perishable -- the
Astral Soul, or the inner, fluidic body -- the other incorruptible and immortal
-- the Augoeides, or portion of the Divine Spirit; that the mortal or Astral
Soul perishes at each gradual change at the threshold of every new sphere,
becoming with every transmigration more purified. The astral man, intangible
and invisible as he might be to our mortal, earthly senses, is still constituted
of matter, though sublimated. Aristotle, notwithstanding that for political
reasons of his own he maintained a prudent silence as to certain esoteric
matters, expressed very clearly his opinion on the subject. It was his belief
that human souls are emanations of God, that are finally re-absorbed into
Divinity. Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, taught that there are "two
eternal qualities throughout nature: the one active, or male; the other
passive, or female: that the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Gibbon's
"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
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OF BEASTS.
former is pure,
subtile ether, or Divine Spirit; the other entirely inert in itself till united
with the active principle. That the Divine Spirit acting upon matter produced
fire, water, earth, and air; and that it is the sole efficient principle by
which all nature is moved. The Stoics, like the Hindu sages, believed in the
final absorption. St. Justin believed in the emanation of these souls from
Divinity, and Tatian, the Assyrian, his disciple, declared that "man was
as immortal as God himself."*
That profoundly
significant verse of the Genesis, "And to every beast of the earth, and to
every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, I gave a
living soul, . . . ." should arrest the attention of every Hebrew scholar
capable of reading the Scripture in its original, instead of following the
erroneous translation, in which the phrase reads, "wherein there is
life."**
From the first to
the last chapters, the translators of the Jewish Sacred Books misconstrued this
meaning. They have even changed the spelling of the name of God, as Sir W.
Drummond proves. Thus El, if written correctly, would read Al, for it stands in
the original -- Al, and, according to Higgins, this word means the god Mithra,
the Sun, the preserver and savior. Sir W. Drummond shows that Beth-El means the
House of the Sun in its literal translation, and not of God. "El, in the
composition of these Canaanite names, does not signify Deus, but Sol."***
Thus Theology has disfigured ancient Theosophy, and Science ancient
Philosophy.****
For lack of
comprehension of this great philosophical principle, the methods of modern
science, however exact, must end in nullity. In no one branch can it
demonstrate the origin and ultimate of things. Instead of tracing the effect
from its primal source, its progress is the reverse. Its higher types, as it
teaches, are all evolved from antecedent lower ones. It starts from the bottom
of the cycle, led on step by step in the great labyrinth of nature by a thread
of matter. As soon as this breaks and the clue is lost, it recoils in affright
from the Incomprehensible, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Turner; also
G. Higgins's "Anacalypsis."
** Genesis, i, 30.
*** Sir William
Drummond: "OEdipus Judicus," p. 250.
**** The absolute
necessity for the perpetration of such pious frauds by the early fathers and
later theologians becomes apparent, if we consider that if they had allowed the
word Al to remain as in the original, it would have become but too evident --
except for the initiated -- that the Jehovah of Moses and the sun were
identical. The multitudes, which ignore that the ancient hierophant considered
our visible sun but as an emblem of the central, invisible, and spiritual Sun,
would have accused Moses -- as many of our modern commentators have already
done -- of worshipping the planetary bodies; in short, of actual Zabaism.
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confesses itself
powerless. Not so did Plato and his disciples. With him the lower types were
but the concrete images of the higher abstract ones. The soul, which is
immortal, has an arithmetical, as the body has a geometrical, beginning. This
beginning, as the reflection of the great universal ARCHAEUS, is self-moving,
and from the centre diffuses itself over the whole body of the microcosm.
It was the sad
perception of this truth that made Tyndall confess how powerless is science,
even over the world of matter. "The first marshalling of the atoms, on
which all subsequent action depends, baffles a keener power than that of the
microscope." "Through pure excess of complexity, and long before observation
can have any voice in the matter, the most highly trained intellect, the most
refined and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment from the
contemplation of the problem. We are struck dumb by an astonishment which no
microscope can relieve, doubting not only the power of our instrument, but even
whether we ourselves possess the intellectual elements which will ever enable
us to grapple with the ultimate structural energies of nature."
The fundamental
geometrical figure of the Kabala -- that figure which tradition and the
esoteric doctrines tell us was given by the Deity itself to Moses on Mount
Sinai* -- contains in its grandiose, because simple combination, the key to the
universal problem. This figure contains in itself all the others. For those who
are able to master it, there is no need to exercise imagination. No earthly
microscope can be compared with the keenness of the spiritual perception.
And even for those
who are unacquainted with the GREAT SCIENCE, the description given by a well-trained
child-psychometer of the genesis of a grain, a fragment of crystal, or any
other object -- is worth all the telescopes and microscopes of "exact
science."
There may be more
truth in the adventurous pangenesis of Darwin -- whom Tyndall calls a "soaring
speculator" -- than in the cautious, line-bound hypothesis of the latter;
who, in common with other thinkers of his class, surrounds his imagination
"by the firm frontiers of reason." The theory of a microscopic germ
which contains in itself "a world of minor germs," soars in one sense
at least into the infinite. It oversteps the world of matter, and begins
unconsciously busying itself in the world of spirit.
If we accept
Darwin's theory of the development of species, we find that his starting-point is
placed in front of an open door. We are at liberty with him, to either remain
within, or cross the threshold, beyond
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Exodus, xxv., 40.
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"BEYOND."
which lies the
limitless and the incomprehensible, or rather the Unutterable. If our mortal
language is inadequate to express what our spirit dimly foresees in the great
"Beyond" -- while on this earth -- it must realize it at some point
in the timeless Eternity.
Not so with
Professor Huxley's theory of the "Physical Basis of Life." Regardless
of the formidable majority of "nays" from his German
brother-scientists, he creates a universal protoplasm and appoints its cells to
become henceforth the sacred founts of the principle of all life. By making the
latter identical in living man, "dead mutton," a nettle-sting, and a
lobster; by shutting in, in the molecular cell of the protoplasm, the
life-principle, and by shutting out from it the divine influx which comes with
subsequent evolution, he closes every door against any possible escape. Like an
able tactician he converts his "laws and facts" into sentries whom he
causes to mount guard over every issue. The standard under which he rallies
them is inscribed with the word "necessity"; but hardly is it
unfurled when he mocks the legend and calls it "an empty shadow of my own
imagination."
The fundamental
doctrines of spiritualism, he says, "lie outside the limits of
philosophical inquiry." We will be bold enough to contradict this
assertion, and say that they lie a great deal more within such inquiry than Mr.
Huxley's protoplasm. Insomuch that they present evident and palpable facts of
the existence of spirit, and the protoplasmic cells, once dead, present none
whatever of being the originators or the bases of life, as this one of the few
"foremost thinkers of the day" wants us to believe.**
The ancient
Kabalist rested upon no hypothesis till he could lay its basis upon the firm
rock of recorded experiment.
But the too great
dependence upon physical facts led to a growth of materialism and a decadence
of spirituality and faith. At the time of Aristotle, this was the prevailing
tendency of thought. And though the Delphic commandment was not as yet
completely eliminated from Grecian thought; and some philosophers still held
that "in order to know what man is, we ought to know what man was" --
still materialism had already begun to gnaw at the root of faith. The Mysteries
themselves had degenerated in a very great degree into mere priestly
speculations and religious fraud. Few were the true adepts and initiates, the
heirs and descendants of those who had been dispersed by the conquering swords
of various invaders of Old Egypt.
The time predicted
by the great Hermes in his dialogue with AEscu-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The
Physical Basis of Life." A Lecture by T. H. Huxley.
** Huxley:
"Physical Basis of Life."
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lapius had indeed
come; the time when impious foreigners would accuse Egypt of adoring monsters,
and naught but the letters engraved in stone upon her monuments would survive
-- enigmas incredible to posterity. Their sacred scribes and hierophants were
wanderers upon the face of the earth. Obliged from fear of a profanation of the
sacred mysteries to seek refuge among the Hermetic fraternities -- known later
as the Essenes -- their esoteric knowledge was buried deeper than ever. The
triumphant brand of Aristotle's pupil swept away from his path of conquest
every vestige of a once pure religion, and Aristotle himself, the type and
child of his epoch, though instructed in the secret science of the Egyptians,
knew but little of this crowning result of millenniums of esoteric studies.
As well as those
who lived in the days of the Psammetics, our present-day philosophers
"lift the Veil of Isis" -- for Isis is but the symbol of nature. But,
they see only her physical forms. The soul within escapes their view; and the
Divine Mother has no answer for them. There are anatomists, who, uncovering to
sight no indwelling spirit under the layers of muscles, the network of nerves,
or the cineritious matter, which they lift with the point of the scalpel, assert
that man has no soul. Such are as purblind in sophistry as the student, who,
confining his research to the cold letter of the Kabala, dares say it has no
vivifying spirit. To see the true man who once inhabited the subject which lies
before him, on the dissecting table, the surgeon must use other eyes than those
of his body. So, the glorious truth covered up in the hieratic writings of the
ancient papyri can be revealed only to him who possesses the faculty of
intuition -- which, if we call reason the eye of the mind, may be defined as
the eye of the soul.
Our modern science
acknowledges a Supreme Power, an Invisible Principle, but denies a Supreme
Being, or Personal God.* Logically, the difference between the two might be
questioned; for in this case the Power and the Being are identical. Human
reason can hardly imagine to itself an Intelligent Supreme Power without
associating it with the idea of an Intelligent Being. The masses can never be
expected to have a clear conception of the omnipotence and omnipresence of a
supreme God, without investing with those attributes a gigantic projection of
their own personality. But the kabalists have never looked upon the invisible
EN-SOPH otherwise than as a Power.
So far our modern
positivists have been anticipated by thousands of ages, in their cautious
philosophy. What the hermetic adept claims to demonstrate is, that simple
common sense precludes the possibility that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Prof. J. W.
Draper: "Conflict Between Religion and Science."
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POTENT ADEPTS.
the universe is the
result of mere chance. Such an idea appears to him more absurd than to think
that the problems of Euclid were unconsciously formed by a monkey playing with
geometrical figures.
Very few Christians
understand, if indeed they know anything at all, of the Jewish Theology. The
Talmud is the darkest of enigmas even for most Jews, while those Hebrew
scholars who do comprehend it do not boast of their knowledge. Their kabalistic
books are still less understood by them; for in our days more Christian than
Jewish students are engrossed in the elimination of their great truths. How
much less is definitely known of the Oriental, or the universal Kabala! Its
adepts are few; but these heirs elect of the sages who first discovered
"the starry truths which shone on the great Shemaia of the Chaldean
lore"* have solved the "absolute" and are now resting from their
grand labor. They cannot go beyond that which is given to mortals of this earth
to know; and no one, not even these elect, can trespass beyond the line drawn by
the finger of the Divinity itself. Travellers have met these adepts on the
shores of the sacred Ganges, brushed against them in the silent ruins of
Thebes, and in the mysterious deserted chambers of Luxor. Within the halls upon
whose blue and golden vaults the weird signs attract attention, but whose
secret meaning is never penetrated by the idle gazers, they have been seen but
seldom recognized. Historical memoirs have recorded their presence in the
brilliantly illuminated salons of European aristocracy. They have been encountered
again on the arid and desolate plains of the Great Sahara, as in the caves of
Elephanta. They may be found everywhere, but make themselves known only to
those who have devoted their lives to unselfish study, and are not likely to
turn back.
Maimonides, the
great Jewish theologian and historian, who at one time was almost deified by
his countrymen and afterward treated as a heretic, remarks, that the more
absurd and void of sense the Talmud seems the more sublime is the secret
meaning. This learned man has successfully demonstrated that the Chaldean
Magic, the science of Moses and other learned thaumaturgists was wholly based
on an extensive knowledge of the various and now forgotten branches of natural
science. Thoroughly acquainted with all the resources of the vegetable, animal,
and mineral kingdoms, experts in occult chemistry and physics, psychologists as
well as physiologists, why wonder that the graduates or adepts instructed in
the mysterious sanctuaries of the temples, could perform wonders, which even in
our days of enlightenment would appear super-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Bulwer's
"Zanoni."
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natural? It is an
insult to human nature to brand magic and the occult science with the name of
imposture. To believe that for so many thousands of years, one-half of mankind
practiced deception and fraud on the other half, is equivalent to saying that
the human race was composed only of knaves and incurable idiots. Where is the
country in which magic was not practised? At what age was it wholly forgotten?
In the oldest
documents now in our possession -- the Vedas and the older laws of Manu -- we
find many magical rites practiced and permitted by the Brahmans.* Thibet, Japan
and China teach in the present age that which was taught by the oldest
Chaldeans. The clergy of these respective countries, prove moreover what they
teach, namely: that the practice of moral and physical purity, and of certain
austerities, developes the vital soulpower of self-illumination. Affording to
man the control over his own immortal spirit, it gives him truly magical powers
over the elementary spirits inferior to himself. In the West we find magic of
as high an antiquity as in the East. The Druids of Great Britain practised it
in the silent crypts of their deep caves; and Pliny devotes many a chapter to
the "wisdom"** of the leaders of the Celts. The Semothees, -- the
Druids of the Gauls, expounded the physical as well as the spiritual sciences.
They taught the secrets of the universe, the harmonious progress of the
heavenly bodies, the formation of the earth, and above all -- the immortality
of the soul.*** Into their sacred groves -- natural academies built by the hand
of the Invisible Architect -- the initiates assembled at the still hour of
midnight to learn about what man once was and what he will be.**** They needed
no artificial illumination, nor life-drawing gas, to light up their temples,
for the chaste goddess of night beamed her most silvery rays on their
oak-crowned heads; and their white-robed sacred bards knew how to converse with
the solitary queen of the starry vault.*****
On the dead soil of
the long by-gone past stand their sacred oaks, now dried up and stripped of
their spiritual meaning by the venomous breath of materialism. But for the
student of occult learning, their vegetation is still as verdant and luxuriant,
and as full of deep and sacred truths, as at that hour when the arch-druid
performed his magical cures, and waving the branch of mistletoe, severed with
his golden sickle the green bough from its mother oak-tree. Magic is as old as man.
It is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See the Code
published by Sir William Jones, chap. ix., p. 11.
** Pliny:
"Hist. Nat.," xxx. I: Ib., xvi., 14; xxv., 9, etc.
*** Pomponius
ascribes to them the knowledge of the highest sciences.
**** Caesar, iii.,
14.
***** Pliny, xxx.
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APOLLONIUS.
as impossible to
name the time when it sprang into existence as to indicate on what day the
first man himself was born. Whenever a writer has started with the idea of
connecting its first foundation in a country with some historical character,
further research has proved his views groundless. Odin, the Scandinavian priest
and monarch, was thought by many to have originated the practice of magic some
seventy years B.C. But it was easily demonstrated that the mysterious rites of
the priestesses called Voilers, Valas, were greatly anterior to his age.* Some
modern authors were bent on proving that Zoroaster was the founder of magic,
because he was the founder of the Magian religion. Ammianus Marcellinus,
Arnobius, Pliny, and other ancient historians demonstrated conclusively that he
was but a reformer of Magic as practiced by the Chaldeans and Egyptians.**
The greatest
teachers of divinity agree that nearly all ancient books were written
symbolically and in a language intelligible only to the initiated. The
biographical sketch of Apollonius of Tyana affords an example. As every
Kabalist knows, it embraces the whole of the Hermetic philosophy, being a
counterpart in many respects of the traditions left us of King Solomon. It
reads like a fairy story, but, as in the case of the latter, sometimes facts
and historical events are presented to the world under the colors of a fiction.
The journey to India represents allegorically the trials of a neophyte. His
long discourses with the Brahmans, their sage advice, and the dialogues with
the Corinthian Menippus would, if interpreted, give the esoteric catechism. His
visit to the empire of the wise men, and interview with their king Hiarchas,
the oracle of Amphiaraus, explain symbolically many of the secret dogmas of
Hermes. They would disclose, if understood, some of the most important secrets
of nature. Eliphas Levi points out the great resemblance which exists between
King Hiarchas and the fabulous Hiram, of whom Solomon procured the cedars of
Lebanon and the gold of Ophir. We would like to know whether modern Masons,
even "Grand Lecturers" and the most intelligent craftsmen belonging
to important lodges, understand who the Hiram is whose death they combine
together to avenge?
Putting aside the
purely metaphysical teachings of the Kabala, if one would devote himself but to
physical occultism, to the so-called branch of therapeutics, the results might
benefit some of our modern sciences; such as chemistry and medicine. Says
Professor Draper: "Sometimes, not
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Munter, on the
most ancient religion of the North before the time of Odin. Memoires de la
Societe des Antiquaires de France. Tome ii., p. 230.
** Ammianus
Marcellinus, xxvi., 6.
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without surprise,
we meet with ideas which we flatter ourselves originated in our own
times." This remark, uttered in relation to the scientific writings of the
Saracens, would apply still better to the more secret Treatises of the
ancients. Modern medicine, while it has gained largely in anatomy, physiology,
and pathology, and even in therapeutics, has lost immensely by its narrowness
of spirit, its rigid materialism, its sectarian dogmatism. One school in its
purblindness sternly ignores whatever is developed by other schools; and all
unite in ignoring every grand conception of man or nature, developed by Mesmerism,
or by American experiments on the brain -- every principle which does not
conform to a stolid materialism. It would require a convocation of the hostile
physicians of the several different schools to bring together what is now known
of medical science, and it too often happens that after the best practitioners
have vainly exhausted their art upon a patient, a mesmerist or a "healing
medium" will effect a cure! The explorers of old medical literature, from
the time of Hippocrates to that of Paracelsus and Van Helmont, will find a vast
number of well-attested physiological and psychological facts and of measures
or medicines for healing the sick which modern physicians superciliously refuse
to employ.* Even with respect to surgery, modern practitioners have humbly and
publicly confessed the total impossibility of their approximating to anything
like the marvellous skill displayed in the art of bandaging by ancient
Egyptians. The many hundred yards of ligature enveloping a mummy from its ears
down to every separate toe, were studied by the chief surgical operators in
Paris, and, notwithstanding that the models were before their eyes, they were
unable to accomplish anything like it.
In the Abbott
Egyptological collection, in New York City, may be seen numerous evidences of
the skill of the ancients in various handicrafts; among others the art of
lace-making; and, as it could hardly be expected but that the signs of woman's
vanity should go side by side with
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In some respects
our modern philosophers, who think they make new discoveries can be compared to
"the very clever, learned, and civil gentleman" whom Hippocrates
having met at Samos one day, describes very good-naturedly. "He informed me,"
the Father of Medicine proceeds to say, "that he had lately discovered an
herb never before known in Europe or Asia, and that no disease, however
malignant or chronic, could resist its marvellous properties. Wishing to be
civil in turn, I permitted myself to be persuaded to accompany him to the
conservatory in which he had transplanted the wonderful specific. What I found
was one of the commonest plants in Greece, namely, garlic -- the plant which
above all others has least pretensions to healing virtues." Hippocrates:
"De optima praedicandi ratione item judicii operum magni." I.
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SUN.
those of man's
strength, there are also specimens of artificial hair, and gold ornaments of
different kinds. The New York Tribune, reviewing the contents of the Ebers
Papyrus, says: -- "Verily, there is no new thing under the sun. . . .
Chapters 65, 66, 79, and 89 show that hair invigorators, hair dyes,
pain-killers, and flea-powders were desiderata 3,400 years ago."
How few of our
recent alleged discoveries are in reality new, and how many belong to the
ancients, is again most fairly and eloquently though but in part stated by our
eminent philosophical writer, Professor John W. Draper. His Conflict between
Religion and Science -- a great book with a very bad title -- swarms with such
facts. At page 13, he cites a few of the achievements of ancient philosophers,
which excited the admiration of Greece. In Babylon was a series of Chaldean
astronomical observations, ranging back through nineteen hundred and three
years, which Callisthenes sent to Aristotle. Ptolemy, the Egyptian
king-astronomer possessed a Babylonian record of eclipses going back seven
hundred and forty-seven years before our era. As Prof. Draper truly remarks:
"Long-continued and close observations were necessary before some of these
astronomical results that have reached our times could have been ascertained.
Thus, the Babylonians had fixed the length of a tropical year within
twenty-five seconds of the truth; their estimate of the sidereal year was
barely two minutes in excess. They had detected the precession of the
equinoxes. They knew the causes of eclipses, and, by the aid of their cycle,
called saros, could predict them. Their estimate of the value of that cycle,
which is more than 6,585 days, was within nineteen and a half minutes of the
truth."
"Such facts
furnish incontrovertible proof of the patience and skill with which astronomy
had been cultivated in Mesopotamia, and that, with very inadequate instrumental
means, it had reached no inconsiderable perfection. These old observers had
made a catalogue of the stars, had divided the zodiac into twelve signs; they
had parted the day into twelve hours, the night into twelve. They had, as
Aristotle says, for a long time devoted themselves to observations of
star-occultations by the moon. They had correct views of the structure of the solar
system, and knew the order of emplacement of the planets. They constructed
sundials, clepsydras, astrolabes, gnomons."
Speaking of the
world of eternal truths that lies "within the world of transient delusions
and unrealities," Professor Draper says: "That world is not to be
discovered through the vain traditions that have brought down to us the opinion
of men who lived in the morning of civilization, nor in the dreams of mystics
who thought that they were inspired. It is to be
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discovered by the
investigations of geometry, and by the practical interrogations of
nature."
Precisely. The
issue could not be better stated. This eloquent writer tells us a profound
truth. He does not, however, tell us the whole truth, because he does not know
it. He has not described the nature or extent of the knowledge imparted in the
Mysteries. No subsequent people has been so proficient in geometry as the
builders of the Pyramids and other Titanic monuments, antediluvian and
postdiluvian. On the other hand, none has ever equalled them in the practical
interrogation of nature.
An undeniable proof
of this is the significance of their countless symbols. Every one of these
symbols is an embodied idea, -- combining the conception of the Divine
Invisible with the earthly and visible. The former is derived from the latter
strictly through analogy according to the hermetic formula -- "as below,
so it is above." Their symbols show great knowledge of natural sciences
and a practical study of cosmical power.
As to practical
results to be obtained by "the investigations of geometry," very fortunately
for students who are coming upon the stage of action, we are no longer forced
to content ourselves with mere conjectures. In our own times, an American, Mr.
George H. Felt, of New York, who, if he continues as he has begun, may one day
be recognized as the greatest geometer of the age, has been enabled, by the
sole help of the premises established by the ancient Egyptians, to arrive at
results which we will give in his own language. "Firstly," says Mr.
Felt, "the fundamental diagram to which all science of elementary
geometry, both plane and solid, is referable; to produce arithmetical systems
of proportion in a geometrical manner; to identify this figure with all the
remains of architecture and sculpture, in all which it had been followed in a marvellously
exact manner; to determine that the Egyptians had used it as the basis of all
their astronomical calculations, on which their religious symbolism was almost
entirely founded; to find its traces among all the remnants of art and
architecture of the Greeks; to discover its traces so strongly among the Jewish
sacred records, as to prove conclusively that it was founded thereon; to find
that the whole system had been discovered by the Egyptians after researches of
tens of thousands of years into the laws of nature, and that it might truly be
called the science of the Universe." Further it enabled him "to
determine with precision problems in physiology heretofore only surmised; to
first develop such a Masonic philosophy as showed it to be conclusively the
first science and religion, as it will be the last"; and we may add,
lastly, to prove by ocular demonstrations that the Egyptian sculptors and
architects ob-
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tained the models
for the quaint figures which adorn the facades and vestibules of their temples,
not in the disordered fantasies of their own brains, but from the "viewless
races of the air," and other kingdoms of nature, whom he, like them,
claims to make visible by resort to their own chemical and kabalistical
processes.
Schweigger proves
that the symbols of all the mythologies have a scientific foundation and
substance.* It is only through recent discoveries of the physical
electro-magnetical powers of nature that such experts in Mesmerism as
Ennemoser, Schweigger and Bart, in Germany, Baron Du Potet and Regazzoni, in
France and Italy, were enabled to trace with almost faultless accuracy the true
relation which each Theomythos bore to some one of these powers. The Idaeic
finger, which had such importance in the magic art of healing, means an iron
finger, which is attracted and repulsed in turn by magnetic, natural forces. It
produced, in Samothrace, wonders of healing by restoring affected organs to
their normal condition.
Bart goes deeper
than Schweigger into the significations of the old myths, and studies the
subject from both its spiritual and physical aspects. He treats at length of
the Phrygian Dactyls, those "magicians and exorcists of sickness,"
and of the Cabeirian Theurgists. He says: "While we treat of the close
union of the Dactyls and magnetic forces, we are not necessarily confined to
the magnetic stone, and our views of nature but take a glance at magnetism in
its whole meaning. Then it is clear how the initiated, who called themselves
Dactyls, created astonishment in the people through their magic arts, working
as they did, miracles of a healing nature. To this united themselves many other
things which the priesthood of antiquity was wont to practice; the cultivation
of the land and of morals, the advancement of art and science, mysteries, and
secret consecrations. All this was done by the priestly Cabeirians, and
wherefore not guided and supported by the mysterious spirits of nature?"**
Schweigger is of the same opinion, and demonstrates that the phenomena of
ancient Theurgy were produced by magnetic powers "under the guidance of
spirits."
Despite their
apparent Polytheism, the ancients -- those of the educated class at all events
-- were entirely monotheistical; and this, too, ages upon ages before the days
of Moses. In the Ebers Papyrus this fact is shown conclusively in the following
words, translated from the first four lines of Plate I.: "I came from
Heliopolis with the great ones from
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Schweigger:
"Introduction to Mythology through Natural History."
** Ennemoser:
"History of Magic," i, 3.
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Het-aat, the Lords
of Protection, the masters of eternity and salvation. I came from Sais with the
Mother-goddesses, who extended to me protection. The Lord of the Universe told
me how to free the gods from all murderous diseases." Eminent men were
called gods by the ancients. The deification of mortal men and supposititious gods
is no more a proof against their monotheism than the monument-building of
modern Christians, who erect statues to their heroes, is proof of their
polytheism. Americans of the present century would consider it absurd in their
posterity 3,000 years hence to classify them as idolaters for having built
statues to their god Washington. So shrouded in mystery was the Hermetic
Philosophy that Volney asserted that the ancient peoples worshipped their gross
material symbols as divine in themselves; whereas these were only considered as
representing esoteric principles. Dupuis, also, after devoting many years of
study to the problem, mistook the symbolic circle, and attributed their
religion solely to astronomy. Eberhart (Berliner Monatschrift) and many other
German writers of the last and present centuries, dispose of magic most
unceremoniously, and think it due to the Platonic mythos of the Timaeus. But
how, without possessing a knowledge of the mysteries, was it possible for these
men or any others not endowed with the finer intuition of a Champollion, to
discover the esoteric half of that which was concealed, behind the veil of
Isis, from all except the adepts?
The merit of
Champollion as an Egyptologist none will question. He declares that everything
demonstrates the ancient Egyptians to have been profoundly monotheistical. The
accuracy of the writings of the mysterious Hermes Trismegistus, whose antiquity
runs back into the night of time, is corroborated by him to their minutest
details. Ennemoser also says: "Into Egypt and the East went Herodotus,
Thales, Parmenides, Empedocles, Orpheus, and Pythagoras, to instruct themselves
in Natural Philosophy and Theology." There, too, Moses acquired his
wisdom, and Jesus passed the earlier years of his life.
Thither gathered
the students of all countries before Alexandria was founded. "How comes
it," Ennemoser goes on to say, "that so little has become known of
these mysteries? through so many ages and amongst so many different times and
people? The answer is that it is owing to the universally strict silence of the
initiated. Another cause may be found in the destruction and total loss of all
the written memorials of the secret knowledge of the remotest antiquity."
Numa's books, described by Livy, consisting of treatises upon natural
philosophy, were found in his tomb; but they were not allowed to be made known,
lest they should reveal the most secret mysteries of the state religion. The
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ANTIQUITY.
senate and the
tribune of the people determined that the books themselves should be burned,
which was done in public.*
Magic was
considered a divine science which led to a participation in the attributes of
Divinity itself. "It unveils the operations of nature," says Philo
Judaeus, "and leads to the contemplation of celestial powers."** In
later periods its abuse and degeneration into sorcery made it an object of
general abhorrence. We must therefore deal with it only as it was in the remote
past, during those ages when every true religion was based on a knowledge of
the occult powers of nature. It was not the sacerdotal class in ancient Persia
that established magic, as it is commonly thought, but the Magi, who derive
their name from it. The Mobeds, priests of the Parsis -- the ancient Ghebers --
are named, even at the present day, Magoi, in the dialect of the Pehlvi.***
Magic appeared in the world with the earlier races of men. Cassien mentions a
treatise, well-known in the fourth and fifth centuries, which was accredited to
Ham, the son of Noah, who in his turn was reputed to have received it from
Jared, the fourth generation from Seth, the son of Adam.****
Moses was indebted
for his knowledge to the mother of the Egyptian princess, Thermuthis, who saved
him from the waters of the Nile. The wife of Pharaoh,***** Batria, was an
initiate herself, and the Jews owe to her the possession of their prophet,
"learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and mighty in words and
deeds."****** Justin Martyr, giving as his authority Trogus Pompeius,
shows Joseph as having acquired a great knowledge in magical arts with the high
priests of Egypt.*******
The ancients knew
more concerning certain sciences than our modern savants have yet discovered.
Reluctant as many are to confess as much, it has been acknowledged by more than
one scientist. "The degree of scientific knowledge existing in an early
period of society was much greater than the moderns are willing to admit";
says Dr. A. Todd Thomson, the editor of Occult Sciences, by Salverte;
"but," he adds, "it was confined to the temples, carefully
veiled from the eyes of the people and opposed only to the priesthood."
Speaking of the Kabala, the learned Franz von Baader remarks that "not
only our salvation and wisdom, but our science itself came to us from the
Jews." But why not complete the sentence and tell the reader from whom the
Jews got their wisdom?
Origen, who had
belonged to the Alexandrian school of Platonists,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Hist. of
Magic," vol. i, p. 3.
** Philo Jud.:
"De Specialibus Legibus."
*** Zend-Avesta,
vol. ii., p. 506.
**** Cassian:
"Conference," i., 21.
***** "De Vita
et Morte Mosis," p. 199.
****** Acts of the
Apostles, vii., 22.
******* Justin,
xxxvi., 2.
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declares that
Moses, besides the teachings of the covenant, communicated some very important
secrets "from the hidden depths of the law" to the seventy elders.
These he enjoined them to impart only to persons whom they found worthy.
St. Jerome names
the Jews of Tiberias and Lydda as the only teachers of the mystical manner of
interpretation. Finally, Ennemoser expresses a strong opinion that "the
writings of Dionysius Areopagita have palpably been grounded on the Jewish Kabala."
When we take in consideration that the Gnostics, or early Christians, were but
the followers of the old Essenes under a new name, this fact is nothing to be
wondered at. Professor Molitor gives the Kabala its just due. He says:
"The age of
inconsequence and shallowness, in theology as well as in sciences, is past, and
since that revolutionary rationalism has left nothing behind but its own
emptiness, after having destroyed everything positive, it seems now to be the
time to direct our attention anew to that mysterious revelation which is the
living spring whence our salvation must come . . . the Mysteries of ancient
Israel, which contain all secrets of modern Israel, would be particularly
calculated to . . . found the fabric of theology upon its deepest theosophical
principles, and to gain a firm basis to all ideal sciences. It would open a new
path . . . to the obscure labyrinth of the myths, mysteries and constitutions
of primitive nations. . . . In these traditions alone are contained the system
of the schools of the prophets, which the prophet Samuel did not found, but
only restored, whose end was no other than to lead the scholars to wisdom and
the highest knowledge, and when they had been found worthy, to induct them into
deeper mysteries. Classed with these mysteries was magic, which was of a double
nature -- divine magic, and evil magic, or the black art. Each of these is
again divisible into two kinds, the active and seeing; in the first, man
endeavors to place himself en rapport with the world to learn hidden things; in
the latter he endeavors to gain power over spirits; in the former, to perform
good and beneficial acts; in the latter to do all kinds of diabolical and
unnatural deeds."*
The clergy of the
three most prominent Christian bodies, the Greek, Roman Catholic, and
Protestant, discountenance every spiritual phenomenon manifesting itself
through the so-called "mediums." A very brief period, indeed, has
elapsed since both the two latter ecclesiastical corporations burned, hanged,
and otherwise murdered every helpless victim through whose organism spirits --
and sometimes blind and as yet unex-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Molitor:
"Philosophy of History and Traditions," Howitt's Translation, p. 285.
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ROME.
plained forces of
nature -- manifested themselves. At the head of these three churches,
pre-eminent stands the Church of Rome. Her hands are scarlet with the innocent
blood of countless victims shed in the name of the Moloch-like divinity at the
head of her creed. She is ready and eager to begin again. But she is bound hand
and foot by that nineteenth century spirit of progress and religious freedom
which she reviles and blasphemes daily. The Graeco-Russian Church is the most
amiable and Christ-like in her primitive, simple, though blind faith. Despite
the fact that there has been no practical union between the Greek and Latin
Churches, and that the two parted company long centuries ago, the Roman
Pontiffs seem to invariably ignore the fact. They have in the most impudent
manner possible arrogated to themselves jurisdiction not only over the
countries within the Greek communion but also over all Protestants as well.
"The Church insists," says Professor Draper, "that the state has
no rights over any thing which it declares to be within its domain, and that
Protestantism being a mere rebellion, has no rights at all; that even in
Protestant communities the Catholic bishop is the only lawful spiritual
pastor."* Decrees unheeded, encyclical letters unread, invitations to
ecumenical councils unnoticed, excommunications laughed at -- all these have
seemed to make no difference. Their persistence has only been matched by their
effrontery. In 1864, the culmination of absurdity was attained when Pius IX.
excommunicated and fulminated publicly his anathemas against the Russian
Emperor, as a "schismatic cast out from the bosom of the Holy Mother
Church."** Neither he nor his ancestors, nor Russia since it was
Christianized, a thousand years ago, have ever consented to join the Roman
Catholics. Why not claim ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Buddhists of
Thibet, or the shadows of the ancient Hyk-Sos?
The mediumistic
phenomena have manifested themselves at all times in Russia as well as in other
countries. This force ignores religious differences; it laughs at
nationalities; and invades unasked any individuality, whether of a crowned head
or a poor beggar.
Not even the
present Vice-God, Pius IX., himself, could avoid the unwelcome guest. For the
last fifty years his Holiness has been known to be subject to very
extraordinary fits. Inside the Vatican they are termed Divine visions; outside,
physicians call them epileptic fits; and popular rumor attributes them to an
obsession by the ghosts of Peruggia, Castelfidardo, and Mentana!
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict
between Religion and Science," p. 329.
** See
"Gazette du Midi," and "Le Monde," of 3 May, 1864.
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"The lights
burn blue: it is now dead midnight,
Cold fearful drops
stand on my trembling flesh,
Methought the souls
of all that I caused to be murdered
Came. . . ." *
The Prince of
Hohenlohe, so famous during the first quarter of our century for his healing
powers, was himself a great medium. Indeed, these phenomena and powers belong
to no particular age or country. They form a portion of the psychological
attributes of man -- the Microcosmos.
For centuries have
the Klikouchy,** the Yourodevoy,*** and other miserable creatures been
afflicted with strange disorders, which the Russian clergy and the populace
attribute to possession by the devil. They throng the entrances of the
cathedrals, without daring to trust themselves inside, lest their self-willed
controlling demons might fling them on the ground. Voroneg, Kiew, Kazan, and
all cities which possess the thaumaturgical relics of canonized saints, abound
with such unconscious mediums. One can always find numbers of them, congregating
in hideous groups, and hanging about the gates and porches. At certain stages
of the celebration of the mass by the officiating clergy, such as the
appearance of the sacraments, or the beginning of the prayer and chorus,
"Ejey Cherouvim," these half-maniacs, half-mediums, begin crowing
like cocks, barking, bellowing and braying, and, finally, fall down in fearful
convulsions. "The unclean one cannot bear the holy prayer," is the
pious explanation. Moved by pity, some charitable souls administer restoratives
to the "afflicted ones," and distribute alms among them.
Occasionally, a priest is invited to exorcise, in which event he either
performs the ceremony for the sake of love and charity, or the alluring
prospect of a twenty-copeck silver bit, according to his Christian impulses.
But these miserable creatures -- who are mediums, for they prophesy and see
visions sometimes, when the fit is genuine**** -- are never molested because of
their misfortune. Why should the clergy persecute them, or people hate and
denounce them as damnable witches or wizards? Common sense and justice surely
suggest that if any are to be punished it is certainly not the victims who
cannot help themselves, but the demon who is alleged to control their actions.
The worst that happens to the patient is, that the priest inundates him or her
with holy water, and causes the poor creature to catch cold. This failing in
efficacy, the Klikoucha is left to the will
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Shakespere:
"Richard III."
** Literally, the
screaming or the howling ones.
*** The
half-demented, the idiots.
**** But such is
not always the case, for some among these beggars make a regular and profitable
trade of it.
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SUN.
of God, and taken
care of in love and pity. Superstitious and blind as it is, a faith conducted
on such principles certainly deserves some respect, and can never be offensive,
either to man or the true God. Not so with that of the Roman Catholics; and
hence, it is they, and secondarily, the Protestant clergy -- with the exception
of some foremost thinkers among them -- that we purpose questioning in this
work. We want to know upon what grounds they base their right to treat Hindus
and Chinese spiritualists and kabalists in the way they do; denouncing them, in
company with the infidels -- creatures of their own making -- as so many
convicts sentenced to the inextinguishable fires of hell.
Far from us be the
thought of the slightest irreverence -- let alone blasphemy -- toward the
Divine Power which called into being all things, visible and invisible. Of its majesty
and boundless perfection we dare not even think. It is enough for us to know
that It exists and that It is all wise. Enough that in common with our fellow
creatures we possess a spark of Its essence. The supreme power whom we revere
is the boundless and endless one -- the grand "CENTRAL SPIRITUAL SUN"
by whose attributes and the visible effects of whose inaudible WILL we are
surrounded -- the God of the ancient and the God of modern seers. His nature
can be studied only in the worlds called forth by his mighty FIAT. His
revelation is traced with his own finger in imperishable figures of universal
harmony upon the face of the Cosmos. It is the only INFALLIBLE gospel we
recognize.
Speaking of ancient
geographers, Plutarch remarks in Theseus, that they "crowd into the edges
of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in
the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full
of wild beasts and unapproachable bogs." Do not our theologians and
scientists do the same? While the former people the invisible world with either
angels or devils, our philosophers try to persuade their disciples that where
there is no matter there is nothing.
How many of our
inveterate skeptics belong, notwithstanding their materialism, to Masonic
Lodges? The brothers of the Rosie-Cross, mysterious practitioners of the
mediaeval ages, still live -- but in name only. They may "shed tears at
the grave of their respectable Master, Hiram Abiff "; but vainly will they
search for the true locality, "where the sprig of myrtle was placed."
The dead letter remains alone, the spirit has fled. They are like the English
or German chorus of the Italian opera, who descend in the fourth act of Ernani
into the crypt of Charlemagne, singing their conspiracy in a tongue utterly
unknown to them. So, our modern knights of the Sacred Arch may descend every
night if they choose
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"through the
nine arches into the bowels of the earth," -- they "will never
discover the sacred Delta of Enoch." The "Sir Knights in the South
Valley" and those in "the North Valley" may try to assure
themselves that "enlightenment dawns upon their minds," and that as
they progress in Masonry "the veil of superstition, despotism,
tyranny" and so on, no longer obscures the visions of their minds. But
these are all empty words so long as they neglect their mother Magic, and turn
their backs upon its twin sister, Spiritualism. Verily, "Sir Knights of
the Orient," you may "leave your stations and sit upon the floor in
attitudes of grief, with your heads resting upon your hands," for you have
cause to bewail and mourn your fate. Since Philippe le Bel destroyed the
Knights-Templars, not one has appeared to clear up your doubts notwithstanding
all claims to the contrary. Truly, you are "wanderers from Jerusalem,
seeking the lost treasure of the holy place." Have you found it? Alas, no!
for the holy place is profaned; the pillars of wisdom, strength and beauty are
destroyed. Henceforth, "you must wander in darkness," and
"travel in humility," among the woods and mountains in search of the
"lost word." "Pass on!" -- you will never find it so long
as you limit your journeys to seven or even seven times seven; because you are
"travelling in darkness," and this darkness can only be dispelled by
the light of the blazing torch of truth which alone the right descendants of
Ormasd carry. They alone can teach you the true pronunciation of the name
revealed to Enoch, Jacob and Moses. "Pass on! Till your R. S. W. shall
learn to multiply 333, and strike instead 666 -- the number of the Apocalyptic
Beast, you may just as well observe prudence and act "sub rosa."
In order to
demonstrate that the notions which the ancients entertained about dividing
human history into cycles were not utterly devoid of a philosophical basis, we
will close this chapter by introducing to the reader one of the oldest
traditions of antiquity as to the evolution of our planet.
At the close of
each "great year," called by Aristotle -- according to Censorinus --
the greatest, and which consists of six sars* our planet is subjected to a
thorough physical revolution. The polar and equatorial climates gradually
exchange places; the former moving slowly toward the Line, and the tropical
zone, with its exuberant vegetation and swarming animal life, replacing the
forbidding wastes of the icy poles. This
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Webster declares
very erroneously that the Chaldeans called saros, the cycle of eclipses, a
period of about 6,586 years, "the time of revolution of the moon's
node." Berosus, himself a Chaldean astrologer, at the Temple of Belus, at
Babylon, gives the duration of the sar, or sarus, 3,600 years; a neros 600; and
a sossus 60. (See, Berosus from Abydenus, "Of the Chaldaean Kings and the
Deluge." See also Eusebius, and Cory's MS. Ex. Cod. reg. gall. gr. No. 2360,
fol. 154.)
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KALPAS.
change of climate
is necessarily attended by cataclysms, earthquakes, and other cosmical throes.*
As the beds of the ocean are displaced, at the end of every decimillennium and
about one neros, a semi-universal deluge like the legendary Noachian flood is
brought about. This year was called the Heliacal by the Greeks; but no one
outside the sanctuary knew anything certain either as to its duration or
particulars. The winter of this year was called the Cataclysm or the Deluge, --
the Summer, the Ecpyrosis. The popular traditions taught that at these
alternate seasons the world was in turn burned and deluged. This is what we
learn at least from the Astronomical Fragments of Censorinus and Seneca. So
uncertain were the commentators about the length of this year, that none except
Herodotus and Linus, who assigned to it, the former 10,800, and the latter
13,984, came near the truth.** According to the claims of the Babylonian
priests, corroborated by Eupolemus,*** "the city of Babylon, owes its
foundation to those who were saved from the catastrophe of the deluge; they
were the giants and they built the tower which is noticed in history."****
These giants who were great astrologers and had received moreover from their
fathers, "the sons of God," every instruction pertaining to secret matters,
instructed the priests in their turn, and left in the temples all the records
of the periodical cataclysm that they had witnessed themselves. This is how the
high priests came by the knowledge of the great years. When we remember,
moreover, that Plato in the Timaeus cites the old Egyptian priest rebuking
Solon for his ignorance of the fact that there were several such deluges as the
great one of Ogyges, we can easily ascertain that this belief in the Heliakos
was a doctrine held by the initiated priests the world over.
The Neroses, the
Vrihaspati, or the periods called yugas or kalpas, are life-problems to solve.
The Satya-yug and Buddhistic cycles of chronology would make a mathematician
stand aghast at the array of ciphers. The Maha-kalpa embraces an untold number
of periods far
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Before scientists
reject such a theory -- traditional as it is -- it would be in order for them
to demonstrate why, at the end of the tertiary period, the Northern Hemisphere
had undergone such a reduction of temperature as to utterly change the torrid
zone to a Siberian climate? Let us bear in mind that the heliocentric system
came to us from upper India; and that the germs of all great astronomical truths
were brought thence by Pythagoras. So long as we lack a mathematically correct
demonstration, one hypothesis is as good as another.
** Censorinus:
"De Natal Die." Seneca: "Nat. Quaest.," iii., 29.
*** Euseb.:
"Praep. Evan." Of the Tower of Babel and Abraham.
**** This is in
flat contradiction of the Bible narrative, which tells us that the deluge was
sent for the special destruction of these giants. The Babylon priests had no
object to invent lies.
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back in the
antediluvian ages. Their system comprises a kalpa or grand period of
4,320,000,000 years, which they divide into four lesser yugas, running as
follows:
1st. -- Satya yug
-- 1,728,000 years.
2d. -- Tretya yug
-- 1,296,000 years.
3d. -- Dvapa yug
---- 864,000 years.
4th. -- Kali yug
------ 432,000 years.
Total
-------------- 4,320,000 years.
which make one
divine age or Maha-yug; seventy-one Maha-yugs make 306,720,000 years, to which
is added a sandhi (or the time when day and night border on each other, morning
and evening twilight), equal to a Satya-yug, 1,728,000, make a manwantara of
308,448,000 years;* fourteen manwantaras make 4,318,272,000 years; to which
must be added a sandhi to begin the kalpa, 1,728,000 years, making the kalpa or
grand period of 4,320,000,000 of years. As we are now only in the Kali-yug of
the twenty-eighth age of the seventh manwantara of 308,448,000 years, we have
yet sufficient time before us to wait before we reach even half of the time
allotted to the world.
These ciphers are
not fanciful, but founded upon actual astronomical calculations, as has been
demonstrated by S. Davis.** Many a scientist, Higgins among others,
notwithstanding their researches, has been utterly perplexed as to which of
these was the secret cycle. Bunsen has demonstrated that the Egyptian priests,
who made the cyclic notations, kept them always in the profoundest mystery.***
Perhaps their difficulty arose from the fact that the calculations of the
ancients applied equally to the spiritual progress of humanity as to the
physical. It will not be difficult to understand the close correspondence drawn
by the ancients between the cycles of nature and of mankind, if we keep in mind
their belief in the constant and all-potent influences of the planets upon the
fortunes of humanity. Higgins justly believed that the cycle of the Indian
system, of 432,000, is the true key of the secret cycle. But his failure in
trying to decipher it was made apparent; for as it pertained to the mystery of
the creation, this cycle was the most inviolable of all. It was repeated in
symbolic figures only in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, the original of which, if
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Coleman, who
makes this calculation, allowed a serious error to escape the proofreader; the
length of the manwantara is given at 368,448,000, which is just sixty million
years too much.
** S. Davis:
"Essay in the Asiatic Researches"; and Higgins's
"Anacalypsis"; also see Coleman's "Mythology of the
Hindus." Preface, p. xiii.
*** Bunsen:
"Egypte," vol. i.
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NEROS.
now extant, is
certainly not to be found in libraries, as it formed one of the most ancient
Books of Hermes,* the number of which is at present undetermined.
Calculating by the
secret period of the Great Neros and the Hindu Kalpas, some kabalists,
mathematicians and archeologists who knew naught of the secret computations
made the above number of 21,000 years to be 24,000 years, for the length of the
great year, as it was to the renewal only of our globe that they thought the
last period of 6,000 years applied. Higgins gives as a reason for it, that it
was anciently thought that the equinoxes preceded only after the rate of 2,000,
not 2,160, years in a sign; for thus it would allow for the length of the great
year four times 6,000 or 24,000 years. "Hence," he says, "might
arise their immensely-lengthened cycles; because, it would be the same with
this great year as with the common year, till it travelled round an
immensely-lengthened circle, when it would come to the old point again."
He therefore accounts for the 24,000 in the following manner: "If the
angle which the plane of the ecliptic makes with the plane of the equator had
decreased gradually and regularly, as it was till very lately supposed to do,
the two planes would have coincided in about ten ages, 6,000 years;
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The forty-two
Sacred Books of the Egyptians mentioned by Clement of Alexandria as having
existed in his time, were but a portion of the Books of Hermes. Iamblichus, on
the authority of the Egyptian priest Abammon, attributes 1200 of such books to
Hermes, and Manetho 36,000. But the testimony of Iamblichus as a neo-Platonist
and theurgist is of course rejected by modern critics. Manetho, who is held by
Bunsen in the highest consideration as a "purely historical
personage" . . . with whom "none of the later native historians can
be compared . . . ." (See "Egypte," i, p. 97), suddenly becomes
a Pseudo-Manetho, as soon as the ideas propounded by him clash with the
scientific prejudices against magic and the occult knowledge claimed by the
ancient priests. However, none of the archeologists doubt for a moment the
almost incredible antiquity of the Hermetic books. Champollion shows the
greatest regard for their authenticity and great truthfulness, corroborated as
it is by many of the oldest monuments. And Bunsen brings irrefutable proofs of
their age. From his researches, for instance, we learn that there was a line of
sixty-one kings before the days of Moses, who preceded the Mosaic period by a
clearly-traceable civilization of several thousand years. Thus we are warranted
in believing that the works of Hermes Trismegistus were extant many ages before
the birth of the Jewish law-giver. "Styli and inkstands were found on
monuments of the fourth Dynasty, the oldest in the world," says Bunsen. If
the eminent Egyptologist rejects the period of 48,863 years before Alexander,
to which Diogenes Laertius carries back the records of the priests, he is
evidently more embarrassed with the ten thousand of astronomical observations,
and remarks that "if they were actual observations, they must have
extended over 10,000 years" (p. 14). "We learn, however," he
adds, "from one of their own old chronological works . . . that the
genuine Egyptian traditions concerning the mythological period, treated of
myriads of years." ("Egypte," i, p. 15).
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in ten ages, 6,000
years more, the sun would have been situated relatively to the Southern
Hemisphere as he is now to the Northern; in ten ages, 6,000 years more, the two
planes would coincide again; and, in ten ages, 6,000 years more, he would be
situated as he is now, after a lapse of about twenty-four or twenty-five
thousand years in all. When the sun arrived at the equator, the ten ages or six
thousand years would end, and the world would be destroyed by fire; when he
arrived at the southern point, it would be destroyed by water. And thus, it
would be destroyed at the end of every 6,000 years, or ten neroses."*
This method of
calculating by the neroses, without allowing any consideration for the secrecy
in which the ancient philosophers, who were exclusively of the sacerdotal
order, held their knowledge, gave rise to the greatest errors. It led the Jews,
as well as some of the Christian Platonists, to maintain that the world would
be destroyed at the end of six thousand years. Gale shows how firmly this
belief was rooted in the Jews. It has also led modern scientists to discredit
entirely the hypothesis of the ancients. It has given rise to the formation of
different religious sects, which, like the Adventists of our century, are
always living in the expectation of the approaching destruction of the world.
As our planet
revolves once every year around the sun and at the same time turns once in
every twenty-four hours upon its own axis, thus traversing minor circles within
a larger one, so is the work of the smaller cyclic periods accomplished and
recommenced, within the Great Saros.
The revolution of
the physical world, according to the ancient doctrine, is attended by a like
revolution in the world of intellect -- the spiritual evolution of the world
proceeding in cycles, like the physical one.
Thus we see in
history a regular alternation of ebb and flow in the tide of human progress.
The great kingdoms and empires of the world, after reaching the culmination of
their greatness, descend again, in accordance with the same law by which they
ascended; till, having reached the lowest point, humanity reasserts itself and
mounts up once more, the height of its attainment being, by this law of
ascending progression by cycles, somewhat higher than the point from which it
had before descended.
The division of the
history of mankind into Golden, Silver, Copper and Iron Ages, is not a fiction.
We see the same thing in the literature of peoples. An age of great inspiration
and unconscious productiveness is invariably followed by an age of criticism
and consciousness. The one affords material for the analyzing and critical intellect
of the other.
Thus, all those
great characters who tower like giants in the history of mankind, like
Buddha-Siddartha, and Jesus, in the realm of spiritual, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Higgins:
"Anacalypsis."
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PROTOTYPES.
Alexander the
Macedonian and Napoleon the Great, in the realm of physical conquests, were but
reflexed images of human types which had existed ten thousand years before, in
the preceding decimillennium, reproduced by the mysterious powers controlling
the destinies of our world. There is no prominent character in all the annals
of sacred or profane history whose prototype we cannot find in the
half-fictitious and half-real traditions of bygone religions and mythologies.
As the star, glimmering at an immeasurable distance above our heads, in the
boundless immensity of the sky, reflects itself in the smooth waters of a lake,
so does the imagery of men of the antediluvian ages reflect itself in the
periods we can embrace in an historical retrospect.
"As above, so
it is below. That which has been, will return again. As in heaven, so on
earth."
The world is always
ungrateful to its great men. Florence has built a statue to Galileo, but hardly
even mentions Pythagoras. The former had a ready guide in the treatises of
Copernicus, who had been obliged to contend against the universally established
Ptolemaic system. But neither Galileo nor modern astronomy discovered the
emplacement of the planetary bodies. Thousands of ages before, it was taught by
the sages of Middle Asia, and brought thence by Pythagoras, not as a
speculation, but as a demonstrated science. "The numerals of
Pythagoras," says Porphyry, "were hieroglyphical symbols, by means
whereof he explained all ideas concerning the nature of all things."*
Verily, then, to
antiquity alone have we to look for the origin of all things. How well Hargrave
Jennings expresses himself when speaking of Pyramids, and how true are his
words when he asks: "Is it at all reasonable to conclude, at a period when
knowledge was at the highest, and when the human powers were, in comparison
with ours at the present time, prodigious, that all these indomitable, scarcely
believable physical effects -- that such achievements as those of the Egyptians
-- were devoted to a mistake? that the myriads of the Nile were fools laboring
in the dark, and that all the magic of their great men was forgery, and that
we, in despising that which we call their superstition and wasted power, are
alone the wise? No! there is much more in these old religions than probably --
in the audacity of modern denial, in the confidence of these
superficial-science times, and in the derision of these days without faith --
is in the least degree supposed. We do not understand the old time. . . . .
Thus we see how classic practice and heathen teaching may be made to reconcile
-- how even the Gentile and the Hebrew, the mytho-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "De Vite
Pythag."
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logical and the
Christian doctrine harmonize in the general faith founded on Magic. That Magic
is indeed possible is the moral of this book."*
It is possible.
Thirty years ago, when the first rappings of Rochester awakened slumbering
attention to the reality of an invisible world; when the gentle shower of raps
gradually became a torrent which overflowed the whole globe, spiritualists had
to contend but against two potencies -- theology and science. But the
theosophists have, in addition to these, to meet the world at large and the
spiritualists first of all.
"There is a
personal God, and there is a personal Devil!" thunders the Christian
preacher. "Let him be anathema who dares say nay!" "There is no
personal God, except the gray matter in our brain," contemptuously replies
the materialist. "And there is no Devil. Let him be considered thrice an
idiot who says aye." Meanwhile the occultists and true philosophers heed
neither of the two combatants, but keep perseveringly at their work. None of
them believe in the absurd, passionate, and fickle God of superstition, but all
of them believe in good and evil. Our human reason, the emanation of our finite
mind, is certainly incapable of comprehending a divine intelligence, an endless
and infinite entity; and, according to strict logic, that which transcends our
understanding and would remain thoroughly incomprehensible to our senses cannot
exist for us; hence, it does not exist. So far finite reason agrees with
science, and says: "There is no God." But, on the other hand, our
Ego, that which lives and thinks and feels independently of us in our mortal
casket, does more than believe. It knows that there exists a God in nature, for
the sole and invincible Artificer of all lives in us as we live in Him. No
dogmatic faith or exact science is able to uproot that intuitional feeling
inherent in man, when he has once fully realized it in himself.
Human nature is
like universal nature in its abhorrence of a vacuum. It feels an intuitional
yearning for a Supreme Power. Without a God, the cosmos would seem to it but
like a soulless corpse. Being forbidden to search for Him where alone His
traces would be found, man filled the aching void with the personal God whom
his spiritual teachers built up for him from the crumbling ruins of heathen
myths and hoary philosophies of old. How otherwise explain the mushroom growth
of new sects, some of them absurd beyond degree? Mankind have one innate, irrepressible
craving, that must be satisfied in any religion that would supplant the
dogmatic, undemonstrated and undemonstrable theology of our Christian ages.
This is the yearning after the proofs of immortality. As Sir Thomas Browne has
expressed it: . . . . "it is the heaviest stone that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The
Rosicrucians," etc., by Hargrave Jennings.
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IMMORTALITY.
melancholy can
throw at a man, to tell him that he is at the end of his nature, or that there
is no future state to come, unto which this seems progressive, and otherwise
made in vain." Let any religion offer itself that can supply these proofs
in the shape of scientific facts, and the established system will be driven to
the alternative of fortifying its dogmas with such facts, or of passing out of
the reverence and affection of Christendom. Many a Christian divine has been
forced to acknowledge that there is no authentic source whence the assurance of
a future state could have been derived by man. How could then such a belief
have stood for countless ages, were it not that among all nations, whether
civilized or savage, man has been allowed the demonstrative proof? Is not the
very existence of such a belief an evidence that thinking philosopher and
unreasoning savage have both been compelled to acknowledge the testimony of their
senses? That if, in isolated instances, spectral illusion may have resulted
from physical causes, on the other hand, in thousands of instances, apparitions
of persons have held converse with several individuals at once, who saw and
heard them collectively, and could not all have been diseased in mind?
The greatest
thinkers of Greece and Rome regarded such matters as demonstrated facts. They
distinguished the apparitions by the names of manes, anima and umbra: the manes
descending after the decease of the individual into the Underworld; the anima,
or pure spirit, ascending to heaven; and the restless umbra (earth-bound
spirit), hovering about its tomb, because the attraction of matter and love of
its earthly body prevailed in it and prevented its ascension to higher regions.
"Terra legit
carnem tumulum circumvolet umbra,
Orcus habet manes,
spiritus astra petit,"
says Ovid, speaking
of the threefold constituents of souls.
But all such
definitions must be subjected to the careful analysis of philosophy. Too many
of our thinkers do not consider that the numerous changes in language, the
allegorical phraseology and evident secretiveness of old Mystic writers, who
were generally under an obligation never to divulge the solemn secrets of the
sanctuary, might have sadly misled translators and commentators. The phrases of
the mediaeval alchemist they read literally; and even the veiled symbolology of
Plato is commonly misunderstood by the modern scholar. One day they may learn
to know better, and so become aware that the method of extreme necessarianism
was practiced in ancient as well as in modern philosophy; that from the first
ages of man, the fundamental truths of all that we are permitted to know on
earth was in the safe keeping of the adepts of the sanc-
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tuary; that the
difference in creeds and religious practice was only external; and that those
guardians of the primitive divine revelation, who had solved every problem that
is within the grasp of human intellect, were bound together by a universal
freemasonry of science and philosophy, which formed one unbroken chain around
the globe. It is for philology and psychology to find the end of the thread.
That done, it will then be ascertained that, by relaxing one single loop of the
old religious systems, the chain of mystery may be disentangled.
The neglect and
withholding of these proofs have driven such eminent minds as Hare and Wallace,
and other men of power, into the fold of modern spiritualism. At the same time
it has forced others, congenitally devoid of spiritual intuitions, into a gross
materialism that figures under various names.
But we see no
utility in prosecuting the subject further. For, though in the opinion of most
of our contemporaries, there has been but one day of learning, in whose
twilight stood the older philosophers, and whose noontide brightness is all our
own; and though the testimony of scores of ancient and mediaeval thinkers has
proved valueless to modern experimenters, as though the world dated from A.D.
1, and all knowledge were of recent growth, we will not lose hope or courage.
The moment is more opportune than ever for the review of old philosophies.
Archaeologists, philologists, astronomers, chemists and physicists are getting
nearer and nearer to the point where they will be forced to consider them.
Physical science has already reached its limits of exploration; dogmatic
theology sees the springs of its inspiration dry. Unless we mistake the signs,
the day is approaching when the world will receive the proofs that only ancient
religions were in harmony with nature, and ancient science embraced all that
can be known. Secrets long kept may be revealed; books long forgotten and arts
long time lost may be brought out to light again; papyri and parchments of
inestimable importance will turn up in the hands of men who pretend to have
unrolled them from mummies, or stumbled upon them in buried crypts; tablets and
pillars, whose sculptured revelations will stagger theologians and confound
scientists, may yet be excavated and interpreted. Who knows the possibilities
of the future? An era of disenchantment and rebuilding will soon begin -- nay,
has already begun. The cycle has almost run its course; a new one is about to
begin, and the future pages of history may contain full evidence, and convey
full proof that
"If ancestry
can be in aught believed,
Descending spirits
have conversed with man,
And told him
secrets of the world unknown."
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CHAPTER II
"Pride, where
wit fails, steps in to our defence
And fills up all
the mighty void of sense. . . . " -- POPE.
"But why
should the operations of nature be changed? There may be a deeper philosophy
than we dream of -- a philosophy that discovers the secrets of nature, but does
not alter, by penetrating them, its course." -- BULWER.
IS it enough for
man to know that he exists? Is it enough to be formed a human being to enable
him to deserve the appellation of MAN? It is our decided impression and
conviction, that to become a genuine spiritual entity, which that designation
implies, man must first create himself anew, so to speak -- i.e., thoroughly
eliminate from his mind and spirit, not only the dominating influence of
selfishness and other impurity, but also the infection of superstition and
prejudice. The latter is far different from what we commonly term antipathy or
sympathy. We are at first irresistibly or unwittingly drawn within its dark
circle by that peculiar influence, that powerful current of magnetism which
emanates from ideas as well as from physical bodies. By this we are surrounded,
and finally prevented through moral cowardice -- fear of public opinion -- from
stepping out of it. It is rare that men regard a thing in either its true or
false light, accepting the conclusion by the free action of their own judgment.
Quite the reverse. The conclusion is more commonly reached by blindly adopting
the opinion current at the hour among those with whom they associate. A church member
will not pay an absurdly high price for his pew any more than a materialist
will go twice to listen to Mr. Huxley's talk on evolution, because they think
that it is right to do so; but merely because Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so have done
it, and these personages are THE S---- AND S----'s.
The same holds good
with everything else. If psychology had had its Darwin, the descent of man as
regards moral qualities might have been found inseparably linked with that of
his physical form. Society in its servile condition suggests to the intelligent
observer of its mimicry a kinship between the Simia and human beings even more
striking than is exhibited in the external marks pointed out by the great
anthropologist.
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The many varieties
of the ape -- "mocking presentments of ourselves" -- appear to have
been evolved on purpose to supply a certain class of expensively-dressed
persons with the material for genealogical trees.
Science is daily
and rapidly moving toward the great discoveries in chemistry and physics,
organology, and anthropology. Learned men ought to be free from preconceptions
and prejudices of every kind; yet, although thought and opinion are now free,
scientists are still the same men as of old. An Utopian dreamer is he who
thinks that man ever changes with the evolution and development of new ideas.
The soil may be well fertilized and made to yield with every year a greater and
better variety of fruit; but, dig a little deeper than the stratum required for
the crop, and the same earth will be found in the subsoil as was there before
the first furrow was turned.
Not many years ago,
the person who questioned the infallibility of some theological dogma was
branded at once an iconoclast and an infidel. Vae victis! . . . Science has
conquered. But in its turn the victor claims the same infallibility, though it
equally fails to prove its right. "Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in
illis," the saying of the good old Lotharius, applies to the case.
Nevertheless, we feel as if we had some right to question the high-priests of science.
For many years we
have watched the development and growth of that apple of discord -- MODERN
SPIRITUALISM. Familiar with its literature both in Europe and America, we have
closely and eagerly witnessed its interminable controversies and compared its
contradictory hypotheses. Many educated men and women -- heterodox
spiritualists, of course -- have tried to fathom the Protean phenomena. The
only result was that they came to the following conclusion: whatever may be the
reason of these constant failures -- whether such are to be laid at the door of
the investigators themselves, or of the secret Force at work -- it is at least
proved that, in proportion as the psychological manifestations increase in
frequency and variety, the darkness surrounding their origin becomes more
impenetrable.
That phenomena are
actually witnessed, mysterious in their nature -- generally and perhaps wrongly
termed spiritual -- it is now idle to deny. Allowing a large discount for
clever fraud, what remains is quite serious enough to demand the careful
scrutiny of science. "E pur se muove," the sentence spoken ages
since, has passed into the category of household words. The courage of Galileo
is not now required to fling it into the face of the Academy. Psychological
phenomena are already on the offensive.
The position
assumed by modern scientists is that even though the occurrence of certain
mysterious phenomena in the presence of the
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PROOF.
mediums be a fact,
there is no proof that they are not due to some abnormal nervous condition of
those individuals. The possibility that they may be produced by returning human
spirits need not be considered until the other question is decided. Little
exception can be taken to this position. Unquestionably, the burden of proof
rests upon those who assert the agency of spirits. If the scientists would
grapple with the subject in good faith, showing an earnest desire to solve the
perplexing mystery, instead of treating it with undignified and unprofessional
contempt, they would be open to no censure. True, the great majority of
"spiritual" communications are calculated to disgust investigators of
even moderate intelligence. Even when genuine they are trivial, commonplace,
and often vulgar. During the past twenty years we have received through various
mediums messages purporting to be from Shakespere, Byron, Franklin, Peter the
Great, Napoleon and Josephine, and even from Voltaire. The general impression
made upon us was that the French conqueror and his consort seemed to have
forgotten how to spell words correctly; Shakespere and Byron had become chronic
inebriates; and Voltaire had turned an imbecile. Who can blame men trained to
habits of exactitude, or even simply well-educated persons, for hastily
concluding that when so much palpable fraud lies upon the surface, there could
hardly be truth if they should go to the bottom? The huckstering about of
pompous names attached to idiotic communications has given the scientific
stomach such an indigestion that it cannot assimilate even the great truth
which lies on the telegraphic plateaux of this ocean of psychological phenomena.
They judge by its surface, covered with froth and scum. But they might with
equal propriety deny that there is any clear water in the depths of the sea
when an oily scum was floating upon the surface. Therefore, if on one hand we
cannot very well blame them for stepping back at the first sight of what seems
really repulsive, we do, and have a right to censure them for their
unwillingness to explore deeper. Neither pearls nor cut diamonds are to be
found lying loose on the ground; and these persons act as unwisely as would a
professional diver, who should reject an oyster on account of its filthy and
slimy appearance, when by opening it he might find a precious pearl inside the
shell.
Even the just and
severe rebukes of some of their leading men are of no avail and the fear on the
part of men of science to investigate such an unpopular subject, seems to have
now become a general panic. "The phenomena chase the scientists, and the
scientists run away from the phenomena," very pointedly remarks M. A. N.
Aksakof in an able article on Mediumism and the St. Petersburg Scientific
Committee. The attitude
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of this body of
professors toward the subject which they had pledged themselves to investigate
was throughout simply disgraceful. Their premature and prearranged report was
so evidently partial and inconclusive as to call out a scornful protest even
from unbelievers.
The inconsistency
of the logic of our learned gentlemen against the philosophy of spiritualism
proper is admirably pointed out by Professor John Fisk -- one of their own
body. In a recent philosophical work, The Unseen World, while showing that from
the very definition of the terms, ,matter and spirit, the existence of spirit
cannot be demonstrated to the senses, and that thus no theory is amenable to
scientific tests, he deals a severe blow at his colleagues in the following lines:
"The testimony
in such a case," he says, "must, under the conditions of the present
life, be forever inaccessible. It lies wholly outside the range of experience.
However abundant it may be, we cannot expect to meet it. And, accordingly, our
failure to produce it does not raise even the slightest presumption against our
theory. When conceived in this way, the belief in the future life is without
scientific support, but at the same time it is placed beyond the need of
scientific support and the range of scientific criticism. It is a belief which
no imaginable future advance of physical discovery can in any way impugn. It is
a belief which is in no sense irrational, and which may be logically
entertained without in the least affecting our scientific habit of mind, or
influencing our scientific conclusions." "If now," he adds,
"men of science will accept the position that spirit is not matter, nor
governed by the laws of matter, and refrain from speculations concerning it
restricted by their knowledge of material things, they will withdraw what is to
men of religion, at present, their principal cause of irritation."
But, they will do
no such thing. They feel incensed at the brave, loyal, and highly commendable
surrender of such superior men as Wallace, and refuse to accept even the
prudent and restrictive policy of Mr. Crookes.
No other claim is
advanced for a hearing of the opinions contained in the present work than that
they are based upon many years' study of both ancient magic and its modern
form, Spiritualism. The former, even now, when phenomena of the same nature
have become so familiar to all, is commonly set down as clever jugglery. The
latter, when overwhelming evidence precludes the possibility of truthfully
declaring it charlatanry, is denominated an universal hallucination.
Many years of
wandering among "heathen" and "Christian" magicians,
occultists, mesmerisers; and the tutti quanti of white and black art, ought to
be sufficient, we think, to give us a certain right to
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BARRACHIAS-HASSAN-OGLU.
feel competent to
take a practical view of this doubted and very complicated question. We have
associated with the fakirs, the holy men of India, and seen them when in
intercourse with the Pitris. We have watched the proceedings and modus operandi
of the howling and dancing dervishes; held friendly communications with the
marabouts of European and Asiatic Turkey; and the serpent-charmers of Damascus
and Benares have but few secrets that we have not had the fortune to study.
Therefore, when scientists who have never had an opportunity of living among
these oriental jugglers and can judge at the best but superficially, tell us
that there is naught in their performances but mere tricks of prestidigitation,
we cannot help feeling a profound regret for such hasty conclusions. That such
pretentious claims should be made to a thorough analysis of the powers of
nature, and at the same time such unpardonable neglect displayed of questions
of purely physiological and psychological character, and astounding phenomena
rejected without either examination or appeal, is an exhibition of
inconsistency, strongly savoring of timidity, if not of moral obliquity.
If, therefore, we
should ever receive from some contemporaneous Faraday the same fling that that
gentleman made years since, when, with more sincerity than good breeding, he
said that "many dogs have the power of coming to much more logical
conclusions than some spiritualists,"* we fear we must still persist.
Abuse is not argument, least of all, proof. Because such men as Huxley and
Tyndall denominate spiritualism "a degrading belief" and oriental
magic "jugglery," they cannot thereby take from truth its verity.
Skepticism, whether it proceeds from a scientific or an ignorant brain, is
unable to overturn the immortality of our souls -- if such immortality is a
fact -- and plunge them into post-mortem annihilation. "Reason is subject
to error," says Aristotle; so is opinion; and the personal views of the
most learned philosopher are often more liable to be proved erroneous, than the
plain common sense of his own illiterate cook. In the Tales of the Impious
Khalif, Barrachias-Hassan-Oglu, the Arabian sage holds a wise discourse:
"Beware, O my son, of self-incense," he says. "It is the most
dangerous, on account of its agreeable intoxication. Profit by thy own wisdom,
but learn to respect the wisdom of thy fathers likewise. And remember, O my
beloved, that the light of Allah's truth will often penetrate much easier an
empty head, than one that is so crammed with learning that many a silver ray is
crowded out for want of space; . . . such is the case with our over-wise Kadi."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* W. Crookes,
F.R.S.: "Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism."
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These
representatives of modern science in both hemispheres seem never to have
exhibited more scorn, or to have felt more bitterly toward the unsolvable
mystery, than since Mr. Crookes began the investigation of the phenomena, in
London. This courageous gentleman was the first to introduce to the public one
of those alleged "materialized" sentries that guard the forbidden
gates. Following after him, several other learned members of the scientific
body had the rare integrity, combined with a degree of courage, which, in view
of the unpopularity of the subject, may be deemed heroic, to take the phenomena
in hand.
But, alas! although
the spirit, indeed, was willing, the mortal flesh proved weak. Ridicule was
more than the majority of them could bear; and so, the heaviest burden was
thrown upon the shoulders of Mr. Crookes. An account of the benefit this
gentleman reaped from his disinterested investigations, and the thanks he
received from his own brother scientists, can be found in his three pamphlets,
entitled, Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism.
After a while, the
members appointed on the Committee of the Dialectical Society and Mr. Crookes,
who had applied to his mediums the most crucial tests, were forced by an
impatient public to report in so many plain words what they had seen. But what
could they say, except the truth? Thus, they were compelled to acknowledge:
1st. That the phenomena which they, at least, had witnessed, were genuine, and
impossible to simulate; thus showing that manifestations produced by some
unknown force, could and did happen. 2d. That, whether the phenomena were
produced by disembodied spirits or other analogous entities, they could not
tell; but that manifestations, thoroughly upsetting many preconceived theories
as to natural laws, did happen and were undeniable. Several of these occurred
in their own families. 3d. That, notwithstanding all their combined efforts to
the contrary, beyond the indisputable fact of the reality of the phenomena,
"glimpses of natural action not yet reduced to law,"* they, to borrow
the expression of the Count de Gabalis, "could make neither head nor tail
on't."
Now this was
precisely what a skeptical public had not bargained for. The discomfiture of
the believers in spiritualism had been impatiently anticipated before the
conclusions of Messrs. Crookes, Varley, and the Dialectical Society were
announced. Such a confession on the part of their brother-scientists was too
humiliating for the pride of even those who had timorously abstained from
investigation. It was regarded as really too much, that such vulgar and
repulsive manifestations of phe-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* W. Crookes:
"Experiments on Psychic Force," page 25.
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nomena which had
always, by common consent of educated people, been regarded as nursery tales,
fit only to amuse hysterical servant-girls and afford revenue to professional
somnambulists -- that manifestations which had been consigned by the Academy
and Institute of Paris to oblivion, should so impertinently elude detection at
the hands of experts in physical sciences.
A tornado of
indignation followed the confession. Mr. Crookes depicts it in his pamphlet on
Psychic Force. He heads it very pointedly with the quotation from Galvani:
"I am attacked by two very opposite sects -- the scientists and the
know-nothings, yet I know that I have discovered one of the greatest forces in
nature. . . ." He then proceeds:
"It was taken
for granted that the results of my experiments would be in accordance with
their preconceptions. What they really desired was not the truth, but an
additional witness in favor of their own foregone conclusions. When they found
the facts which that investigation established could not be made to fit those
opinions, why, . . . so much the worse for the facts. They try to creep out of
their own confident recommendations of the inquiry, by declaring 'that Mr. Home
is a clever conjurer who has duped us all.' 'Mr. Crookes might, with equal
propriety, examine the performances of an Indian juggler.' 'Mr. Crookes must
get better witnesses before he can be believed.' 'The thing is too absurd to be
treated seriously.' 'It is impossible, and therefore can't be.' . . . (I never
said it was impossible, I only said it was true.) 'The observers have all been
biologized, and fancy they saw things occur which really never took place,'
etc., etc., etc."*
After expending
their energy on such puerile theories as "unconscious cerebration,"
"involuntary muscular contraction," and the sublimely ridiculous one
of the "cracking knee-joints" (le muscle craqueur); after meeting
ignominious failures by the obstinate survival of the new force, and finally,
after every desperate effort to compass its obliteration, these filii
diffidentiae -- as St. Paul calls their class -- thought best to give up the
whole thing in disgust. Sacrificing their courageously persevering brethren as
a holocaust on the altar of public opinion, they withdrew in dignified silence.
Leaving the arena of investigation to more fearless champions, these unlucky
experimenters are not likely to ever enter it again.** It is easier by far to
deny the reality of such manifestations from a secure distance, than find for
them a proper place among the classes of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* W. Crookes:
"Spiritualism Viewed by the Light of Modern Science." See
"Quarterly Journal of Science."
** A. Aksakof:
"Phenomena of Mediumism."
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natural phenomena
accepted by exact science. And how can they, since all such phenomena pertain
to psychology, and the latter, with its occult and mysterious powers, is a
terra incognita for modern science. Thus, powerless to explain that which
proceeds directly from the nature of the human soul itself -- the existence of
which most of them deny -- unwilling at the same time to confess their
ignorance, scientists retaliate very unjustly on those who believe in the
evidence of their senses without any pretence to science.
"A kick from
thee, O Jupiter! is sweet," says the poet Tretiakowsky, in an old Russian
tragedy. Rude as those Jupiters of science may be occasionally toward us
credulous mortals, their vast learning -- in less abstruse questions, we mean
-- if not their manners, entitles them to public respect. But unfortunately it
is not the gods who shout the loudest.
The eloquent Tertullian,
speaking of Satan and his imps, whom he accuses of ever mimicking the Creator's
works, denominates them the "monkeys of God." It is fortunate for the
philosophicules that we have no modern Tertullian to consign them to an
immortality of contempt as the "monkeys of science."
But to return to
genuine scientists. "Phenomena of a merely objective character," says
A. N. Aksakof, "force themselves upon the representatives of exact
sciences for investigation and explanation; but the high-priests of science, in
the face of apparently such a simple question . . . are totally disconcerted!
This subject seems to have the privilege of forcing them to betray, not only
the highest code of morality -- truth, but also the supreme law of science --
experiment! . . . They feel that there is something too serious underlying it.
The cases of Hare, Crookes, de Morgan, Varley, Wallace, and Butleroff create a
panic! They fear that as soon as they concede one step, they will have to yield
the whole ground. Time-honored principles, the contemplative speculations of a
whole life, of a long line of generations, are all staked on a single
card!"*
In the face of such
experience as that of Crookes and the Dialectical Society, of Wallace and the
late Professor Hare, what can we expect from our luminaries of erudition? Their
attitude toward the undeniable phenomena is in itself another phenomenon. It is
simply incomprehensible, unless we admit the possibility of another
psychological disease, as mysterious and contagious as hydrophobia. Although we
claim no honor for this new discovery, we nevertheless propose to recognize it
under the name of scientific psychophobia.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A. N. Aksakof:
"Phenomena of Mediumism."
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THEORIES.
They ought to have
learned by this time, in the school of bitter experience, that they can rely on
the self-sufficiency of the positive sciences only to a certain point; and
that, so long as there remains one single unexplained mystery in nature, the
word "impossible" is a dangerous word for them to pronounce.
In the Researches
on the Phenomena of Spiritualism, Mr. Crookes submits to the option of the
reader eight theories "to account for the phenomena observed."
These theories run
as follows:
"First Theory.
-- The phenomena are all the result of tricks, clever mechanical arrangements,
or legerdemain; the mediums are impostors, and the rest of the company fools.
"Second
Theory. -- The persons at a seance are the victims of a sort of mania, or
delusion, and imagine phenomena to occur which have no real objective
existence.
"Third Theory.
-- The whole is the result of conscious or unconscious cerebral action.
"Fourth
Theory. -- The result of the spirit of the medium, perhaps in association with
the spirits of some or all of the people present.
"Fifth Theory.
-- The actions of evil spirits, or devils, personifying whom or what they
please, in order to undermine Christianity, and ruin men's souls. (Theory of
our theologians.)
"Sixth Theory.
-- The actions of a separate order of beings living on this earth, but
invisible and immaterial to us. Able, however, occasionally to manifest their
presence, known in almost all countries and ages as demons (not necessarily
bad), gnomes, fairies, kobolds, elves, goblins, Puck, etc. (One of the claims
of the kabalists.)
"Seventh
Theory. -- The actions of departed human beings. (The spiritual theory par
excellence.)
"Eighth
Theory. -- (The psychic force) . . . an adjunct to the fourth, fifth, sixth,
and seventh theories."
The first of these
theories having been proved valid only in exceptional, though unfortunately
still too frequent cases, must be ruled out as having no material bearing upon
the phenomena themselves. Theories the second and the third are the last
crumbling entrenchments of the guerilla of skeptics and materialists, and
remain, as lawyers say, "Adhuc sub judice lis est." Thus, we can deal
in this work but with the four remaining ones, the last, eighth, theory being
according to Mr. Crookes's opinion, but "a necessary adjunct" of the
others.
How subject even a
scientific opinion is to error, we may see, if we only compare the several
articles on spiritual phenomena from the able
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pen of that
gentleman, which appeared from 1870 to 1875. In one of the first we read: . . .
"the increased employment of scientific methods will promote exact
observations and greater love of truths among inquirers, and will produce a
race of observers who will drive the worthless residuum of spiritualism hence
into the unknown limbo of magic and necromancy." And in 1875, we read,
over his own signature, minute and most interesting descriptions of the
materialized spirit -- Katie King!*
It is hardly
possible to suppose that Mr. Crookes could be under electro-biological
influence or hallucination for two or three consecutive years. The
"spirit" appeared in his own house, in his library, under the most
crucial tests, and was seen, felt, and heard by hundreds of persons.
But Mr. Crookes
denies that he ever took Katie King for a disembodied spirit. What was it then?
If it was not Miss Florence Cook, and his word is our sufficient guarantee for
it -- then it was either the spirit of one who had lived on earth, or one of
those that come directly under the sixth theory of the eight the eminent
scientist offers to the public choice. It must have been one of the classes
named: Fairies, Kobolds, Gnomes, Elves, Goblins, or a Puck.**
Yes; Katie King
must have been a fairy -- a Titania. For to a fairy only could be applied with
propriety the following poetic effusion which Mr. Crookes quotes in describing
this wonderful spirit:
"Round her she
made an atmosphere of life;
The very air seemed
lighter from her eyes;
They were so soft
and beautiful and rife
With all we can
imagine of the skies;
Her overpowering
presence makes you feel
It would not be
idolatry to kneel!"***
And thus, after
having written, in 1870, his severe sentence against spiritualism and magic;
after saying that even at that moment he believed "the whole affair a
superstition, or, at least, an unexplained trick -- a delusion of the
senses;"**** Mr. Crookes, in 1875, closes his letter with the following
memorable words: -- "To imagine, I say, the Katie King of the last three
years to be the result of imposture does more violence to one's reason and
common sense than to believe her to be what she herself affirms."*****
This last remark, moreover, conclusively proves that:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Last of
Katie King," pamphlet iii., p. 119.
** Ibid., pam. i.,
p. 7.
*** "The Last
of Katie King," pamp. iii., p. 112.
**** Ibid., p. 112.
*****
"Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism," p. 45.
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OBSCURIUS.
1. Notwithstanding
Mr. Crookes's full convictions that the somebody calling herself Katie King was
neither the medium nor some confederate, but on the contrary an unknown force
in nature, which -- like love -- "laughs at locksmiths"; 2. That that
hitherto unrecognized form of Force, albeit it had become with him "not a
matter of opinion, but of absolute knowledge," -- the eminent investigator
still did not abandon to the last his skeptical attitude toward the question.
In short, he firmly believes in the phenomenon, but cannot accept the idea of
its being the human spirit of a departed somebody.
It seems to us,
that, as far as public prejudice goes, Mr. Crookes solves one mystery by
creating a still deeper one: the obscurum per obscurius. In other words,
rejecting "the worthless residuum of spiritualism," the courageous
scientist fearlessly plunges into his own "unknown limbo of magic and
necromancy!"
The recognized laws
of physical science account for but a few of the more objective of the
so-called spiritual phenomena. While proving the reality of certain visible
effects of an unknown force, they have not thus far enabled scientists to
control at will even this portion of the phenomena. The truth is that the
professors have not yet discovered the necessary conditions of their
occurrence. They must go as deeply into the study of the triple nature of man
-- physiological, psychological, and divine -- as did their predecessors, the
magicians, theurgists, and thaumaturgists of old. Until the present moment,
even those who have investigated the phenomena as thoroughly and impartially as
Mr. Crookes, have set aside the cause as something not to be discovered now, if
ever. They have troubled themselves no more about that than about the first
cause of the cosmic phenomena of the correlation of forces, whose endless
effects they are at such pains to observe and classify. Their course has been
as unwise as that of a man who should attempt to discover the sources of a
river by exploring toward its mouth. It has so narrowed their views of the
possibilities of natural law that very simple forms of occult phenomena have
necessitated their denial that they can occur unless miracles were possible;
and this being a scientific absurdity the result has been that physical science
has latterly been losing prestige. If scientists had studied the so-called
"miracles" instead of denying them, many secret laws of nature
comprehended by the ancients would have been again discovered.
"Conviction," says Bacon, "comes not through arguments but through
experiments."
The ancients were
always distinguished -- especially the Chaldean astrologers and Magians -- for
their ardent love and pursuit of knowledge in every branch of science. They
tried to penetrate the secrets of na-
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ture in the same
way as our modern naturalists, and by the only method by which this object can
be obtained, namely: by experimental researches and reason. If our modern
philosophers cannot apprehend the fact that they penetrated deeper than
themselves into the mysteries of the universe, this does not constitute a valid
reason why the credit of possessing this knowledge should be denied them or the
imputation of superstition laid at their door. Nothing warrants the charge; and
every new archaeological discovery militates against the assumption. As
chemists they were unequalled, and in his famous lecture on The Lost Arts,
Wendell Phillips says: "The chemistry of the most ancient period had
reached a point which we have never even approached." The secret of the
malleable glass, which, "if supported by one end by its own weight, in
twenty hours dwindles down to a fine line that you can curve around your
wrist," would be as difficult to rediscover in our civilized countries as
to fly to the moon.
The fabrication of
a cup of glass which was brought by an exile to Rome in the reign of Tiberius,
-- a cup "which he dashed upon the marble pavement, and it was not crushed
nor broken by the fall," and which, as it got "dented some" was
easily brought into shape again with a hammer, is a historic fact. If it is
doubted now it is merely because the moderns cannot do the same. And yet, in
Samarkand and some monasteries of Thibet such cups and glass-ware may be found
to this day; nay, there are persons who claim that they can make the same by
virtue of their knowledge of the much-ridiculed and ever-doubted alkahest --
the universal solvent. This agent that Paracelsus and Van Helmont maintain to
be a certain fluid in nature, "capable of reducing all sublunary bodies,
as well homogeneous as mixed, into their ens primum, or the original matter of
which they are composed; or into an uniform, equable, and potable liquor, that
will unite with water, and the juices of all bodies, and yet retain its own
radical virtues; and, if again mixed with itself will thereby be converted into
pure elementary water": what impossibilities prevent our crediting the
statement? Why should it not exist and why the idea be considered Utopian? Is
it again because our modern chemists are unable to produce it? But surely it
may be conceived without any great effort of imagination that all bodies must
have originally come from some first matter, and that this matter, according to
the lessons of astronomy, geology and physics, must have been a fluid. Why
should not gold -- of whose genesis our scientists know so little -- have been
originally a primitive or basic matter of gold, a ponderous fluid which, as
says Van Helmont, "from its own nature, or a strong cohesion between its
particles, acquired afterward a solid form?"
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There seems to be
very little absurdity to believe in a "universal ens that resolves all
bodies into their ens genitale." Van Helmont calls it "the highest
and most successful of all salts; which having obtained the supreme degree of
simplicity, purity, subtilty, enjoys alone the faculty of remaining unchanged
and unimpaired by the subjects it works upon, and of dissolving the most
stubborn and untractable bodies; as stones, gems, glass, earth, sulphur,
metals, etc., into red salt, equal in weight to the matter dissolved; and this
with as much ease as hot water melts down snow."
It is into this
fluid that the makers of malleable glass claimed, and now claim, that they
immersed common glass for several hours, to acquire the property of
malleability.
We have a ready and
palpable proof of such possibilities. A foreign correspondent of the
Theosophical Society, a well-known medical practitioner, and one who has
studied the occult sciences for upward of thirty years, has succeeded in
obtaining what he terms the "true oil of gold," i.e., the primal
element. Chemists and physicists have seen and examined it, and were driven to
confess that they neither knew how it was obtained nor could they do the same.
That he desires his name to remain unknown is not to be wondered at; ridicule
and public prejudice are more dangerous sometimes than the inquisition of old.
This "Adamic earth" is next-door neighbor to the alkahest, and one of
the most important secrets of the alchemists. No Kabalist will reveal it to the
world, for, as he expresses it in the well-known jargon: "it would explain
the eagles of the alchemists, and how the eagles' wings are clipped," a
secret that it took Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes) twenty years to
learn.
As the dawn of
physical science broke into a glaring day-light, the spiritual sciences merged
deeper and deeper into night, and in their turn they were denied. So, now,
these greatest masters in psychology are looked upon as "ignorant and
superstitious ancestors"; as mountebanks and jugglers, because, forsooth,
the sun of modern learning shines to-day so bright, it has become an axiom that
the philosophers and men of science of the olden time knew nothing, and lived
in a night of superstition. But their traducers forget that the sun of to-day
will seem dark by comparison with the luminary of to-morrow, whether justly or
not; and as the men of our century think their ancestors ignorant, so will
perhaps their descendants count them for know-nothings. The world moves in
cycles. The coming races will be but the reproductions of races long bygone; as
we, perhaps, are the images of those who lived a hundred centuries ago. The
time will come when those who now in public slan-
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der the hermetists,
but ponder in secret their dust-covered volumes; who plagiarize their ideas,
assimilate and give them out as their own -- will receive their dues.
"Who," honestly exclaims Pfaff -- "what man has ever taken more
comprehensive views of nature than Paracelsus? He was the bold creator of
chemical medicines; the founder of courageous parties; victorious in
controversy, belonging to those spirits who have created amongst us a new mode
of thinking on the natural existence of things. What he scattered through his
writings on the philosopher's stone, on pigmies and spirits of the mines; on
signs, on homunculi, and the elixir of life, and which are employed by many to
lower his estimation, cannot extinguish our grateful remembrance of his general
works, nor our admiration of his free, bold exertions, and his noble,
intellectual life."*
More than one
pathologist, chemist, homoeopathist, and magnetist has quenched his thirst for
knowledge in the books of Paracelsus. Frederick Hufeland got his theoretical
doctrines on infection from this mediaeval "quack," as Sprengel
delights in calling one who was immeasurably higher than himself. Hemman, who
endeavors to vindicate this great philosopher, and nobly tries to redress his
slandered memory, speaks of him as the "greatest chemist of his
time."** So do Professor Molitor,*** and Dr. Ennemoser, the eminent German
psychologist.**** According to their criticisms on the labors of this
Hermetist, Paracelsus is the most "wondrous intellect of his age," a
"noble genius." But our modern lights assume to know better, and the
ideas of the Rosicrucians about the elementary spirits, the goblins and the
elves, have sunk into the "limbo of magic" and fairy tales for early
childhoods.*****
We are quite ready
to concede to skeptics that one-half, and even more, of seeming phenomena, are
but more or less clever fraud. Recent exposures, especially of
"materializing" mediums, but too well prove the fact. Unquestionably
numerous others are still in store, and this will
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pfaff's
"Astrology." Berl.
** "Medico-Surgical
Essays."
*** "The
Philosophy of Hist."
**** On Theoph.
Paracelsus. -- Magic.
***** Kemshead says
in his "Inorganic Chemistry" that "the element hydrogen was
first mentioned in the sixteenth century by Paracelsus, but very little was
known of it in any way." (P. 66.) And why not be fair and confess at once
that Paracelsus was the re-discoverer of hydrogen as he was the re-discoverer
of the hidden properties of the magnet and animal magnetism? It is easy to show
that according to the strict vows of secrecy taken and faithfully observed by
every Rosicrucian (and especially by the alchemist) he kept his knowledge
secret. Perhaps it would not prove a very difficult task for any chemist well
versed in the works of Paracelsus to demonstrate that oxygen, the discovery of
which is credited to Priestley, was known to the Rosicrucian alchemists as well
as hydrogen.
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CHURCHWARD.
continue until
tests have become so perfect and spiritualists so reasonable as no longer to
furnish opportunity to mediums or weapons to adversaries.
What should
sensible spiritualists think of the character of angel guides, who after
monopolizing, perhaps for years, a poor medium's time, health and means,
suddenly abandon him when he most needs their help? None but creatures without
soul or conscience would be guilty of such injustice. Conditions? -- Mere
sophistry. What sort of spirits must they be who would not summon if necessary
an army of spirit-friends (if such there be) to snatch the innocent medium from
the pit dug for his feet? Such things happened in the olden time, such may
happen now. There were apparitions before modern spiritualism, and phenomena
like ours in every previous age. If modern manifestations are a reality and
palpable facts, so must have been the so-called "miracles" and
thaumaturgic exploits of old; or if the latter are but fictions of superstition
so must be the former, for they rest on no better testimony.
But, in this
daily-increasing torrent of occult phenomena that rushes from one end of the
globe to the other, though two-thirds of the manifestations are proved
spurious, what of those which are proved genuine beyond doubt or cavil? Among
these may be found communications coming through non-professional as well as
professional mediums, which are sublime and divinely grand. Often, through
young children, and simple-minded ignorant persons, we receive philosophical
teachings and precepts, poetry and inspirational orations, music and paintings
that are fully worthy of the reputations of their alleged authors. Their
prophecies are often verified and their moral disquisitions beneficent, though
the latter is of rarer occurrence. Who are those spirits, what those powers or
intelligences which are evidently outside of the medium proper and entities per
se? These intelligences deserve the appellation; and they differ as widely from
the generality of spooks and goblins that hover around the cabinets for
physical manifestations, as day from night.
We must confess
that the situation appears to be very grave. The control of mediums by such
unprincipled and lying "spirits" is constantly becoming more and more
general; and the pernicious effects of seeming diabolism constantly multiply.
Some of the best mediums are abandoning the public rostrum and retiring from
this influence; and the movement is drifting churchward. We venture the
prediction that unless spiritualists set about the study of ancient philosophy,
so as to learn to discriminate between spirits and to guard themselves against
the baser sort, twenty-five years more will not elapse before they will have to
fly to the Romish communion to escape these "guides" and
"controls" that they have fondled so long. The signs of this
catastrophe already exhibit
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themselves. At a
recent convention at Philadelphia, it was seriously proposed to organize a sect
of Christian Spiritualists! This is because, having withdrawn from the church
and learned nothing of the philosophy of the phenomena, or the nature of their
spirits, they are drifting about on a sea of uncertainty like a ship without
compass or rudder. They cannot escape the dilemma; they must choose between
Porphyry and Pio Nono.
While men of
genuine science, such as Wallace, Crookes, Wagner, Butlerof, Varley, Buchanan,
Hare, Reichenbach, Thury, Perty, de Morgan, Hoffmann, Goldschmidt, W. Gregory,
Flammarion, Sergeant Cox and many others, firmly believe in the current
phenomena, many of the above named reject the theory of departed spirits.
Therefore, it seems but logical to think that if the London "Katie
King," the only materialized something which the public is obliged more or
less to credit out of respect to science, -- is not the spirit of an ex-mortal,
then it must be the astral solidified shadow of either one of the Rosicrucian
spooks -- "fantasies of superstition" -- or of some as yet
unexplained force in nature. Be it however a "spirit of health or goblin
damn'd" it is of little consequence; for if it be once proved that its
organism is not solid matter, then it must be and is a "spirit," an
apparition, a breath. It is an intelligence which acts outside our organisms
and therefore must belong to some existing even though unseen race of beings.
But what is it? What is this something which thinks and even speaks but yet is
not human; that is impalpable and yet not a disembodied spirit; that simulates
affection, passion, remorse, fear, joy, but yet feels neither? What is this
canting creature which rejoices in cheating the truthful inquirer and mocking
at sacred human feeling? For, if not Mr. Crookes's Katie King, other similar
creatures have done all these. Who can fathom the mystery? The true
psychologist alone. And where should he go for his text-books but to the
neglected alcoves of libraries where the works of despised hermetists and
theurgists have been gathering dust these many years.
Says Henry More,
the revered English Platonist, in his answer to an attack on the believers of
spiritual and magic phenomena by a skeptic of that age, named Webster:*
"As for that other opinion, that the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Letter to
J. Glanvil, chaplain to the king and a fellow of the Royal Society."
Glanvil was the author of the celebrated work on Apparitions and Demonology
entitled "Sadducismus Triumphatus, or a full and plain evidence concerning
witches and apparitions," in two parts, "proving partly by Scripture,
and partly by a choice collection of modern relations, the real existence of
apparitions, spirits and witches." -- 1700.
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THING.
greater part of the
reformed divines hold, that it was the Devil that appeared in Samuel's shape,
it is beneath contempt; for though I do not doubt but that in many of these
necromantic apparitions, they are ludicrous spirits, not the souls of the
deceased that appear, yet I am clear for the appearing of the soul of Samuel,
and as clear that in other necromancies, it may be such kinds of spirits, as
Porphyrius above describes, 'that change themselves into omnifarious forms and
shapes, and one while act the parts of daemons, another while of angels or
gods, and another while of the souls of the departed.' And I confess such a
spirit as this might personate Samuel here, for anything Webster alleged to the
contrary, for his arguments indeed are wonderfully weak and wooden."
When such a
metaphysician and philosopher as Henry More gives such testimony as this, we
may well assume our point to have been well taken. Learned investigators, all
very skeptical as to spirits in general and "departed human spirits"
in particular, during the last twenty years have taxed their brains to invent
new names for an old thing. Thus, with Mr. Crookes and Sergeant Cox, it is the
"psychic force." Professor Thury of Geneva calls it the
"psychode" or ectenic force; Professor Balfour Stewart, the
"electro-biological power"; Faraday, the "great master of
experimental philosophy in physics," but apparently a novice in
psychology, superciliously termed it an "unconscious muscular
action," an "unconscious cerebration," and what not? Sir William
Hamilton, a "latent thought"; Dr. Carpenter, "the ideo-motor
principle," etc., etc. So many scientists -- so many names.
Years ago the old
German philosopher, Schopenhauer, disposed of this force and matter at the same
time; and since the conversion of Mr. Wallace, the great anthropologist has
evidently adopted his ideas. Schopenhauer's doctrine is that the universe is
but the manifestation of the will. Every force in nature is also an effect of
will, representing a higher or lower degree of its objectiveness. It is the
teaching of Plato, who stated distinctly that everything visible was created or
evolved out of the invisible and eternal WILL, and after its fashion. Our
Heaven -- he says -- was produced according to the eternal pattern of the
"Ideal World," contained, as everything else, in the dodecahedron,
the geometrical model used by the Deity.* With Plato, the Primal Being is an
emanation of the Demiurgic Mind (Nous), which contains from the eternity the
"idea" of the "to be created world" within itself, and
which idea he produces out of himself.** The laws of nature are the established
relations of this idea to the forms of its manifestations; "these
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plato:
"Timaeus Soerius," 97.
** See Movers'
"Explanations," 268.
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forms," says
Schopenhauer, "are time, space, and causality. Through time and space the
idea varies in its numberless manifestations."
These ideas are far
from being new, and even with Plato they were not original. This is what we
read in the Chaldean Oracles:* "The works of nature co-exist with the intellectual
[[noerio]], spiritual Light of the Father. For it is the soul [[psuche]] which
adorned the great heaven, and which adorns it after the Father."
"The
incorporeal world then was already completed, having its seat in the Divine
Reason," says Philo** who is erroneously accused of deriving his
philosophy from Plato's.
In the Theogony of
Mochus, we find AEther first, and then the air; the two principles from which
Ulom, the intelligible [[noetos]] God (the visible universe of matter) is
born.***
In the Orphic
hymns, the Eros-Phanes evolves from the Spiritual Egg, which the AEthereal
winds impregnate, Wind**** being "the spirit of God," who is said to
move in AEther, "brooding over the Chaos" -- the Divine
"Idea." In the Hindu Katakopanisad, Purusha, the Divine Spirit,
already stands before the original matter, from whose union springs the great
Soul of the World, "Maha =Atma, Brahm, the Spirit of Life";*****
these latter appellations are identical with the Universal Soul, or Anima
Mundi, and the Astral Light of the theurgists and kabalists.
Pythagoras brought
his doctrines from the eastern sanctuaries, and Plato compiled them into a form
more intelligible than the mysterious numerals of the sage -- whose doctrines
he had fully embraced -- to the uninitiated mind. Thus, the Cosmos is "the
Son" with Plato, having for his father and mother the Divine Thought and
Matter.******
"The
Egyptians," says Dunlap,******* "distinguish between an older and
younger Horus, the former the brother of Osiris, the latter the son of Osiris
and Isis." The first is the Idea of the world remaining in the Demiurgic
Mind, "born in darkness before the creation of the world." The second
Horus is this "Idea" going forth from the Logos, becoming clothed
with matter, and assuming an actual existence.********
"The mundane
God, eternal, boundless, young and old, of winding form," ********* say
the Chaldean Oracles.
This "winding
form" is a figure to express the vibratory motion of the Astral Light,
with which the ancient priests were perfectly well
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Cory:
"Chaldean Oracles," 243.
** Philo Judaeus:
"On the Creation," x.
*** Movers:
"Phoinizer," 282.
**** K. O. Muller,
236.
***** Weber:
"Akad. Vorles," 213, 214, etc.
****** Plutarch,
"Isis and Osiris," i., vi.
*******
"Spirit History of Man," p. 88.
******** Movers:
"Phoinizer," 268.
********* Cory:
"Fragments," 240.
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acquainted, though
they may have differed in views of ether, with modern scientists; for in the
AEther they placed the Eternal Idea pervading the Universe, or the Will which
becomes Force, and creates or organizes matter.
"The
will," says Van Helmont, "is the first of all powers. For through the
will of the Creator all things were made and put in motion. . . . The will is
the property of all spiritual beings, and displays itself in them the more
actively the more they are freed from matter." And Paracelsus, "the
divine," as he was called, adds in the same strain: "Faith must
confirm the imagination, for faith establishes the will. . . . Determined will
is a beginning of all magical operations. . . . Because men do not perfectly
imagine and believe the result, is that the arts are uncertain, while they
might be perfectly certain."
The opposing power
alone of unbelief and skepticism, if projected in a current of equal force, can
check the other, and sometimes completely neutralize it. Why should
spiritualists wonder that the presence of some strong skeptics, or of those
who, feeling bitterly opposed to the phenomenon, unconsciously exercise their
will-power in opposition, hinders and often stops altogether the
manifestations? If there is no conscious power on earth but sometimes finds
another to interfere with or even counterbalance it, why wonder when the
unconscious, passive power of a medium is suddenly paralyzed in its effects by another
opposing one, though it also be as unconsciously exercised? Professors Faraday
and Tyndall boasted that their presence at a circle would stop at once every
manifestation. This fact alone ought to have proved to the eminent scientists
that there was some force in these phenomena worthy to arrest their attention.
As a scientist, Prof. Tyndall was perhaps pre-eminent in the circle of those
who were present at the seance; as a shrewd observer, one not easily deceived
by a tricking medium, he was perhaps no better, if as clever, as others in the
room, and if the manifestations were but a fraud so ingenious as to deceive the
others, they would not have stopped, even on his account. What medium can ever
boast of such phenomena as were produced by Jesus, and the apostle Paul after
him? Yet even Jesus met with cases where the unconscious force of resistance
overpowered even his so well directed current of will. "And he did not
many mighty works there, because of their unbelief."
There is a
reflection of every one of these views in Schopenhauer's philosophy. Our
"investigating" scientists might consult his works with profit. They
will find therein many a strange hypothesis founded on old ideas, speculations
on the "new" phenomena, which may prove as reasonable as any, and be
saved the useless trouble of inventing new
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theories. The
psychic and ectenic forces, the "ideo-motor" and
"electro-biological powers"; "latent thought" and even
"unconscious cerebration" theories, can be condensed in two words:
the kabalistic ASTRAL LIGHT.
The bold theories
and opinions expressed in Schopenhauer's works differ widely with those of the
majority of our orthodox scientists. "In reality," remarks this
daring speculator, "there is neither matter nor spirit. The tendency to
gravitation in a stone is as unexplainable as thought in human brain. . . . If
matter can -- no one knows why -- fall to the ground, then it can also -- no
one knows why -- think. . . . As soon, even in mechanics, as we trespass beyond
the purely mathematical, as soon as we reach the inscrutable, adhesion,
gravitation, and so on, we are faced by phenomena which are to our senses as
mysterious as the WILL and THOUGHT in man -- we find ourselves facing the
incomprehensible, for such is every force in nature. Where is then that matter
which you all pretend to know so well; and from which -- being so familiar with
it -- you draw all your conclusions and explanations, and attribute to it all
things? . . . That, which can be fully realized by our reason and senses, is
but the superficial: they can never reach the true inner substance of things.
Such was the opinion of Kant. If you consider that there is in a human head
some sort of a spirit, then you are obliged to concede the same to a stone. If
your dead and utterly passive matter can manifest a tendency toward
gravitation, or, like electricity, attract and repel, and send out sparks --
then, as well as the brain, it can also think. In short, every particle of the
so-called spirit, we can replace with an equivalent of matter, and every
particle of matter replace with spirit. . . . Thus, it is not the Cartesian
division of all things into matter and spirit that can ever be found
philosophically exact; but only if we divide them into will and manifestation,
which form of division has naught to do with the former, for it spiritualizes
every thing: all that, which is in the first instance real and objective --
body and matter -- it transforms into a representation, and every manifestation
into will."*
These views
corroborate what we have expressed about the various names given to the same
thing. The disputants are battling about mere words. Call the phenomena force,
energy, electricity or magnetism, will, or spirit-power, it will ever be the
partial manifestation of the soul, whether disembodied or imprisoned for a
while in its body -- of a portion of that intelligent, omnipotent, and
individual WILL, pervading all nature, and known, through the insufficiency of
human language to express correctly psychological images, as -- GOD.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"Parerga," ii., pp. 111, 112.
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"PARERGA."
The ideas of some
of our schoolmen about matter are, from the kabalistic standing-point, in many
a way erroneous. Hartmann calls their views "an instinctual
prejudice." Furthermore, he demonstrates that no experimenter can have
anything to do with matter properly termed, but only with the forces into which
he divides it. The visible effects of matter are but the effects of force. He
concludes thereby, that that which is now called matter is nothing but the
aggregation of atomic forces, to express which the word matter is used: outside
of that, for science matter is but a word void of sense. Notwithstanding many
an honest confession on the part of our specialists -- physicists,
physiologists and chemists -- that they know nothing whatever of matter,* they
deify it. Every new phenomenon which they find themselves unable to explain, is
triturated, compounded into incense, and burned on the altar of the goddess who
patronizes modern scientists.
No one can better
treat his subject than does Schopenhauer in his Parerga. In this work he discusses
at length animal magnetism, clairvoyance, sympathetic cures, seership, magic,
omens, ghost-seeing, and other spiritual matters. "All these
manifestations," he says, "are branches of one and the same tree, and
furnish us with irrefutable proofs of the existence of a chain of beings which
is based on quite a different order of things than that nature which has at its
foundation laws of space, time and adaptability. This other order of things is
far deeper, for it is the original and the direct one; in its presence the
common laws of nature, which are simply formal, are unavailing; therefore,
under its immediate action neither time nor space can separate any longer the
individuals, and the separation impendent on these forms presents no more
insurmountable barriers for the intercourse of thoughts and the immediate
action of the will. In this manner changes may be wrought by quite a different
course than the course of physical causality, i.e., through an action of the
manifestation of the will exhibited in a peculiar way and outside the
individual himself. Therefore the peculiar character of all the aforesaid
manifestations is the visio in distante et actio in distante (vision and action
at a distance) in its relation to time as well as in its relation to space.
Such an action at a distance is just what constitutes the fundamental character
of what is called magical; for such is the immediate action of our will, an
action liberated from the causal conditions of physical action, viz.,
contact."
"Besides that,"
continues Schopenhauer, "these manifestations present to us a substantial
and perfectly logical contradiction to materialism, and even to naturalism,
because in the light of such manifestations,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Huxley:
"Physical Basis of Life."
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that order of
things in nature which both these philosophies seek to present as absolute and
the only genuine, appears before us on the contrary purely phenomenal and
superficial, and containing at the bottom of it a substance of things a parte
and perfectly independent of its own laws. That is why these manifestations --
at least from a purely philosophical point of view -- among all the facts which
are presented to us in the domain of experiment, are beyond any comparison the
most important. Therefore, it is the duty of every scientist to acquaint
himself with them."*
To pass from the
philosophical speculations of a man like Schopenhauer to the superficial
generalizations of some of the French Academicians, would be profitless but for
the fact that it enables us to estimate the intellectual grasp of the two
schools of learning. What the German makes of profound psychological questions,
we have seen. Compare with it the best that the astronomer Babinet and the
chemist Boussingault can offer by way of explaining an important spiritualistic
phenomenon. In 1854-5 these distinguished specialists presented to the Academy
a memoire, or monograph, whose evident object was to corroborate and at the
same time make clearer Dr. Chevreuil's too complicated theory in explanation of
the turning-tables, of the commission for the investigation of which he was a
member.
Here it is
verbatim: "As to the movements and oscillations alleged to happen with
certain tables, they can have no cause other than the invisible and involuntary
vibrations of the experimenter's muscular system; the extended contraction of
the muscles manifesting itself at such time by a series of vibrations, and
becoming thus a visible tremor which communicates to the object a circumrotary
motion. This rotation is thus enabled to manifest itself with a considerable
energy, by a gradually quickening motion, or by a strong resistance, whenever
it is required to stop. Hence the physical explanation of the phenomenon
becomes clear and does not offer the slightest difficulty."**
None whatever. This
scientific hypothesis -- or demonstration shall we say? -- is as clear as one
of M. Babinet's nebulae examined on a foggy night.
And still, clear as
it may be, it lacks an important feature, i.e., common sense. We are at a loss
to decide whether or not Babinet accepts en desespoir de cause Hartmann's
proposition that "the visible effects of matter are nothing but the
effects of a force," and, that in order to form a clear conception of
matter, one must first form one of force. The philosophy to the school of which
belongs Hartmann, and which is
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Schopenhauer:
"Parerga." Art. on "Will in Nature."
** "Revue des
Deux Mondes," Jan. 15, 1855, p. 108.
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ATOMS.
partly accepted by
several of the greatest German scientists, teaches that the problem of matter
can only be solved by that invisible Force, acquaintance with which
Schopenhauer terms the "magical knowledge," and "magical effect
or action of Will." Thus, we must first ascertain whether the
"involuntary vibrations of the experimenter's muscular system," which
are but "actions of matter," are influenced by a will within the
experimenter or without. In the former case Babinet makes of him an unconscious
epileptic; the latter, as we will further see, he rejects altogether, and
attributes all intelligent answers of the tipping or rapping tables to
"unconscious ventriloquism."
We know that every
exertion of will results in force, and that, according to the above-named
German school, the manifestations of atomic forces are individual actions of
will, resulting in the unconscious rushing of atoms into the concrete image
already subjectively created by the will. Democritus taught, after his
instructor Leucippus, that the first principles of all things contained in the
universe were atoms and a vacuum. In its kabalistic sense, the vacuum means in
this instance the latent Deity, or latent force, which at its first
manifestation became WILL, and thus communicated the first impulse to these
atoms -- whose agglomeration, is matter. This vacuum was but another name for
chaos, and an unsatisfactory one, for, according to the Peripatetics
"nature abhors a vacuum."
That before
Democritus the ancients were familiar with the idea of the indestructibility of
matter is proved by their allegories and numerous other facts. Movers gives a
definition of the Phoenician idea of the ideal sun-light as a spiritual
influence issuing from the highest God, IAO, "the light conceivable only
by intellect -- the physical and spiritual Principle of all things; out of
which the soul emanates." It was the male Essence, or Wisdom, while the
primitive matter or Chaos was the female. Thus the two first principles --
co-eternal and infinite, were already with the primitive Phoenicians, spirit
and matter. Therefore the theory is as old as the world; for Democritus was not
the first philosopher who taught it; and intuition existed in man before the
ultimate development of his reason. But it is in the denial of the boundless
and endless Entity, possessor of that invisible Will which we for lack of a better
term call GOD, that lies the powerlessness of every materialistic science to
explain the occult phenomena. It is in the rejection a priori of everything
which might force them to cross the boundary of exact science and step into the
domain of psychological, or, if we prefer, metaphysical physiology, that we
find the secret cause of their discomfiture by the manifestations, and their
absurd theories to account for them. The ancient philosophy affirmed that it is
in consequence of the manifestation of that Will -- termed by Plato the Divine
Idea -- that everything visible and invisible
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sprung into
existence. As that Intelligent Idea, which, by directing its sole will-power
toward a centre of localized forces called objective forms into being, so can
man, the microcosm of the great Macrocosm, do the same in proportion with the
development of his will-power. The imaginary atoms -- a figure of speech
employed by Democritus, and gratefully seized upon by the materialists -- are
like automatic workmen moved inwardIy by the influx of that Universal Will
directed upon them, and which, manifesting itself as force, sets them into
activity. The plan of the structure to be erected is in the brain of the
Architect, and reflects his will; abstract as yet, from the instant of the
conception it becomes concrete through these atoms which follow faithfully
every line, point and figure traced in the imagination of the Divine Geometer.
As God creates, so
man can create. Given a certain intensity of will, and the shapes created by
the mind become subjective. Hallucinations, they are called, although to their creator
they are real as any visible object is to any one else. Given a more intense
and intelligent concentration of this will, and the form becomes concrete,
visible, objective; the man has learned the secret of secrets; he is a
MAGICIAN.
The materialist
should not object to this logic, for he regards thought as matter. Conceding it
to be so, the cunning mechanism contrived by the inventor; the fairy scenes
born in the poet's brain; the gorgeous painting limned by the artist's fancy;
the peerless statue chiselled in ether by the sculptor; the palaces and castles
built in air by the architect -- all these, though invisible and subjective,
must exist, for they are matter, shaped and moulded. Who shall say, then, that
there are not some men of such imperial will as to be able to drag these
air-drawn fancies into view, enveloped in the hard casing of gross substance to
make them tangible?
If the French
scientists reaped no laurels in the new field of investigation, what more was
done in England, until the day when Mr. Crookes offered himself in atonement
for the sins of the learned body? Why, Mr. Faraday, some twenty years ago,
actually condescended to be spoken to once or twice upon the subject. Faraday,
whose name is pronounced by the anti-spiritualists in every discussion upon the
phenomena, as a sort of scientific charm against the evil-eye of Spiritualism,
Faraday, who "blushed" for having published his researches upon such
a degrading belief, is now proved on good authority to have never sat at a
tipping table himself at all! We have but to open a few stray numbers of the
Journal des Debats, published while a noted Scotch medium was in England, to
recall the past events in all their primitive freshness. In one of these
numbers, Dr. Foucault, of Paris, comes out as a champion for the eminent
English experimenter. "Pray, do not imagine," says he,
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GLUE.
"that the
grand physicist had ever himself condescended so far as to sit prosaically at a
jumping table." Whence, then, came the "blushes" which suffused
the cheeks of the "Father of Experimental Philosophy"? Remembering
this fact, we will now examine the nature of Faraday's beautiful
"Indicator," the extraordinary "Medium-Catcher," invented
by him for the detection of mediumistic fraud. That complicated machine, the
memory of which haunts like a nightmare the dreams of dishonest mediums, is
carefully described in Comte de Mirville's Question des Esprits.
The better to prove
to the experimenters the reality of their own impulsion, Professor Faraday
placed several card-board disks, united to each other and stuck to the table by
a half-soft glue, which, making the whole adhere for a time together, would,
nevertheless, yield to a continuous pressure. Now, the table having turned --
yes, actually having dared to turn before Mr. Faraday, which fact is of some
value, at least -- the disks were examined; and, as they were found to have
gradually displaced themselves by slipping in the same direction as the table,
it thus became an unquestionable proof that the experimenters had pushed the
tables themselves.
Another of the
so-called scientific tests, so useful in a phenomenon alleged to be either
spiritual or psychical, consisted of a small instrument which immediately
warned the witnesses of the slightest personal impulsion on their part, or
rather, according to Mr. Faraday's own expression, "it warned them when
they changed from the passive to the active state." This needle which
betrayed the active motion proved but one thing, viz.: the action of a force
which either emanated from the sitters or controlled them. And who has ever
said that there is no such force? Every one admits so much, whether this force
passes through the operator, as it is generally shown, or acts independently of
him, as is so often the case. "The whole mystery consisted in the
disproportion of the force employed by the operators, who pushed because they
were forced to push, with certain effects of rotation, or rather, of a really
marvellous race. In the presence of such prodigious effects, how could any one
imagine that the Lilliputian experiments of that kind could have any value in
this newly discovered Land of Giants?"*
Professor Agassiz,
who occupied in America nearly the same eminent position as a scientist which
Mr. Faraday did in England, acted with a still greater unfairness. Professor J.
R. Buchanan, the distinguished anthropologist, who has treated Spiritualism in
some respects more scientifically than any one else in America, speaks of
Agassiz, in a recent article, with
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Comte de
Mirville: "Question des Esprits."
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a very just
indignation. For, of all other men, Professor Agassiz ought to believe in a
phenomenon to which he had been a subject himself. But now that both Faraday
and Agassiz are themselves disembodied, we can do better by questioning the
living than the dead.
Thus a force whose
secret powers were thoroughly familiar to the ancient theurgists, is denied by
modern skeptics. The antediluvian children -- who perhaps played with it, using
it as the boys in Bulwer-Lytton's Coming Race, use the tremendous
"vril" -- called it the "Water of Phtha"; their descendants
named it the Anima Mundi, the soul of the universe; and still later the
mediaeval hermetists termed it "sidereal light," or the "Milk of
the Celestial Virgin," the "Magnes," and many other names. But
our modern learned men will neither accept nor recognize it under such
appellations; for it pertains to magic, and magic is, in their conception, a
disgraceful superstition.
Apollonius and
Iamblichus held that it was not "in the knowledge of things without, but
in the perfection of the soul within, that lies the empire of man, aspiring to
be more than men."* Thus they had arrived at a perfect cognizance of their
godlike souls, the powers of which they used with all the wisdom, outgrowth of
esoteric study of the hermetic lore, inherited by them from their forefathers.
But our philosophers, tightly shutting themselves up in their shells of flesh,
cannot or dare not carry their timid gaze beyond the comprehensible. For them
there is no future life; there are no godlike dreams, they scorn them as
unscientific; for them the men of old are but "ignorant ancestors,"
as they express it; and whenever they meet during their physiological
researches with an author who believes that this mysterious yearning after
spiritual knowledge is inherent in every human being, and cannot have been
given us utterly in vain, they regard him with contemptuous pity.
Says a Persian
proverb: "The darker the sky is, the brighter the stars will shine."
Thus, on the dark firmament of the mediaeval ages began appearing the
mysterious Brothers of the Rosie Cross. They formed no associations, they built
no colleges; for, hunted up and down like so many wild beasts, when caught by
the Christian Church, they were unceremoniously roasted. "As religion
forbids it," says Bayle, "to spill blood," therefore, "to
elude the maxim, Ecclesia non novit sanguinem, they burned human beings, as
burning a man does not shed his blood!"
Many of these
mystics, by following what they were taught by some treatises, secretly
preserved from one generation to another, achieved discoveries which would not
be despised even in our modern days of exact sciences. Roger Bacon, the friar,
was laughed at as a quack, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Bulwer-Lytton:
"Zanoni."
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is now generally
numbered among "pretenders" to magic art; but his discoveries were
nevertheless accepted, and are now used by those who ridicule him the most.
Roger Bacon belonged by right if not by fact to that Brotherhood which includes
all those who study the occult sciences. Living in the thirteenth century,
almost a contemporary, therefore, of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, his
discoveries -- such as gunpowder and optical glasses, and his mechanical
achievements -- were considered by every one as so many miracles. He was
accused of having made a compact with the Evil One.
In the legendary
history of Friar Bacon, as "well as in an old play written by Robert
Green, a dramatist in the days of Queen Elizabeth, it is recounted, that,
having been summoned before the king, the friar was induced to show" some
of his skill before her majesty the queen. So he waved his hand (his wand, says
the text), and "presently was heard such excellent music, that they all
said they had never heard the like." Then there was heard a still louder
music and four apparitions suddenly presented themselves and danced until they
vanished and disappeared in the air. Then he waved his wand again, and suddenly
there was such a smell "as if all the rich perfumes in the whole world had
been there prepared in the best manner that art could set them out." Then
Roger Bacon having promised a gentleman to show him his sweetheart, he pulled a
hanging in the king's apartment aside and every one in the room saw "a
kitchen-maid with a basting-ladle in her hand." The proud gentleman,
although he recognized the maiden who disappeared as suddenly as she had
appeared, was enraged at the humiliating spectacle, and threatened the friar
with his revenge. What does the magician do? He simply answers: "Threaten
not, lest I do you more shame; and do you take heed how you give scholars the
lie again!"
As a commentary on
this, the modern historian* remarks: "This may be taken as a sort of
exemplification of the class of exhibitions which were probably the result of a
superior knowledge of natural sciences." No one ever doubted that it was
the result of precisely such a knowledge, and the hermetists, magicians,
astrologers and alchemists never claimed anything else. It certainly was not
their fault that the ignorant masses, under the influence of an unscrupulous
and fanatical clergy, should have attributed all such works to the agency of
the devil. In view of the atrocious tortures provided by the Inquisition for
all suspected of either black or white magic, it is not strange that these
philosophers neither boasted nor even acknowledged the fact of such an
intercourse. On the contrary, their own writings prove that they held that
magic is "no more than the
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* T. Wright:
"Narratives of Sorcery and Magic."
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application of
natural active causes to passive things or subjects; by means thereof, many
tremendously surprising but yet natural effects are produced."
The phenomena of
the mystic odors and music, exhibited by Roger Bacon, have been often observed
in our own time. To say nothing of our personal experience, we are informed by
English correspondents of the Theosophical Society that they have heard strains
of the most ravishing music, coming from no visible instrument, and inhaled a
succession of delightful odors produced, as they believed, by spirit-agency.
One correspondent tells us that so powerful was one of these familiar odors --
that of sandal-wood -- that the house would be impregnated with it for weeks
after the seance. The medium in this case was a member of a private family, and
the experiments were all made within the domestic circle. Another describes
what he calls a "musical rap." The potencies that are now capable of
producing these phenomena must have existed and been equally efficacious in the
days of Roger Bacon. As to the apparitions, it suffices to say that they are
evoked now in spiritualistic circles, and guaranteed by scientists, and their
evocation by Roger Bacon is thus made more probable than ever.
Baptista Porta, in
his treatise on Natural Magic, enumerates a whole catalogue of secret formulae
for producing extraordinary effects by employing the occult powers of nature.
Although the "magicians" believed as firmly as our spiritualists in a
world of invisible spirits, none of them claimed to produce his effects under
their control or through their sole help. They knew too well how difficult it
is to keep away the elementary creatures when they have once found the door
wide open. Even the magic of the ancient Chaldeans was but a profound knowledge
of the powers of simples and minerals. It was only when the theurgist desired
divine help in spiritual and earthly matters that he sought direct
communication through religious rites, with pure spiritual beings. With them,
even, those spirits who remain invisible and communicate with mortals through
their awakened inner senses, as in clairvoyance, clairaudience and trance,
could only be evoked subjectively and as a result of purity of life and prayer.
But all physical phenomena were produced simply by applying a knowledge of
natural forces, although certainly not by the method of legerdemain, practiced
in our days by conjurers.
Men possessed of
such knowledge and exercising such powers patiently toiled for something better
than the vain glory of a passing fame. Seeking it not, they became immortal, as
do all who labor for the good of the race, forgetful of mean self. Illuminated
with the light of eternal truth, these rich-poor alchemists fixed their
attention upon the things that lie beyond the common ken, recognizing nothing
inscrutable but the First
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KING."
Cause, and finding
no question unsolvable. To dare, to know, to will, and REMAIN SILENT, was their
constant rule; to be beneficent, unselfish, and unpretending, were, with them,
spontaneous impulses. Disdaining the rewards of petty traffic, spurning wealth,
luxury, pomp, and worldly power, they aspired to knowledge as the most
satisfying of all acquisitions. They esteemed poverty, hunger, toil, and the
evil report of men, as none too great a price to pay for its achievement. They,
who might have lain on downy, velvet-covered beds, suffered themselves to die
in hospitals and by the wayside, rather than debase their souls and allow the
profane cupidity of those who tempted them to triumph over their sacred vows.
The lives of Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, and Philalethes are too well known
to repeat the old, sad story.
If spiritualists
are anxious to keep strictly dogmatic in their notions of the
"spirit-world," they must not set scientists to investigate their
phenomena in the true experimental spirit. The attempt would most surely result
in a partial re-discovery of the magic of old -- that of Moses and Paracelsus.
Under the deceptive beauty of some of their apparitions, they might find some
day the sylphs and fair Undines of the Rosicrucians playing in the currents of
psychic and odic force.
Already Mr.
Crookes, who fully credits the being, feels that under the fair skin of Katie,
covering a simulacrum of heart borrowed partially from the medium and the
circle, there is no soul! And the learned authors of The Unseen Universe,
abandoning their "electro-biological" theory, begin to perceive in
the universal ether the possibility that it is a photographic album of EN-SOPH
-- the Boundless.
We are far from
believing that all the spirits that communicate at circles are of the classes
called "Elemental," and "Elementary." Many -- especially
among those who control the medium subjectively to speak, write, and otherwise
act in various ways -- are human, disembodied spirits. Whether the majority of
such spirits are good or bad, largely depends on the private morality of the
medium, much on the circle present, and a great deal on the intensity and
object of their purpose. If this object is merely to gratify curiosity and to
pass the time, it is useless to expect anything serious. But, in any case,
human spirits can never materialize themselves in propria persona. These can
never appear to the investigator clothed with warm, solid flesh, sweating hands
and faces, and grossly-material bodies. The most they can do is to project
their aethereal reflection on the atmospheric waves, and if the touch of their
hands and clothing can become upon rare occasions objective to the senses of a
living mortal, it will be felt as a passing breeze gently sweeping over the
touched spot, not as a human hand or material body. It is useless to plead that
the "materialized spirits" that have exhibited themselves with
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beating hearts and
loud voices (with or without a trumpet) are human spirits. The voices -- if
such sound can be termed a voice at all -- of a spiritual apparition once heard
can hardly be forgotten. That of a pure spirit is like the tremulous murmur of
an AEolian harp echoed from a distance; the voice of a suffering, hence impure,
if not utterly bad spirit, may be assimilated to a human voice issuing from an
empty barrel.
This is not our
philosophy, but that of the numberless generations of theurgists and magicians,
and based upon their practical experience. The testimony of antiquity is
positive on this subject: [[Daimonioin phonai anarthroi eisi]]. . . .* The
voices of spirits are not articulated. The spirit-voice consists of a series of
sounds which conveys the impression of a column of compressed air ascending
from beneath upward, and spreading around the living interlocutor. The many
eye-witnesses who testified in the case of Elizabeth Eslinger, namely:** the
deputy-governor of the prison of Weinsberg, Mayer, Eckhart, Theurer, and Knorr
(sworn evidence), Duttenhofer, and Kapff, the mathematician, testified that
they saw the apparition like a pillar of clouds. For the space of eleven weeks,
Doctor Kerner and his sons, several Lutheran ministers, the advocate Fraas, the
engraver Duttenhofer, two physicians, Siefer and Sicherer, the judge Heyd, and
the Baron von Hugel, with many others, followed this manifestation daily.
During the time it lasted, the prisoner Elizabeth prayed with a loud voice
uninterruptedly; therefore, as the "spirit" was talking at the same
time, it could be no ventriloquism; and that voice, they say, "had nothing
human in it; no one could imitate its sounds."
Further on we will
give abundant proofs from ancient authors concerning this neglected truism. We
will now only again assert that no spirit claimed by the spiritualists to be
human was ever proved to be such on sufficient testimony. The influence of the
disembodied ones can be felt, and communicated subjectively by them to
sensitives. They can produce objective manifestations, but they cannot produce
themselves otherwise than as described above. They can control the body of a
medium, and express their desires and ideas in various modes well known to
spiritualists; but not materialize what is matterless and purely spiritual --
their divine essence. Thus every so-called "materialization" -- when
genuine -- is either produced (perhaps) by the will of that spirit whom the
"appearance" is claimed to be but can only personate at best, or by
the elementary goblins themselves, which are generally too stupid to deserve
the honor of being called devils. Upon rare occasions the spirits are able to
subdue and control these soulless beings, which are ever ready to
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* See Des
Mousseaux's "Dodone," and "Dieu et les dieux," p. 326.
**
"Apparitions," translated by C. Crowe, pp. 388, 391, 399.
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HUMAN.
assume pompous
names if left to themselves, in such a way that the mischievous spirit "of
the air," shaped in the real image of the human spirit, will be moved by
the latter like a marionette, and unable to either act or utter other words
than those imposed on him by the "immortal soul." But this requires
many conditions generally unknown to the circles of even spiritualists most in
the habit of regularly attending seances. Not every one can attract human
spirits who likes. One of the most powerful attractions of our departed ones is
their strong affection for those whom they have left on earth. It draws them
irresistibly, by degrees, into the current of the Astral Light vibrating
between the person sympathetic to them and the Universal Soul. Another very
important condition is harmony, and the magnetic purity of the persons present.
If this philosophy
is wrong, if all the "materialized" forms emerging in darkened rooms
from still darker cabinets, are spirits of men who once lived upon this earth,
why such a difference between them and the ghosts that appear unexpectedly --
ex abrupto -- without either cabinet or medium? Who ever heard of the
apparitions, unrestful "souls," hovering about the spots where they
were murdered, or coming back for some other mysterious reasons of their own,
with "warm hands" feeling like living flesh, and but that they are
known to be dead and buried, not distinguishable from living mortals? We have
well-attested facts of such apparitions making themselves suddenly visible, but
never, until the beginning of the era of the "materializations," did
we see anything like them. In the Medium and Day Break, of September 8, 1876,
we read a letter from "a lady travelling on the continent," narrating
a circumstance that happened in a haunted house. She says: ". . . A
strange sound proceeded from a darkened corner of the library . . . on looking
up she perceived a cloud or column of luminous vapor; . . . . the earth-bound
spirit was hovering about the spot rendered accursed by his evil deed. . .
." As this spirit was doubtless a genuine elementary apparition, which
made itself visible of its own free will -- in short, an umbra -- it was, as
every respectable shadow should be, visible but impalpable, or if palpable at
all, communicating to the feeling of touch the sensation of a mass of water
suddenly clasped in the hand, or of condensed but cold steam. It was luminous
and vapory; for aught we can tell it might have been the real personal umbra of
the "spirit," persecuted, and earth-bound, either by its own remorse
and crimes or those of another person or spirit. The mysteries of after-death
are many, and modern "materializations" only make them cheap and
ridiculous in the eyes of the indifferent.
To these assertions
may be opposed a fact well known among spiritualists: The writer has publicly
certified to having seen such materialized forms. We have most assuredly done
so, and are ready to repeat the
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testimony. We have
recognized such figures as the visible representations of acquaintances, friends,
and even relatives. We have, in company with many other spectators, heard them
pronounce words in languages unfamiliar not only to the medium and to every one
else in the room, except ourselves, but, in some cases, to almost if not quite
every medium in America and Europe, for they were the tongues of Eastern tribes
and peoples. At the time, these instances were justly regarded as conclusive
proofs of the genuine mediumship of the uneducated Vermont farmer who sat in
the "cabinet." But, nevertheless, these figures were not the forms of
the persons they appeared to be. They were simply their portrait statues,
constructed, animated and operated by the elementaries. If we have not
previously elucidated this point, it was because the spiritualistic public was
not then ready to even listen to the fundamental proposition that there are
elemental and elementary spirits. Since that time this subject has been
broached and more or less widely discussed. There is less hazard now in
attempting to launch upon the restless sea of criticism the hoary philosophy of
the ancient sages, for there has been some preparation of the public mind to
consider it with impartiality and deliberation. Two years of agitation have
effected a marked change for the better.
Pausanias writes
that four hundred years after the battle of Marathon, there were still heard in
the place where it was fought, the neighing of horses and the shouts of shadowy
soldiers. Supposing that the spectres of the slaughtered soldiers were their
genuine spirits, they looked like "shadows," not materialized men.
Who, then, or what, produced the neighing of horses? Equine
"spirits"? And if it be pronounced untrue that horses have spirits --
which assuredly no one among zoologists, physiologists or psychologists, or
even spiritualists, can either prove or disprove -- then must we take it for
granted that it was the "immortal souls" of men which produced the
neighing at Marathon to make the historical battle scene more vivid and
dramatic? The phantoms of dogs, cats, and various other animals have been
repeatedly seen, and the world-wide testimony is as trustworthy upon this point
as that with respect to human apparitions. Who or what personates, if we are
allowed such an expression, the ghosts of departed animals? Is it, again, human
spirits? As the matter now stands, there is no side issue; we have either to
admit that animals have surviving spirits and souls as well as ourselves, or
hold with Porphyry that there are in the invisible world a kind of tricky and
malicious demons, intermediary beings between living men and "gods,"
spirits that delight in appearing under every imaginable shape, beginning with
the human form, and ending with those of multifarious animals.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "De
Abstinentia," etc.
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CRIMES.
Before venturing to
decide the question whether the spectral animal forms so frequently seen and
attested are the returning spirits of dead beasts, we must carefully consider
their reported behavior. Do these spectres act according to the habits and
display the same instincts, as the animals during life? Do the spectral beasts
of prey lie in wait for victims, and timid animals flee before the presence of
man; or do the latter show a malevolence and disposition to annoy, quite
foreign to their natures? Many victims of these obsessions -- notably, the
afflicted persons of Salem and other historical witchcrafts -- testify to
having seen dogs, cats, pigs, and other animals, entering their rooms, biting
them, trampling upon their sleeping bodies, and talking to them; often inciting
them to suicide and other crimes. In the well-attested case of Elizabeth
Eslinger, mentioned by Dr. Kerner, the apparition of the ancient priest of
Wimmenthal* was accompanied by a large black dog, which he called his father,
and which dog in the presence of numerous witnesses jumped on all the beds of
the prisoners. At another time the priest appeared with a lamb, and sometimes
with two lambs. Most of those accused at Salem were charged by the seeresses
with consulting and plotting mischief with yellow birds, which would sit on
their shoulder or on the beams overhead.** And unless we discredit the
testimony of thousands of witnesses, in all parts of the world, and in all
ages, and allow a monopoly of seership to modern mediums, spectre-animals do
appear and manifest all the worst traits of depraved human nature, without
themselves being human. What, then, can they be but elementals?
Descartes was one
of the few who believed and dared say that to occult medicine we shall owe
discoveries "destined to extend the domain of philosophy"; and
Brierre de Boismont not only shared in these hopes but openly avowed his
sympathy with "supernaturalism," which he considered the universal
"grand creed." ". . . We think with Guizot," he says, "that
the existence of society is bound up in it. It is in vain that modern reason,
which, notwithstanding its positivism, cannot explain the intimate cause of any
phenomena, rejects the supernatural; it is universal, and at the root of all
hearts. The most elevated minds are frequently its most ardent
disciples."***
Christopher
Columbus discovered America, and Americus Vespucius reaped the glory and
usurped his dues. Theophrastus Paracelsus rediscovered the occult properties of
the magnet -- "the bone of Horus" which, twelve centuries before his
time, had played such an important part in the theurgic mysteries -- and he
very naturally became the founder
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* C. Crowe:
"On Apparitions," p. 398.
** Upham:
"Salem Witchcraft."
*** Brierre de
Boismont: "On Hallucinations," p. 60.
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of the school of
magnetism and of mediaeval magico-theurgy. But Mesmer, who lived nearly three
hundred years after him, and as a disciple of his school brought the magnetic
wonders before the public, reaped the glory that was due to the
fire-philosopher, while the great master died in a hospital!
So goes the world:
new discoveries, evolving from old sciences; new men -- the same old nature!
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CHAPTER III.
"The mirror of
the soul cannot reflect both earth and heaven; and the one vanishes from its
surface, as the other is glassed upon its deep." ZANONI.
"Qui, donc,
t'a donne la mission d'annoncer au peuple que la Divinite n'existe pas -- quel
avantage trouves tu a persuader a l'homme qu'une force aveugle preside a ses
destinees et frappe au hasard le crime et la vertu?"
ROBESPIERRE
(Discours), May 7, 1794.
WE believe that few
of those physical phenomena which are genuine are caused by disembodied human
spirits. Still, even those that are produced by occult forces of nature, such
as happen through a few genuine mediums, and are consciously employed by the
so-called "jugglers" of India and Egypt, deserve a careful and
serious investigation by science; especially now that a number of respected
authorities have testified that in many cases the hypothesis of fraud does not
hold. No doubt, there are professed "conjurors" who can perform
cleverer tricks than all the American and English "John Kings"
together. Robert Houdin unquestionably could, but this did not prevent his
laughing outright in the face of the academicians, when they desired him to
assert in the newspapers, that he could make a table move, or rap answers to
questions, without contact of hands, unless the table was a prepared one.* The
fact alone, that a now notorious London juggler refused to accept a challenge
for £1,000 offered him by Mr. Algernon Joy,* to produce such manifestations as
are usually obtained through mediums, unless he was left unbound and free from
the hands of a committee, negatives his expose of the occult phenomena. Clever
as he may be, we defy and challenge him to reproduce, under the same
conditions, the "tricks" exhibited even by a common Indian juggler.
For instance, the spot to be chosen by the investigators at the moment of the
performance, and the juggler to know nothing of the choice; the experiment to
be made in broad daylight, without the least preparations for it; without any
confederate but a boy absolutely naked, and the juggler to be in a condition of
semi-nudity. After that, we should select out of a variety three tricks, the
most common among such public jugglers, and that were recently exhibited to
some gentlemen belonging to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See de Mirville's
"Question des Esprits," and the works on the "Phenomenes
Spirites," by de Gasparin.
** Honorary
Secretary to the National Association of Spiritualists of London.
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the suite of the
Prince of Wales: 1. To transform a rupee -- firmly clasped in the hand of a
skeptic -- into a living cobra, the bite of which would prove fatal, as an
examination of its fangs would show. 2. To cause a seed chosen at random by the
spectators, and planted in the first semblance of a flower-pot, furnished by
the same skeptics, to grow, mature, and bear fruit in less than a quarter of an
hour. 3. To stretch himself on three swords, stuck perpendicularly in the
ground at their hilts, the sharp points upward; after that, to have removed
first one of the swords, then the other, and, after an interval of a few
seconds, the last one, the juggler remaining, finally, lying on nothing -- on
the air, miraculously suspended at about one yard from the ground. When any
prestidigitateur, to begin with Houdin and end with the last trickster who has
secured gratuitous advertisement by attacking spiritualism, does the same, then
-- but only then -- we will train ourselves to believe that mankind has been
evolved out of the hind-toe of Mr. Huxley's Eocene Orohippus.
We assert again, in
full confidence, that there does not exist a professional wizard, either of the
North, South or West, who can compete with anything approaching success, with
these untutored, naked sons of the East. These require no Egyptian Hall for
their performances, nor any preparations or rehearsals; but are ever ready, at
a moment's notice, to evoke to their help the hidden powers of nature, which,
for European prestidigitateurs as well as for scientists, are a closed book.
Verily, as Elihu puts it, "great men are not always wise; neither do the
aged understand judgment."* To repeat the remark of the English divine,
Dr. Henry More, we may well say: ". . . indeed, if there were any modesty
left in mankind, the histories of the Bible might abundantly assure men of the
existence of angels and spirits." The same eminent man adds, "I look
upon it as a special piece of Providence that . . . fresh examples of
apparitions may awaken our benumbed and lethargic minds into an assurance that
there are other intelligent beings besides those that are clothed in heavy
earth or clay . . . for this evidence, showing that there are bad spirits, will
necessarily open a door to the belief that there are good ones, and lastly,
that there is a God." The instance above given carries a moral with it,
not only to scientists, but theologians. Men who have made their mark in the
pulpit and in professors' chairs, are continually showing the lay public that
they really know so little of psychology, as to take up with any plausible
schemer who comes their way, and so make themselves ridiculous in the eyes of
the thoughtful student. Public opinion upon this subject has been manufactured
by jugglers and self-styled savants, unworthy of respectful consideration.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Job.
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The development of
psychological science has been retarded far more by the ridicule of this class
of pretenders, than by the inherent difficulties of its study. The empty laugh
of the scientific nursling or of the fools of fashion, has done more to keep
man ignorant of his imperial psychical powers, than the obscurities, the obstacles
and the dangers that cluster about the subject. This is especially the case
with spiritualistic phenomena. That their investigation has been so largely
confined to incapables, is due to the fact that men of science, who might and
would have studied them, have been frightened off by the boasted exposures, the
paltry jokes, and the impertinent clamor of those who are not worthy to tie
their shoes. There are moral cowards even in university chairs. The inherent
vitality of modern spiritualism is proven in its survival of the neglect of the
scientific body, and of the obstreperous boasting of its pretended exposers. If
we begin with the contemptuous sneers of the patriarchs of science, such as
Faraday and Brewster, and end with the professional (?) exposes of the
successful mimicker of the phenomena, ----, of London, we will not find them
furnishing one single, well-established argument against the occurrence of
spiritual manifestations. "My theory is," says this individual, in
his recent soi-disant "expose," "that Mr. Williams dressed up
and personified John King and Peter. Nobody can prove that it wasn't so."
Thus it appears that, notwithstanding the bold tone of assertion, it is but a
theory after all, and spiritualists might well retort upon the exposer, and
demand that he should prove that it is so.
But the most
inveterate, uncompromising enemies of Spiritualism are a class very fortunately
composed of but few members, who, nevertheless, declaim the louder and assert
their views with a clamorousness worthy of a better cause. These are the
pretenders to science of young America -- a mongrel class of
pseudo-philosophers, mentioned at the opening of this chapter, with sometimes
no better right to be regarded as scholars than the possession of an electrical
machine, or the delivery of a puerile lecture on insanity and mediomania. Such
men are -- if you believe them -- profound thinkers and physiologists; there is
none of your metaphysical nonsense about them; they are Positivists -- the
mental sucklings of Auguste Comte, whose bosoms swell at the thought of
plucking deluded humanity from the dark abyss of superstition, and rebuilding
the cosmos on improved principles. Irascible psychophobists, no more cutting
insult can be offered them than to suggest that they may be endowed with
immortal spirits. To hear them, one would fancy that there can be no other
souls in men and women than "scientific" or "unscientific
souls"; whatever that kind of soul may be.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Dr. F. R.
Marvin's "Lectures on Mediomania and Insanity."
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Some thirty or
forty years ago, in France, Auguste Comte -- a pupil of the Ecole
Polytechnique, who had remained for years at that establishment as a repetiteur
of Transcendant Analysis and Rationalistic Mechanics -- awoke one fine morning
with the very irrational idea of becoming a prophet. In America, prophets can
be met with at every street-corner; in Europe, they are as rare as black swans.
But France is the land of novelties. Auguste Comte became a prophet; and so
infectious is fashion, sometimes, that even in sober England he was considered,
for a certain time, the Newton of the nineteenth century.
The epidemic
extended, and for the time being, it spread like wildfire over Germany,
England, and America. It found adepts in France, but the excitement did not
last long with these. The prophet needed money: the disciples were unwilling to
furnish it. The fever of admiration for a religion without a God cooled off as
quickly as it had come on; of all the enthusiastic apostles of the prophet,
there remained but one worthy of any attention. It was the famous philologist
Littre, a member of the French Institute, and a would-be member of the Imperial
Academy of Sciences, but whom the archbishop of Orleans maliciously prevented
from becoming one of the "Immortals."*
The philosopher-mathematician
-- the high-priest of the "religion of the future" -- taught his
doctrine as do all his brother-prophets of our modern days. He deified
"woman," and furnished her with an altar; but the goddess had to pay
for its use. The rationalists had laughed at the mental aberration of Fourier;
they had laughed at the St. Simonists; and their scorn for Spiritualism knew no
bounds. The same rationalists and materialists were caught, like so many
empty-headed sparrows, by the bird-lime of the new prophet's rhetoric. A
longing for some kind of divinity, a craving for the "unknown," is a
feeling congenital in man; hence the worst atheists seem not to be exempt from
it. Deceived by the outward brilliancy of this ignus fatuus, the disciples followed
it until they found themselves floundering in a bottomless morass.
Covering themselves
with the mask of a pretended erudition, the Positivists of this country have
organized themselves into clubs and committees with the design of uprooting
Spiritualism, while pretending to impartially investigate it.
Too timid to openly
challenge the churches and the Christian doctrine, they endeavor to sap that
upon which all religion is based -- man's faith in God and his own immortality.
Their policy is to ridicule that which affords an unusual basis for such a
faith -- phenomenal Spiritualism.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vapereau:
"Biographie Contemporaine," art. Littre; and Des Mousseaux: "Les
Hauts Phenomenes de la Magie," ch. 6.
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FUTURE.
Attacking it at its
weakest side, they make the most of its lack of an inductive method, and of the
exaggerations that are to be found in the transcendental doctrines of its
propagandists. Taking advantage of its unpopularity, and displaying a courage
as furious and out of place as that of the errant knight of La Mancha, they
claim recognition as philanthropists and benefactors who would crush out a
monstrous superstition.
Let us see in what
degree Comte's boasted religion of the future is superior to Spiritualism, and
how much less likely its advocates are to need the refuge of those lunatic
asylums which they officiously recommend for the mediums whom they have been so
solicitous about. Before beginning, let us call attention to the fact that
three-fourths of the disgraceful features exhibited in modern Spiritualism are
directly traceable to the materialistic adventurers pretending to be
spiritualists. Comte has fulsomely depicted the
"artificially-fecundated" woman of the future. She is but elder
sister to the Cyprian ideal of the free-lovers. The immunity against the future
offered by the teachings of his moonstruck disciples, has inoculated some
pseudo-spiritualists to such an extent as to lead them to form communistic
associations. None, however, have proved long-lived. Their leading feature
being generally a materialistic animalism, gilded over with a thin leaf of
Dutch-metal philosophy and tricked out with a combination of hard Greek names,
the community could not prove anything else than a failure.
Plato, in the fifth
book of the Republic, suggests a method for improving the human race by the
elimination of the unhealthy or deformed individuals, and by coupling the
better specimens of both sexes. It was not to be expected that the "genius
of our century," even were he a prophet, would squeeze out of his brain
anything entirely new.
Comte was a
mathematician. Cleverly combining several old utopias, he colored the whole,
and, improving on Plato's idea, materialized it, and presented the world with
the greatest monstrosity that ever emanated from a human mind!
We beg the reader
to keep in view, that we do not attack Comte as a philosopher, but as a
professed reformer. In the irremediable darkness of his political,
philosophical and religious views, we often meet with isolated observations and
remarks in which profound logic and judiciousness of thought rival the
brilliancy of their interpretation. But then, these dazzle you like flashes of
lightning on a gloomy night, to leave you, the next moment, more in the dark
than ever. If condensed and repunctuated, his several works might produce, on
the whole, a volume of very original aphorisms, giving a very clear and really
clever definition of most of our social evils; but it would be vain to seek,
either through the tedious circumlocution of the six volumes of his Cours de
Philoso-
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phie Positive, or
in that parody on priesthood, in the form of a dialogue -- The Catechism of the
Religion of Positivism -- any idea suggestive of even provisional remedies for
such evils. His disciples suggest that the sublime doctrines of their prophet
were not intended for the vulgar. Comparing the dogmas preached by Positivism
with their practical exemplifications by its apostles, we must confess the
possibility of some very achromatic doctrine being at the bottom of it. While
the "high-priest" preaches that "woman must cease to be the female
of the man";* while the theory of the positivist legislators on marriage
and the family, chiefly consists in making the woman the "mere companion
of man by ridding her of every maternal function";** and while they are
preparing against the future a substitute for that function by applying
"to the chaste woman" "a latent force,"*** some of its lay
priests openly preach polygamy, and others affirm that their doctrines are the
quintessence of spiritual philosophy.
In the opinion of
the Romish clergy, who labor under a chronic nightmare of the devil, Comte
offers his "woman of the future" to the possession of the
"incubi."**** In the opinion of more prosaic persons, the Divinity of
Positivism, must henceforth be regarded as a biped broodmare. Even Littre, made
prudent restrictions while accepting the apostleship of this marvellous
religion. This is what he wrote in 1859:
"M. Comte not
only thought that he found the principles, traced the outlines, and furnished
the method, but that he had deduced the consequences and constructed the social
and religious edifice of the future. It is in this second division that we make
our reservations, declaring, at the same time, that we accept as an
inheritance, the whole of the first."*****
Further, he says:
"M. Comte, in a grand work entitled the System of the Positive Philosophy,
established the basis of a philosophy [?] which must finally supplant every
theology and the whole of metaphysics. Such a work necessarily contains a
direct application to the government of societies; as it has nothing arbitrary
in it [?] and as we find therein a real science [?], my adhesion to the
principles involves my adhesion to the essential consequences."
M. Littre has shown
himself in the light of a true son of his prophet. Indeed the whole system of
Comte appears to us to have been built on a play of words. When they say
"Positivism," read Nihilism; when you hear the word chastity, know
that it means impudicity; and so on.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A. Comte:
"Systeme de Politique Positive," vol. i., p. 203, etc.
** Ibid.
*** Ibid.
**** See des
Mousseaux: "Hauts Phenomenes de la Magie," chap. 6.
***** Littre:
"Paroles de Philosophie Positive."
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NEGATION.
Being a religion
based on a theory of negation, its adherents can hardly carry it out
practically without saying white when meaning black!
"Positive
Philosophy," continues Littre, "does not accept atheism, for the
atheist is not a really-emancipated mind, but is, in his own way, a theologian
still; he gives his explanation about the essence of things; he knows how they
began! . . . Atheism is Pantheism; this system is quite theological yet, and
thus belongs to the ancient party."*
It really would be
losing time to quote any more of these paradoxical dissertations. Comte
attained to the apotheosis of absurdity and inconsistency when, after inventing
his philosophy, he named it a "Religion." And, as is usually the
case, the disciples have surpassed the reformer -- in absurdity. Supposititious
philosophers, who shine in the American academies of Comte, like a lampyris
noctiluca beside a planet, leave us in no doubt as to their belief, and
contrast "that system of thought and life" elaborated by the French
apostle with the "idiocy" of Spiritualism; of course to the advantage
of the former. "To destroy, you must replace"; exclaims the author of
the Catechism of the Religion of Positivism, quoting Cassaudiere, by the way,
without crediting him with the thought; and his disciples proceed to show by
what sort of a loathsome system they are anxious to replace Christianity,
Spiritualism, and even Science.
"Positivism,"
perorates one of them, "is an integral doctrine. It rejects completely all
forms of theological and metaphysical belief; all forms of supernaturalism, and
thus -- Spiritualism. The true positive spirit consists in substituting the
study of the invariable laws of phenomena for that of their so-called causes,
whether proximate or primary. On this ground it equally rejects atheism; for
the atheist is at bottom a theologian," he adds, plagiarizing sentences from
Littre's works: "the atheist does not reject the problems of theology,
only the solution of these, and so he is illogical. We Positivists reject the
problem in our turn on the ground that it is utterly inaccessible to the
intellect, and we would only waste our strength in a vain search for first and
final causes. As you see, Positivism gives a complete explanation [?] of the
world, of man, his duty and destiny . . . . "!**
Very brilliant
this; and now, by way of contrast, we will quote what a really great scientist,
Professor Hare, thinks of this system. "Comte's positive philosophy,"
he says, "after all, is merely negative. It is admitted by Comte, that he
knows nothing of the sources and causes of nature's laws; that their
origination is so perfectly inscrutable as to make it idle to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Littre:
"Paroles de Philosophie Positive," vii., 57.
**
"Spiritualism and Charlatanism."
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take up time in any
scrutiny for that purpose. . . . Of course his doctrine makes him avowedly a
thorough ignoramus, as to the causes of laws, or the means by which they are
established, and can have no basis but the negative argument above stated, in
objecting to the facts ascertained in relation to the spiritual creation. Thus,
while allowing the atheist his material dominion, Spiritualism will erect within
and above the same space a dominion of an importance as much greater as
eternity is to the average duration of human life, and as the boundless regions
of the fixed stars are to the habitable area of this globe."*
In short,
Positivism proposes to itself to destroy Theology, Metaphysics, Spiritualism,
Atheism, Materialism, Pantheism, and Science, and it must finally end in
destroying itself. De Mirville thinks that according to Positivism, "order
will begin to reign in the human mind only on the day when psychology will
become a sort of cerebral physics, and history a kind of social physics."
The modern Mohammed first disburdens man and woman of God and their own soul,
and then unwittingly disembowels his own doctrine with the too sharp sword of
metaphysics, which all the time he thought he was avoiding, thus letting out
every vestige of philosophy.
In 1864, M. Paul
Janet, a member of the Institute, pronounced a discourse upon Positivism, in
which occur the following remarkable words:
"There are
some minds which were brought up and fed on exact and positive sciences, but
which feel nevertheless, a sort of instinctive impulse for philosophy. They can
satisfy this instinct but with elements that they have already on hand.
Ignorant in psychological sciences, having studied only the rudiments of
metaphysics, they nevertheless are determined to fight these same metaphysics
as well as psychology, of which they know as little as of the other. After this
is done, they will imagine themselves to have founded a Positive Science, while
the truth is that they have only built up a new mutilated and incomplete
metaphysical theory. They arrogate to themselves the authority and
infallibility properly belonging alone to the true sciences, those which are
based on experience and calculations; but they lack such an authority, for
their ideas, defective as they may be, nevertheless belong to the same class as
those which they attack. Hence the weakness of their situation, the final ruin
of their ideas, which are soon scattered to the four winds."**
The Positivists of
America have joined hands in their untiring efforts to overthrow Spiritualism.
To show their impartiality, though, they propound such novel queries as
follows: " . . . how much rationality is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Prof. Hare:
"On Positivism," p. 29.
** "Journal
des Debats," 1864. See also des Mousseaux's "Hauts Phen. de la
Magie."
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FECUNDATION."
there in the dogmas
of the Immaculate Conception, the Trinity and Transubstantiation, if submitted
to the tests of physiology, mathematics, and chemistry?" and they
"undertake to say, that the vagaries of Spiritualism do not surpass in
absurdity these eminently respectable beliefs." Very well. But there is
neither theological absurdity nor spiritualistic delusion that can match in
depravity and imbecility that positivist notion of "artificial
fecundation." Denying to themselves all thought on primal and final
causes, they apply their insane theories to the construction of an impossible
woman for the worship of future generations; the living, immortal companion of
man they would replace with the Indian female fetich of the Obeah, the wooden
idol that is stuffed every day with serpents' eggs, to be hatched by the heat
of the sun!
And now, if we are
permitted to ask in the name of common-sense, why should Christian mystics be
taxed with credulity or the spiritualists be consigned to Bedlam, when a
religion embodying such revolting absurdity finds disciples even among
Academicians? -- when such insane rhapsodies as the following can be uttered by
the mouth of Comte and admired by his followers: "My eyes are dazzled; --
they open each day more and more to the increasing coincidence between the
social advent of the feminine mystery, and the mental decadence of the
eucharistical sacrament. Already the Virgin has dethroned God in the minds of
Southern Catholics! Positivism realizes the Utopia of the mediaeval ages, by
representing all the members of the great family as the issue of a virgin
mother without a husband. . . ." And again, after giving the modus
operandi: "The development of the new process would soon cause to spring
up a caste without heredity, better adapted than vulgar procreation to the
recruitment of spiritual chiefs, or even temporal ones, whose authority would
then rest upon an origin truly superior, which would not shrink from an
investigation."
To this we might
inquire with propriety, whether there has ever been found in the "vagaries
of Spiritualism," or the mysteries of Christianity, anything more
preposterous than this ideal "coming race." If the tendency of
materialism is not grossly belied by the behavior of some of its advocates,
those who publicly preach polygamy, we fancy that whether or not there will
ever be a sacerdotal stirp so begotten, we shall see no end of progeny, -- the
offspring of "mothers without husbands."
How natural that a
philosophy which could engender such a caste of didactic incubi, should express
through the pen of one of its most garrulous essayists, the following
sentiments: "This is a sad, a very sad
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Philosophie
Positive," Vol. iv., p. 279.
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age,* full of dead
and dying faiths; full of idle prayers sent out in vain search for the
departing gods. But oh! it is a glorious age, full of the golden light which
streams from the ascending sun of science! What shall we do for those who are
shipwrecked in faith, bankrupt in intellect, but . . . who seek comfort in the
mirage of spiritualism, the delusions of transcendentalism, or the will o' the
wisp of mesmerism? . . ."
The ignis fatuus,
now so favorite an image with many dwarf philosophers, had itself to struggle
for recognition. It is not so long since the now familiar phenomenon was
stoutly denied by a correspondent of the London Times, whose assertions carried
weight, till the work of Dr. Phipson, supported by the testimony of Beccaria,
Humboldt, and other naturalists, set the question at rest.** The Positivists
should choose some happier expression, and follow the discoveries of science at
the same time. As to mesmerism, it has been adopted in many parts of Germany,
and is publicly used with undeniable success in more than one hospital; its
occult properties have been proved and are believed in by physicians, whose
eminence, learning, and merited fame, the self-complacent lecturer on mediums
and insanity cannot well hope to equal.
We have to add but
a few more words before we drop this unpleasant subject. We have found
Positivists particularly happy in the delusion that the greatest scientists of
Europe were Comtists. How far their claims may be just, as regards other
savants, we do not know, but Huxley, whom all Europe considers one of her
greatest scientists, most decidedly declines that honor, and Dr. Maudsley, of
London, follows suit. In a lecture delivered by the former gentleman in 1868,
in Edinburgh, on The Physical Basis of Life, he even appears to be very much
shocked at the liberty taken by the Archbishop of York, in identifying him with
Comte's philosophy. "So far as I am concerned," says Mr. Huxley,
"the most reverend prelate might dialectically hew Mr. Comte in pieces, as
a modern Agag, and I would not attempt to stay his hand. In so far as my study
of what specially characterizes the positive philosophy has led me, I find,
therein, little or nothing of any scientific value, and a great deal which is
as thoroughly antagonistic to the very essence of science as anything in
ultramontane Catholicism. In fact, Comte's philosophy in practice might be
compendiously described as Catholicism minus Christianity." Further,
Huxley even becomes wrathful, and falls to accusing Scotchmen of ingratitude
for having allowed the Bishop to mistake Comte for the founder of a philosophy
which belonged by right to Hume. "It was enough," exclaims the
professor, "to make David
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dr. F. R. Marvin:
"Lecture on Insanity."
** See Howitt:
"History of the Supernatural," vol. ii.
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OF SCIENCE.
Hume turn in his
grave, that here, almost within earshot of his house, an interested audience
should have listened, without a murmur, whilst his most characteristic
doctrines were attributed to a French writer of fifty years later date, in
whose dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the vigor of thought and the
clearness of style. . . ."*
Poor Comte! It
appears that the highest representatives of his philosophy are now reduced, at
least in this country, to "one physicist, one physician who has made a
specialty of nervous diseases, and one lawyer." A very witty critic
nicknamed this desperate trio, "an anomalistic triad, which, amid its
arduous labors, finds no time to acquaint itself with the principles and laws
of their language."**
To close the
question, the Positivists neglect no means to overthrow Spiritualism in favor
of their religion. Their high priests are made to blow their trumpets
untiringly; and though the walls of no modern Jericho are ever likely to tumble
down in dust before their blast, still they neglect no means to attain the
desired object. Their paradoxes are unique, and their accusations against
spiritualists irresistible in logic. In a recent lecture, for instance, it was
remarked that: "The exclusive exercise of religious instinct is productive
of sexual immorality. Priests, monks, nuns, saints, media, ecstatics, and
devotees are famous for their impurities."***
We are happy to
remark that, while Positivism loudly proclaims itself a religion, Spiritualism
has never pretended to be anything more than a science, a growing philosophy,
or rather a research in hidden and as yet unexplained forces in nature. The
objectiveness of its various phenomena has been demonstrated by more than one
genuine representative of science, and as ineffectually denied by her
"monkeys."
Finally, it may be
remarked of our Positivists who deal so unceremoniously with every
psychological phenomenon, that they are like Samuel Butler's rhetorician, who
". . . . could
not ope
His mouth, but out
there flew a trope."
We would there were
no occasion to extend the critic's glance beyond the circle of triflers and
pedants who improperly wear the title of men
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Prof. Huxley:
"Physical Basis of Life."
** Reference is
made to a card which appeared some time since in a New York paper, signed by
three persons styling themselves as above, and assuming to be a scientific
committee appointed two years before to investigate spiritual phenomena. The
criticism on the triad appeared in the "New Era" magazine.
*** Dr. Marvin:
"Lecture on Insanity," N. Y., 1875.
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of science. But it
is also undeniable that the treatment of new subjects by those whose rank is
high in the scientific world but too often passes unchallenged, when it is
amenable to censure. The cautiousness bred of a fixed habit of experimental
research, the tentative advance from opinion to opinion, the weight accorded to
recognized authorities -- all foster a conservatism of thought which naturally
runs into dogmatism. The price of scientific progress is too commonly the
martyrdom or ostracism of the innovator. The reformer of the laboratory must,
so to speak, carry the citadel of custom and prejudice at the point of the
bayonet. It is rare that even a postern-door is left ajar by a friendly hand.
The noisy protests and impertinent criticisms of the little people of the
antechamber of science, he can afford to let pass unnoticed; the hostility of
the other class is a real peril that the innovator must face and overcome.
Knowledge does increase apace, but the great body of scientists are not
entitled to the credit. In every instance they have done their best to
shipwreck the new discovery, together with the discoverer. The palm is to him
who has won it by individual courage, intuitiveness, and persistency. Few are
the forces in nature which, when first announced, were not laughed at, and then
set aside as absurd and unscientific. Humbling the pride of those who had not
discovered anything, the just claims of those who have been denied a hearing
until negation was no longer prudent, and then -- alas for poor, selfish
humanity! these very discoverers too often became the opponents and oppressors,
in their turn, of still more recent explorers in the domain of natural law! So,
step by step, mankind move around their circumscribed circle of knowledge,
science constantly correcting its mistakes, and readjusting on the following
day the erroneous theories of the preceding one. This has been the case, not
merely with questions pertaining to psychology, such as mesmerism, in its dual sense
of a physical and spiritual phenomenon, but even with such discoveries as
directly related to exact sciences, and have been easy to demonstrate.
What can we do?
Shall we recall the disagreeable past? Shall we point to mediaeval scholars
conniving with the clergy to deny the Heliocentric theory, for fear of hurting
an ecclesiastical dogma? Must we recall how learned conchologists once denied
that the fossil shells, found scattered over the face of the earth, were ever
inhabited by living animals at all? How the naturalists of the eighteenth
century declared these but mere fac-similes of animals? And how these
naturalists fought and quarrelled and battled and called each other names, over
these venerable mummies of the ancient ages for nearly a century, until Buffon
settled the question by proving to the negators that they were mistaken? Surely
an oyster-shell is anything but transcendental, and ought to be quite a
palpable subject for any exact study; and if the scientists could not agree
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on that, we can
hardly expect them to believe at all that evanescent forms, -- of hands, faces,
and whole bodies sometimes -- appear at the seances of spiritual mediums, when
the latter are honest.
There exists a
certain work which might afford very profitable reading for the leisure hours
of skeptical men of science. It is a book published by Flourens, the Perpetual
Secretary of the French Academy, called Histoire des Recherches de Buffon. The
author shows in it how the great naturalist combated and finally conquered the
advocates of the fac-simile theory; and how they still went on denying everything
under the sun, until at times the learned body fell into a fury, an epidemic of
negation. It denied Franklin and his refined electricity; laughed at Fulton and
his concentrated steam; voted the engineer Perdormet a strait-jacket for his
offer to build railroads; stared Harvey out of countenance; and proclaimed
Bernard de Palissy "as stupid as one of his own pots!"
In his oft-quoted
work, Conflict between Religion and Science, Professor Draper shows a decided
propensity to kick the beam of the scales of justice, and lay all such
impediments to the progress of science at the door of the clergy alone. With
all respect and admiration due to this eloquent writer and scientist, we must
protest and give every one his just due. Many of the above-enumerated discoveries
are mentioned by the author of the Conflict. In every case he denounces the
bitter resistance on the part of the clergy, and keeps silent on the like
opposition invariably experienced by every new discoverer at the hands of
science. His claim on behalf of science that "knowledge is power" is
undoubtedly just. But abuse of power, whether it proceeds from excess of wisdom
or ignorance is alike obnoxious in its effects. Besides, the clergy are
silenced now. Their protests would at this day be scarcely noticed in the world
of science. But while theology is kept in the background, the scientists have
seized the sceptre of despotism with both hands, and they use it, like the
cherubim and flaming sword of Eden, to keep the people away from the tree of immortal
life and within this world of perishable matter.
The editor of the
London Spiritualist, in answer to Dr. Gully's criticism of Mr. Tyndall's
fire-mist theory, remarks that if the entire body of spiritualists are not
roasting alive at Smithfield in the present century, it is to science alone
that we are indebted for this crowning mercy. Well, let us admit that the
scientists are indirectly public benefactors in this case, to the extent that
the burning of erudite scholars is no longer fashionable. But is it unfair to
ask whether the disposition manifested toward the spiritualistic doctrine by
Faraday, Tyndall, Huxley, Agassiz, and others, does not warrant the suspicion
that if these learned gentlemen
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and their following
had the unlimited power once held by the Inquisition, spiritualists would not
have reason to feel as easy as they do now? Even supposing that they should not
roast believers in the existence of a spirit-world -- it being unlawful to
cremate people alive -- would they not send every spiritualist they could to
Bedlam? Do they not call us "incurable monomaniacs," "hallucinated
fools," "fetich-worshippers," and like characteristic names?
Really, we cannot see what should have stimulated to such extent the gratitude
of the editor of the London Spiritualist, for the benevolent tutelage of the
men of science. We believe that the recent Lankester-Donkin-Slade prosecution
in London ought at last to open the eyes of hopeful spiritualists, and show
them that stubborn materialism is often more stupidly bigoted than religious
fanaticism itself.
One of the
cleverest productions of Professor Tyndall's pen is his caustic essay upon
Martineau and Materialism. At the same time it is one which in future years the
author will doubtless be only too ready to trim of certain unpardonable
grossnesses of expression. For the moment, however, we will not deal with
these, but consider what he has to say of the phenomenon of consciousness. He
quotes this question from Mr. Martineau: "A man can say 'I feel, I think,
I love'; but how does consciousness infuse itself into the problem?" And thus
answers: "The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding
facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a
molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess the
intellectual organ nor apparently any rudiments of the organ, which would
enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from one to the other. They appear
together, but we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded,
strengthened and illuminated, as to enable us to see and feel the very
molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all
their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we
intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we
should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem, 'How are these
physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness?' The chasm
between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually
impassable."*
This chasm, as
impassable to Professor Tyndall as the fire-mist where the scientist is
confronted with his unknowable cause, is a barrier only to men without
spiritual intuitions. Professor Buchanan's Outlines of Lectures on the
Neurological System of Anthropology, a work written so far back as 1854,
contains suggestions that, if the scio-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Tyndall:
"Fragments of Science."
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SCIENCE.
lists would only
heed them, would show how a bridge can be thrown across this dreadful abyss. It
is one of the bins in which the thought-seed of future harvests is stored up by
a frugal present. But the edifice of materialism is based entirely upon that
gross sub-structure -- the reason. When they have stretched its capabilities to
their utmost limits, its teachers can at best only disclose to us an universe
of molecules animated by an occult impulse. What better diagnosis of the
ailment of our scientists could be asked than can be derived from Professor
Tyndall's analysis of the mental state of the Ultramontane clergy by a very
slight change of names. For "spiritual guides" read "scientists,"
for "prescientific past" substitute "materialistic
present," say "spirit" for "science," and in the
following paragraph we have a life portrait of the modern man of science drawn
by the hand of a master:
" . . . Their
spiritual guides live so exclusively in the prescientific past, that even the
really strong intellects among them are reduced to atrophy as regards
scientific truth. Eyes they have and see not; ears they have and hear not; for
both eyes and ears are taken possession of by the sights and sounds of another
age. In relation to science, the Ultramontane brain, through lack of exercise,
is virtually the undeveloped brain of the child. And thus it is that as
children in scientific knowledge, but as potent wielders of spiritual power
among the ignorant, they countenance and enforce practices sufficient to bring
the blush of shame to the cheeks of the more intelligent among
themselves."* The Occultist holds this mirror up to science that it may
see how it looks itself.
Since history
recorded the first laws established by man, there never was yet a people, whose
code did not hang the issues of the life and death of its citizens upon the
testimony of two or three credible witnesses. "At the mouth of two
witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to
death,"** says Moses, the first legislator we meet in ancient history.
"The laws which put to death a man on the deposition of one witness are
fatal to freedom" -- says Montesquieu. "Reason claims there should be
two witnesses."***
Thus the value of
evidence has been tacitly agreed upon and accepted in every country. But the
scientists will not accept the evidence of the million against one. In vain do
hundreds of thousands of men testify to facts. Oculos habent et non vident! They
are determined to remain blind and deaf. Thirty years of practical
demonstrations and the testimony of some millions of believers in America and
Europe are certainly entitled to some degree of respect and attention.
Especially so, when
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Tyndall: Preface
to "Fragments of Science."
** Deuteronomy,
chap. xvii., 6.
*** Montesquieu:
Esprit des Lois I., xii., chap. 3.
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the verdict of
twelve spiritualists, influenced by the evidence testified to by any two
others, is competent to send even a scientist to swing on the gallows for a
crime, perhaps committed under the impulse supplied by a commotion among the
cerebral molecules unrestrained by a consciousness of future moral RETRIBUTION.
Toward science as a
whole, as a divine goal, the whole civilized world ought to look with respect
and veneration; for science alone can enable man to understand the Deity by the
true appreciation of his works. "Science is the understanding of truth or
facts," says Webster; "it is an investigation of truth for its own
sake and a pursuit of pure knowledge." If the definition be correct, then
the majority of our modern scholars have proved false to their goddess.
"Truth for its own sake!" And where should the keys to every truth in
nature be searched for, unless in the hitherto unexplored mystery of
psychology? Alas! that in questioning nature so many men of science should
daintily sort over her facts and choose only such for study as best bolster
their prejudices.
Psychology has no
worse enemies than the medical school denominated allopathists. It is in vain
to remind them that of the so-called exact sciences, medicine, confessedly,
least deserves the name. Although of all branches of medical knowledge,
psychology ought more than any other to be studied by physicians, since without
its help their practice degenerates into mere guess-work and chance-intuitions,
they almost wholly neglect it. The least dissent from their promulgated
doctrines is resented as a heresy, and though an unpopular and unrecognized
curative method should be shown to save thousands, they seem, as a body,
disposed to cling to accepted hypotheses and prescriptions, and decry both
innovator and innovation until they get the mint-stamp of regularity. Thousands
of unlucky patients may die meanwhile, but so long as professional honor is
vindicated, this is a matter of secondary importance.
Theoretically the
most benignant, at the same time no other school of science exhibits so many
instances of petty prejudice, materialism, atheism, and malicious stubbornness
as medicine. The predilections and patronage of the leading physicians are
scarcely ever measured by the usefulness of a discovery. Bleeding, by leeching,
cupping, and the lancet, had its epidemic of popularity, but at last fell into
merited disgrace; water, now freely given to fevered patients, was once denied
them, warm baths were superseded by cold water, and for a while hydropathy was
a mania. Peruvian bark -- which a modern defender of biblical authority
seriously endeavors to identify with the paradisiacal "Tree of
Life,"* and which was brought to Spain in 1632 -- was neg-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* C. B. Warring.
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lected for years.
The Church, for once, showed more discrimination than science. At the request
of Cardinal de Lugo, Innocent X. gave it the prestige of his powerful name.
In an old book
entitled Demonologia, the author cites many instances of important remedies
which being neglected at first afterward rose into notice through mere
accident. He also shows that most of the new discoveries in medicine have
turned out to be no more than "the revival and readoption of very ancient
practices." During the last century, the root of the male fern was sold
and widely advertised as a secret nostrum by a Madame Nouffleur, a female
quack, for the effective cure of the tapeworm. The secret was bought by Louis
XV. for a large sum of money; after which the physicians discovered that it was
recommended and administered in that disease by Galen. The famous powder of the
Duke of Portland for the gout, was the diacentaureon of Caelius Aurelianus.
Later it was ascertained that it had been used by the earliest medical writers,
who had found it in the writings of the old Greek philosophers. So with the eau
medicinale of Dr. Husson, whose name it bears. This famous remedy for the gout
was recognized under its new mask to be the Colchicum autumnale, or meadow
saffron, which is identical with a plant called Hermodactylus, whose merits as
a certain antidote to gout were recognized and defended by Oribasius, a great
physician of the fourth century, and AEtius Amidenus, another eminent physician
of Alexandria (fifth century). Subsequently it was abandoned and fell into
disfavor only because it was too old to be considered good by the members of
the medical faculties that flourished toward the end of the last century!
Even the great
Magendie, the wise physiologist, was not above discovering that which had
already been discovered and found good by the oldest physicians. His proposed
remedy against consumption, namely, the use of prussic acid, may be found in
the works of Linnaeus, Amenitates Academicae, vol. iv., in which he shows
distilled laurel water to have been used with great profit in pulmonary
consumption. Pliny also assures us that the extract of almonds and cherry-pits
had cured the most obstinate coughs. As the author of Demonologia well remarks,
it may be asserted with perfect safety that "all the various secret
preparations of opium which have been lauded as the discovery of modern times,
may be recognized in the works of ancient authors," who see themselves so
discredited in our days.
It is admitted on
all hands that from time immemorial the distant East was the land of knowledge.
Not even in Egypt were botany and mineralogy so extensively studied as by the
savants of archaic Middle Asia. Sprengel, unjust and prejudiced as he shows
himself in everything else, confesses this much in his Histoire de la Medicine.
And yet,
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notwithstanding
this, whenever the subject of magic is discussed, that of India has rarely
suggested itself to any one, for of its general practice in that country less
is known than among any other ancient people. With the Hindus it was and is
more esoteric, if possible, than it was even among the Egyptian priests. So
sacred was it deemed that its existence was only half admitted, and it was only
practiced in public emergencies. It was more than a religious matter, for it
was considered divine. The Egyptian hierophants, notwithstanding the practice
of a stern and pure morality, could not be compared for one moment with the
ascetical Gymnosophists, either in holiness of life or miraculous powers
developed in them by the supernatural adjuration of everything earthly. By
those who knew them well they were held in still greater reverence than the
magians of Chaldea. Denying themselves the simplest comforts of life, they
dwelt in woods, and led the life of the most secluded hermits,* while their
Egyptian brothers at least congregated together. Notwithstanding the slur
thrown by history on all who practiced magic and divination, it has proclaimed
them as possessing the greatest secrets in medical knowledge and unsurpassed
skill in its practice. Numerous are the volumes preserved in Hindu convents, in
which are recorded the proofs of their learning. To attempt to say whether
these Gymnosophists were the real founders of magic in India, or whether they
only practiced what had passed to them as an inheritance from the earliest
Rishis** -- the seven primeval sages -- would be regarded as a mere speculation
by exact scholars. "The care which they took in educating youth, in
familiarizing it with generous and virtuous sentiments, did them peculiar
honor, and their maxims and discourses, as recorded by historians, prove that
they were expert in matters of philosophy, metaphysics, astronomy, morality,
and religion," says a modern writer. They preserved their dignity under
the sway of the most powerful princes, whom they would not condescend to visit,
or to trouble for the slightest favor. If the latter desired the advice or the
prayers of the holy men, they were either obliged to go themselves, or to send
messengers. To these men no secret power of either plant or mineral was
unknown. They had fathomed nature to its depths, while psychology and
physiology were to them open books, and the result was that science or
machagiotia that is now termed, so superciliously, magic.
While the miracles
recorded in the Bible have become accepted facts
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ammianus
Marcellinus, xxiii., 6.
** The Rishis were
seven in number, and lived in days anteceding the Vedic period. They were known
as sages, and held in reverence like demigods. Haug shows that they occupy in
the Brahmanical religion a position answering to that of the twelve sons of
Jacob in the Jewish Bible. The Brahmans claim to descend directly from these
Rishis.
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with the
Christians, to disbelieve which is regarded as infidelity, the narratives of
wonders and prodigies found in the Atharva-Veda,* either provoke their contempt
or are viewed as evidences of diabolism. And yet, in more than one respect, and
notwithstanding the unwillingness of certain Sanscrit scholars, we can show the
identity between the two. Moreover, as the Vedas have now been proved by
scholars to antedate the Jewish Bible by many ages, the inference is an easy
one that if one of them has borrowed from the other, the Hindu sacred books are
not to be charged with plagiarism.
First of all, their
cosmogony shows how erroneous has been the opinion prevalent among the
civilized nations that Brahma was ever considered by the Hindus their chief or
Supreme God. Brahma is a secondary deity, and like Jehovah is "a mover of
the waters." He is the creating god, and has in his allegorical
representations four heads, answering to the four cardinal points. He is the
demiurgos, the architect of the world. "In the primordiate state of the creation,"
says Polier's Mythologie des Indous, "the rudimental universe, submerged
in water, reposed in the bosom of the Eternal. Sprang from this chaos and
darkness, Brahma, the architect of the world, poised on a lotus-leaf floated
(moved?) upon the waters, unable to discern anything but water and
darkness." This is as identical as possible with the Egyptian cosmogony,
which shows in its opening sentences Athtor** or Mother Night (which represents
illimitable darkness) as the primeval element which covered the infinite abyss,
animated by water and the universal spirit of the Eternal, dwelling alone in
Chaos. As in the Jewish Scriptures, the history of the creation opens with the
spirit of God and his creative emanation -- another Deity.*** Perceiving such a
dismal state of things, Brahma soliloquizes in consternation: "Who am I?
Whence came I?" Then he hears a voice: "Direct your prayer to
Bhagavant -- the Eternal, known, also, as Parabrahma." Brahma, rising from
his natatory position, seats himself upon the lotus in an attitude of
contemplation, and reflects upon the Eternal, who, pleased with this evidence
of piety, disperses the primeval darkness and opens his understanding.
"After this Brahma issues from the universal egg -- (infinite chaos) as light,
for his understanding is now opened, and he sets himself to work; he moves on
the eternal waters, with the spirit of God within himself; in his capacity of
mover of the waters he is Narayana."
The lotus, the
sacred flower of the Egyptians, as well as the Hindus, is the symbol of Horus
as it is that of Brahma. No temples in Thibet or
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The fourth Veda.
** Orthography of
the "Archaic Dictionary."
*** We do not mean
the current or accepted Bible, but the real Jewish one explained
kabalistically.
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Nepaul are found
without it; and the meaning of this symbol is extremely suggestive. The sprig
of lilies placed in the hand of the archangel, who offers them to the Virgin
Mary, in the pictures of the "Annunciation," have in their esoteric
symbolism precisely the same meaning. We refer the reader to Sir William
Jones.* With the Hindus, the lotus is the emblem of the productive power of
nature, through the agency of fire and water (spirit and matter).
"Eternal!" says a verse in the Bhagavad Gita, "I see Brahma the
creator enthroned in thee above the lotus!" and Sir W. Jones shows that
the seeds of the lotus contain -- even before they germinate --
perfectly-formed leaves, the miniature shapes of what one day, as perfected
plants, they will become; or, as the author of The Heathen Religion, has it --
"nature thus giving us a specimen of the preformation of its
productions"; adding further that "the seed of all phoenogamous
plants bearing proper flowers, contain an embryo plantlet ready formed."**
With the Buddhists,
it has the same signification. Maha-Maya, or Maha-Deva, the mother of Gautama
Buddha, had the birth of her son announced to her by Bhodisat (the spirit of
Buddha), who appeared beside her couch with a lotus in his hand. Thus, also,
Osiris and Horus are represented by the Egyptians constantly in association
with the lotus-flower.
These facts all go
to show the identical parentage of this idea in the three religious systems,
Hindu, Egyptian and Judaico-Christian. Wherever the mystic water-lily (lotus)
is employed, it signifies the emanation of the objective from the concealed, or
subjective -- the eternal thought of the ever-invisible Deity passing from the
abstract into the concrete or visible form. For as soon as darkness was
dispersed and "there was light," Brahma's understanding was opened,
and he saw in the ideal world (which had hitherto lain eternally concealed in
the Divine thought) the archetypal forms of all the infinite future things that
would be called into existence, and hence become visible. At this first stage
of action, Brahma had not yet become the architect, the builder of the
universe, for he had, like the architect, to first acquaint himself with the
plan, and realize the ideal forms which were buried in the bosom of the Eternal
One, as the future lotus-leaves are concealed within the seed of that plant.
And it is in this idea that we must look for the origin and explanation of the
verse in the Jewish cosmogony, which reads: "And God said, Let the earth
bring forth . . . the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is
in itself." In all the primitive religions, the "Son of the
Father" is the creative God -- i.e., His thought made visible; and before
the Christian era, from the Trimurti of the Hindus down to the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"Dissertations Relating to Asia."
** Dr. Gross, p.
195.
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GABRIEL.
three kabalistic
heads of the Jewish-explained scriptures, the triune godhead of each nation was
fully defined and substantiated in its allegories. In the Christian creed we
see but the artificial engrafting of a new branch upon the old trunk; and the
adoption by the Greek and Roman churches of the lily-symbol held by the
archangel at the moment of the Annunciation, shows a thought of precisely the
same metaphysical significance.
The lotus is the
product of fire (heat) and water, hence the dual symbol of spirit and matter.
The God Brahma is the second person of the Trinity, as are Jehovah
(Adam-Kadmon) and Osiris, or rather Pimander, or the Power of the Thought
Divine, of Hermes; for it is Pimander who represents the root of all the
Egyptian Sun-gods. The Eternal is the Spirit of Fire, which stirs up and
fructifies and develops into a concrete form everything that is born of water
or the primordial earth, evolved out of Brahma; but the universe is itself Brahma,
and he is the universe. This is the philosophy of Spinoza, which he derived
from that of Pythagoras; and it is the same for which Bruno died a martyr. How
much Christian theology has gone astray from its point of departure, is
demonstrated in this historical fact. Bruno was slaughtered for the exegesis of
a symbol that was adopted by the earliest Christians, and expounded by the
apostles! The sprig of water-lilies of Bhodisat, and later of Gabriel,
typifying fire and water, or the idea of creation and generation, is worked
into the earliest dogma of the baptismal sacrament.
Bruno's and
Spinoza's doctrines are nearly identical, though the words of the latter are
more veiled, and far more cautiously chosen than those to be found in the
theories of the author of the Causa Principio et Uno, or the Infinito Universo
e Mondi. Both Bruno, who confesses that the source of his information was
Pythagoras, and Spinoza, who, without acknowledging it as frankly, allows his
philosophy to betray the secret, view the First Cause from the same
stand-point. With them, God is an Entity totally per se, an Infinite Spirit,
and the only Being utterly free and independent of either effects or other
causes; who, through that same Will which produced all things and gave the
first impulse to every cosmic law, perpetually keeps in existence and order
everything in the universe. As well as the Hindu Swabhavikas, erroneously
called Atheists, who assume that all things, men as well as gods and spirits,
were born from Swabhava, or their own nature,* both
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Brahma does not
create the earth, Mirtlok, any more than the rest of the universe. Having
evolved himself from the soul of the world, once separated from the First Cause,
he emanates in his turn all nature out of himself. He does not stand above it,
but is mixed up with it; and Brahma and the universe form one Being, each
particle of which is in its essence Brahma himself, who proceeded out of
himself. [Burnouf: "Introduction," p. 118.]
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Spinoza and Bruno
were led to the conclusion that God is to be sought for within nature and not
without. For, creation being proportional to the power of the Creator, the
universe as well as its Creator must be infinite and eternal, one form
emanating from its own essence, and creating in its turn another. The modern commentators
affirm that Bruno, "unsustained by the hope of another and better world,
still surrendered his life rather than his convictions"; thereby allowing
it to be inferred that Giordano Bruno had no belief in the continued existence
of man after death. Professor Draper asserts most positively that Bruno did not
believe in the immortality of the soul. Speaking of the countless victims of
the religious intolerance of the Popish Church, he remarks: "The passage
from this life to the next, though through a hard trial, was the passage from a
transient trouble to eternal happiness. . . . On his way through the dark
valley, the martyr believed that there was an invisible hand that would lead
him. . . . For Bruno there was no such support. The philosophical opinions, for
the sake of which he surrendered his life, could give him no
consolation."*
But Professor
Draper seems to have a very superficial knowledge of the true belief of the
philosophers. We can leave Spinoza out of the question, and even allow him to
remain in the eyes of his critics an utter atheist and materialist; for the
cautious reserve which he placed upon himself in his writings makes it
extremely difficult for one who does not read him between the lines, and is not
thoroughly acquainted with the hidden meaning of the Pythagorean metaphysics,
to ascertain what his real sentiments were. But as for Giordano Bruno, if he
adhered to the doctrines of Pythagoras he must have believed in another life,
hence, he could not have been an atheist whose philosophy offered him no such
"consolation." His accusation and subsequent confession, as given by
Professor Domenico Berti, in his Life of Bruno, and compiled from original
documents recently published, proved beyond doubt what were his real philosophy,
creed and doctrines. In common with the Alexandrian Platonists, and the later
Kabalists, he held that Jesus was a magician in the sense given to this
appellation by Porphyry and Cicero, who call it the divina sapientia (divine
knowledge), and by Philo Judaes, who described the Magi as the most wonderful
inquirers into the hidden mysteries of nature, not in the degrading sense given
to the word magic in our century. In his noble conception, the Magi were holy
men, who, setting themselves apart from everything else on this earth,
contemplated the divine virtues and understood the divine nature of the gods
and spirits, the more clearly; and so, initiated others into the same mys-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict
between Religion and Science," 180.
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BRUNO.
teries, which
consist in one holding an uninterrupted intercourse with these invisible beings
during life. But we will show Bruno's inmost philosophical convictions better
by quoting fragments from the accusation and his own confession.
The charges in the
denunciation of Mocenigo, his accuser, are expressed in the following terms:
"I, Zuane
Mocenigo, son of the most illustrious Ser Marcantonio, denounce to your very
reverend fathership, by constraint of my conscience and by order of my
confessor, that I have heard say by Giordano Bruno, several times when he
discoursed with me in my house, that it is great blasphemy in Catholics to say
that the bread transubstantiates itself into flesh; that he is opposed to the
Mass; that no religion pleases him; that Christ was a wretch (un tristo), and
that if he did wicked works to seduce the people he might well predict that He
ought to be impaled; that there is no distinction of persons in God, and that
it would be imperfection in God; that the world is eternal, and that there are
infinite worlds, and that God makes them continually, because, he says, He
desires all He can; that Christ did apparent miracles and was a magician, and
so were the apostles, and that he had a mind to do as much and more than they
did; that Christ showed an unwillingness to die, and shunned death all He
could; that there is no punishment of sin, and that souls created by the
operation of nature pass from one animal to another, and that as the brute
animals are born of corruption, so also are men when after dissolution they
come to be born again."
Perfidious as they
are, the above words plainly indicate the belief of Bruno in the Pythagorean
metempsychosis, which, misunderstood as it is, still shows a belief in the
survival of man in one shape or another. Further, the accuser says:
"He has shown
indications of wishing to make himself the author of a new sect, under the name
of 'New Philosophy.' He has said that the Virgin could not have brought forth,
and that our Catholic faith is all full of blasphemies against the majesty of
God; that the monks ought to be deprived of the right of disputation and their
revenues, because they pollute the world; that they are all asses, and that our
opinions are doctrines of asses; that we have no proof that our faith has merit
with God, and that not to do to others what we would not have done to ourselves
suffices for a good life, and that he laughs at all other sins, and wonders how
God can endure so many heresies in Catholics. He says that he means to apply
himself to the art of divination, and make all the world run after him; that
St. Thomas and all the Doctors knew nothing to compare with him, and that he
could ask questions of all the first theologians of the world that they could
not answer."
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To this, the
accused philosopher answered by the following profession of faith, which is
that of every disciple of the ancient masters:
"I hold, in
brief, to an infinite universe, that is, an effect of infinite divine power,
because I esteemed it a thing unworthy of divine goodness and power, that being
able to produce besides this world another and infinite others, it should
produce a finite world. Thus I have declared that there are infinite particular
worlds similar to this of the earth, which, with Pythagoras, I understand to be
a star similar in nature with the moon, the other planets, and the other stars,
which are infinite; and that all those bodies are worlds, and without number,
which thus constitute the infinite universality in an infinite space, and this
is called the infinite universe, in which are innumerable worlds, so that there
is a double kind of infinite greatness in the universe, and of a multitude of
worlds. Indirectly, this may be understood to be repugnant to the truth
according to the true faith.
"Moreover, I
place in this universe a universal Providence, by virtue of which everything
lives, vegetates and moves, and stands in its perfection, and I understand it
in two ways; one, in the mode in which the whole soul is present in the whole
and every part of the body, and this I call nature, the shadow and footprint of
divinity; the other, the ineffable mode in which God, by essence, presence, and
power, is in all and above all, not as part, not as soul, but in mode
inexplicable.
"Moreover, I
understand all the attributes in divinity to be one and the same thing.
Together with the theologians and great philosophers, I apprehend three
attributes, power, wisdom, and goodness, or, rather, mind, intellect, love,
with which things have first, being, through the mind; next, ordered and
distinct being, through the intellect; and third, concord and symmetry, through
love. Thus I understand being in all and over all, as there is nothing without
participation in being, and there is no being without essence, just as nothing
is beautiful without beauty being present; thus nothing can be free from the
divine presence, and thus by way of reason, and not by way of substantial
truth, do I understand distinction in divinity.
"Assuming then
the world caused and produced, I understand that, according to all its being,
it is dependent upon the first cause, so that it did not reject the name of creation,
which I understand that Aristotle also has expressed, saying, 'God is that upon
whom the world and all nature depends,' so that according to the explanation of
St. Thomas, whether it be eternal or in time, it is, according to all its
being, dependent on the first cause, and nothing in it is independent.
"Next, in
regard to what belongs to the true faith, not speaking philosophically, to come
to individuality about the divine persons, the
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wisdom and the son
of the mind, called by philosophers intellect, and by theologians the word,
which ought to be believed to have taken on human flesh. But I, abiding in the
phrases of philosophy, have not understood it, but have doubted and held it
with inconstant faith, not that I remember to have shown marks of it in writing
nor in speech, except indirectly from other things, something of it may be
gathered as by way of ingenuity and profession in regard to what may be proved
by reason and concluded from natural light. Thus, in regard to the Holy Spirit
in a third person, I have not been able to comprehend, as ought to be believed,
but, according to the Pythagoric manner, in conformity to the manner shown by
Solomon, I have understood it as the soul of the universe, or adjoined to the
universe according to the saying of the wisdom of Solomon: 'The spirit of God
filled all the earth, and that which contains all things,' all which conforms
equally to the Pythagoric doctrine explained by Virgil in the text of the
AEneid:
Principio coelum ac
terras camposque liquentes,
Lucentemque globum
Lunae, Titaniaque astra
Spiritus intus
alit, totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem;
and the lines
following.
"From this
spirit, then, which is called the life of the universe, I understand, in my
philosophy, proceeds life and soul to everything which has life and soul,
which, moreover, I understand to be immortal, as also to bodies, which, as to
their substance, are all immortal, there being no other death than division and
congregation, which doctrine seems expressed in Ecclesiastes, where it is said
that 'there is nothing new under the sun; that which is is that which was.'
"
Furthermore, Bruno
confesses his inability to comprehend the doctrine of three persons in the
godhead, and his doubts of the incarnation of God in Jesus, but firmly
pronounces his belief in the miracles of Christ. How could he, being a Pythagorean
philosopher, discredit them? If, under the merciless constraint of the
Inquisition, he, like Galileo, subsequently recanted, and threw himself upon
the clemency of his ecclesiastical persecutors, we must remember that he spoke
like a man standing between the rack and the fagot, and human nature cannot
always be heroic when the corporeal frame is debilitated by torture and
imprisonment.
But for the
opportune appearance of Berti's authoritative work, we would have continued to
revere Bruno as a martyr, whose bust was deservedly set high in the Pantheon of
Exact Science, crowned with laurel by the hand of Draper. But now we see that
their hero of an hour
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is neither atheist,
materialist, nor positivist, but simply a Pythagorean who taught the philosophy
of Upper Asia, and claimed to possess the powers of the magicians, so despised
by Draper's own school! Nothing more amusing than this contretemps has happened
since the supposed statue of St. Peter was discovered by irreverent
archaeologists to be nothing else than the Jupiter of the Capitol, and Buddha's
identity with the Catholic St. Josaphat was satisfactorily proven.
Thus, search where
we may through the archives of history, we find that there is no fragment of
modern philosophy -- whether Newtonian, Cartesian, Huxleyian or any other --
but has been dug from the Oriental mines. Even Positivism and Nihilism find
their prototype in the exoteric portion of Kapila's philosophy, as is well
remarked by Max Muller. It was the inspiration of the Hindu sages that
penetrated the mysteries of Pragna Paramita (perfect wisdom); their hands that
rocked the cradle of the first ancestor of that feeble but noisy child that we
have christened MODERN SCIENCE.
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CHAPTER IV.
"I choose the
nobler part of Emerson, when, after various disenchantments, he exclaimed, 'I
covet Truth.' The gladness of true heroism visits the heart of him who is
really competent to say this." -- TYNDALL.
"A testimony is
sufficient when it rests on:
1st. A great number
of very sensible witnesses who agree in having seen well.
2d. Who are sane,
bodily and mentally.
3d. Who are
impartial and disinterested.
4th. Who
unanimously agree.
5th. Who solemnly
certify to the fact." -- VOLTAIRE, Dictiannaire Philosophique.
THE Count Agenor de
Gasparin is a devoted Protestant. His battle with des Mousseaux, de Mirville
and other fanatics who laid the whole of the spiritual phenomena at the door of
Satan, was long and fierce. Two volumes of over fifteen hundred pages are the
result, proving the effects, denying the cause, and employing superhuman
efforts to invent every other possible explanation that could be suggested
rather than the true one.
The severe rebuke
received by the Journal des Debats from M. de Gasparin, was read by all
civilized Europe.* After that gentleman had minutely described numerous
manifestations that he had witnessed himself, this journal very impertinently
proposed to the authorities in France to send all those who, after having read
the fine analysis of the "spiritual hallucinations" published by
Faraday, should insist on crediting this delusion, to the lunatic asylum for
Incurables. "Take care," wrote de Gasparin in answer, "the
representatives of the exact sciences are on their way to become . . . the
Inquisitors of our days. . . . Facts are stronger than Academies. Rejected,
denied, mocked, they nevertheless are facts, and do exist."**
The following
affirmations of physical phenomena, as witnessed by himself and Professor
Thury, may be found in de Gasparin's voluminous work.
"The
experimenters have often seen the legs of the table glued, so to say, to the
floor, and, notwithstanding the excitement of those present, refuse to be moved
from their place. On other occasions they have seen the tables levitated in
quite an energetic way. They heard, with their own
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Des
Tables," vol. i, p. 213.
** Ibid., 216.
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ears, loud as well
as gentle raps, the former threatening to shatter the table to pieces on
account of their violence, the latter so soft as to become hardly perceptible.
. . . As to LEVITATIONS WITHOUT CONTACT, we found means to produce them easily,
and with success. . . . And such levitations do not pertain to isolated
results. We have reproduced them over THIRTY times.* . . . One day the table
will turn, and lift its legs successively, its weight being augmented by a man
weighing eighty-seven kilogrammes seated on it; another time it will remain
motionless and immovable, notwithstanding that the person placed on it weighs but
sixty.**. . . On one occasion we willed it to turn upside down, and it turned
over, with its legs in the air, notwithstanding that our fingers never touched
it once."***
"It is
certain," remarks de Mirville, "that a man who had repeatedly
witnessed such a phenomenon, could not accept the fine analysis of the English
physicist."****
Since 1850, des
Mousseaux and de Mirville, uncompromising Roman Catholics, have published many
volumes whose titles are cleverly contrived to attract public attention. They betray
on the part of the authors a very serious alarm, which, moreover, they take no
pains to conceal. Were it possible to consider the phenomena spurious, the
church of Rome would never have gone so much out of her way to repress them.
Both sides having
agreed upon the facts, leaving skeptics out of the question, people could
divide themselves into but two parties: the believers in the direct agency of
the devil, and the believers in disembodied and other spirits. The fact alone,
that theology dreaded a great deal more the revelations which might come
through this mysterious agency than all the threatening "conflicts"
with Science and the categorical denials of the latter, ought to have opened
the eyes of the most skeptical. The church of Rome has never been either
credulous or cowardly, as is abundantly proved by the Machiavellism which marks
her policy. Moreover, she has never troubled herself much about the clever
prestidigitateurs whom she knew to be simply adepts in juggling. Robert Houdin,
Comte, Hamilton and Bosco, slept secure in their beds, while she persecuted
such men as Paracelsus, Cagliostro, and Mesmer, the Hermetic philosophers and
mystics -- and effectually stopped every genuine manifestation of an occult
nature by killing the mediums.
Those who are
unable to believe in a personal devil and the dogmas of the church must
nevertheless accord to the clergy enough of shrewdness
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Des
Tables," vol. i., p. 48.
** Ibid., p. 24.
*** Ibid., p. 35.
**** De Mirville:
"Des Esprits," p. 26.
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"UNCONSCIOUS VENTRILOQUISM!"
to prevent the
compromising of her reputation for infallibility by making so much of
manifestations which, if fraudulent, must inevitably be some day exposed.
But the best
testimony to the reality of this force was given by Robert Houdin himself, the
king of jugglers, who, upon being called as an expert by the Academy to witness
the wonderful clairvoyant powers and occasional mistakes of a table, said:
"We jugglers never make mistakes, and my second-sight never failed me
yet."
The learned astronomer
Babinet was not more fortunate in his selection of Comte, the celebrated
ventriloquist, as an expert to testify against the phenomena of direct voices
and the rappings. Comte, if we may believe the witnesses, laughed in the face
of Babinet at the bare suggestion that the raps were produced by
"unconscious ventriloquism!" The latter theory, worthy twin-sister of
"unconscious cerebration," caused many of the most skeptical
academicians to blush. Its absurdity was too apparent.
"The problem
of the supernatural," says de Gasparin, "such as it was presented by
the middle ages, and as it stands now, is not among the number of those which
we are permitted to despise; its breadth and grandeur escape the notice of no
one. . . . Everything is profoundly serious in it, both the evil and the
remedy, the superstitious recrudescency, and the physical fact which is
destined to conquer the latter."*
Further, he
pronounces the following decisive opinion, to which he came, conquered by the
various manifestations, as he says himself -- "The number of facts which
claim their place in the broad daylight of truth, has so much increased of
late, that of two consequences one is henceforth inevitable: either the domain
of natural sciences must consent to expand itself, or the domain of the
supernatural will become so enlarged as to have no bounds."**
Among the multitude
of books against spiritualism emanating from Catholic and Protestant sources,
none have produced a more appalling effect than the works of de Mirville and
des Mousseaux: La Magie au XIXme Siecle -- Moeurs et Pratiques des Demons --
Hauts Phenomees de la Magie -- Les Mediateurs de la Magie -- Des Esprits et de
leurs Manifestations, etc. They comprise the most cyclopaedic biography of the
devil and his imps that has appeared for the private delectation of good
Catholics since the middle ages.
According to the
authors, he who was "a liar and murderer from the beginning," was
also the principal motor of spiritual phenomena. He had been for thousands of
years at the head of pagan theurgy; and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Avant
propos," pp. 12 and 16.
** Vol. i., p. 244.
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it was he, again,
who, encouraged by the increase of heresies, infidelity, and atheism, had
reappeared in our century. The French Academy lifted up its voice in a general
outcry of indignation, and M. de Gasparin even took it for a personal insult.
"This is a declaration of war, a 'levee of shields' " -- wrote he in
his voluminous book of refutations. "The work of M. de Mirville is a real
manifesto. . . . I would be glad to see in it the expression of a strictly
individual opinion, but, in truth, it is impossible. The success of the work,
these solemn adhesions, the faithful reproduction of its theses by the journals
and writers of the party, the solidarity established throughout between them
and the whole body of catholicity . . . everything goes to show a work which is
essentially an act, and has the value of a collective labor. As it is, I felt
that I had a duty to perform. . . . I felt obliged to pick up the glove. . . .
and lift high the Protestant flag against the Ultramontane banner."*
The medical
faculties, as might have been expected, assuming the part of the Greek chorus,
echoed the various expostulations against the demonological authors. The
Medico-Psychological Annals, edited by Drs. Brierre de Boismont and Cerise,
published the following: "Outside these controversies of antagonistical
parties, never in our country did a writer dare to face, with a more aggressive
serenity, . . . the sarcasms, the scorn of what we term common sense; and, as
if to defy and challenge at the same time thundering peals of laughter and
shrugging of shoulders, the author strikes an attitude, and placing himself
with effrontery before the members of the Academy . . . addresses to them what
he modestly terms his Memoire on the Devil!"**
That was a cutting
insult to the Academicians, to be sure; but ever since 1850 they seem to have
been doomed to suffer in their pride more than most of them can bear. The idea
of asking the attention of the forty "Immortals" to the pranks of the
Devil! They vowed revenge, and, leaguing themselves together, propounded a
theory which exceeded in absurdity even de Mirville's demonolatry! Dr. Royer
and Jobart de Lamballe -- both celebrities in their way -- formed an alliance
and presented to the Institute a German whose cleverness afforded, according to
his statement, the key to all the knockings and rappings of both hemispheres.
"We blush" -- remarks the Marquis de Mirville -- "to say that
the whole of the trick consisted simply in the reiterated displacement of one
of the muscular tendons of the legs. Great demonstration of the system in full
sitting of the Institute -- and on the spot . . . expressions of Academical
gratitude for this interesting communication, and, a few days later, a full
assurance given to the public by a professor of the medical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vol. ii., p. 524.
**
"Medico-Psychological Annals," Jan. 1, 1854.
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PILLAR OF FAITH."
faculty, that,
scientists having pronounced their opinion, the mystery was at last
unravelled!"*
But such scientific
explanations neither prevented the phenomenon from quietly following its
course, nor the two writers on demonology from proceeding to expound their
strictly orthodox theories.
Denying that the
Church had anything to do with his books, des Mousseaux gravely gave the
Academy, in addition to his Memoire, the following interesting and profoundly
philosophical thoughts on Satan:
"The Devil is
the chief pillar of Faith. He is one of the grand personages whose life is
closely allied to that of the church; and without his speech which issued out
so triumphantly from the mouth of the Serpent, his medium, the fall of man
could not have taken place. Thus, if it was not for him, the Saviour, the
Crucified, the Redeemer, would be but the most ridiculous of supernumeraries,
and the Cross an insult to good sense!"**
This writer, be it
remembered, is only the faithful echo of the church, which anathematizes
equally the one who denies God and him who doubts the objective existence of
Satan.
But the Marquis de
Mirville carries this idea of God's partnership with the Devil still further.
According to him it is a regular commercial affair, in which the senior
"silent partner" suffers the active business of the firm to be
transacted as it may please his junior associate, by whose audacity and
industry he profits. Who could be of any other opinion, upon reading the
following?
"At the moment
of this spiritual invasion of 1853, so slightingly regarded, we had dared to
pronounce the word of a 'threatening catastrophe.' The world was nevertheless
at peace, but history showing us the same symptoms at all disastrous epochs, we
had a presentiment of the sad effects of a law which Goerres has formulated
thus: [vol. v., p. 356.] 'These mysterious apparitions have invariably indicated
the chastening hand of God on earth.' "***
These
guerilla-skirmishes between the champions of the clergy and the materialistic
Academy of Science, prove abundantly how little the latter has done toward
uprooting blind fanaticism from the minds of even very educated persons.
Evidently science has neither completely conquered nor muzzled theology. She
will master her only on that day when she will condescend to see in the
spiritual phenomenon something besides mere hallucination and charlatanry. But
how can she do it without investigating it thoroughly? Let us suppose that
before the time when
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* De Mirville:
"Des Esprits," "Constitutionnel," June 16, 1854.
** Chevalier des
Mousseaux: "Moeurs et Pratiques des Demons," p. x.
*** De Mirville:
"Des Esprits," p. 4.
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electro-magnetism
was publicly acknowledged, the Copenhagen Professor Oersted, its discoverer,
had been suffering from an attack of what we call psychophobia, or
pneumatophobia. He notices that the wire along which a voltaic current is
passing shows a tendency to turn the magnetic needle from its natural position
to one perpendicular to the direction of the current. Suppose, moreover, that
the professor had heard much of certain superstitious people who used that kind
of magnetized needles to converse with unseen intelligences. That they received
signals and even held correct conversations with them by means of the tippings
of such a needle, and that in consequence he suddenly felt a scientific horror
and disgust for such an ignorant belief, and refused, point-blank, to have
anything to do with such a needle. What would have been the result?
Electro-magnetism might not have been discovered till now, and our
experimentalists would have been the principal losers thereby.
Babinet, Royer, and
Jobert de Lamballe, all three members of the Institute, particularly
distinguished themselves in this struggle between skepticism and
supernaturalism, and most assuredly have reaped no laurels. The famous
astronomer had imprudently risked himself on the battlefield of the phenomenon.
He had explained scientifically the manifestations. But, emboldened by the fond
belief among scientists that the new epidemic could not stand close
investigation nor outlive the year, he had the still greater imprudence to
publish two articles on them. As M. de Mirville very wittily remarks, if both
of the articles had but a poor success in the scientific press, they had, on
the other hand, none at all in the daily one.
M. Babinet began by
accepting a priori, the rotation and movements of the furniture, which fact he
declared to be "hors de doute." "This rotation," he said,
"being able to manifest itself with a considerable energy, either by a
very great speed, or by a strong resistance when it is desired that it should
stop."*
Now comes the
explanation of the eminent scientist. "Gently pushed by little concordant
impulsions of the hands laid upon it, the table begins to oscillate from right
to left. . . . At the moment when, after more or less delay, a nervous
trepidation is established in the hands and the little individual impulsions of
all the experimenters have become harmonized, the table is set in
motion."**
He finds it very
simple, for "all muscular movements are determined over bodies by levers
of the third order, in which the fulcrum is very near to the point where the
force acts. This, consequently, communicates a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid.,
"Revue des Deux Mondes," January 15, 1854, p. 108.
** This is a
repetition and variation of Faraday's theory.
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HIMSELF.
great speed to the
mobile parts for the very little distance which the motor force has to run. . .
. Some persons are astonished to see a table subjected to the action of several
well-disposed individuals in a fair way to conquer powerful obstacles, even
break its legs, when suddenly stopped; but that is very simple if we consider
the power of the little concordant actions. . . . Once more, the physical
explanation offers no difficulty."*
In this
dissertation, two results are clearly shown: the reality of the phenomena
proved, and the scientific explanation made ridiculous. But M. Babinet can well
afford to be laughed at a little; he knows, as an astronomer, that dark spots
are to be found even in the sun.
There is one thing,
though, that Babinet has always stoutly denied, viz.: the levitation of
furniture without contact. De Mirville catches him proclaiming that such
levitation is impossible: "simply impossible," he says, "as
impossible as perpetual motion."**
Who can take upon
himself, after such a declaration, to maintain that the word impossible
pronounced by science is infallible?
But the tables,
after having waltzed, oscillated and turned, began tipping and rapping. The
raps were sometimes as powerful as pistol-detonations. What of this? Listen:
"The witnesses and investigators are ventriloquists!"
De Mirville refers
us to the Revue des Deux Mondes, in which is published a very interesting
dialogue, invented by M. Babinet speaking of himself to himself, like the
Chaldean En-Soph of the Kabalists: "What can we finally say of all these
facts brought under our observation? Are there such raps produced? Yes. Do such
raps answer questions? Yes. Who produces these sounds? The mediums. By what
means? By the ordinary acoustic method of the ventriloquists. But we were given
to suppose that these sounds might result from the cracking of the toes and
fingers? No; for then they would always proceed from the same point, and such
is not the fact."***
"Now,"
asks de Mirville, "what are we to believe of the Americans, and their
thousands of mediums who produce the same raps before millions of
witnesses?" "Ventriloquism, to be sure," answers Babinet.
"But how can you explain such an impossibility?" The easiest thing in
the world; listen only: "All that was necessary to produce the first
manifestation in the first house in America was, a street-boy knocking at the
door of a mystified citizen, perhaps with a leaden ball attached to a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Revue des
Deux Mondes," p. 410.
** "Revue des
Deux Mondes," January, 1854, p. 414.
*** "Revue des
Deux Mondes," May 1, 1854, p. 531.
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string, and if Mr.
Weekman (the first believer in America) (?)* when he watched for the third
time, heard no shouts of laughter in the street, it is because of the essential
difference which exists between a French street-Arab, and an English or
Trans-Atlantic one, the latter being amply provided with what we call a sad
merriment, "gaite triste."**
Truly says de
Mirville in his famous reply to the attacks of de Gasparin, Babinet, and other
scientists: "and thus according to our great physicist, the tables turn
very quickly, very energetically, resist likewise, and, as M. de Gasparin has
proved, they levitate without contact. Said a minister: 'With three words of a
man's handwriting, I take upon myself to have him hung.' With the above three
lines, we take upon ourselves, in our turn, to throw into the greatest
confusion the physicists of all the globe, or rather to revolutionize the world
-- if at least, M. de Babinet had taken the precaution of suggesting, like M.
de Gasparin, some yet unknown law or force. For this would cover the whole
ground."***
But it is in the
notes embracing the "facts and physical theories," that we find the
acme of the consistency and logic of Babinet as an expert investigator on the
field of Spiritualism.
It would appear,
that M. de Mirville in his narrative of the wonders manifested at the
Presbytere de Cideville,**** was much struck by the marvellousness of some
facts. Though authenticated before the inquest and magistrates, they were of so
miraculous a nature as to force the demonological author himself to shrink from
the responsibility of publishing them.
These facts were as
follows: "At the precise moment predicted by a sorcerer" -- case of
revenge -- "a violent clap of thunder was heard above one of the chimneys
of the presbytery, after which the fluid descended with a formidable noise
through that passage, threw down believers as well as skeptics (as to the power
of the sorcerer) who were warming themselves by the fire; and, having filled
the room with a multitude of fantastic animals, returned to the chimney, and
having reascended it, disappeared, after producing the same terrible noise.
"As," adds de Mirville, "we were already but too rich in facts,
we recoiled before this new enormity added to so many others."****
But Babinet, who in
common with his learned colleagues had made such fun of the two writers on
demonology, and who was determined, moreover, to prove the absurdity of all
like stories, felt himself obliged
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We translate
verbatim. We doubt whether Mr. Weekman was the first investigator.
** Babinet:
"Revue des Deux Mondes," May 1, 1854, p. 511.
*** De Mirville:
"Des Esprits," p. 33.
**** Notes,
"Des Esprits," p. 38.
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to discredit the
above-mentioned fact of the Cideville phenomena, by presenting one still more
incredible. We yield the floor to M. Babinet, himself.
The following
circumstance which he gave to the Academy of Sciences, on July 5, 1852, can be
found without further commentary, and merely as an instance of a sphere-like
lightning, in the "OEuvres de F. Arago," vol. i., p. 52. We offer it
verbatim.
"After a
strong clap of thunder," says M. Babinet, "but not immediately
following it, a tailor apprentice, living in the Rue St. Jacques, was just
finishing his dinner, when he saw the paper-screen which shut the fireplace
fall down as if pushed out of its place by a moderate gust of wind. Immediately
after that he perceived a globe of fire, as large as the head of a child, come
out quietly and softly from within the grate and slowly move about the room,
without touching the bricks of the floor. The aspect of this fire-globe was
that of a young cat, of middle size . . . moving itself without the use of its
paws. The fire-globe was rather brilliant and luminous than hot or inflamed,
and the tailor had no sensation of warmth. This globe approached his feet like
a young cat which wishes to play and rub itself against the legs, as is
habitual to these animals; but the apprentice withdrew his feet from it, and
moving with great caution, avoided contact with the meteor. The latter remained
for a few seconds moving about his legs, the tailor examining it with great
curiosity and bending over it. After having tried several excursions in
opposite directions, but without leaving the centre of the room, the fire-globe
elevated itself vertically to the level of the man's head, who to avoid its
contact with his face, threw himself backward on his chair. Arrived at about a
yard from the floor the fire-globe slightly lengthened, took an oblique
direction toward a hole in the wall over the fireplace, at about the height of
a metre above the mantelpiece." This hole had been made for the purpose of
admitting the pipe of a stove in winter; but, according to the expression of
the tailor, "the thunder could not see it, for it was papered over like
the rest of the wall. The fire-globe went directly to that hole, unglued the
paper without damaging it, and reasscended the chimney . . . when it arrived at
the top, which it did very slowly . . . at least sixty feet above ground . . .
it produced a most frightful explosion, which partly destroyed the chimney, . .
." etc.
"It
seems," remarks de Mirville in his review, "that we could apply to M.
Babinet the following remark made by a very witty woman to Raynal, 'If you are
not a Christian, it is not for lack of faith.' "*
It was not alone
believers who wondered at the credulity displayed by
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* De Mirville:
"Faits et Theories Physiques," p. 46.
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M. Babinet, in
persisting to call the manifestation a meteor; for Dr. Boudin mentions it very
seriously in a work on lightning he was just then publishing. "If these
details are exact," says the doctor, "as they seem to be, since they
are admitted by MM. Babinet and Arago, it appears very difficult for the
phenomenon to retain its appellation of sphere-shaped lightning. However, we
leave it to others to explain, if they can, the essence of a fire-globe
emitting no sensation of heat, having the aspect of a cat, slowly promenading
in a room, which finds means to escape by reascending the chimney through an
aperture in the wall covered over with a paper which it unglues without
damaging!"*
"We are of the
same opinion," adds the marquis, "as the learned doctor, on the
difficulty of an exact definition, and we do not see why we should not have in
future lightning in the shape of a dog, of a monkey, etc., etc. One shudders at
the bare idea of a whole meteorological menagerie, which, thanks to thunder,
might come down to our rooms to promenade themselves at will."
Says de Gasparin,
in his monster volume of refutations: "In questions of testimony,
certitude must absolutely cease the moment we cross the borders of the
supernatural."**
The line of
demarcation not being sufficiently fixed and determined, which of the opponents
is best fitted to take upon himself the difficult task? Which of the two is
better entitled to become the public arbiter? Is it the party of superstition,
which is supported in its testimony by the evidence of many thousands of
people? For nearly two years they crowded the country where were daily
manifested the unprecedented miracles of Cideville, now nearly forgotten among
other countless spiritual phenomena; shall we believe them, or shall we bow to
science, represented by Babinet, who, on the testimony of one man (the tailor),
accepts the manifestation of the fire-globe, or the meteor-cat, and henceforth
claims for it a place among the established facts of natural phenomena?
Mr. Crookes, in his
first article in the Quarterly Journal of Science, October 1, 1871, mentions de
Gasparin and his work Science v. Spiritualism. He remarks that "the author
finally arrived at the conclusion that all these phenomena are to be accounted
for by the action of natural causes, and do not require the supposition of
miracles, nor the intervention of spirits and diabolical influences! Gasparin
considers it as a fact fully established by his experiments, that the will, in
certain
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Monograph:
"Of the Lightning considered from the point of view of the history of
Legal Medicine and Public Hygiene," by M. Boudin, Chief Surgeon of the
Military Hospital of Boule.
** De Gasparin:
vol. i., page 288.
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GASPARIN.
states of organism,
can act at a distance on inert matter, and most of his work is devoted to
ascertaining the laws and conditions under which this action manifests
itself."*
Precisely; but as
the work of de Gasparin called forth numberless Answers, Defenses, and Memoirs,
it was then demonstrated by his own work that as he was a Protestant, in point
of religious fanaticism, he was as little to be relied upon as des Mousseaux and
de Mirville. The former is a profoundly pious Calvinist, while the two latter
are fanatical Roman Catholics. Moreover, the very words of de Gasparin betray
the spirit of partisanship: -- "I feel I have a duty to perform. . . . I
lift high the Protestant flag against the Ultramontane banner!" etc.** In
such matters as the nature of the so-called spiritual phenomena, no evidence
can be relied upon, except the disinterested testimony of cold unprejudiced
witnesses and science. Truth is one, and Legion is the name for religious
sects; every one of which claims to have found the unadulterated truth; as
"the Devil is the chief pillar of the (Catholic) Church," so all
supernaturalism and miracles ceased, in de Gasparin's opinion, "with
apostleship."
But Mr. Crookes
mentioned another eminent scholar, Thury, of Geneva, professor of natural
history, who was a brother-investigator with Gasparin in the phenomena of
Valleyres. This professor contradicts point-blank the assertions of his
colleague. "The first and most necessary condition," says Gasparin,
"is the will of the experimenter; without the will, one would obtain
nothing; you can form the chain (the circle) for twenty-four hours
consecutively, without obtaining the least movement."***
The above proves
only that de Gasparin makes no difference between phenomena purely magnetic,
produced by the persevering will of the sitters among whom there may be not
even a single medium, developed or undeveloped, and the so-called spiritual
ones. While the first can be produced consciously by nearly every person, who
has a firm and determined will, the latter overpowers the sensitive very often
against his own consent, and always acts independently of him. The mesmerizer
wills a thing, and if he is powerful enough, that thing is done. The medium,
even if he had an honest purpose to succeed, may get no manifestations at all;
the less he exercises his will, the better the phenomena: the more he feels
anxious, the less he is likely to get anything; to mesmerize requires a positive
nature, to be a medium a perfectly passive one. This is the Alphabet of
Spiritualism, and no medium is ignorant of it.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Crookes:
"Physical Force," page 26.
** De Gasparin:
"Science versus Spirit," vol. i., p. 313.
*** Ibid., vol. i.,
p. 313.
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The opinion of
Thury, as we have said, disagrees entirely with Gasparin's theories of
will-power. He states it in so many plain words, in a letter, in answer to the
invitation of the count to modify the last article of his memoire. As the book
of Thury is not at hand, we translate the letter as it is found in the resume
of de Mirville's Defense. Thury's article which so shocked his religious
friend, related to the possibility of the existence and intervention in those
manifestations "of wills other than those of men and animals."
"I feel, sir,
the justness of your observations in relation to the last pages of this
memoire: they may provoke a very bad feeling for me on the part of scientists
in general. I regret it the more as my determination seems to affect you so
much; nevertheless, I persist in my resolution, because I think it a duty, to
shirk which would be a kind of treason.
"If, against
all expectations, there were some truth in Spiritualism, by abstaining from
saying on the part of science, as I conceive it to be, that the absurdity of
the belief in the intervention of spirits is not as yet demonstrated
scientifically (for such is the resume, and the thesis of the past pages of my
memoire), by abstaining from saying it to those who, after having read my work,
will feel inclined to experiment with the phenomena, I might risk to entice
such persons on a path many issues of which are very equivocal.
"Without
leaving the domain of science, as I esteem it, I will pursue my duty to the
end, without any reticence to the profit of my own glory, and, to use your own
words, 'as the great scandal lies there,' I do not wish to assume the shame of
it. I, moreover, insist that 'this is as scientific as anything else.' If I
wanted to sustain now the theory of the intervention of disembodied spirits, I
would have no power for it, for the facts which are made known are not
sufficient for the demonstration of such a hypothesis. As it is, and in the
position I have assumed, I feel I am strong against every one. Willingly or
not, all the scientists must learn, through experience and their own errors, to
suspend their judgment as to things which they have not sufficiently examined.
The lesson you gave them in this direction cannot be lost.
"GENEVA, 21
December, 1854."
Let us analyze the
above letter, and try to discover what the writer thinks, or rather what he
does not think of this new force. One thing is certain, at least: Professor
Thury, a distinguished physicist and naturalist, admits, and even
scientifically proves that various manifestations take place. Like Mr. Crookes,
he does not believe that they are produced by the interference of spirits or
disembodied men who have lived
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GASPARIN.
and died on earth;
for he says in his letter that nothing has demonstrated this theory. He
certainly believes no more in the Catholic devils or demons, for de Mirville,
who quotes this letter as a triumphant proof against de Gasparin's naturalistic
theory, once arrived at the above sentence, hastens to emphasize it by a
foot-note, which runs thus: "At Valleyres -- perhaps, but everywhere
else!"* showing himself anxious to convey the idea that the professor only
meant the manifestations of Valleyres, when denying their being produced by
demons.
The contradictions,
and we are sorry to say, the absurdities in which de Gasparin allows himself to
be caught, are numerous. While bitterly criticizing the pretensions of the
learned Faradaysiacs, he attributes things which he declares magical, to causes
perfectly natural. "If," he says, "we had to deal but with such
phenomena (as witnessed and explained (?) by the great physicist), we might as
well hold our tongues; but we have passed beyond, and what good can they do
now, I would ask, these apparatus which demonstrate that an unconscious
pressure explains the whole? It explains all, and the table resists pressure
and guidance! It explains all, and a piece of furniture which nobody touches
follows the fingers pointed at it; it levitates (without contact), and it turns
itself upside down!"**
But for all that,
he takes upon himself to explain the phenomena.
"People will
be advocating miracles, you say -- magic! Every new law appears to them as a
prodigy. Calm yourselves; I take upon myself the task to quiet those who are
alarmed. In the face of such phenomena, we do not cross at all the boundaries
of natural law."***
Most assuredly, we
do not. But can the scientists assert that they have in their possession the
keys to such law? M. de Gasparin thinks he has. Let us see.
"I do not risk
myself to explain anything; it is no business of mine. (?) To authenticate
simple facts, and maintain a truth which science desires to smother, is all I
pretend to do. Nevertheless, I cannot resist the temptation to point out to
those who would treat us as so many illuminati or sorcerers, that the
manifestation in question affords an interpretation which agrees with the ordinary
laws of science.
"Suppose a
fluid, emanating from the experimenters, and chiefly from some of them; suppose
that the will determined the direction taken by the fluid, and you will readily
understand the rotation and levitation of that one of the legs of the table
toward which is ejected with every action of the will an excess of fluid.
Suppose that the glass causes the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* De Mirville
pleads here the devil-theory, of course.
** "Des Tables,"
vol. i., p. 213.
*** Vol. i., p.
217.
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fluid to escape,
and you will understand how a tumbler placed on the table can interrupt its
rotation, and that the tumbler, placed on one of its sides, causes the
accumulation of the fluid in the opposite side, which, in consequence of that,
is lifted!"
If every one of the
experimenters were clever mesmerizers, the explanation, minus certain important
details, might be acceptable. So much for the power of human will on inanimate
matter, according to the learned minister of Louis Philippe. But how about the
intelligence exhibited by the table? What explanation does he give as to
answers obtained through the agency of this table to questions? answers which
could not possibly have been the "reflections of the brain" of those
present (one of the favorite theories of de Gasparin), for their own ideas were
quite the reverse of the very liberal philosophy given by this wonderful table?
On this he is silent. Anything but spirits, whether human, satanic, or
elemental.
Thus, the
"simultaneous concentration of thought," and the "accumulation
of fluid," will be found no better than "the unconscious
cerebration" and "psychic force" of other scientists. We must
try again; and we may predict beforehand that the thousand and one theories of
science will prove of no avail until they will confess that this force, far
from being a projection of the accumulated wills of the circle, is, on the
contrary, a force which is abnormal, foreign to themselves, and
supra-intelligent.
Professor Thury,
who denies the theory of departed human spirits, rejects the Christian devil-doctrine,
and shows himself unwilling to pronounce in favor of Crookes's theory (the
6th), that of the hermetists and ancient theurgists, adopts the one, which, he
says in his letter, is "the most prudent, and makes him feel strong
against every one." Moreover, he accepts as little of de Gasparin's
hypothesis of "unconscious will-power." This is what he says in his
work:
"As to the
announced phenomena, such as the levitation without contact, and the
displacement of furniture by invisible hands -- unable to demonstrate their
impossibility, a priori, no one has the right to treat as absurd the serious
evidences which affirm their occurrence" (p. 9).
As to the theory
proposed by M. de Gasparin, Thury judges it very severely. "While
admitting that in the experiments of Valleyres," says de Mirville,
"the seat of the force might have been in the individual -- and we say
that it was intrinsic and extrinsic at the same time -- and that the will might
be generally necessary (p. 20), he repeats but what he had said in his preface,
to wit: 'M. de Gasparin presents us with crude facts, and the explanations
following he offers for what they are worth. Breathe on them, and not many will
be found standing after this. No,
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"ECTENIC FORCE."
very little, if
anything, will remain of his explanations. As to facts, they are henceforth
demonstrated' " (p. 10).
As Mr. Crookes
tells us, Professor Thury refutes "all these explanations, and considers
the effects due to a peculiar substance, fluid, or agent, pervading in a manner
similar to the luminiferous ether of the scientists, all matter, nervous,
organic or inorganic, which he terms psychode. He enters into full discussion
as to the properties of this state, or form, or matter, and proposes the term
ectenic force . . . for the power exerted when the mind acts at a distance
through the influence of the psychode."*
Mr. Crookes remarks
further, that "Professor Thury's ectenic force, and his own 'psychic
force' are evidently equivalent terms."
We certainly could
very easily demonstrate that the two forces are identical, moreover, the astral
or sidereal light as explained by the alchemists and Eliphas Levi, in his Dogme
et Rituel de la Haute Magie; and that, under the name of AKASA, or
life-principle, this all-pervading force was known to the gymnosophists, Hindu
magicians, and adepts of all countries, thousands of years ago; and, that it is
still known to them, and used at present by the Thibetan lamas, fakirs,
thaumaturgists of all nationalities, and even by many of the Hindu
"jugglers."
In many cases of
trance, artificially induced by mesmerization, it is also quite possible, even
quite probable, that it is the "spirit" of the subject which acts
under the guidance of the operator's will. But, if the medium remains
conscious, and psycho-physical phenomena occur which indicate a directing
intelligence, then, unless it be conceded that he is a "magician,"
and can project his double, physical exhaustion can signify nothing more than
nervous prostration. The proof that he is the passive instrument of unseen
entities controlling occult potencies, seems conclusive. Even if Thury's
ectenic and Crookes's psychic force are substantially of the same derivation,
the respective discoverers seem to differ widely as to the properties and
potencies of this force; while Professor Thury candidly admits that the
phenomena are often produced by "wills not human," and so, of course,
gives a qualified endorsement to Mr. Crookes's theory No. 6, the latter,
admitting the genuineness of the phenomena, has as yet pronounced no definite
opinion as to their cause.
Thus, we find that
neither M. Thury, who investigated these manifestations with de Gasparin in
1854, nor Mr. Crookes, who conceded their undeniable genuineness in 1874, have
reached anything definite. Both are chemists, physicists, and very learned men.
Both have given all their attention to the puzzling question; and besides these
two scien-
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Crookes:
"Psychic Force," part i., pp. 26-27.
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tists there were
many others who, while coming to the same conclusion, have hitherto been as
unable to furnish the world with a final solution. It follows then, that in
twenty years none of the scientists have made a single step toward the
unravelling of the mystery, which remains as immovable and impregnable as the
walls of an enchanted castle in a fairy tale.
Would it be too
impertinent to surmise that perhaps our modern scientists have got in what the
French term un cercle vicieux? That, hampered by the weight of their
materialism, and the insufficiency of what they name "the exact
sciences" to demonstrate to them tangibly the existence of a spiritual universe,
peopled and inhabited much more than our visible one, they are doomed forever
to creep around inside that circle, unwilling rather than unable to penetrate
beyond its enchanted ring, and explore it in its length and breadth? It is but
prejudice which keeps them from making a compromise with well-established facts
and seek alliance with such expert magnetists and mesmerizers as were Du Potet
and Regazzoni.
"What, then,
is produced from death?" inquired Socrates of Cebes. "Life," was
the reply.* . . . "Can the soul, since it is immortal, be anything else
than imperishable?"** The "seed cannot develop unless it is in part
consumed," says Prof. Lecomte; "it is not quickened unless it
die," says St. Paul.
A flower blossoms;
then withers and dies. It leaves a fragrance behind, which, long after its
delicate petals are but a little dust, still lingers in the air. Our material
sense may not be cognizant of it, but it nevertheless exists. Let a note be
struck on an instrument, and the faintest sound produces an eternal echo. A
disturbance is created on the invisible waves of the shoreless ocean of space,
and the vibration is never wholly lost. Its energy being once carried from the
world of matter into the immaterial world will live for ever. And man, we are
asked to believe, man, the living, thinking, reasoning entity, the indwelling
deity of our nature's crowning masterpiece, will evacuate his casket and be no
more! Would the principle of continuity which exists even for the so-called
inorganic matter, for a floating atom, be denied to the spirit, whose
attributes are consciousness, memory, mind, LOVE! Really, the very idea is
preposterous. The more we think and the more we learn, the more difficult it
becomes for us to account for the atheism of the scientist. We may readily
understand that a man ignorant of the laws of nature, unlearned in either
chemistry or physics, may be fatally drawn into materialism through his very
ignorance; his incapacity of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plato:
"Phaedo," § 44.
** Ibid., § 128.
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MALFORMATION.
understanding the
philosophy of the exact sciences, or drawing any inference by analogy from the
visible to the invisible. A natural-born metaphysician, an ignorant dreamer,
may awake abruptly and say to himself: "I dreamed it; I have no tangible
proof of that which I imagined; it is all illusion," etc. But for a man of
science, acquainted with the characteristics of the universal energy, to
maintain that life is merely a phenomenon of matter, a species of energy,
amounts simply to a confession of his own incapability of analyzing and
properly understanding the alpha and the omega even of that -- matter.
Sincere skepticism
as to the immortality of man's soul is a malady; a malformation of the physical
brain, and has existed in every age. As there are infants born with a caul upon
their heads, so there are men who are incapable to their last hour of ridding
themselves of that kind of caul evidently enveloping their organs of
spirituality. But it is quite another feeling which makes them reject the
possibility of spiritual and magical phenomena. The true name for that feeling
is -- vanity. "We can neither produce nor explain it -- hence, it does not
exist, and moreover, could never have existed." Such is the irrefutable
argument of our present-day philosophers. Some thirty years ago, E. Salverte
startled the world of the "credulous" by his work, The Philosophy of
Magic. The book claimed to unveil the whole of the miracles of the Bible as
well as those of the Pagan sanctuaries. Its resume ran thus: Long ages of
observation; a great knowledge (for those days of ignorance) of natural
sciences and philosophy; imposture; legerdemain; optics; phantasmagoria;
exaggeration. Final and logical conclusion: Thaumaturgists, prophets,
magicians, rascals, and knaves; the rest of the world, fools.
Among many other
conclusive proofs, the reader can find him offering the following: "The
enthusiastic disciples of Iamblichus affirmed that when he prayed, he was
raised to the height of ten cubits from the ground; and dupes to the same
metaphor, although Christians, have had the simplicity to attribute a similar
miracle to St. Clare, and St. Francis of Assisi."*
Hundreds of
travellers claimed to have seen fakirs produce the same phenomena, and they
were all thought either liars or hallucinated. But it was but yesterday that
the same phenomenon was witnessed and endorsed by a well-known scientist; it
was produced under test conditions; declared by Mr. Crookes to be genuine, and
to be beyond the possibility of an illusion or a trick. And so was it
manifested many a time before and attested by numerous witnesses, though the
latter are now invariably disbelieved.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Philosophy of
Magic," English translation, p. 47.
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Peace to thy
scientific ashes, O credulous Eusebe Salverte! Who knows but before the close
of the present century popular wisdom will have invented a new proverb:
"As incredibly credulous as a scientist."
Why should it
appear so impossible that when the spirit is once separated from its body, it may
have the power to animate some evanescent form, created out of that magical
"psychic" or "ectenic" or "ethereal" force, with
the help of the elementaries who furnish it with the sublimated matter of their
own bodies? The only difficulty is, to realize the fact that surrounding space
is not an empty void, but a reservoir filled to repletion with the models of
all things that ever were, that are, and that will be; and with beings of
countless races, unlike our own. Seemingly supernatural facts -- supernatural
in that they openly contradict the demonstrated natural laws of gravitation, as
in the above-mentioned instance of levitation -- are recognized by many
scientists. Every one who has dared to investigate with thoroughness has found
himself compelled to admit their existence; only in their unsuccessful efforts
to account for the phenomena on theories based on the laws of such forces as
were already known, some of the highest representatives of science have
involved themselves in inextricable difficulties!
In his Resume de
Mirville describes the argumentation of these adversaries of spiritualism as
consisting of five paradoxes, which he terms distractions.
First distraction:
that of Faraday, who explains the table phenomenon, by the table which pushes
you "in consequence of the resistance which pushes it back."
Second distraction:
that of Babinet, explaining all the communications (by raps) which are
produced, as he says, "in good faith and with perfect conscientiousness,
correct in every way and sense -- by ventriloquism," the use of which
faculty implies of necessity -- bad faith.
Third distraction:
that of Dr. Chevreuil, explaining the faculty of moving furniture without
contact, by the preliminary acquisition of that faculty.
Fourth distraction:
that of the French Institute and its members, who consent to accept the
miracles, on condition that the latter will not contradict in any way those
natural laws with which they are acquainted.
Fifth distraction:
that of M. de Gasparin, introducing as a very simple and perfectly elementary
phenomenon that which every one rejects, precisely because no one ever saw the
like of it.*
While the great,
world-known scientists indulge in such fantastic theories, some less known
neurologists find an explanation for occult phe-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* De Mirville:
"Des Esprits," p. 159.
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VERSUS IMMORTALITY.
nomena of every
kind in an abnormal effluvium resulting from epilepsy.* Another would treat
mediums -- and poets, too, we may infer -- with assafoetida and ammonia,** and
declare every one of the believers in spiritual manifestations lunatics and
hallucinated mystics.
To the latter
lecturer and professed pathologist is commended that sensible bit of advice to
be found in the New Testament: "Physician, heal thyself." Truly, no
sane man would so sweepingly charge insanity upon four hundred and forty-six
millions of people in various parts of the world, who believe in the
intercourse of spirits with ourselves!
Considering all
this, it remains to us but to wonder at the preposterous presumption of these
men, who claim to be regarded by right of learning as the high priests of
science, to classify a phenomenon they know nothing about. Surely, several
millions of their countrymen and women, if deluded, deserve at least as much
attention as potato-bugs or grasshoppers! But, instead of that, what do we
find? The Congress of the United States, at the demand of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, enacts statutes for organization of
National Insect Commissions; chemists are busying themselves in boiling frogs
and bugs; geologists amuse their leisure by osteological surveys of
armor-plated ganoids, and discuss the odontology of the various species of
dinichtys; and entomologists suffer their enthusiasm to carry them to the length
of supping on grasshoppers boiled, fried, and in soup.*** Meanwhile, millions
of Americans are either losing themselves in the maze of "crazy
delusions," according to the opinion of some of these very learned
encyclopaedists, or perishing physically from "nervous disorders,"
brought on or brought out by mediumistic diathesis.
At one time, there
was reason to hope that Russian scientists would have undertaken the task of
giving the phenomena a careful and impartial study. A commission was appointed
by the Imperial University of St. Petersburg, with Professor Mendeleyeff, the
great physicist, at its head. The advertised programme provided for a series of
forty seances to test mediums, and invitations were extended to all of this
class who chose to come to the Russian capital and submit their powers to
examination. As a rule they refused -- doubtless from a prevision of the trap
that had been laid for them. After eight sittings, upon a shallow pretext, and
just when the manifestations were becoming interesting, the commission
prejudged the case, and published a decision adverse to the claims of
mediumism. Instead of pursuing dignified, scientific methods, they set spies to
peep
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See F. Gerry Fairfield's
"Ten Years with Spiritual Mediums," New York, 1875.
** Marvin:
"Lecture on Mediomania."
***
"Scientific American," N. Y., 1875.
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through the
key-holes. Professor Mendeleyeff declared in a public lecture that
spiritualism, or any such belief in our souls' immortality, was a mixture of
superstition, delusion, and fraud; adding that every "manifestation"
of such nature -- including mind-reading, trance, and other psychological
phenomena, we must suppose -- could be, and was produced by means of clever
apparatus and machinery concealed under the clothing of mediums!
After such a public
exhibition of ignorance and prejudice, Mr. Butlerof, Professor of Chemistry at
the St. Petersburg University, and Mr. Aksakof, Counsellor of State in the same
city, who had been invited to assist on the committee for mediums, became so
disgusted that they withdrew. Having published their protests in the Russian
papers, they were supported by the majority of the press, who did not spare
either Mendeleyeff or his officious committee with their sarcasms. The public
acted fairly in that case. One hundred and thirty names, of the most
influential persons of the best society of St. Petersburg, many of them no
spiritualists at all, but simply investigators, added their signatures to the
well-deserved protest.
The inevitable
result of such a procedure followed; universal attention was drawn to the
question of spiritualism; private circles were organized throughout the empire;
some of the most liberal journals began to discuss the subject; and, as we
write, a new commission is being organized to finish the interrupted task.
But now -- as a
matter of course -- they will do their duty less than ever. They have a better
pretext than they ever had in the pretended expose of the medium Slade, by
Professor Lankester, of London. True, to the evidence of one scientist and his
friend, -- Messrs. Lankester and Donkin -- the accused opposed the testimony of
Wallace, Crookes, and a host of others, which totally nullifies an accusation
based merely on circumstantial evidence and prejudice. As the London Spectator
very pertinently observes:
"It is really
a pure superstition and nothing else to assume that we are so fully acquainted
with the laws of nature, that even carefully examined facts, attested by an
experienced observer, ought to be cast aside as utterly unworthy of credit,
only because they do not, at first sight, seem to be in keeping with what is
most clearly known already. To assume, as Professor Lankester appears to do,
that because there are fraud and credulity in plenty to be found in connection
with these facts -- as there is, no doubt, in connection with all nervous
diseases -- fraud and credulity will account for all the carefully attested
statements of accurate and conscientious observers, is to saw away at the very
branch of the tree of knowledge on which inductive science necessarily rests,
and to bring the whole structure toppling to the ground."
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LOURDES.
But what matters
all this to scientists? The torrent of superstition, which, according to them,
sweeps away millions of bright intellects in its impetuous course, cannot reach
them. The modern deluge called spiritualism is unable to affect their strong
minds; and the muddy waves of the flood must expend their raging fury without
wetting even the soles of their boots. Surely it must be but traditional
stubbornness on the part of the Creator that prevents him from confessing what
a poor chance his miracles have in our day in blinding professed scientists. By
this time even He ought to know and take notice that long ago they decided to
write on the porticoes of their universities and colleges:
Science commands
that God shall not
Do miracles upon
this spot! *
Both the infidel
spiritualists and the orthodox Roman Catholics seem to have leagued themselves
this year against the iconoclastic pretensions of materialism. Increase of
skepticism has developed of late a like increase of credulity. The champions of
the Bible "divine" miracles rival the panegyrist's mediumistic
phenomena, and the middle ages revive in the nineteenth century. Once more we
see the Virgin Mary resume her epistolary correspondence with the faithful
children of her church; and while the "angel friends" scribble
messages to spiritualists through their mediums, the "mother of God"
drops letters direct from heaven to earth. The shrine of Notre Dame de Lourdes
has turned into a spiritualistic cabinet for "materializations,"
while the cabinets of popular American mediums are transformed into sacred
shrines, into which Mohammed, Bishop Polk, Joan of Arc and other aristocratic
spirits from over the "dark river," having descended,
"materialize" in full light. And if the Virgin Mary is seen taking
her daily walk in the woods about Lourdes in full human form, why not the
Apostle of Islam, and the late Bishop of Louisiana? Either both
"miracles" are possible, or both kinds of these manifestations, the
"divine" as well as the "spiritual," are arrant impostures.
Time alone will prove which; but meanwhile, as science refuses the loan of her
magic lamp to illuminate these mysteries, common people must go stumbling on
whether they be mired or not.
The recent
"miracles" at Lourdes having been unfavorably discussed in the London
papers, Monsignor Capel communicates to the Times the views of the Roman Church
in the following terms:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*"De par le
Roi, defense a Dieu,
De faire miracle,
en ces lieux."
A satire that was
found written upon the walls of the cemetery at the time of the Jansenist
miracles and their prohibition by the police of France.
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"As to the
miraculous cures which are effected, I would refer your readers to the calm,
judicious work, La Grotte de Lourdes, written by Dr. Dozous, an eminent
resident practitioner, inspector of epidemic diseases for the district, and
medical assistant of the Court of Justice. He prefaces a number of detailed
cases of miraculous cures, which he says he has studied with great care and
perseverance, with these words: 'I declare that these cures effected at the
Sanctuary of Lourdes by means of the water of the fountain, have established
their supernatural character in the eyes of men of good faith. I ought to
confess that without these cures, my mind, little prone to listen to miraculous
explanations of any kind, would have had great difficulty in accepting even
this fact (the apparition), remarkable as it is from so many points of view.
But the cures, of which I have been so often an ocular witness, have given to
my mind a light which does not permit me to ignore the importance of the visits
of Bernadette to the Grotto, and the reality of the apparitions with which she
was favored.' The testimony of a distinguished medical man, who has carefully
watched from the beginning Bernadette, and the miraculous cures at the Grotto,
is at least worthy of respectful consideration. I may add, that the vast number
of those who come to the Grotto do so to repent of their sins, to increase
their piety, to pray for the regeneration of their country, to profess publicly
their belief in the Son of God and his Immaculate Mother. Many come to be cured
of bodily ailments; and on the testimony of eye-witnesses several return home
freed from their sickness. To upbraid with non-belief, as does your article,
those who use also the waters of the Pyrenees, is as reasonable as to charge
with unbelief the magistrates who inflict punishment on the peculiar people for
neglecting to have medical aid. Health obliged me to pass the winters of 1860 to
1867 at Pau. This gave me the opportunity of making the most minute inquiry
into the apparition at Lourdes. After frequent and lengthened examinations of
Bernadette and of some of the miracles effected, I am convinced that, if facts
are to be received on human testimony, then has the apparition at Lourdes every
claim to be received as an undeniable fact. It is, however, no part of the
Catholic faith, and may be accepted or rejected by any Catholic without the
least praise or condemnation."
Let the reader
observe the sentence we have italicized. This makes it clear that the Catholic
Church, despite her infallibility and her liberal postage convention with the
Kingdom of Heaven, is content to accept even the validity of divine miracles
upon human testimony. Now when we turn to the report of Mr. Huxley's recent New
York lectures on evolution, we find him saying that it is upon "human
historical evidence that we depend for the greater part of our knowledge for
the doings of
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PROOF.
the past." In
a lecture on Biology, he has said " . . . every man who has the interest
of truth at heart must earnestly desire that every well-founded and just
criticism that can be made should be made; but it is essential . . . that the
critic should know what he is talking about." An aphorism that its author
should recall when he undertakes to pronounce upon psychological subjects. Add
this to his views, as expressed above, and who could ask a better platform upon
which to meet him?
Here we have a
representative materialist, and a representative Catholic prelate, enunciating
an identical view of the sufficiency of human testimony to prove facts that it
suits the prejudices of each to believe. After this, what need for either the
student of occultism, or even the spiritualist, to hunt about for endorsements
of the argument they have so long and so persistently advanced, that the
psychological phenomena of ancient and modern thaumaturgists being
superabundantly proven upon human testimony must be accepted as facts? Church
and College having appealed to the tribunal of human evidence, they cannot deny
the rest of mankind an equal privilege. One of the fruits of the recent
agitation in London of the subject of mediumistic phenomena, is the expression
of some remarkably liberal views on the part of the secular press. "In any
case, we are for admitting spiritualism to a place among tolerated beliefs, and
letting it alone accordingly," says the London Daily News, in 1876.
"It has many votaries who are as intelligent as most of us, and to whom
any obvious and palpable defect in the evidence meant to convince must have been
obvious and palpable long ago. Some of the wisest men in the world believed in
ghosts, and would have continued to do so even though half-a-dozen persons in
succession had been convicted of frightening people with sham goblins."
It is not for the
first time in the history of the world, that the invisible world has to contend
against the materialistic skepticism of soul-blind Sadducees. Plato deplores
such an unbelief, and refers to this pernicious tendency more than once in his
works.
From Kapila, the Hindu
philosopher, who many centuries before Christ demurred to the claim of the
mystic Yogins, that in ecstasy a man has the power of seeing Deity face to face
and conversing with the "highest" beings, down to the Voltaireans of
the eighteenth century, who laughed at everything that was held sacred by other
people, each age had its unbelieving Thomases. Did they ever succeed in
checking the progress of truth? No more than the ignorant bigots who sat in
judgment over Galileo checked the progress of the earth's rotation. No
exposures whatever are able to vitally affect the stability or instability of a
belief which humanity inherited from the first races of men, those, who -- if
we
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can believe in the
evolution of spiritual man as in that of the physical one -- had the great
truth from the lips of their ancestors, the gods of their fathers, "that
were on the other side of the flood." The identity of the Bible with the
legends of the Hindu sacred books and the cosmogonies of other nations, must be
demonstrated at some future day. The fables of the mythopoeic ages will be
found to have but allegorized the greatest truths of geology and anthropology.
It is in these ridiculously expressed fables that science will have to look for
her "missing links."
Otherwise, whence
such strange "coincidences" in the respective histories of nations
and peoples so widely thrown apart? Whence that identity of primitive
conceptions which, fables and legends though they are termed now, contain in
them nevertheless the kernel of historical facts, of a truth thickly overgrown
with the husks of popular embellishment, but still a truth? Compare only this
verse of Genesis vi.: "And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on
the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God
saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all
which they chose. . . . There were giants in the earth in those days,"
etc., with this part of the Hindu cosmogony, in the Vedas, which speaks of the
descent of the Brahmans. The first Brahman complains of being alone among all
his brethren without a wife. Notwithstanding that the Eternal advises him to
devote his days solely to the study of the Sacred Knowledge (Veda), the
first-born of mankind insists. Provoked at such ingratitude, the eternal gave
Brahman a wife of the race of the Daints, or giants, from whom all the Brahmans
maternally descend. Thus the entire Hindu priesthood is descended, on the one
hand, from the superior spirits (the sons of God), and from Daintany, a
daughter of the earthly giants, the primitive men.* "And they bare children
to them; the same became mighty men which were of old; men of renown."**
The same is found
in the Scandinavian cosmogonical fragment. In the Edda is given the description
to Gangler by Har, one of the three informants (Har, Jafuhar, and Tredi) of the
first man, called Bur, "the father of Bor, who took for wife Besla, a
daughter of the giant Bolthara, of the race of the primitive giants." The
full and interesting narrative may be found in the Prose Edda, sects. 4-8, in
Mallett's Northern Antiquities.**
The same groundwork
underlies the Grecian fables about the Titans; and may be found in the legend
of the Mexicans -- the four successive races of Popol-Vuh. It constitutes one
of the many ends to be found in
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Polier:
"Mythologie des Indous."
** Genesis vi., 4.
*** Mallett:
"Northern Antiquities," Bohn's edition, pp. 401-405.
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PROTESTS.
the entangled and
seemingly inextricable skein of mankind, viewed as a psychological phenomenon.
Belief in supernaturalism would be otherwise inexplicable. To say that it
sprang up, and grew and developed throughout the countless ages, without either
cause or the least firm basis to rest upon, but merely as an empty fancy, would
be to utter as great an absurdity as the theological doctrine that the universe
sprang into creation out of nothing.
It is too late now
to kick against an evidence which manifests itself as in the full glare of
noon. Liberal, as well as Christian papers, and the organs of the most advanced
scientific authorities, begin to protest unanimously against the dogmatism and
narrow prejudices of sciolism. The Christian World, a religious paper, adds its
voice to that of the unbelieving London press. Following is a good specimen of
its common sense:
"If a
medium," it says,* "can be shown ever so conclusively to be an
impostor, we shall still object to the disposition manifested by persons of
some authority in scientific matters, to pooh-pooh and knock on the head all
careful inquiry into those subjects of which Mr. Barrett took note in his paper
before the British Association. Because spiritualists have committed themselves
to many absurdities, that is no reason why the phenomena to which they appeal
should be scouted as unworthy of examination. They may be mesmeric, or
clairvoyant, or something else. But let our wise men tell us what they are, and
not snub us, as ignorant people too often snub inquiring youth, by the easy but
unsatisfactory apothegm, 'Little children should not ask questions.' "
Thus the time has
come when the scientists have lost all right to be addressed with the Miltonian
verse, "O thou who, for the testimony of truth, hast borne universal
reproach!" Sad degeneration, and one that recalls the exclamation of that
"doctor of physic" mentioned one hundred and eighty years ago by Dr.
Henry More, and who, upon hearing the story told of the drummer of Tedworth and
of Ann Walker, "cryed out presently, If this be true, I have been in a
wrong box all this time, and must begin my account anew."**
But in our century,
notwithstanding Huxley's endorsement of the value of "human
testimony," even Dr. Henry More has become "an enthusiast and a
visionary, both of which, united in the same person, constitute a canting
madman."***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the
"Quarterly Review" of 1859, Graham gives a strange account of many
now deserted Oriental cities, in which the stone doors are of enormous
dimensions, often seemingly out of proportion with the buildings themselves,
and remarks that dwellings and doors bear all of them the impress of an ancient
race of giants.
** Dr. More:
"Letter to Glanvil, author of 'Saducismus Triumphatus.' "
*** J. S. Y.:
"Demonologia, or Natural Knowledge Revealed," 1827, p. 219.
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What psychology has
long lacked to make its mysterious laws better understood and applied to the
ordinary as well as extraordinary affairs of life, is not facts. These it has
had in abundance. The need has been for their recording and classification --
for trained observers and competent analysts. From the scientific body these
ought to have been supplied. If error has prevailed and superstition run riot
these many centuries throughout Christendom, it is the misfortune of the common
people, the reproach of science. The generations have come and gone, each
furnishing its quota of martyrs to conscience and moral courage, and psychology
is little better understood in our day than it was when the heavy hand of the
Vatican sent those brave unfortunates to their untimely doom, and branded their
memories with the stigma of heresy and sorcery.
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CHAPTER V.
"Ich bin der
Geist der stets verneint."
(I am the spirit
which still denies.) -- (Mephisto in FAUST.)
"The Spirit of
truth, whom the world cannot receive because it seeth Him not; neither knoweth
Him." -- Gospel according to John, xiv., 17.
"Millions of
spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when
we wake and when we sleep." -- MILTON.
"Mere
intellectual enlightenment cannot recognize the spiritual. As the sun puts out
a fire, so spirit puts out the eyes of mere intellect. -- W. HOWITT.
THERE has been an
infinite confusion of names to express one and the same thing.
The chaos of the
ancients; the Zoroastrian sacred fire, or the Antusbyrum of the Parsees; the
Hermes-fire; the Elmes-fire of the ancient Germans; the lightning of Cybele;
the burning torch of Apollo; the flame on the altar of Pan; the
inextinguishable fire in the temple on the Acropolis, and in that of Vesta; the
fire-flame of Pluto's helm; the brilliant sparks on the hats of the Dioscuri,
on the Gorgon head, the helm of Pallas, and the staff of Mercury; the [[pur
asbeston]]; the Egyptian Phtha, or Ra; the Grecian Zeus Cataibates (the
descending);* the pentecostal fire-tongues; the burning bush of Moses; the
pillar of fire of the Exodus, and the "burning lamp" of Abram; the
eternal fire of the "bottomless pit"; the Delphic oracular vapors;
the Sidereal light of the Rosicrucians; the AKASA of the Hindu adepts; the
Astral light of Eliphas Levi; the nerve-aura and the fluid of the magnetists;
the od of Reichenbach; the fire-globe, or meteor-cat of Babinet; the Psychod
and ectenic force of Thury; the psychic force of Sergeant Cox and Mr. Crookes;
the atmospheric magnetism of some naturalists; galvanism; and finally,
electricity, are but various names for many different manifestations, or
effects of the same mysterious, all-pervading cause -- the Greek Archeus, or
[[Archaios]].
Sir E.
Bulwer-Lytton, in his Coming Race, describes it as the VRIL,** used by the
subterranean populations, and allowed his readers to take it
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pausanias:
"Eliae," lib. i., cap. xiv.
** We apprehend
that the noble author coined his curious names by contracting words in
classical languages. Gy would come from gune; vril from virile.
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for a fiction.
"These people," he says, "consider that in the vril they had
arrived at the unity in natural energic agencies"; and proceeds to show
that Faraday intimated them "under the more cautious term of correlation,"
thus:
"I have long
held an opinion, almost amounting to a conviction, in common, I believe, with
many other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the
forces of matter are made manifest, HAVE ONE COMMON ORIGIN; or, in other words,
are so directly related and naturally dependent, that they are convertible, as
it were, into one another, and possess equivalents of power in their
action."
Absurd and
unscientific as may appear our comparison of a fictitious vril invented by the
great novelist, and the primal force of the equally great experimentalist, with
the kabalistic astral light, it is nevertheless the true definition of this
force. Discoveries are constantly being made to corroborate the statement thus
boldly put forth. Since we began to write this part of our book, an
announcement has been made in a number of papers of the supposed discovery of a
new force by Mr. Edison, the electrician, of Newark, New Jersey, which force
seems to have little in common with electricity, or galvanism, except the
principle of conductivity. If demonstrated, it may remain for a long time under
some pseudonymous scientific name; but, nevertheless, it will be but one of the
numerous family of children brought forth from the commencement of time by our
kabalistic mother, the Astral Virgin. In fact, the discoverer says that,
"it is as distinct, and has as regular laws as heat, magnetism, or
electricity." The journal which contains the first account of the
discovery adds that, "Mr. Edison thinks that it exists in connection with
heat, and that it can also be generated by independent and as yet undiscovered
means."
Another of the most
startling of recent discoveries, is the possibility of annihilating distance
between human voices -- by means of the telephone (distance-sounder), an
instrument invented by Professor A. Graham Bell. This possibility, first
suggested by the little "lovers' telegraph," consisting of small tin
cups with vellum and drug-twine apparatus, by which a conversation can be carried
on at a distance of two hundred feet, has developed into the telephone, which
will become the wonder of this age. A long conversation has taken place between
Boston and Cambridgeport by telegraph; "every word being distinctly heard
and perfectly understood, and the modulations of voices being quite
distinguishable," according to the official report. The voice is seized
upon, so to say, and held in form by a magnet, and the sound-wave transmitted
by electricity acting in unison and co-operating with the magnet. The whole
success depends upon a perfect control of the electric currents and the
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TELEPHONE.
power of the
magnets used, with which the former must co-operate. "The invention,"
reports the paper, "may be rudely described as a sort of trumpet, over the
bell-mouth of which is drawn a delicate membrane, which, when the voice is thrown
into the tube, swells outward in proportion to the force of the sound-wave. To
the outer side of the membrane is attached a piece of metal, which, as the
membrane swells outward, connects with a magnet, and this, with the electric
circuit, is controlled by the operator. By some principle, not yet fully
understood, the electric current transmits the sound-wave just as delivered by
the voice in the trumpet, and the listener at the other end of the line, with a
twin or facsimile trumpet at his ear, hears every word distinctly, and readily
detects the modulations of the speaker's voice."
Thus, in the
presence of such wonderful discoveries of our age, and the further magical
possibilities lying latent and yet undiscovered in the boundless realm of
nature, and further, in view of the great probability that Edison's Force and
Professor Graham Bell's Telephone may unsettle, if not utterly upset all our
ideas of the imponderable fluids, would it not be well for such persons as may
be tempted to traverse our statements, to wait and see whether they will be
corroborated or refuted by further discoveries.
Only in connection
with these discoveries, we may, perhaps, well remind our readers of the many
hints to be found in the ancient histories as to a certain secret in the
possession of the Egyptian priesthood, who could instantly communicate, during
the celebration of the Mysteries, from one temple to another, even though the
former were at Thebes and the latter at the other end of the country; the
legends attributing it, as a matter of course, to the "invisible
tribes" of the air, which carry messages for mortals. The author of
Pre-Adamite Man quotes an instance, which being given merely on his own
authority, and he seeming uncertain whether the story comes from Macrinus or
some other writer, may be taken for what it is worth. He found good evidence,
he says, during his stay in Egypt, that "one of the Cleopatras (?) sent
news by a wire to all the cities, from Heliopolis to Elephantine, on the Upper
Nile."*
It is not so long
since Professor Tyndall ushered us into a new world, peopled with airy shapes
of the most ravishing beauty.
"The discovery
consists," he says, "in subjecting the vapors of volatile liquids to
the action of concentrated sun-light, or to the concentrated beam of the
electric light." The vapors of certain nitrites, iodides, and acids are
subjected to the action of the light in an experimental tube, lying
horizontally, and so arranged that the axis of the tube and that of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* P. B. Randolph:
"Pre-Adamite Man," p. 48.
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the parallel beams
issuing from the lamp are coincident. The vapors form clouds of gorgeous tints,
and arrange themselves into the shapes of vases, of bottles and cones, in nests
of six or more; of shells, of tulips, roses, sunflowers, leaves, and of involved
scrolls. "In one case," he tells us, "the cloud-bud grew rapidly
into a serpent's head; a mouth was formed, and from the cloud, a cord of cloud
resembling a tongue was discharged." Finally, to cap the climax of
marvels, "once it positively assumed the form of a fish, with eyes, gills,
and feelers. The twoness of the animal form was displayed throughout, and no
disk, coil, or speck existed on one side that did not exist on the other."
These phenomena may
possibly be explained in part by the mechanical action of a beam of light,
which Mr. Crookes has recently demonstrated. For instance, it is a supposable
case, that the beams of light may have constituted a horizontal axis, about
which the disturbed molecules of the vapors gathered into the forms of globes and
spindles. But how account for the fish, the serpent's head, the vases, the
flowers of different varieties, the shells? This seems to offer a dilemma to
science as baffling as the meteor-cat of Babinet. We do not learn that Tyndall
ventured as absurd an explanation of his extraordinary phenomena as that of the
Frenchman about his.
Those who have not
given attention to the subject may be surprised to find how much was known in
former days of that all-pervading, subtile principle which has recently been
baptized THE UNIVERSAL ETHER.
Before proceeding,
we desire once more to enunciate in two categorical propositions, what was
hinted at before. These propositions were demonstrated laws with the ancient
theurgists.
I. The so-called
miracles, to begin with Moses and end with Cagliostro, when genuine, were as de
Gasparin very justly insinuates in his work on the phenomena, "perfectly
in accordance with natural law"; hence -- no miracles. Electricity and
magnetism were unquestionably used in the production of some of the prodigies;
but now, the same as then, they are put in requisition by every sensitive, who
is made to use unconsciously these powers by the peculiar nature of his or her
organization, which serves as a conductor for some of these imponderable
fluids, as yet so imperfectly known to science. This force is the prolific
parent of numberless attributes and properties, many, or rather, most of which,
are as yet unknown to modern physics.
II. The phenomena
of natural magic to be witnessed in Siam, India, Egypt, and other Oriental
countries, bear no relationship whatever to sleight of hand; the one being an
absolute physical effect, due to the action of occult natural forces, the
other, a mere deceptive result
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obtained by
dexterous manipulations supplemented with confederacy.*
The thaumaturgists
of all periods, schools, and countries, produced their wonders, because they
were perfectly familiar with the imponderable -- in their effects -- but
otherwise perfectly tangible waves of the astral light. They controlled the
currents by guiding them with their will-power. The wonders were both of
physical and psychological character; the former embracing effects produced
upon material objects, the latter the mental phenomena of Mesmer and his
successors. This class has been represented in our time by two illustrious men,
Du Potet and Regazzoni, whose wonderful powers were well attested in France and
other countries. Mesmerism is the most important branch of magic; and its
phenomena are the effects of the universal agent which underlies all magic and
has produced at all ages the so-called miracles.
The ancients called
it Chaos; Plato and the Pythagoreans named it the Soul of the World. According
to the Hindus, the Deity in the shape of AEther pervades all things. It is the
invisible, but, as we have said before, too tangible Fluid. Among other names
this universal Proteus -- or "the nebulous Almighty," as de Mirville
calls it in derision -- was termed by the theurgists "the living
fire,"** the "Spirit of Light," and Magnes. This last
appellation indicates its magnetic properties and shows its magical nature.
For, as truly expressed by one of its enemies -- [[magos]] and [[magnes]] are
two branches growing from the same trunk, and shooting forth the same
resultants.
Magnetism is a word
for the derivation of which we have to look to an incredibly early epoch. The
stone called magnet is believed by many to owe its name to Magnesia, a city or
district in Thessaly, where these stones were found in quantity. We believe,
however, the opinion of the Hermetists to be the correct one. The word Magh,
magus, is derived from the Sanskrit Mahaji, the great or wise (the anointed by
the divine wisdom). "Eumolpus is the mythic founder of the Eumolpidae
(priests);
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* On this point at
least we are on firm ground. Mr. Crookes's testimony corroborates our
assertions. On page 84 of his pamphlet on "Phenomenal Spiritualism"
he says: "The many hundreds of facts I am prepared to attest -- facts
which to imitate by known mechanics or physical means would baffle the skill of
a Houdin, a Bosco, or an Anderson, backed with all the resources of elaborate
machinery and the practice of years -- have all taken place in my own house; at
times appointed by myself and under circumstances which absolutely precluded
the employment of the very simplest instrumental aids."
** In this
appellation, we may discover the meaning of the puzzling sentence to be found
in the Zend-Avesta that "fire gives knowledge of the future, science, and
amiable speech," as it develops an extraordinary eloquence in some
sensitives.
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the priests traced
their own wisdom to the Divine Intelligence."* The various cosmogonies
show that the Archaeal Universal Soul was held by every nation as the
"mind" of the Demiurgic Creator, the Sophia of the Gnostics, or the
Holy Ghost as a female principle. As the Magi derived their name from it, so
the Magnesian stone or Magnet was called in their honor, for they were the
first to discover its wonderful properties. Their temples dotted the country in
all directions, and among these were some temples of Hercules,** -- hence the
stone, when it once became known that the priests used it for their curative
and magical purposes, received the name of the Magnesian or Heraclean stone.
Socrates, speaking of it, remarks: "Euripides calls it the Magnesian
stone, but the common people, the Heraclean."*** It was the country and
stone which were called after the Magi, not the Magi after one or the other.
Pliny informs us that the wedding-ring among the Romans was magnetized by the
priests before the ceremony. The old Pagan historians are careful to keep
silent on certain Mysteries of the "wise" (Magi) and Pausanias was
warned in a dream, he says, not to unveil the holy rites of the temple of
Demeter and Persephoneia at Athens.****
Modern science,
after having ineffectually denied animal magnetism, has found herself forced to
accept it as a fact. It is now a recognized property of human and animal
organization; as to its psychological, occult influence, the Academies battle
with it, in our century, more ferociously than ever. It is the more to be
regretted and even wondered at, as the representatives of "exact
science" are unable to either explain or even offer us anything like a
reasonable hypothesis for the undeniable mysterious potency contained in a
simple magnet. We begin to have daily proofs that these potencies underlie the
theurgic mysteries, and therefore might perhaps explain the occult faculties
possessed by ancient and modern thaumaturgists as well as a good many of their
most astounding achievements. Such were the gifts transmitted by Jesus to some
of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dunlap:
"Musah, His Mysteries," p. iii.
** "Hercules
was known as the king of the Musians," says Schwab, ii., 44; and Musien
was the feast of "Spirit and Matter," Adonis and Venus, Bacchus and
Ceres. (See Dunlap: "Mystery of Adonis," p. 95.) Dunlap shows, on the
authority of Julian and Anthon (67), AEsculapius, "the Savior of
all," identical with Phtha (the creative Intellect, the Divine Wisdom),
and with Apollo, Baal, Adonis, and Hercules (ibid., p. 93), and Phtha is the
"Anima mundi," the Universal Soul, of Plato, the Holy Ghost of the
Egyptians, and the Astral Light of the Kabalists. M. Michelet, however, regards
the Grecian Herakles as a different character, the adversary of the Bacchic
revellings and their attendant human sacrifices.
*** Plato:
"Ion" (Burgess), vol. iv., p. 294.
****
"Attica," i., xiv.
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POWER.
his disciples. At
the moment of his miraculous cures, the Nazarene felt a power issuing from him.
Socrates, in his dialogue with Theages,* telling him of his familiar god
(demon), and his power of either imparting his (Socrates') wisdom to his
disciples or preventing it from benefiting those he associates with, brings the
following instance in corroboration of his words: "I will tell you, Socrates,"
says Aristides, "a thing incredible, indeed, by the gods, but true. I made
a proficiency when I associated with you, even if I was only in the same house,
though not in the same room; but more so, when I was in the same room . . . and
much more when I looked at you. . . . But I made by far the greatest
proficiency when I sat near you and touched you."
This is the modern
magnetism and mesmerism of Du Potet and other masters, who, when they have
subjected a person to their fluidic influence, can impart to them all their
thoughts even at a distance, and with an irresistible power force their subject
to obey their mental orders. But how far better was this psychic force known to
the ancient philosophers! We can glean some information on that subject from
the earliest sources. Pythagoras taught his disciples that God is the universal
mind diffused through all things, and that this mind by the sole virtue of its
universal sameness could be communicated from one object to another and be made
to create all things by the sole will-power of man. With the ancient Greeks,
Kurios was the god-Mind (Nous). "Now Koros (Kurios) signifies the pure and
unmixed nature of intellect -- wisdom," says Plato.** Kurios is Mercury,
the Divine Wisdom, and "Mercury is the Sol" (Sun),*** from whom Thaut
-- Hermes -- received this divine wisdom, which, in his turn, he imparted to
the world in his books. Hercules is also the Sun -- the celestial storehouse of
the universal magnetism;**** or rather Hercules is the magnetic light which,
when having made its way through the "opened eye of heaven," enters
into the regions of our planet and thus becomes the Creator. Hercules passes
through the twelve labors, the valiant Titan! He is called "Father of
All" and
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Plato:
"Theages." Cicero renders this word [[daimonion]], quiddam divinum, a
divine something, not anything personal.
**
"Cratylus," p. 79.
***
"Arnobius," vi., xii.
**** As we will
show in subsequent chapters, the sun was not considered by the ancients as the
direct cause of the light and heat, but only as an agent of the former, through
which the light passes on its way to our sphere. Thus it was always called by
the Egyptians "the eye of Osiris," who was himself the Logos, the
First-begotten, or light made manifest to the world, "which is the mind
and divine intellect of the Concealed." It is only that light of which we
are cognizant that is the Demiurge, the creator of our planet and everything
pertaining to it; with the invisible and unknown universes disseminated through
space, none of the sun-gods had anything to do. The idea is expressed very
clearly in the "Books of Hermes."
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"self-born"
"(autophues)."* Hercules, the Sun, is killed by the Devil, Typhon,**
and so is Osiris, who is the father and brother of Horus, and at the same time
is identical with him; and we must not forget that the magnet was called the
"bone of Horus," and iron the "bone of Typhon." He is
called "Hercules Invictus," only when he descends to Hades (the
subterranean garden), and plucking the "golden apples" from the
"tree of life," slays the dragon.*** The rough Titanic power, the
"lining" of every sun-god, opposes its force of blind matter to the
divine magnetic spirit, which tries to harmonize everything in nature.
All the sun-gods,
with their symbol, the visible sun, are the creators of physical nature only.
The spiritual is the work of the Highest God -- the Concealed, the Central,
Spiritual SUN, and of his Demiurge -- the Divine Mind of Plato, and the Divine
Wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus**** -- the wisdom effused from Oulom or Kronos.
"After the
distribution of pure Fire, in the Samothracian Mysteries, a new life
began."***** This was the "new birth," that is alluded to by
Jesus, in his nocturnal conversation with Nicodemus. "Initiated into the
most blessed of all Mysteries, being ourselves pure . . . we become just and
holy with wisdom."****** "He breathed on them and saith unto them,
'Take the Holy Pneuma.' "******* And this simple act of will-power was
sufficient to impart vaticination in its nobler and most perfect form if both
the initiator and the initiated were worthy of it. To deride this gift, even in
its present aspect, "as the corrupt offspring and lingering remains of an
ignorant age of superstition, and hastily to condemn it as unworthy of sober
investigation, would be as unphilosophical as it is wrong," remarks the
Rev. J. B. Gross. "To remove the veil which hides our vision from the
future, has been attempted -- in all ages of the world; and therefore the
propensity to pry into the lap of time, contemplated as one of the faculties of
human mind, comes recommended to us under the sanction of God. . . . Zuinglius,
the Swiss reformer, attested the comprehensiveness of his faith in the
providence of the Supreme Being, in the cosmopolitan doctrine that the Holy
Ghost was not excluded from the more worthy portion of the heathen world.
Admitting its truth, we cannot
[[Footnote(s)]]
--------------------------------------------------
* "Orphic
Hymn," xii.; Hermann; Dunlap: "Musah, His Mysteries," p. 91.
** Movers, 525.
Dunlap: "Mysteries of Adonis," 94.
*** Preller: ii.,
153. This is evidently the origin of the Christian dogma of Christ descending
into hell and overcoming Satan.
**** This important
fact accounts admirably for the gross polytheism of the masses, and the
refined, highly-philosophical conception of one God, which was taught only in
sanctuaries of the "pagan" temples.
*****Anthon:
"Cabeiria."
****** Plato:
"Phaedrus," Cary's translation.
******* John xx.,
22.
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easily conceive a
valid reason why a heathen, thus favored, should not be capable of true
prophecy."*
Now, what is this
mystic, primordial substance? In the book of Genesis, at the beginning of the
first chapter, it is termed the "face of the waters," said to have
been incubated by the "Spirit of God." Job mentions, in chap. xxvi.,
5, that "dead things are formed from under the waters, and inhabitants
thereof." In the original text, instead of "dead things," it is
written dead Rephaim (giants, or mighty primitive men), from whom
"Evolution" may one day trace our present race. In the Egyptian
mythology, Kneph the Eternal unrevealed God is represented by a snake-emblem of
eternity encircling a water-urn, with his head hovering over the waters, which
it incubates with his breath. In this case the serpent is the Agathodaimon, the
good spirit; in its opposite aspect it is the Kakodaimon -- the bad one. In the
Scandinavian Eddas, the honey-dew -- the food of the gods and of the creative,
busy Yggdrasill -- bees -- falls during the hours of night, when the atmosphere
is impregnated with humidity; and in the Northern mythologies, as the passive
principle of creation, it typifies the creation of the universe out of water;
this dew is the astral light in one of its combinations and possesses creative
as well as destructive properties. In the Chaldean legend of Berosus, Oannes or
Dagon, the man-fish, instructing the people, shows the infant world created out
of water and all beings originating from this prima materia. Moses teaches that
only earth and water can bring a living soul; and we read in the Scriptures
that herbs could not grow until the Eternal caused it to rain upon earth. In
the Mexican Popol-Vuh man is created out of mud or clay (terre glaise), taken
from under the water. Brahma creates Lomus, the great Muni (or first man),
seated on his lotus, only after having called into being, spirits, who thus
enjoyed among mortals a priority of existence, and he creates him out of water,
air, and earth. Alchemists claim that primordial or pre-Adamic earth when
reduced to its first substance is in its second stage of transformation like
clear-water, the first being the alkahest** proper. This primordial substance
is said to contain within itself the essence of all that goes to make up man;
it has not only all the elements of his physical being, but even the
"breath of life" itself in a latent state, ready to be awakened. This
it derives from the "incubation" of the Spirit of God upon the face
of the waters -- chaos; in fact, this substance is chaos itself. From this it
was that Paracelsus claimed to be able to make his "homunculi"; and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Heathen
Religion," 104.
** Alkahest, a word
first used by Paracelsus, to denote the menstruum or universal solvent, that is
capable of reducing all things.
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this is why Thales,
the great natural philosopher, maintained that water was the principle of all
things in nature.
What is the
primordial Chaos but AEther? The modern Ether; not such as is recognized by our
scientists, but such as it was known to the ancient philosophers, long before
the time of Moses; Ether, with all its mysterious and occult properties,
containing in itself the germs of universal creation; Ether, the celestial
virgin, the spiritual mother of every existing form and being, from whose bosom
as soon as "incubated" by the Divine Spirit, are called into existence
Matter and Life, Force and Action. Electricity, magnetism, heat, light, and
chemical action are so little understood even now that fresh facts are
constantly widening the range of our knowledge. Who knows where ends the power
of this protean giant -- Ether; or whence its mysterious origin? -- Who, we
mean, that denies the spirit that works in it and evolves out of it all visible
forms?
It is an easy task
to show that the cosmogonical legends all over the world are based on a
knowledge by the ancients of those sciences which have allied themselves in our
days to support the doctrine of evolution; and that further research may
demonstrate that they were far better acquainted with the fact of evolution
itself, embracing both its physical and spiritual aspects, than we are now.
With the old philosophers, evolution was a universal theorem, a doctrine
embracing the whole, and an established principle; while our modern
evolutionists are enabled to present us merely with speculative theoretics;
with particular, if not wholly negative theorems. It is idle for the
representatives of our modern wisdom to close the debate and pretend that the
question is settled, merely because the obscure phraseology of the Mosaic
account clashes with the definite exegesis of "exact science."
One fact at least
is proved: there is not a cosmogonical fragment, to whatever nation it may
belong, but proves by this universal allegory of water and the spirit brooding
over it, that no more than our modern physicists did any of them hold the universe
to have sprung into existence out of nothing; for all their legends begin with
that period when nascent vapors and Cimmerian darkness lay brooding over a
fluid mass ready to start on its journey of activity at the first flutter of
the breath of Him, who is the Unrevealed One. Him they felt, if they saw Him
not. Their spiritual intuitions were not so darkened by the subtile sophistry
of the forecoming ages as ours are now. If they talked less of the Silurian age
slowly developing into the Mammalian, and if the Cenozoic time was only
recorded by various allegories of the primitive man -- the Adam of our race --
it is but a negative proof after all that their "wise men" and
leaders did not know of these successive periods as well as we do now.
-------Cardiff
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ORIGIN.
In the days of
Democritus and Aristotle, the cycle had already begun to enter on its downward
path of progress. And if these two philosophers could discuss so well the
atomic theory and trace the atom to its material or physical point, their
ancestors may have gone further still and followed its genesis far beyond that
limit where Mr. Tyndall and others seem rooted to the spot, not daring to cross
the line of the "Incomprehensible." The lost arts are a sufficient
proof that if even their achievements in physiography are now doubted, because
of the unsatisfactory writings of their physicists and naturalists, -- on the
other hand their practical knowledge in phytochemistry and mineralogy far
exceeded our own. Furthermore, they might have been perfectly acquainted with
the physical history of our globe without publishing their knowledge to the
ignorant masses in those ages of religious Mysteries.
Therefore, it is
not only from the Mosaic books that we mean to adduce proof for our further
arguments. The ancient Jews got all their knowledge -- religious as well as
profane -- from the nations with which we see them mixed up from the earliest
periods. Even the oldest of all sciences, their kabalistic "secret
doctrine," may be traced in each detail to its primeval source, Upper
India, or Turkestan, far before the time of a distinct separation between the
Aryan and Semitic nations. The King Solomon so celebrated by posterity, as
Josephus the historian says,* for his magical skill, got his secret learning
from India through Hiram, the king of Ophir, and perhaps Sheba. His ring,
commonly known as "Solomon's seal," so celebrated for the potency of
its sway over the various kinds of genii and demons, in all the popular
legends, is equally of Hindu origin. Writing on the pretentious and abominable
skill of the "devil-worshippers" of Travancore, the Rev. Samuel
Mateer, of the London Missionary Society, claims at the same time to be in
possession of a very old manuscript volume of magical incantations and spells
in the Malayalim language, giving directions for effecting a great variety of
purposes. Of course he adds, that "many of these are fearful in their
malignity and obscenity," and gives in his work the fac-simile of some
amulets bearing the magical figures and designs on them. We find among them one
with the following legend: "To remove trembling
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Josephus:
"Antiquities," vol. viii., c. 2, 5.
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arising from
demoniacal possession -- write this figure on a plant that has milky juice, and
drive a nail through it; the trembling will cease."* The figure is the
identical Solomon's seal, or double triangle of the Kabalists. Did the Hindu
get it from the Jewish kabalist, or the latter from India, by inheritance from
their great king-kabalist, the wise Solomon?** But we will leave this trifling
dispute to continue the more interesting question of the astral light, and its
unknown properties.
Admitting, then,
that this mythical agent is Ether, we will proceed to see what and how much of
it is known to science.
With respect to the
various effects of the different solar rays, Robert Hunt, F. R. S., remarks, in
his Researches on Light in its Chemical Relations, that:
"Those rays
which give the most light -- the yellow and the orange rays -- will not produce
change of color in the chloride of silver"; while "those rays which
have the least illuminating power -- the blue and violet -- produce the
greatest change, and in exceedingly short time. . . . The
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "The Land of
Charity," p. 210.
** The claims of certain "adepts," which do not agree with those of the students of the purely Jewish Kabala, and show that the "secret doctrine" has originated in India, from whence it was brought to Chaldea, passing subsequently into the hands of the Hebrew "Tanaim," are singularly corroborated by the researches of the Christian missionaries. These pious and learned travellers have inadvertently come to our help. Dr. Caldwell, in his "Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages," p. 66, and Dr. Mateer, in the "Land of Charity," p. 83, fully support our assertions that the "wise" King Solomon got all his kabalistic lore from India, as the above-given magical figure well shows. The former missionary is desirous to prove that very old and huge specimens of the baobab-tree, which is not, as it appears, indigenous to India, but belongs to the African soil, and "found only at several ancient sites of foreign commerce (at Travancore), may, for aught we know," he adds, "have been introduced into India, and planted by the servants of King Solomon." The other proof is still more conclusive. Says Dr. Mateer, in his chapter on the Natural History of Travancore: "There is a curious fact connected with the name of this bird (the peacock) which throws some light upon Scripture history. King Solomon sent his navy to Tarshish (I Kings