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Title: Lucifer - A Theosophical Magazine
Author: Various, - To be updated
Language: English
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Transcriber’s Note:
This text is a compilation of the six numbers of the first Volume of
LUCIFER, spanning September 1887 through February 1888.
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. Certain
headings were printed in a blackletter font, indicated with a ‘=’
delimiter.
Footnotes have been moved to follow the paragraphs in which they are
referenced. They have been resequenced for uniqueness across the text.
Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.
LUCIFER
=A Theosophical Magazine,=
DESIGNED TO “BRING TO LIGHT THE HIDDEN THINGS OF DARKNESS.”
EDITED BY
H. P. BLAVATSKY AND MABEL COLLINS.
THE LIGHT-BEARER IS THE MORNING STAR OR LUCIFER, AND “LUCIFER IS NO
PROFANE OR SATANIC TITLE. IT IS THE LATIN LUCIFERUS. THE
LIGHT-BRINGER, THE MORNING STAR, EQUIVALENT TO THE GREEK φωσφορος ...
THE NAME OF THE PURE PALE HERALD OF DAYLIGHT.”—YONGE.
_VOLUME I._
SEPTEMBER 1887-FEBRUARY 1888.
--------------
=London=:
GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
KELLY & CO., PRINTERS
1 & 3, GATE STREET, LINCOLNS INN FIELDS, LONDON, W.C.
AND MIDDLE MILL, KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.
CONTENTS.
Astrological Notes 158, 512
Auto-Hypnotic Rhapsody, An 472
Birth of Light, The 52
Blood Covenanting 216
Blossom and the Fruit, The. The True 23, 123, 193, 258,
Story of a Magician 347, 443
Brotherhood 212
Buddhism, The Four Noble Truths of 49
Christian Dogma, Esotericism of the 368
Christmas Eve, A Remarkable 274
Correspondence 76, 136, 228, 311,
412, 502
Emerson and Occultism 252
Evil, The Origin of 109
Fear 298
Freedom 185
Ghost’s Revenge, A 63, 102
God Speaks for Law and Order 292
Gospels, The Esoteric Character of the 173, 299, 490
Hand, The “Square” in the 181
Hauntings, A Theory of 486
Healing, The Spirit of 267
Hylo-Idealism and “The Adversary” 507
Infant Genius 296
Interlaced Triangles, The Relation of 481
Colour to the
Invisible World, The 186
Lady of Light, The 81
Lama, The Last of a Good 51
Law of Life, A: Karma 39, 97
Let Every Man Prove His Own Work 161
“Light on the Path,” Comments on 8, 90, 170, 379
Literary Jottings 71, 329
Love with an Object 391
“LUCIFER” To the Archbishop of 340
Canterbury Greeting, 241; To the Readers
of
Luniolatry 440
Morning Star, To the 339
Mystery of all Time, The 46
Mystic Thought, The 192
Paradox, The Great 120
Planet, History of a 15
Quest, The Great 288, 375
Reviews 143, 232, 395, 497
Science of Life, The 203
Signs of the Times, The 83
Soldier’s Daughter, The 432
Some Words on Daily Life 344
Theosophical and Mystic Publications 77, 156, 335
Theosophist, A True (Count Tolstoi) 55
Theosophy, Thoughts on, 134; and 282
Socialism
Three Desires, The 476
Twilight Visions 365, 461
Unpopular Philosopher, From the 80, 160, 238
Note-Book of an
What is Truth? 425
What’s in a Name? Why is the Magazine 1
called “LUCIFER”?
White Monk, The 384, 466
1888 337
LUCIFER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOL. I. LONDON, SEPTEMBER 15TH, 1887. NO. 1.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
WHY THE MAGAZINE IS CALLED “LUCIFER.”
What’s in a name? Very often there is more in it than the profane is
prepared to understand, or the learned mystic to explain. It is an
invisible, secret, but very potential influence that every name carries
about with it and “leaveth wherever it goeth.” Carlyle thought that
“there is much, nay, almost all, in names.” “Could I unfold the
influence of names, which are the most important of all clothings, I
were a second great Trismegistus,” he writes.
The name or title of a magazine started with a definite object, is,
therefore, all important; for it is, indeed, the invisible seedgrain,
which will either grow “to be an all-over-shadowing tree” on the fruits
of which must depend the nature of the results brought about by the said
object, or the tree will wither and die. These considerations show that
the name of the present magazine—rather equivocal to orthodox Christian
ears—is due to no careless selection, but arose in consequence of much
thinking over its fitness, and was adopted as the best symbol to express
that object and the results in view.
Now, the first and most important, if not the sole object of the
magazine, is expressed in the line from the 1st Epistle to the
Corinthians, on its title page. It is to bring light to “the hidden
things of darkness,” (iv. 5); to show in their true aspect and their
original real meaning things and names, men and their doings and
customs; it is finally to fight prejudice, hypocrisy and shams in every
nation, in every class of Society, as in every department of life. The
task is a laborious one but it is neither impracticable nor useless, if
even as an experiment.
Thus, for an attempt of such nature, no better title could ever be found
than the one chosen. “Lucifer,” is the pale morning-star, the precursor
of the full blaze of the noon-day sun—the “Eosphoros” of the Greeks. It
shines timidly at dawn to gather forces and dazzle the eye after sunset
as its own brother ‘Hesperos’—the radiant evening star, or the planet
Venus. No fitter symbol exists for the proposed work—that of throwing a
ray of truth on everything hidden by the darkness of prejudice, by
social or religious misconceptions; especially by that idiotic routine
in life, which, once that a certain action, a thing, a name, has been
branded by slanderous inventions, however unjust, makes _respectable_
people, so called, turn away shiveringly, refusing to even look at it
from any other aspect than the one sanctioned by public opinion. Such an
endeavour then, to force the weak-hearted to look truth straight in the
face, is helped most efficaciously by a title belonging to the category
of branded names.
Piously inclined readers may argue that “Lucifer” is accepted by all the
churches as one of the many names of the Devil. According to Milton’s
superb fiction, Lucifer is _Satan_, the “rebellious” angel, the enemy of
God and man. If one analyzes his rebellion, however, it will be found of
no worse nature than an assertion of free-will and independent thought,
as if Lucifer had been born in the XIXth century. This epithet of
“rebellious,” is a theological calumny, on a par with that other slander
of God by the Predestinarians, one that makes of deity an “Almighty”
fiend worse than the “rebellious” Spirit himself; “an omnipotent Devil
desiring to be ‘complimented’ as all merciful when he is exerting the
most fiendish cruelty,” as put by J. Cotter Morison. Both the
foreordaining and predestining fiend-God, and his subordinate agent are
of human invention; they are two of the most morally repulsive and
horrible theological dogmas that the nightmares of light-hating monks
have ever evolved out of their unclean fancies.
They date from the Mediæval age, the period of mental obscuration,
during which most of the present prejudices and superstitions have been
forcibly inoculated on the human mind, so as to have become nearly
ineradicable in some cases, one of which is the present prejudice now
under discussion.
So deeply rooted, indeed, is this preconception and aversion to the name
of Lucifer—meaning no worse than “light-bringer” (from _lux_, _lucis_,
“light,” and _ferre_ “to bring”)[1]—even among the educated classes,
that by adopting it for the title of their magazine the editors have the
prospect of a long strife with public prejudice before them. So absurd
and ridiculous is that prejudice, indeed, that no one has seemed to ever
ask himself the question, how came Satan to be called a _light-bringer_,
unless the silvery rays of the morning-star can in any way be made
suggestive of the glare of the infernal flames. It is simply, as
Henderson showed, “one of those gross perversions of sacred writ which
so extensively obtain, and which are to be traced to a proneness to seek
for more in a given passage than it really contains—a disposition to be
influenced by sound rather than sense, and an implicit faith in received
interpretation”—which is not quite one of the weaknesses of our present
age. Nevertheless, the prejudice is there, to the shame of our century.
-----
Footnote 1:
“It was Gregory the Great who was the first to apply this passage of
Isaiah, “How art thou fallen from Heaven, Lucifer, son of the
morning,” etc., to Satan, and ever since the bold metaphor of the
prophet, which referred, after all, but to an Assyrian king inimical
to the Israelites, has been applied to the Devil.”
-----
This cannot be helped. The two editors would hold themselves as
recreants in their own sight, as traitors to the very spirit of the
proposed work, were they to yield and cry craven before the danger. If
one would fight prejudice, and brush off the ugly cobwebs of
superstition and materialism alike from the noblest ideals of our
forefathers, one has to prepare for opposition. “The crown of the
reformer and the innovator is a crown of thorns” indeed. If one would
rescue Truth in all her chaste nudity from the almost bottomless well,
into which she has been hurled by cant and hypocritical propriety, one
should not hesitate to descend into the dark, gaping pit of that well.
No matter how badly the blind bats—the dwellers in darkness, and the
haters of light—may treat in their gloomy abode the intruder, unless one
is the first to show the spirit and courage he preaches to others, he
must be justly held as a hypocrite and a seceder from his own
principles.
Hardly had the title been agreed upon, when the first premonitions of
what was in store for us, in the matter of the opposition to be
encountered owing to the title chosen, appeared on our horizon. One of
the editors received and recorded some spicy objections. The scenes that
follow are sketches from nature.
I.
_A Well-known Novelist._ Tell me about your new magazine. What class
do you propose to appeal to?
_Editor._ No class in particular: we intend to appeal to the public.
_Novelist._ I am very glad of that. For once I shall be one of the
public, for I don’t understand your subject in the least, and I want
to. But you must remember that if your public is to understand you, it
must necessarily be a very small one. People talk about occultism
nowadays as they talk about many other things, without the least idea
of what it means. We are so ignorant and—so prejudiced.
_Editor._ Exactly. That is what calls the new magazine into existence.
We propose to educate you, and to tear the mask from every prejudice.
_Novelist._ That really is good news to me, for I want to be educated.
What is your magazine to be called?
_Editor._ Lucifer.
_Novelist._ What! Are you going to educate us in vice? We know enough
about that. Fallen angels are plentiful. You may find popularity, for
soiled doves are in fashion just now, while the white-winged angels
are voted a bore, because they are not so amusing. But I doubt your
being able to teach us much.
II.
_A Man of the World_ (_in a careful undertone, for the scene is a
dinner-party_). I hear you are going to start a magazine, all about
occultism. Do you know, I’m very glad. I don’t say anything about such
matters as a rule, but some queer things have happened in my life
which can’t be explained in any ordinary manner. I hope you will go in
for explanations.
_Editor._ We shall try, certainly. My impression is, that when
occultism is in any measure apprehended, its laws are accepted by
everyone as the only intelligible explanation of life.
_A M. W._ Just so, I want to know all about it, for ’pon my honour,
life’s a mystery. There are plenty of other people as curious as
myself. This is an age which is afflicted with the Yankee disease of
‘wanting to know.’ I’ll get you lots of subscribers. What’s the
magazine called?
_Editor._ Lucifer—and (_warned by former experience_) don’t
misunderstand the name. It is typical of the divine spirit which
sacrificed itself for humanity—it was Milton’s doing that it ever
became associated with the devil. We are sworn enemies to popular
prejudices, and it is quite appropriate that we should attack such a
prejudice as this—Lucifer, you know, is the Morning Star—the
Lightbearer,...
_A M. W._ (_interrupting_). Oh, I know all that—at least I don’t know,
but I take it for granted you’ve got some good reason for taking such
a title. But your first object is to have readers; you want the public
to buy your magazine, I suppose. That’s in the programme, isn’t it?
_Editor._ Most decidedly.
_A M. W._ Well, listen to the advice of a man who knows his way about
town. Don’t mark your magazine with the wrong colour at starting. It’s
quite evident, when one stays an instant to think of its derivation
and meaning, that Lucifer is an excellent word. But the public don’t
stay to think of derivations and meanings; and the first impression is
the most important. Nobody will buy the magazine if you call it
Lucifer.
III.
_A Fashionable Lady Interested in Occultism._ I want to hear some more
about the new magazine, for I have interested a great many people in
it, even with the little you have told me. But I find it difficult to
express its actual purpose. What is it?
_Editor._ To try and give a little light to those that want it.
_A F. L._ Well, that’s a simple way of putting it, and will be very
useful to me. What is the magazine to be called?
_Editor._ Lucifer.
_A F. L._ (_After a pause_) You can’t mean it.
_Editor._ Why not?
_A F. L._ The associations are so dreadful! What can be the object of
calling it that? It sounds like some unfortunate sort of joke, made
against it by its enemies.
_Editor._ Oh, but Lucifer, you know, means Light-bearer; it is typical
of the Divine Spirit——
_A F. L._ Never mind all that—I want to do your magazine good and make
it known, and you can’t expect me to enter into explanations of that
sort every time I mention the title? Impossible! Life is too short and
too busy. Besides, it would produce such a bad effect; people would
think me priggish, and then I couldn’t talk at all, for I couldn’t
bear them to think that. Don’t call it Lucifer—please don’t. Nobody
knows what the word is typical of; what it means now is the devil,
nothing more or less.
_Editor._ But then that is quite a mistake, and one of the first
prejudices we propose to do battle with. Lucifer is the pale, pure
herald of dawn——
_Lady_ (_interrupting_). I thought you were going to do something more
interesting and more important than to whitewash mythological
characters. We shall all have to go to school again, or read up Dr.
Smith’s Classical Dictionary. And what is the use of it when it is
done? I thought you were going to tell us things about our own lives
and how to make them better. I suppose Milton wrote about Lucifer,
didn’t he?—but nobody reads Milton now. Do let us have a modern title
with some human meaning in it.
IV.
_A Journalist_ (_thoughtfully, while rolling his cigarette_). Yes, it
is a good idea, this magazine of yours. We shall all laugh at it, as a
matter of course: and we shall cut it up in the papers. But we shall
all read it, because secretly everybody hungers after the mysterious.
What are you going to call it?
_Editor._ Lucifer.
_Journalist_ (_striking a light_). Why not _The Fusee_? Quite as good
a title and not so pretentious.
The “Novelist,” the “Man of the World,” the “Fashionable Lady,” and the
“Journalist,” should be the first to receive a little instruction. A
glimpse into the real and primitive character of Lucifer can do them no
harm and may, perchance, cure them of a bit of ridiculous prejudice.
They ought to study their Homer and Hesiod’s Theogony if they would do
justice to Lucifer, “_Eosphoros and Hesperos_,” the Morning and the
Evening beautiful star. If there are more useful things to do in this
life than “to whitewash mythological characters,” to slander and blacken
them is, at least, as useless, and shows, moreover, a narrow-mindedness
which can do honour to no one.
To object to the title of LUCIFER, only because its “associations are so
dreadful,” is pardonable—if it can be pardonable in any case—only in an
ignorant American missionary of some dissenting sect, in one whose
natural laziness and lack of education led him to prefer ploughing the
minds of heathens, as ignorant as he is himself, to the more profitable,
but rather more arduous, process of ploughing the fields of his own
father’s farm. In the English clergy, however, who receive all a more or
less classical education, and are, therefore, supposed to be acquainted
with the _ins_ and _outs_ of theological sophistry and casuistry, this
kind of opposition is absolutely unpardonable. It not only smacks of
hypocrisy and deceit, but places them directly on a lower moral level
than him they call the apostate angel. By endeavouring to show the
theological Lucifer, fallen through the idea that
“To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell;
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,”
they are virtually putting into practice the supposed crime they would
fain accuse him of. They prefer reigning over the spirit of the masses
by means of a pernicious dark LIE, productive of many an evil, than
serve heaven by serving TRUTH. Such practices are worthy only of the
Jesuits.
But their sacred writ is the first to contradict their interpretations
and the association of Lucifer, the Morning Star, with Satan. Chapter
XXII. of _Revelation_, verse 16th, says: “I, Jesus ... am the root ...
and the bright and _Morning Star_” (ὀρθρινὸς “early rising”): hence
Eosphoros, or the Latin Lucifer. The opprobrium attached to this name is
of such a very late date, that the Roman Church found itself forced to
screen the theological slander behind a two-sided interpretation—as
usual. Christ, we are told, is the “Morning Star,” the _divine_ Lucifer;
and Satan the _usurpator_ of the _Verbum_, the “infernal Lucifer.”[2]
“The great Archangel Michael, the conqueror of Satan, is identical in
paganism[3] with Mercury-Mithra, to whom, after defending the Sun
(symbolical of God) from the attacks of Venus-Lucifer, was given the
possession of this planet, _et datus est ei locus Luciferi_. And since
the Archangel Michael is the ‘Angel of the Face,’ and ‘the Vicar of the
_Verbum_’ he is now considered in the Roman Church as the regent of that
planet Venus which ‘the vanquished fiend had usurped.’” _Angelus faciei
Dei sedem superbi humilis obtinuit_, says Cornelius à Lapide (in Vol.
VI. p. 229).
-----
Footnote 2:
Mirville’s Memoirs to the Academy of France, Vol. IV., quoting
Cardinal Ventura.
Footnote 3:
Which paganism has passed long milleniums, it would seem, in _copying
beforehand_ Christian dogmas to come.
-----
This gives the reason why one of the early Popes was called Lucifer, as
Yonge and ecclesiastical records prove. It thus follows that the title
chosen for our magazine is as much associated with divine and pious
ideas as with the supposed rebellion of the hero of Milton’s “Paradise
Lost.” By choosing it, _we throw the first ray of light and truth_ on a
ridiculous prejudice which ought to have no room made for it in this our
“age of facts and discovery.” We work for true Religion and Science, in
the interest of fact as against fiction and prejudice. It is our duty,
as it is that of physical Science—professedly its mission—to throw light
on facts in Nature hitherto surrounded by the darkness of ignorance. And
since ignorance is justly regarded as the chief promoter of
superstition, that work is, therefore, a noble and beneficent work. But
natural Sciences are only one aspect of SCIENCE and TRUTH. Psychological
and moral Sciences, or theosophy, the knowledge of divine truth,
wheresoever found, are still more important in human affairs, and real
Science should not be limited simply to the physical aspect of life and
nature. Science is an abstract of every fact, a comprehension of every
truth within the scope of human research and intelligence.
“Shakespeare’s deep and accurate science in mental philosophy”
(Coleridge), has proved more beneficent to the true philosopher in the
study of the human heart—therefore, in the promotion of truth—than the
more accurate, but certainly less deep, science of any Fellow of the
Royal Institution.
Those readers, however, who do not find themselves convinced that the
Church had no right to throw a slur upon a beautiful star, and that it
did so through a mere necessity of accounting for one of its numerous
loans from Paganism with all its poetical conceptions of the truths in
Nature, are asked to read our article “The History of a Planet.”
Perhaps, after its perusal, they will see how far Dupuis was justified
in asserting that “all the theologies have their origin in astronomy.”
With the modern Orientalists every myth is _solar_. This is one more
prejudice, and a preconception in favour of materialism and physical
science. It will be one of our duties to combat it with much of the
rest.
--------------
Occultism is not magic, though magic is one of its tools.
Occultism is not the acquirement of powers, whether psychic or
intellectual, though both are its servants. Neither is occultism the
pursuit of happiness, as men understand the word; for the first step is
sacrifice, the second, renunciation.
--------------
Life is built up by the sacrifice of the individual to the whole. Each
cell in the living body must sacrifice itself to the perfection of the
whole; when it is otherwise, disease and death enforce the lesson.
--------------
Occultism is the science of life, the art of living.
COMMENTS ON “LIGHT ON THE PATH.”
BY THE AUTHOR.
“Before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears.”
It should be very clearly remembered by all readers of this volume that
it is a book which may appear to have some little philosophy in it, but
very little sense, to those who believe it to be written in ordinary
English. To the many, who read in this manner it will be—not caviare so
much as olives strong of their salt. Be warned and read but a little in
this way.
There is another way of reading, which is, indeed, the only one of any
use with many authors. It is reading, not between the lines but within
the words. In fact, it is deciphering a profound cipher. All alchemical
works are written in the cipher of which I speak; it has been used by
the great philosophers and poets of all time. It is used systematically
by the adepts in life and knowledge, who, seemingly giving out their
deepest wisdom, hide in the very words which frame it its actual
mystery. They cannot do more. There is a law of nature which insists
that a man shall read these mysteries for himself. By no other method
can he obtain them. A man who desires to live must eat his food himself:
this is the simple law of nature—which applies also to the higher life.
A man who would live and act in it cannot be fed like a babe with a
spoon; he must eat for himself.
I propose to put into new and sometimes plainer language parts of “Light
on the Path”; but whether this effort of mine will really be any
interpretation I cannot say. To a deaf and dumb man, a truth is made no
more intelligible if, in order to make it so, some misguided linguist
translates the words in which it is couched into every living or dead
language, and shouts these different phrases in his ear. But for those
who are not deaf and dumb one language is generally easier than the
rest; and it is to such as these I address myself.
The very first aphorisms of “Light on the Path,” included under Number
I. have, I know well, remained sealed as to their inner meaning to many
who have otherwise followed the purpose of the book.
There are four proven and certain truths with regard to the entrance to
occultism. The Gates of Gold bar that threshold; yet there are some who
pass those gates and discover the sublime and illimitable beyond. In the
far spaces of Time all will pass those gates. But I am one who wish that
Time, the great deluder, were not so over-masterful. To those who know
and love him I have no word to say; but to the others—and there are not
so very few as some may fancy—to whom the passage of Time is as the
stroke of a sledge-hammer, and the sense of Space like the bars of an
iron cage, I will translate and re-translate until they understand
fully.
The four truths written on the first page of “Light on the Path,” refer
to the trial initiation of the would-be occultist. Until he has passed
it, he cannot even reach to the latch of the gate which admits to
knowledge. Knowledge is man’s greatest inheritance; why, then, should he
not attempt to reach it by every possible road? The laboratory is not
the only ground for experiment; _science_, we must remember, is derived
from _sciens_, present participle of _scire_, “to know,”—its origin is
similar to that of the word “discern,” “to ken.” Science does not
therefore deal only with matter, no, not even its subtlest and obscurest
forms. Such an idea is born merely of the idle spirit of the age.
Science is a word which covers all forms of knowledge. It is exceedingly
interesting to hear what chemists discover, and to see them finding
their way through the densities of matter to its finer forms; but there
are other kinds of knowledge than this, and it is not every one who
restricts his (strictly scientific) desire for knowledge to experiments
which are capable of being tested by the physical senses.
Everyone who is not a dullard, or a man stupefied by some predominant
vice, has guessed, or even perhaps discovered with some certainty, that
there are subtle senses lying within the physical senses. There is
nothing at all extraordinary in this; if we took the trouble to call
Nature into the witness box we should find that everything which is
perceptible to the ordinary sight, has something even more important
than itself hidden within it; the microscope has opened a world to us,
but within those encasements which the microscope reveals, lies a
mystery which no machinery can probe.
The whole world is animated and lit, down to its most material shapes,
by a world within it. This inner world is called Astral by some people,
and it is as good a word as any other, though it merely means starry;
but the stars, as Locke pointed out, are luminous bodies which give
light of themselves. This quality is characteristic of the life which
lies within matter; for those who see it, need no lamp to see it by. The
word star, moreover, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon “stir-an,” to
steer, to stir, to move, and undeniably it is the inner life which is
master of the outer, just as a man’s brain guides the movements of his
lips. So that although Astral is no very excellent word in itself, I am
content to use it for my present purpose.
The whole of “Light on the Path” is written in an astral cipher and can
therefore only be deciphered by one who reads astrally. And its teaching
is chiefly directed towards the cultivation and development of the
astral life. Until the first step has been taken in this development,
the swift knowledge, which is called intuition with certainty, is
impossible to man. And this positive and certain intuition is the only
form of knowledge which enables a man to work rapidly or reach his true
and high estate, within the limit of his conscious effort. To obtain
knowledge by experiment is too tedious a method for those who aspire to
accomplish real work; he who gets it by certain intuition, lays hands on
its various forms with supreme rapidity, by fierce effort of will; as a
determined workman grasps his tools, indifferent to their weight or any
other difficulty which may stand in his way. He does not stay for each
to be tested—he uses such as he sees are fittest.
All the rules contained in “Light on the Path,” are written for all
disciples, but only for disciples—those who “take knowledge.” To none
else but the student in this school are its laws of any use or interest.
To all who are interested seriously in Occultism, I say first—take
knowledge. To him who hath shall be given. It is useless to wait for it.
The womb of Time will close before you, and in later days you will
remain unborn, without power. I therefore say to those who have any
hunger or thirst for knowledge, attend to these rules.
They are none of my handicraft or invention. They are merely the
phrasing of laws in super-nature, the putting into words truths as
absolute in their own sphere, as those laws which govern the conduct of
the earth and its atmosphere.
The senses spoken of in these four statements are the astral, or inner
senses.
No man desires to see that light which illumines the spaceless soul
until pain and sorrow and despair have driven him away from the life of
ordinary humanity. First he wears out pleasure; then he wears out
pain—till, at last, his eyes become incapable of tears.
This is a truism, although I know perfectly well that it will meet with
a vehement denial from many who are in sympathy with thoughts which
spring from the inner life. _To see_ with the astral sense of sight is a
form of activity which it is difficult for us to understand immediately.
The scientist knows very well what a miracle is achieved by each child
that is born into the world, when it first conquers its eye-sight and
compels it to obey its brain. An equal miracle is performed with each
sense certainly, but this ordering of sight is perhaps the most
stupendous effort. Yet the child does it almost unconsciously, by force
of the powerful heredity of habit. No one now is aware that he has ever
done it at all; just as we cannot recollect the individual movements
which enabled us to walk up a hill a year ago. This arises from the fact
that we move and live and have our being in matter. Our knowledge of it
has become intuitive.
With our astral life it is very much otherwise. For long ages past, man
has paid very little attention to it—so little, that he has practically
lost the use of his senses. It is true, that in every civilization the
star arises, and man confesses, with more or less of folly and
confusion, that he knows himself to be. But most often he denies it, and
in being a materialist becomes that strange thing, a being which cannot
see its own light, a thing of life which will not live, an astral animal
which has eyes, and ears, and speech, and power, yet will use none of
these gifts. This is the case, and the habit of ignorance has become so
confirmed, that now none will see with the inner vision till agony has
made the physical eyes not only unseeing, but without tears—the moisture
of life. To be incapable of tears is to have faced and conquered the
simple human nature, and to have attained an equilibrium which cannot be
shaken by personal emotions. It does not imply any hardness of heart, or
any indifference. It does not imply the exhaustion of sorrow, when the
suffering soul seems powerless to suffer acutely any longer; it does not
mean the deadness of old age, when emotion is becoming dull because the
strings which vibrate to it are wearing out. None of these conditions
are fit for a disciple, and if any one of them exist in him, it must be
overcome before the path can be entered upon. Hardness of heart belongs
to the selfish man, the egotist, to whom the gate is for ever closed.
Indifference belongs to the fool and the false philosopher; those whose
lukewarmness makes them mere puppets, not strong enough to face the
realities of existence. When pain or sorrow has worn out the keenness of
suffering, the result is a lethargy not unlike that which accompanies
old age, as it is usually experienced by men and women. Such a condition
makes the entrance to the path impossible, because the first step is one
of difficulty and needs a strong man, full of psychic and physical
vigour, to attempt it.
It is a truth, that, as Edgar Allan Poe said, the eyes are the windows
for the soul, the windows of that haunted palace in which it dwells.
This is the very nearest interpretation into ordinary language of the
meaning of the text. If grief, dismay, disappointment or pleasure, can
shake the soul so that it loses its fixed hold on the calm spirit which
inspires it, and the moisture of life breaks forth, drowning knowledge
in sensation, then all is blurred, the windows are darkened, the light
is useless. This is as literal a fact as that if a man, at the edge of a
precipice, loses his nerve through some sudden emotion he will certainly
fall. The poise of the body, the balance, must be preserved, not only in
dangerous places, but even on the level ground, and with all the
assistance Nature gives us by the law of gravitation. So it is with the
soul, it is the link between the outer body and the starry spirit
beyond; the divine spark dwells in the still place where no convulsion
of Nature can shake the air; this is so always. But the soul may lose
its hold on that, its knowledge of it, even though these two are part of
one whole; and it is by emotion, by sensation, that this hold is loosed.
To suffer either pleasure or pain, causes a vivid vibration which is, to
the consciousness of man, life. Now this sensibility does not lessen
when the disciple enters upon his training; it increases. It is the
first test of his strength; he must suffer, must enjoy or endure, more
keenly than other men, while yet he has taken on him a duty which does
not exist for other men, that of not allowing his suffering to shake him
from his fixed purpose. He has, in fact, at the first step to take
himself steadily in hand and put the bit into his own mouth; no one else
can do it for him.
The first four aphorisms of “Light on the Path,” refer entirely to
astral development. This development must be accomplished to a certain
extent—that is to say it must be fully entered upon—before the remainder
of the book is really intelligible except to the intellect; in fact,
before it can be read as a practical, not a metaphysical treatise.
In one of the great mystic Brotherhoods, there are four ceremonies, that
take place early in the year, which practically illustrate and elucidate
these aphorisms. They are ceremonies in which only novices take part,
for they are simply services of the threshold. But it will show how
serious a thing it is to become a disciple, when it is understood that
these are all ceremonies of sacrifice. The first one is this of which I
have been speaking. The keenest enjoyment, the bitterest pain, the
anguish of loss and despair, are brought to bear on the trembling soul,
which has not yet found light in the darkness, which is helpless as a
blind man is, and until these shocks can be endured without loss of
equilibrium the astral senses must remain sealed. This is the merciful
law. The “medium,” or “spiritualist,” who rushes into the psychic world
without preparation, is a law-breaker, a breaker of the laws of
super-nature. Those who break Nature’s laws lose their physical health;
those who break the laws of the inner life, lose their psychic health.
“Mediums” become mad, suicides, miserable creatures devoid of moral
sense; and often end as unbelievers, doubters even of that which their
own eyes have seen. The disciple is compelled to become his own master
before he adventures on this perilous path, and attempts to face those
beings who live and work in the astral world, and whom we call masters,
because of their great knowledge and their ability to control not only
themselves but the forces around them.
The condition of the soul when it lives for the life of sensation as
distinguished from that of knowledge, is vibratory or oscillating, as
distinguished from fixed. That is the nearest literal representation of
the fact; but it is only literal to the intellect, not to the intuition.
For this part of man’s consciousness a different vocabulary is needed.
The idea of “fixed” might perhaps be transposed into that of “at home.”
In sensation no permanent home can be found, because change is the law
of this vibratory existence. That fact is the first one which must be
learned by the disciple. It is useless to pause and weep for a scene in
a kaleidoscope which has passed.
It is a very well-known fact, one with which Bulwer Lytton dealt with
great power, that an intolerable sadness is the very first experience of
the neophyte in Occultism. A sense of blankness falls upon him which
makes the world a waste, and life a vain exertion. This follows his
first serious contemplation of the abstract. In gazing, or even in
attempting to gaze, on the ineffable mystery of his own higher nature,
he himself causes the initial trial to fall on him. The oscillation
between pleasure and pain ceases for—perhaps an instant of time; but
that is enough to have cut him loose from his fast moorings in the world
of sensation. He has experienced, however briefly, the greater life; and
he goes on with ordinary existence weighted by a sense of unreality, of
blank, of horrid negation. This was the nightmare which visited Bulwer
Lytton’s neophyte in “Zanoni”; and even Zanoni himself, who had learned
great truths, and been entrusted with great powers, had not actually
passed the threshold where fear and hope, despair and joy seem at one
moment absolute realities, at the next mere forms of fancy.
This initial trial is often brought on us by life itself. For life is
after all, the great teacher. We return to study it, after we have
acquired power over it, just as the master in chemistry learns more in
the laboratory than his pupil does. There are persons so near the door
of knowledge that life itself prepares them for it, and no individual
hand has to invoke the hideous guardian of the entrance. These must
naturally be keen and powerful organizations, capable of the most vivid
pleasure; then pain comes and fills its great duty. The most intense
forms of suffering fall on such a nature, till at last it arouses from
its stupor of consciousness, and by the force of its internal vitality
steps over the threshold into a place of peace. Then the vibration of
life loses its power of tyranny. The sensitive nature must suffer still;
but the soul has freed itself and stands aloof, guiding the life towards
its greatness. Those who are the subjects of Time, and go slowly through
all his spaces, live on through a long-drawn series of sensations, and
suffer a constant mingling of pleasure and of pain. They do not dare to
take the snake of self in a steady grasp and conquer it, so becoming
divine; but prefer to go on fretting through divers experiences,
suffering blows from the opposing forces.
When one of these subjects of Time decides to enter on the path of
Occultism, it is this which is his first task. If life has not taught it
to him, if he is not strong enough to teach himself, and if he has power
enough to demand the help of a master, then this fearful trial, depicted
in Zanoni, is put upon him. The oscillation in which he lives, is for an
instant stilled; and he has to survive the shock of facing what seems to
him at first sight as the abyss of nothingness. Not till he has learned
to dwell in this abyss, and has found its peace, is it possible for his
eyes to have become incapable of tears.
The difficulty of writing intelligibly on these subjects is so great
that I beg of those who have found any interest in this article, and are
yet left with perplexities and doubts, to address me in the
correspondence column of this magazine. I ask this because thoughtful
questions are as great an assistance to the general reader as the
answers to them.
Δ
(_To be continued_.)
--------------
Harmony is the law of life, discord its shadow, whence springs
suffering, the teacher, the awakener of consciousness.
--------------
Through joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, the soul comes to a knowledge
of itself; then begins the task of learning the laws of life, that the
discords may be resolved, and the harmony be restored.
------------------
The eyes of wisdom are like the ocean depths; there is neither joy nor
sorrow in them; therefore the soul of the occultist must become stronger
than joy, and greater than sorrow.
THE HISTORY OF A PLANET.
No star, among the countless myriads that twinkle over the sidereal
fields of the night sky, shines so dazzlingly as the planet Venus—not
even Sirius-Sothis, the dog-star, beloved by Isis. Venus is the queen
among our planets, the crown jewel of our solar system. She is the
inspirer of the poet, the guardian and companion of the lonely shepherd,
the lovely morning and the evening star. For,
“Stars teach as well as shine.”
although their secrets are still untold and unrevealed to the majority
of men, including astronomers. They are “a beauty and a mystery,”
verily. But “where there is a mystery, it is generally supposed that
there must also be evil,” says Byron. Evil, therefore, was detected by
evilly-disposed human fancy, even in those bright luminous eyes peeping
at our wicked world through the veil of ether. Thus there came to exist
slandered stars and planets as well as slandered men and women. Too
often are the reputation and fortune of one man or party sacrificed for
the benefit of another man or party. As on earth below, so in the
heavens above, and Venus, the sister planet of our Earth,[4] was
sacrificed to the ambition of our little globe to show the latter the
“chosen” planet of the Lord. She became the scapegoat, the _Azaziel_ of
the starry dome, for the sins of the Earth, or rather for those of a
certain class in the human family—the clergy—who slandered the bright
orb, in order to prove what their ambition suggested to them as the best
means to reach power, and exercise it unswervingly over the
superstitious and ignorant masses.
-----
Footnote 4:
“Venus is a second Earth,” says Reynaud, in _Terre et Ciel_ (p. 74),
“so much so that were there any communication possible between the two
planets, their inhabitants might take their respective earths for the
two hemispheres of the same world.... They seem on the sky, _like two
sisters_. Similar in conformation, these two worlds are also similar
in the character assigned to them in the Universe.”
-----
This took place during the middle ages. And now the sin lies black at
the door of Christians and their scientific inspirers, though the error
was successfully raised to the lofty position of a religious dogma, as
many other fictions and inventions have been.
Indeed, the whole sidereal world, planets and their regents—the ancient
gods of poetical paganism—the sun, the moon, the elements, and the
entire host of incalculable worlds—those at least which happened to be
known to the Church Fathers—shared in the same fate. They have all been
slandered, all bedevilled by the insatiable desire of proving one little
system of theology—built on and constructed out of old pagan
materials—the only right and holy one, and all those which preceded or
followed it utterly wrong. Sun and stars, the very air itself, we are
asked to believe, became pure and “redeemed” from original sin and the
Satanic element of heathenism, only after the year I, A.D. Scholastics
and scholiasts, the spirit of whom “spurned laborious investigation and
slow induction,” had shown, to the satisfaction of infallible Church,
the whole Kosmos in the power of Satan—a poor compliment to God—before
the year of the Nativity; and Christians had to believe or be condemned.
Never have subtle sophistry and casuistry shown themselves so plainly in
their true light, however, as in the questions of the ex-Satanism and
later redemption of various heavenly bodies. Poor beautiful Venus got
worsted in that war of so-called divine proofs to a greater degree than
any of her sidereal colleagues. While the history of the other six
planets, and their gradual transformation from Greco-Aryan gods into
Semitic devils, and finally into “divine attributes of the _seven eyes_
of the Lord,” is known but to the educated, that of Venus-Lucifer has
become a household story among even the most illiterate in Roman
Catholic countries.
This story shall now be told for the benefit of those who may have
neglected their astral mythology.
Venus, characterised by Pythagoras as the _sol alter_, a second Sun, on
account of her magnificent radiance—equalled by none other—was the first
to draw the attention of ancient Theogonists. Before it began to be
called Venus, it was known in _pre_-Hesiodic theogony as Eosphoros (or
Phosphoros) and Hesperos, the children of the dawn and twilight. In
Hesiod, moreover, the planet is decomposed into two divine beings, two
brothers—Eosphoros (the _Lucifer_ of the Latins) the morning, and
Hesperos, the evening star. They are the children of Astrœos and Eos,
the starry heaven and the dawn, as also of Kephalos and Eos (_Theog:_
381, _Hyg: Poet: Astron_: 11, 42). Preller, quoted by Decharme, shows
Phaeton identical with Phosphoros or Lucifer (_Griech: Mythol_: 1. 365).
And on the authority of Hesiod he also makes Phaeton the son of the
latter two divinities—Kephalos and Eos.
Now Phaeton or Phosphoros, the “luminous morning orb,” is carried away
in his early youth by Aphrodite (Venus) who makes of him the night
guardian of her sanctuary (_Theog:_ 987-991). He is the “beautiful
morning star” (_Vide_ St. John’s _Revelation_ XXII. 16) loved for its
radiant light by the Goddess of the Dawn, Aurora, who, while gradually
eclipsing the light of her beloved, thus seeming to carry off the star,
makes it reappear on the evening horizon where it watches the gates of
heaven. In early morning, Phosphoros “issuing from the waters of the
Ocean, raises in heaven his sacred head to announce the approach of
divine light.” (_Iliad_, XXIII. 226; _Odyss:_ XIII. 93; Virg: _Æneid_,
VIII. 589; _Mythol: de la Grèce Antique_. 247). He holds a torch in his
hand and flies through space as he precedes the car of Aurora. In the
evening he becomes Hesperos, “the most splendid of the stars that shine
on the celestial vault” (_Iliad_, XXII. 317). He is the father of the
Hesperides, the guardians of the golden apples together with the Dragon;
the beautiful genius of the flowing golden curls, sung and glorified in
all the ancient _epithalami_ (the bridal songs of the early Christians
as of the pagan Greeks); he, who at the fall of the night, leads the
nuptial _cortège_ and delivers the bride into the arms of the
bridegroom. (_Carmen Nuptiale._ See _Mythol: de la Grèce Antique_.
Decharme.)
So far, there seems to be no possible _rapprochement_, no analogy to be
discovered between this poetical personification of a star, a purely
astronomical myth, and the _Satanism_ of Christian theology. True, the
close connection between the planet as Hesperos, the evening star, and
the Greek Garden of Eden with its Dragon and the golden apples may, with
a certain stretch of imagination, suggest some painful comparisons with
the third chapter of Genesis. But this is insufficient to justify the
building of a theological wall of defence against paganism made up of
slander and misrepresentations.
But of all the Greek _euhemerisations_, Lucifer-Eosphoros is, perhaps,
the most complicated. The planet has become with the Latins, Venus, or
Aphrodite-_Anadyomene_, the foam-born Goddess, the “Divine Mother,” and
one with the Phœnician Astarte, or the Jewish Astaroth. They were all
called “The Morning Star,” and the Virgins of the Sea, or _Mar_ (whence
Mary), the great Deep, titles now given by the Roman Church to their
Virgin Mary. They were all connected with the moon and the crescent,
with the Dragon and the planet Venus, as the mother of Christ has been
made connected with all these attributes. If the Phœnician mariners
carried, fixed on the prow of their ships, the image of the goddess
Astarte (or Aphrodite, Venus Erycina) and looked upon the evening and
the morning star as _their_ guiding star, “the eye of their Goddess
mother,” so do the Roman Catholic sailors the same to this day. They fix
a Madonna on the prows of their vessels, and the blessed Virgin Mary is
called the “Virgin of the Sea.” The accepted patroness of Christian
sailors, their star, “_Stella Del Mar_,” etc., she stands on the
crescent moon. Like the old pagan Goddesses, she is the “Queen of
Heaven,” and the “Morning Star” just as they were.
Whether this can explain anything, is left to the reader’s sagacity.
Meanwhile, Lucifer-Venus has nought to do with darkness, and everything
with light. When called _Lucifer_, it is the “light bringer,” the first
radiant beam which destroys the lethal darkness of night. When named
Venus, the planet-star becomes the symbol of dawn, the chaste Aurora.
Professor Max Müller rightly conjectures that Aphrodite, born of the
sea, is a personification of the Dawn of Day, and the most lovely of all
the sights in Nature (“Science of Language”) for, before her
naturalisation by the Greeks, Aphrodite was Nature personified, the life
and light of the Pagan world, as proven in the beautiful invocation to
Venus by Lucretius, quoted by Decharme. She is _divine_ Nature in her
entirety, _Aditi-Prakriti_ before she becomes Lakshmi. She is that
Nature before whose majestic and fair face, “the winds fly away, the
quieted sky pours torrents of light, and the sea-waves smile,”
(Lucretius). When referred to as the Syrian goddess Astarte, the
Astaroth of Hieropolis, the radiant planet was personified as a majestic
woman, holding in one outstretched hand a torch, in the other, a crooked
staff in the form of a cross. (_Vide_ Lucian’s _De Dea Syriê_, and
Cicero’s _De Nat: Deorum_, 3 c.23). Finally, the planet is represented
astronomically, as a globe _poised above the cross_—a symbol no devil
would like to associate with—while the planet Earth is a globe with a
cross _over it_.
But then, these crosses are not the symbols of Christianity, but the
Egyptian _crux ansata_, the attribute of Isis (who is Venus, and
Aphrodite, Nature, also) ♀ or ♀ the planet; the fact that the Earth has
the _crux ansata_ reversed, ♁ having a great occult significance upon
which there is no necessity of entering at present.
Now what says the Church and how does it explain the “dreadful
association.” The Church believes in the devil, of course, and could not
afford to lose him. “_The Devil is the chief pillar of the Church_”
confesses unblushingly an advocate[5] of the _Ecclesia Militans_. “All
the Alexandrian Gnostics speak to us of the fall of the Æons and their
Pleroma, and all attribute that fall _to the desire to know_,” writes
another volunteer in the same army, slandering the Gnostics as usual and
identifying _the desire to know_ or occultism, magic, with Satanism.[6]
And then, forthwith, he quotes from Schlegel’s _Philosophie de
l’Histoire_ to show that the seven rectors (planets) of Pymander,
“commissioned by God to contain the phenomenal world in their seven
circles, lost in love with their own beauty,[7] came to admire
themselves with such intensity that owing to this proud self-adulation
they finally _fell_.”
-----
Footnote 5:
Thus saith Des Mousseaux. “Mœurs et Pratiques des Demons.” p. X.—and
he is corroborated in this by Cardinal de Ventura. The Devil, he says,
“is one of the great personages _whose life is closely allied to that
of the Church_; and without him ... the fall of man could not have
taken place. If it were not for him (the Devil), the Saviour, the
Redeemer, the Crucified would be but the most ridiculous of
supernumeraries and the Cross an insult to good sense.” And if so,
then we should feel thankful to the poor Devil.
Footnote 6:
De Mirville. “No Devil, no Christ,” he exclaims.
Footnote 7:
This is only another version of Narcissus, the Greek victim of his own
fair looks.
-----
Perversity having thus found its way amongst the angels, the most
beautiful creature of God “revolted against its Maker.” That creature is
in theological fancy Venus-Lucifer, or rather the informing Spirit or
Regent of that planet. This teaching is based on the following
speculation. The three principal heroes of the great sidereal
catastrophe mentioned in _Revelation_ are, according to the testimony of
the Church fathers—“the Verbum, Lucifer his usurper (see editorial) and
the grand Archangel who conquered him,” and whose “palaces” (the
“houses” astrology calls them) are in the Sun, Venus-Lucifer and
Mercury. This is quite evident, since the position of these orbs in the
Solar system correspond in their hierarchical order to that of the
“heroes” in Chapter xii of _Revelation_ “their names and destinies (?)
being closely connected in the theological (exoteric) system with these
three great metaphysical names.” (De Mirville’s _Memoir_ to the Academy
of France, on the rapping Spirits and the Demons).
The outcome of this was, that theological legend made of Venus-Lucifer
the sphere and domain of the fallen Archangel, or Satan before his
apostacy. Called upon to reconcile this statement with that other fact,
that the metaphor of “the morning star,” is applied to both Jesus, and
his Virgin mother, and that the planet Venus-Lucifer is included,
moreover, among the “stars” of the seven planetary spirits worshipped by
the Roman Catholics[8] under new names, the defenders of the Latin
dogmas and beliefs answer as follows:—
“Lucifer, the jealous neighbour of the Sun (Christ) said to himself in
his great pride: ‘I will rise as high as he!’ He was thwarted in his
design by Mercury, though the brightness of the latter (who is St.
Michael) was as much lost in the blazing fires of the great Solar orb as
his own was, and though, like Lucifer, Mercury is only the assessor, and
the guard of honour to the Sun.”—(_Ibid._)
-----
Footnote 8:
The famous temple dedicated to the Seven Angels at Rome, and built by
Michael-Angelo in 1561, is still there, now called the “Church of St
Mary of the Angels.” In the old Roman Missals printed in 1563—one or
two of which may still be seen in Palazzo Barberini—one may find the
religious service (_officio_) of the seven angels, and their _old_ and
occult names. That the “angels” are the pagan Rectors, under different
names—the Jewish having replaced the Greek and Latin names—of the
seven planets is proven by what Pope Pius V. said in his Bull to the
Spanish Clergy, permitting and encouraging the worship of the said
seven spirits of the stars. “One cannot exalt too much these _seven
rectors_ of the world, _figured by the seven planets_, as it is
consoling to our century to witness by the grace of God the cult of
these _seven ardent lights_, and of these _seven stars_ reassuming all
its lustre in the Christian republic.” (_Les Sept Esprits et
l’Histoire de leur Culte_; De Mirville’s 2nd memoir addressed to the
Academy. Vol. II. p. 358.)
-----
Guards of “dishonour” now rather, if the teachings of _theological_
Christianity were true. But here comes in the cloven foot of the Jesuit.
The ardent defender of Roman Catholic Demonolatry and of the worship of
the seven planetary spirits, at the same time, pretends great wonder at
the coincidences between old Pagan and Christian _legends_, between the
fable about Mercury and Venus, and the _historical truths_ told of St.
Michael—the “angel of the face,”—the terrestrial double, or _ferouer_ of
Christ. He points them out saying: “like Mercury, the archangel Michael,
is the _friend_ of the Sun, his Mitra, perhaps, for Michael is a
_psychopompic_ genius, one who leads the separated souls to their
appointed abodes, and like Mitra, he is the _well-known adversary of the
demons_.” This is demonstrated by the book of the _Nabatheans_ recently
discovered (by Chwolson), in which the Zoroastrian Mitra is called the
“_grand enemy of the planet Venus_.”[9] (_ibid_ p. 160.)
-----
Footnote 9:
Herodotus showing the identity of Mitra and Venus, the sentence in the
_Nabathean Agriculture_ is evidently misunderstood.
-----
There is something in this. A candid confession, for once, of perfect
identity of celestial personages and of _borrowing_ from every pagan
source. It _is_ curious, if unblushing. While in the oldest Mazdean
allegories, Mitra conquers the planet Venus, in Christian tradition
Michael defeats Lucifer, and both receive, as war spoils, the planet of
the vanquished deity.
“Mitra,” says Dollinger, “possessed, in days of old, the star of
Mercury, placed between the sun and the moon, but he was given the
planet of the conquered, and ever since his victory he is identified
with Venus.” (_“Judaisme and Paganisme,” Vol. II., p. 109. French
transl._)
“In the Christian tradition,” adds the learned Marquis, “St. Michael _is
apportioned in Heaven the throne and the palace of the foe he has
vanquished_. Moreover, like Mercury, during the palmy days of paganism,
which made sacred to this _demon_-god all the promontories of the earth,
_the Archangel is the patron of the same in our religion_.” This means,
if it does mean anything, that _now_, at any rate, Lucifer-Venus is a
_sacred_ planet, and no synonym of Satan, since St. Michael has become
his legal heir?
The above remarks conclude with this cool reflection:
“It is evident that paganism has _utilised beforehand_, and most
marvellously, all the features and characteristics of the _prince of the
face of the Lord_ (Michael) in applying them to that _Mercury_, to the
Egyptian _Hermes Anubis_, and the _Hermes Christos_ of the Gnostics.
Each of these was represented as the first among the divine councillors,
and the god nearest to the sun, _quis ut Deus_.”
Which title, with all its attributes, became that of Michael. The good
Fathers, the Master Masons of the temple of _Church_ Christianity, knew
indeed how to utilize pagan material for their new dogmas.
The fact is, that it is sufficient to examine certain Egyptian
_cartouches_, pointed out by Rossellini (_Egypte_, Vol. I., p. 289), to
find Mercury (the double of Sirius in our solar system) as Sothis,
preceded by the words “_sole_” and “_solis custode, sostegnon dei
dominanti, e forte grande dei vigilanti_,” “watchman of the sun,
sustainer of dominions, and the strongest of all the vigilants.” All
these titles and attributes are now those of the Archangel Michael, who
has inherited them from the _demons_ of paganism.
Moreover, travellers in Rome may testify to the wonderful presence in
the statue of Mitra, at the Vatican, of the best known Christian
symbols. Mystics boast of it. They find “in his lion’s head, and the
eagle’s wings, those of the courageous Seraph, the master of space
(Michael); in his caduceus, the spear, in the two serpents coiled round
the body, the struggle of the good and bad principles, and especially in
the two keys which the said Mitra holds, like St. Peter, the keys with
which this Seraph-patron of the latter opens and shuts the gates of
Heaven, _astra cludit et recludit_.” (_Mem_: p. 162.)
To sum up, the aforesaid shows that the theological romance of Lucifer
was built upon the various myths and allegories of the pagan world, and
that it is no _revealed_ dogma, but simply one invented to uphold
superstition. Mercury being one of the Sun’s _assessors_, or the
_cynocephali_ of the Egyptians and _the watch-dogs of the Sun_,
literally, the other was _Eosphoros_, the most brilliant of the planets,
“_qui mane oriebaris_,” the early rising, or the Greek ὀρθρινὸς. It was
identical with the _Amoon-ra_, the light-bearer of Egypt, and called by
all nations “the _second born_ of light” (the first being Mercury), the
beginning of his (the Sun’s) ways of wisdom, the Archangel Michael being
also referred to as the _principium viarum Domini_.
Thus a purely astronomical personification, built upon an occult meaning
which no one has hitherto seemed to unriddle outside the Eastern wisdom,
has now become a dogma, part and parcel of Christian revelation. A
clumsy transference of characters is unequal to the task of making
thinking people accept in one and the same trinitarian group, the “Word”
or Jesus, God and Michael (with the Virgin occasionally to complete it)
on the one hand, and Mitra, Satan and Apollo-Abbadon on the other: the
whole at the whim and pleasure of Roman Catholic Scholiasts. If Mercury
and Venus (Lucifer) are (astronomically in their revolution around the
Sun) the symbols of God the Father, the Son, and of their Vicar,
Michael, the “Dragon-Conqueror,” in Christian legend, why should they
when called Apollo-_Abaddon_, the “King of the Abyss,” Lucifer, Satan,
or Venus—become forthwith devils and demons? If we are told that the
“conqueror,” or “Mercury-Sun,” or again St. Michael of the _Revelation_,
was given the spoils of the conquered angel, namely, his planet, why
should opprobrium be any longer attached to a constellation so purified?
Lucifer is now the “Angel of the Face of the Lord,”[10] because “that
face is mirrored in it.” We think rather, because the Sun is reflecting
his beams in Mercury seven times more than it does on our Earth, and
twice more in Lucifer-Venus: the Christian symbol proving again its
astronomical origin. But whether from the astronomical, mystical or
symbological aspect, Lucifer is as good as any other planet. To advance
as a proof of its demoniacal character, and identity with Satan, the
configuration of Venus, which gives to the crescent of this planet the
appearance of a cut-off horn is rank nonsense. But to connect this with
the horns of “The Mystic Dragon” in _Revelation_—“one of which was
broken”[11]—as the two French Demonologists, the Marquis de Mirville and
the Chevalier des Mousseaux, the champions of the Church militant, would
have their readers believe in the second half of our present century—is
simply an insult to the public.
-----
Footnote 10:
“Both in Biblical and pagan theologies,” says de Mirville, “the Sun
has its god, its defender, and its sacrilegious usurper, in other
words, its Ormuzd, its planet Mercury (Mitra), and its Lucifer, Venus
(or Ahriman), taken away from its ancient master, and now given to its
conqueror.” (p. 164.) Therefore, Lucifer-Venus is quite _holy_ now.
Footnote 11:
In Revelation there is no “horn broken,” but it is simply said in
Chapter XIII., 3. that John saw “one of his heads, as it were, wounded
to death.” John knew naught in his generation of “a horned” devil.
-----
Besides which, the Devil had no horns before the fourth century of the
Christian era. It is a purely Patristic invention arising from their
desire to connect the god Pan, and the pagan Fauns and Satyrs, with
their Satanic legend. The demons of Heathendom were as hornless and as
tailless as the Archangel Michael himself in the imaginations of his
worshippers. The “horns” were, in pagan symbolism, an emblem of divine
power and creation, and of fertility in nature. Hence the ram’s horns of
Ammon, of Bacchus, and of Moses on ancient medals, and the cow’s horns
of Isis and Diana, etc., etc., and of the Lord God of the Prophets of
Israel himself. For Habakkuk gives the evidence that this symbolism was
accepted by the “chosen people” as much as by the Gentiles. In Chapter
III. that prophet speaks of the “Holy One from Mount Paran,” of the Lord
God who “comes from Teman, and _whose brightness was as the light_,” and
who had “_horns_ coming out of his hand.”
When one reads, moreover, the Hebrew text of Isaiah, and finds that no
Lucifer is mentioned at all in Chapter XIV., v. 12, but simply הֵילֵל,
_Hillel_, “a _bright_ star,” one can hardly refrain from wondering that
_educated_ people should be still ignorant enough at the close of our
century to associate a radiant planet—or anything else in nature for the
matter of that—with the DEVIL![12]
H. P. B.
-----
Footnote 12:
The literal words used, and their translation, are: “_Aïk Naphelta
Mi-Shamayim Hillel Ben-Shachar Negdangta La-Aretz Cholesch El-Goüm_,”
or, “How art thou fallen from the heavens, Hillel, Son of the Morning,
how art thou cast down unto the earth, thou who didst cast down the
nations.” Here the word, translated “Lucifer,” is הילל, Hillel, and
its meaning is “shining brightly or gloriously.” It is very true also,
that by a pun to which Hebrew words lend themselves so easily, the
verb _hillel_ may be made to mean “to howl,” hence, by an easy
derivation, hillel may be constructed into “howler,” or a devil, a
creature, however, one hears rarely, if ever, “howling.” In his
Lexicon, Art. הל, Parkhurst says: “The Syriac translation of this
passage renders it אילל ‘howl’; and even Jerome observes that it
literally means ‘to howl.’” Michaelis translates it, ‘Howl, Son of the
Morning.’ But at this rate, Hillel, the great Jewish sage and
reformer, might also be called a “howler,” and connected with the
devil!
-----
=THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT=:
_A TALE OF LOVE AND MAGIC_.
---------------------
BY MABEL COLLINS,
Author of “THE PRETTIEST WOMAN IN WARSAW,” &c., &c., And Scribe of “THE
IDYLL OF THE WHITE LOTUS,” and “THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD.”
---------------------
Only—
One facet of the stone,
One ray of the star,
One petal of the flower of life,
But the one that stands outermost and faces us, who are men and women.
_This strange story has come to me from a far country and was brought to
me in a mysterious manner; I claim only to be the scribe and the editor.
In this capacity, however, it is I who am answerable to the public and
the critics. I therefore ask in advance, one favour only of the reader;
that he will accept (while reading this story) the theory of the
reincarnation of souls as a living fact._
_M. C._
INTRODUCTION.
Containing two sad lives on earth,
And two sweet times of sleep in Heaven.
A LIFETIME.
Overhead the boughs of the trees intermingle, hiding the deep blue sky
and mellowing the fierce heat of the sun. The boughs are so covered with
white blossoms that it is like a canopy of clustered snow-flakes, tinged
here and there with a soft pink. It is a natural orchard, a spot
favoured by the wild apricot. And among the trees, wandering from shine
to shade, flitting to and fro, is a solitary figure. It is that of a
young woman, a savage, one of a wild and fierce tribe dwelling in the
fastnesses of an inaccessible virgin forest. She is dark but beautiful.
Her blue-black hair hangs far down over her naked body; its masses
shield the warm, quivering, nervous brown skin from the direct rays of
the sun. She wears neither clothing nor any ornament. Her eyes are dark,
fierce and tender: her mouth soft and natural as the lips of an opening
flower. She is absolutely perfect in her simple savage beauty and in the
natural majesty of her womanhood, virgin in herself and virgin in the
quality of her race, which is untaught, undegraded. But in her sublimely
natural face is the dawn of a great tragedy. Her soul, her thought, is
struggling to awake. She has done a deed that seemed to her quite
simple, quite natural; yet now it is done a dim perplexity is rising
within her obscure mind. Wandering to and fro beneath the rich masses of
blossom-laden boughs, she for the first time endeavours to question
herself. Finding no answer within she goes again to look on that which
she has done.
A form lies motionless upon the ground within the thickest shade of the
rich fruit trees. A young man, one of her own tribe, beautiful like
herself, and with strength and vigour written in every line of his form.
But he is dead. He was her lover, and she found his love sweet, yet with
one wild treacherous movement of her strong supple arm she had killed
him. The blood flowed from his forehead where the sharp stone had made
the death wound. The life blood ebbed away from his strong young form; a
moment since his lips still trembled, now they were still. Why had she
in this moment of fierce passion taken that beautiful life? She loved
him as well as her untaught heart knew how to love; but he, exulting in
his greater strength, tried to snatch her love before it was ripe. It
was but a blossom, like the white flowers overhead: he would have taken
it with strong hands as though it were a fruit ripe and ready. And then
in a sudden flame of wondrous new emotion the woman became aware that
the man was her enemy, that he desired to be her tyrant. Until now she
had thought him as herself, a thing to love as she loved herself, with a
blind unthinking trust. And she acted passionately upon the guidance of
this thing—feeling—which until now she had never known. He, unaccustomed
to any treachery or anger, suspected no strange act from her, and thus,
unsuspicious, unwarned, he was at her mercy. And now he lay dead at her
feet. And still the fierce sun shone through the green leaves and
silvern blossoms and gleamed upon her black hair and tender brown skin.
She was beautiful as the morning when it rose over the tree tops of that
world-old forest. But there is a new wonder in her dark eyes; a question
that was not there until this strange and potent hour came to her. What
ages must pass over her dull spirit ere it can utter the question; ere
it can listen and hear the answer?
The savage woman, nameless, unknown save of her tribe, who regard her as
indifferently as any creature of the woods, has none to help her or stay
in its commencement the great roll of the wave of energy she has
started. Blindly she lives out her own emotions. She is dissatisfied,
uneasy, conscious of some error. When she leaves the orchard of wild
fruit trees and wanders back to the clearer part of the forest beneath
the great trees, where her tribe dwells, when she returns among them her
lips are dumb, her voice is silent. None ever heard that he, the one she
loved, had died by her hand, for she knew not how to frame or tell this
story. It was a mystery to her, this thing which had happened. Yet it
made her sad, and her great eyes wore a dumb look of longing. But she
was very beautiful and soon another young and sturdy lover was always at
her side. He did not please her; there was not the glow in his eyes that
had gladdened her in those of the dead one whom she had loved. And yet
she shrunk not from him nor did she raise her arm in anger, but held it
fast at her side lest her passion should break loose unawares. For she
felt that she had brought a want, a despair upon herself by her former
deed; and now she determined that she would act differently. Blindly she
tried to learn the lesson that had come upon her. Blindly she let
herself be the agent of her own will. For now she became the willing
slave and serf of one whom she did not love, and whose passion for her
was full of tyranny. Yet she did not, she dared not, resist this
tyranny; not because she feared him, but because she feared herself. She
had the feeling that one might have who had come in contact with a new
and hitherto unknown natural force. She feared lest resistance or
independence should bring upon her a greater wonder, a greater sadness
and loss than that which she had already brought upon herself.
And so she submitted to that which in her first youth would no more have
been endured by her than the bit by the wild horse.
The apricot blossom has fallen and fruit has followed it; the leaves
have fallen and the trees are bare. The sky is grey and wild above, the
ground dank and soft with fallen leaves below. The aspect of the place
is changed, but it is the same; the face and form of the woman have
changed; but she is the same. She is alone again in the wild orchard,
finding her way by instinct to the spot where her first lover died. She
has found it. What is there? Some white bones that lie together; a
skeleton. The woman’s eyes fasten and feed on the sight and grow large
and terrible. Horror at last is struck into her soul. This is all that
is left of her young love, who died by her hand—white bones that lie in
ghastly order! And the long hot days and sultry nights of her life have
been given to a tyrant who has reaped no gladness and no satisfaction
from her submission; for he has not learned yet even the difference
between woman and woman. All alike are mere creatures like the wild
things; creatures to hunt and to conquer. Dumbly in her dark heart
strange questionings arise. She turns from this graveyard of her
unquestioning time and goes back to her slavery. Through the years of
her life she waits and wonders, looking blankly at the life around her.
Will no answer come to her soul?
---
AFTER SLEEP, AWAKENING.
Splendid was the veil that shielded her from that other soul, the soul
she knew and of which she showed her recognition by swift and sudden
love. But the veil separated them; a veil heavy with gold and shining
with stars of silver. And as she gazed upon these stars, with delighted
admiration of their brilliance, they grew larger and larger, till at
length they blended together, and the veil became one shining sheen
gorgeous with golden broideries. Then it became easier to see through
the veil, or rather it seemed easier to these lovers. For before the
veil had made the shape appear dim; now it appeared glorious and ideally
beautiful and strong. Then the woman put out her hand, hoping to obtain
the pressure of another hand through the shining gossamer. And at the
same instant he too put out his hand, for in this moment their souls
communicated, and they understood each other. Their hands touched; the
veil was broken; the moment of joy was ended and again the struggle
began.
---
A LIFETIME.
Sitting, singing, on the steps of an old palace, her feet paddling in
the water of a broad canal, was a child who was becoming more than a
child; a creature on the threshold of life, of awakening sensation. A
girl, with ruddy gold hair, and innocent blue eyes, that had in their
vivid depths the strange startled look of a wild creature. She was as
simple and isolated in her happiness as any animal of the woods or
hills—the sunshine, the sweet air with the faint savour of salt in it,
her own pure clear girlish voice, and the gay songs of the people that
she sang—these were pleasure enough and to spare for her.
But the space of unconscious happiness or unhappiness which heralds the
real events of a life was already at an end. The great wave which she
had set in motion was increasing in volume ceaselessly; how long before
it shall reach the shore and break upon that far off coast? None can
know, save those whose eyesight is more than man’s. None can tell; and
she is ignorant, unknowing. But though she knows nothing of it, she is
within the sweep of the wave, and is powerless to arrest it until her
soul shall awake.
“My blossom, my beautiful wild flower,” said a voice close beside her. A
young boatman had brought his small vessel so gently to the steps she
had not noticed his approach. He leaned over his boat towards her, and
touched her bare white feet with his hand.
“Come away with me, Wild Blossom,” he said. “Leave that wretched home
you cling to. What is there to keep you there now your mother is dead?
Your father is like a savage, and makes you live like a savage too. Come
away with me, and we will live among people who will love you and find
you beautiful as I do. Will you come? How often have I asked you, Wild
Blossom, and you have never answered. Will you answer now?”
“Yes,” said the girl, looking up with grave, serious eyes, that had
beneath their beauty a melancholy meaning, a sad question.
The man saw this strange look and interpreted it as clearly as he could.
“Trust me,” he said, “I am not a savage like your father. When you are
my little wife I will care for you far more dearly than myself. You will
be my soul, my guide, my star. And I will shield you as my soul is
shielded within my body, follow you as my guide, look up to you as to a
star in the blue heavens. Surely you can trust my love, Wild Blossom.”
He had not answered the doubt in her heart, for he had not guessed what
it was, nor could she have told him. For she had not yet learned to know
what it was, nor to know of it more than that it troubled her. But she
put it aside and silenced it now, for the moment had come to do so. Not
till she had learned her lesson much more fully could the question ever
be expressed even to her own soul, and before this could be, the
question must be silenced many times.
“Yes,” she said, “I will come.”
She held out her hand to him as if to seal the compact. He interpreted
the gesture by his own desire, and taking her hand in his drew her
towards him. She yielded and stepped into the boat. And then he quickly
pushed away from the steps, and, dipping his oars in the water, soon had
gone far away down the canal. Blossom looking earnestly back, watched
the old palace disappear. In some of its old rooms and on its sunny
steps her child-life had been spent. Now she knew that was at an end.
She understood that all was changed henceforth, though she could not
guess into what she was going, and she waited for her future with a
strange confidence in the companion she had accepted. This puzzled her
dimly. Yet how should she lack confidence, having known him long ago and
thrown away his love and his life beneath the wild apricot trees, having
seen afterwards the steadfastness of his love when her soul stood beside
his in soul life?
A long way they went in the little boat. They left the canals and went
out upon the open sea, and still the boatman rowed unwearyingly, his
eyes all the while upon the beautiful wild blossom he had plucked and
carried away with him to be his own, his dear and adored possession. Far
away along the coast lay a small village of fishermen’s cots. It was to
this that the young man guided his boat, for it was here he dwelled.
At the door of his cot stood his old mother, a quaint old woman with
wrinkled, rosy face, wearing a rough fishwife’s dress and coarse shawl;
her brown hand shaded her eyes as she watched her son’s boat
approaching. Presently a smile came on her mouth. “He’s gotten the
blossom he’s talked of so often in his sleep. Will he be happy now, the
good lad?”
He was truly a good lad; for his mother knew him well, and the more she
knew him the deeper grew her love. She would do anything for his
happiness. And now she took to her arms the child, the Blossom, and
cherished her for his sake. Before many days had passed the fishing
village made a _fête_ day for the wedding of its strongest boatman. And
the women’s eyes filled with tears when they looked at the sad, tender,
questioning face of the beautiful Wild Blossom.
She had given her love without hesitation, in complete confidence. She
had given more; herself, her life, her very soul. The surrender was now
complete.
And now, when all seemed done and all accomplished, her question began
to be answered. Dimly she knew that, spite of the husband at whose feet
she bowed, spite of the babes she carried in her arms till their tiny
feet were strong enough to carry them down over the shore to the marge
of the blue waters, spite of the cottage home she garnished and cleansed
and loved so dearly, spite of all, her heart was hungry and empty. What
could it mean, that though she had all she had none? Blossom was grown a
woman now, and there were some lines of care and of pain on her
forehead. Yet, still, she was beautiful and still she bore her
child-name of Blossom; but the beauty of her face grew sadder and more
strange as the years went by, the years that bring ease and satisfaction
to the stagnant soul. Wild Blossom’s soul was eager and anxious; she
could not still the mysterious voices of her heart, and these told her
(though perhaps she did not always understand their speech) that her
husband was not in reality her king; that he heard no sound from that
inner region in which she chiefly existed. For him contentment existed
in the outward life that he lived, in sheer physical pleasure, in the
excitement of hard work, and the dangers of the sea, in the beauty of
his wife, the mirth of his happy children. He asked no more. But Wild
Blossom’s eyes had the prophetic light in them. She saw that all this
peace must pass, this pleasure end; she recognised that these things did
not, could not, absolutely satisfy the spirit; her soul seemed to
tremble within her as she began to feel the first dawn of the terrible
answer to her sad questioning.
---
A deeper dream of rest;
A stronger waking.
Many a long year later, a solitary woman dwelled in that fisherman’s
cottage on the shore of the blue sea. She was old and bowed with age and
trouble. But still her eyes were brighter than any girl’s in the
village, and held in them the mysterious beauty of the soul; still her
hair, once golden, now grey, waved about her forehead. The people loved
her and were kind to her, for she was always gentle and full of generous
thought. But they never understood her, for they were long ages behind
her in her growth. She was ready now for the great central test of
personal existence; the experience of life in civilization. When the old
fishwife lay dead within her cottage, and the people came to grieve
beside her body, they little guessed that she was going on to a great
and glorious future; a future full of daring and of danger. When her
eyes closed in death, her inner eyes opened on a sight that filled her
with absolute joy. She was in a garden of fruit trees, and the blossom
of the trees was at its full. When her eyes fell on this white maze of
flowers and drank in its beauty, she remembered the name she had borne
on earth and dimly understood its meaning. The blossoms hid from her the
sky and all else until a soft pressure on her hand drew her eyes
downwards; and then she saw beside her that one whom she had loved
through the ages, and who, side by side with her, was experiencing the
profound mystery, and learning the strange lesson of incarnation in the
world where sex is the first great teacher. And with each phase of
existence that they passed through, these two forged stronger and
stronger links that held them together and compelled them again and
again to meet, so that together they were destined to pass through the
vital hour; the hour when the life is shaped for greater ends or for
vain deeds.
Here within this sheltered place, where blossoms filled the air with
sweetness and beauty, it seemed to them, that they had attained to the
full of pleasure. They rested in perfect satisfaction, drinking deep
draughts of the joy of living. To them existence seemed a final and
splendid fact in itself; existence as they then had it. The moment in
which they lived was sufficient, they desired none other, nor any other
place, nor any other beauty, than those they had. None knows and none
can tell what time or age was passed in this deep contentment and
fulfilment of pleasure. At last Wild Blossom’s soul woke from its sleep,
satiated; the hunger returned to gnaw at her heart; the longing to know
reasserted itself. Holding tight the hand she held in hers, she sprang
from the soft couch on which she lay. Then, for the first time, she
noticed that the ground was so soft and pleasant, because there, where
she had lain, had drifted great heaps of the fallen fruit blossoms. The
ground was all white with them, though some had begun to lose their
delicate beauty, to curl and wrinkle and turn dark. Then she looked
overhead and saw that the trees had, with the loss of the delicate
petals, lost their first fairness, the splendour of the spring. Now they
were covered with small, hard, green fruit, scarce formed, unbeautiful
to the eye, hard to the touch, acid to the taste. With a shudder of
regret for the sweet spring time that was gone, Wild Blossom hurried
away from the trees, still holding fast that other hand in hers. She was
going to face new, strange experiences, perhaps terrible dangers: her
task was the easier for that tried companionship, for the nearness of
that other who was climbing the same steep ladder of life.
END OF INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I.
In a masked ball there is an element of adventure that appeals to the
daring of both sexes, to the bright and witty spirits. Hilary Estanol
was just such an one as the hero of a bright revel should be. A
beautiful boy, with a lovely face, and eyes that had in them a deep
sadness. In repose his face was almost womanish in its softness; but a
chill brilliance was in his smile, a certain slight cynicism coloured
all his speech. Yet Hilary had no reason to be a cynic, and he was not
one who adopted anything from fashion or affectation. The spring of this
uncalled-for coldness and indifference lay in himself.
To-night he was the centre of attraction in Madame Estanol’s
drawing-rooms. This _bal masqué_ was to celebrate his coming of age, and
Hilary had never looked so womanish as when he stood among his friends
receiving their congratulations and admiring their gifts. He wore the
dress of a troubadour, and it was one which became him well, not only in
its picturesqueness as a costume, but in the requirements of the
character. He had the faculty of the improvisatore, his voice was rich
and soft, his musical and poetic gifts swift and versatile. Hilary was
adored by his friends, but disliked, indeed almost hated, by his one
near relation, his mother. She was standing near him now, talking to a
group who had gathered round her. She was one of the cleverest women of
the day, and, still beautiful and full of a charming pride, held a court
of her own. Her dislike for Hilary was founded on her estimate of his
character. To one of her intimate friends she had said, not long before
this night, “Hilary will disgrace his name and family before there is
one grey thread in his dark hair. He has the qualities that bring
despair and ensure remorse. God will surely forgive me that I say this
of my son; but I see it before me, an abyss into which he will drag me
with him; and I wait for it every day.”
A guest, just arrived, approached Madame Estanol with a smile, and after
greeting her affectionately, said, in a whisper, “I have brought a
friend with me. Welcome her in her character as a fortune-teller. She is
very witty, and will amuse us presently, if you like.”
She moved aside a little, and Madame Estanol saw standing behind her a
stooping figure, an old haggard crone, with palsied head, and hand that
trembled as it grasped her stick.
“Ah, Countess! it is impossible to recognise your friend under this
disguise,” said Madame Estanol. “Will you not tell me who she is?”
“I am pledged to say nothing but that she is a fortune-teller,” said the
Countess Bairoun. “Her name she herself will reveal only to one person;
and that person must be born under the star that favoured her own
birth.”
The fortune-teller turned her bent head towards Madame Estanol, and
fixed a pair of brilliant and fascinating eyes on hers. Immediately
Madame Estanol became aware of a strong charm that drew her towards this
mysterious person. She advanced and held out her hand to assist the old
woman in moving across the room.
“Come with me,” she said, “I should like to introduce you to my son. He
is the hero of this scene to-night, for the ball is held in honour of
his coming of age.”
They went together through the maskers that were now beginning to throng
the large drawing-rooms, and everyone turned to look at the strange
figure of the tottering old crone. Hilary Estanol was leaning against
the high carved oak mantel frame of the inner drawing-room, surrounded
by a laughing group of his intimate friends. He held his mask in his
hand, and as he stood there smiling, his dark curls falling on his
forehead, his mother thought, as she approached him, “My boy grows
handsomer every hour of his gay young life.” When Hilary saw his
mother’s strange companion he advanced a step, as if to welcome her, but
Madame Estanol checked him with a smile. “I cannot introduce our visitor
to you,” she said, “for I do not know her name. She will tell it to but
one person, who must have been born under the same star as herself.
Meantime, we are to greet her in her character as the fortune-teller.”
This announcement was welcomed by a murmur of amusement and interest.
“Then will our kind visitor perhaps exercise her craft for us?” asked
Hilary, gazing with curiosity at the trembling head and grey locks
before him. The old woman turned her head sideways, and gave him a look
from those strange brilliant eyes. He, too, like his mother, felt the
charm from them. But he felt more. Something suddenly wakened within
him; a rush of inexplicable emotions roused him into amazement; he put
his hand to his forehead; he was bewildered, almost faint.
There was a small drawing-room which opened out of the room they were
in. It was so tiny that it held but a table covered with flowers, a low
couch and an easy-chair. The laughing group that surrounded Hilary went
eagerly to convert this room into the sanctum of the prophetess. They
lowered and softened the shaded light; drew close the blinds and shut
the doors, locking all but one. Here was placed a guardian who was to
admit grudgingly and one by one those who were fortunate enough to speak
alone with the sybil, for she would only see certain of the guests whom
she selected herself from the throng, describing their appearance and
dress to the guardian of her improvised temple. These were all ladies of
great position. They entered laughing and half defiant. They came out,
some pale, some red, some trembling, some in tears. “Who can she be?”
they whispered in terrified tones to one another, and in that terror
showed how she had penetrated their hearts and touched on their secret
thoughts.
At last the guardian of the door said that Hilary himself was to enter.
When Hilary went in, the young man, as he closed the door on the fortune
teller and her new guest, turned with a laugh to the group behind him.
“Already she has startled him,” he said, “I heard him utter almost a cry
as he entered.”
“Could you see in?” asked one, “perhaps she has taken off her disguise
for her host!”
“No, I saw nothing,” he answered. “Can none of you who have been in
guess who she is?”
“No,” answered a girl who had come out from the ordeal with white and
trembling lips. “It is impossible to guess. She knows everything.”
It was as they had supposed. She had taken off her disguise for her
host. The staff, the large cloak, the wig and cap lay on the ground.
With the swift use of a cosmetiqued kerchief she had removed from her
fair skin the dark complexion of the ancient sybil. When Hilary entered
she had completed this rapid toilette and sat leaning back in a low
chair. She was dressed in a rich evening costume; she held a mask in her
hand ready for use. But now her face was uncovered; her strange and
brilliant eyes were fixed on Hilary; her beautiful mouth wore a half
smile of amusement at his surprise. It was more than surprise that he
experienced. Again that rush of inexplicable emotion overpowered him. He
felt like one intoxicated. He regarded her very earnestly for a few
moments.
“Surely,” he said, “we have met before!”
“We were born under the same star,” she answered in a voice that
thrilled him. Until now he had not heard her speak. The sense of some
strong link or association that united them, was made doubly strong by
the sound of that voice, rich, strong and soft. Suddenly he recognised
the meaning of his emotion. He no longer struggled against it, he no
longer was bewildered by it.
He approached her and sat down upon the couch at her side. He regarded
her with wonder and adoration, but no longer with awe or surprise. For
he understood that the event which he had imagined would never come was
already here—he was in love.
“You said you would disclose your name to the one who was born under the
same star as yourself.”
“Do you not know me?” she said with a slight look of surprise. She
fancied everyone knew her at least by sight.
“I do not,” he answered, “though indeed I am perplexed to think I can
ever have lived without knowing you.”
Flattery produced no effect upon her, she lived in an atmosphere of it.
“I am the Princess Fleta,” she answered. Hilary started and coloured a
little at the words, and could ill control his emotion. The Princess
Fleta held a position in the society of the country, which can only
belong to one who stands next to a throne that rules an important
nation. She was a personage among crowned heads, one to whom an emperor
might, without stooping, offer his love; and Hilary, the child of an
officer of the Austrian army, and of a poor daughter of a decayed
aristocratic family, Hilary had in the swift stirring of love at first
sight, told his own heart that he loved her! It could never be unsaid,
and he knew it. He had whispered the words within himself, the whisper
would find a hundred echoes. He must always love her.
The Princess turned her wonderful eyes on him and smiled.
“I have done my work for to-night,” she said. “I have amused some of the
people, now I should like to dance.”
Hilary was sufficient of a courtier not to be deaf to this command,
though his whole soul was in his eyes and all his thoughts fixed on her
beauty. He rose and offered her his arm, she put on her mask and they
left the room. When Hilary appeared among the crowd that hung round the
door of the fortune teller’s sanctum, accompanied by a slender, graceful
woman, whose face was hidden save for the great dark eyes, there was an
irrepressible murmur of excitement and wonder. “Who can she be?” was
repeated again a hundred times. But no one guessed. None dreamed this
could be the Princess Fleta herself; for there were but few houses she
would visit at, and no one imagined that there could be any inducement
to bring her to Madame Estanol’s. The mystery of her presence she
explained to Hilary while they danced together.
“I am a student of magic,” she said, “and I have already learned some
useful secrets. I can read the hearts of the courtiers who surround me,
and I know where to look for true friends. Last night I dreamed of the
friend I should find here. Do you care for these mystic occupations?”
“I know nothing of them,” said Hilary.
“Let me teach you then,” said the Princess, with a light laugh. “You
will be a good pupil, that I know. Perhaps I may make a disciple of you!
and there are not many with whom that is possible.”
“And why?” asked Hilary. “Surely it is a fascinating study to those who
can believe in the secrets.”
“Scepticism is not the great difficulty,” answered the Princess, “but
fear. Terror turns the crowd back from the threshold. Only a few dare
cross it.”
“And you are one of the few,” said Hilary, gazing on her with eyes of
burning admiration.
“I have never felt fear,” she answered.
“And would it be impossible to make you feel it, I wonder,” said Hilary.
“Do you desire to try?” she answered, with a smile at his daring speech.
It did not sound so full of impertinence as it looks, for Hilary’s eyes
and face were all alight with love and admiration, and his voice
trembled with passion.
“You can make the attempt if you choose,” she said, glancing at him with
those strange eyes of hers. “Terrify me if you can.”
“Not here, in my own house, it would not be hospitable.”
“Come and see me, then, some day when you think it will amuse you. Try
and frighten me. I will show you my laboratory, where I produce essences
and incenses to please the gnomes and ghouls.”
Hilary accepted this invitation with a flush of pleasure.
“Take me to the Countess,” she said at last. “I am going home. But I
want her first to introduce me to your mother.”
The Countess was delighted that the Princess had made up her mind to
this. She hardly thought Madame Estanol would be pleased to discover
that the great lady had been masquerading in her drawing-room, and had
not cared to throw off her disguise even for her hostess. And the
Countess valued the friendship of Madame Estanol; so she was glad the
wilful Princess had decided to treat her with politeness.
Madame Estanol could scarcely conceal her surprise at learning what the
dignity was which had been hidden under the disguise of the old
fortune-teller. The Princess did not remove her mask, and, with a laugh,
she warned Madame Estanol that some of her guests would not be pleased
to discover who the sybil was who had read their hearts so shrewdly.
When she had gone, Hilary’s heart and spirits had gone with her. It
seemed as if he hardly cared to speak; his laughter had died away
altogether. His thoughts, his very self, followed the fascinating
personality that had bewitched him.
Madame Estanol saw his abstraction, his flushed eager look, and the new
softness of his eyes. But she said no word. She feared the Princess, who
was well known to be full of caprice and wilfulness. She feared lest
Hilary should be mad enough to yield to the charm of the girl’s beauty
and confident manner; the charm of power, peculiar, or rather, possible
only to one in a royal place. But she would say no word; knowing Hilary
well, she knew that any attempt to influence him against it would only
intensify his new passion.
CHAPTER II.
Two days later Hilary nerved himself to pay the visit to the Princess.
He thought she could not consider it to be too soon, for it seemed to
him two months since he had seen her.
She lived in a garden-house some two or three miles away in the country.
Her father’s palace in the city never pleased her; she only came there
when festivities or ceremonials made her presence necessary. In the
country, with her chaperone and her maids, she was free to do as she
chose. For they were one and all afraid of her, and held her
“laboratory” in the profoundest respect. None of them would have entered
that room except to avoid some dreadful doom.
Hilary was taken to the Princess in the garden, where she was walking to
and fro in an avenue of trees which were covered with sweet scented
blossoms. She welcomed Hilary with a charming manner, and the hour he
spent with her here in the sunshine was one of the wildest intoxication.
They began openly to play the pretty game of love. Now that no eyes were
on them the Princess let him forget that she belonged to a different
rank from his own. When she was tired of walking, “Come,” she said, “and
I will shew you my laboratory. No one in this house ever enters it. If
you should say in the city that you have been in that room you will be
besieged with questions. Be careful to say nothing.”
“I would die sooner,” exclaimed Hilary, to whom the idea of talking
about the Princess and her secrets seemed like sacrilege.
The room was without windows, perfectly dark but for a softened light
shed by a lamp in the centre of the high ceiling. The walls were painted
black and on them were drawn strange figures and shapes in red. These
had evidently not been painted by any artisan hand; though bold in
touch, they were irregular in workmanship. Beside a great vessel which
stood upon the ground, was a chair, and in this chair a figure upon
which Hilary’s attention immediately became fastened.
He saw at once that it was not human, that it was not a lay figure, that
it was not a statue. It resembled most a lay figure, but there was
something strange about it which does not exist in the mere form on
which draperies are hung. And its detail was elaborated; the skin was
tinted, the eyes darkened correctly, the hair appeared to be human.
Hilary remained at the doorway unable to advance because of the
fascination this form exercised upon him.
The Princess looked back from where she stood in the centre of the room
beneath the light; she saw the direction of his gaze and laughed.
“You need not fear it,” she said.
“Is it a lay figure?” asked Hilary, trying to speak easily, for he
remembered that she despised those who knew fear.
“Yes,” she answered, “it is my lay figure.”
There was something that puzzled Hilary in her tone.
“Are you an artist?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, “in life—in human nature. I do not work with a
pencil or a brush; I use an agent that cannot be seen yet can be felt.”
“What do you mean?” asked Hilary.
She turned on him a strange look, that was at first distrustful, and
then grew soft and tender.
“I will not tell you yet,” she said.
Hilary roused himself to answer her lightly.
“Have I to pass through some ordeal before you tell me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered gaily, “and already an ordeal faces you. Dare you
advance into the room or no?”
Hilary made a great effort to break the spell that was on him. He went
hastily across the room to where she stood. Then he realised that he had
actually passed through an ordeal. He had resisted some force, the
nature of which he knew not, and he had come out the victor. Realising
this brought to him another conviction.
“Princess,” he said, “there is some one else in this room besides you
and me. We are not alone.”
He spoke so suddenly, and from so great a sense of startled surprise,
that he did not pause to think whether his question were a wise one or
not. The Princess laughed as she looked at him.
“You are very sensitive,” she said. “Certainly we were born under the
same star, for we are susceptible to the same influences. No, we are not
alone. I have servants here whom no eyes have seen but mine. Would you
like to see them? Do not say yes hastily. It means a long and tedious
apprenticeship, obtaining mastery over these servants. But unless you
conquer them you cannot often see me; for if you are much near to me
they will hate you, and their hate is greater than your power to resist
it.”
She spoke seriously now, and Hilary felt a strange sensation as he
looked at this beautiful girl standing beneath the lamp light. He
experienced a sudden dread of her as of someone stronger than himself;
and also an impassioned desire to serve her, to be her slave, to give
his life to her utterly. Perhaps she read the love in his eyes, for she
turned away and moved towards the figure in the chair.
“I know this distresses you,” she said. “You shall see it no longer.”
She opened a large screen which was formed of some gold coloured
material covered with shapes outlined in black. She arranged this so
that the figure was altogether hidden from view and also the great
vessel which stood beside it.
“Now,” she said, “you will breathe more freely. And I am going to shew
you something. We did not come out of the sunshine for no purpose. And
we must be quick, for my good aunt will be terrified when she finds I
have brought you in here. I believe she will hardly expect to see you
alive again.”
She opened a gold vessel, which stood upon a cabinet, while she spoke,
and the air immediately became full of a strong sweet perfume. Hilary
put his hand to his forehead. Was it possible that he could be so
immediately affected, or was it his imagination that the red shapes and
figures which were on the black wall moved and ordered and arranged
themselves? Yet, so it was; to his eyes the forms mingled and again
broke up and re-mingled. A word was formed and then another. It was
unconsciously imprinted on Hilary’s memory before it changed and
vanished; he noticed only the mysterious occurrence which was happening
before his eyes. Suddenly he became aware that a sentence had been
completed; that words had been written there which he would never have
dared to utter; that on the wall before him had appeared in letters as
of fire the secret of his heart. He staggered back and drew his eyes
with difficulty from the wall to fix them in amazement and fear upon the
Princess. Her face was flushed, her eyes were bright and tender.
“Did you see it?” he asked in a trembling voice.
For a moment she hesitated then she answered, “Yes, I saw it.”
There was a brief silence. Hilary looked again at the wall, expecting to
see the thought in his mind written there. But the shapes were returning
to their original appearance, and the perfume was dying out of the air.
“Come,” said the Princess suddenly, “we have been here long enough. My
aunt will be distressed. Let us go to her.”
She led the way from the room, and Hilary followed her. In another
moment they were in a large drawing-room, flooded with sunshine and
fragrant with flowers; the Princess’ aunt was busied with silks which
she had entangled while at her embroidery; the Princess was on her knees
beside her, holding a skein of yellow silk upon her hands. Hilary stood
a moment utterly bewildered. Had he been dreaming? Was that black room
and its terrible atmosphere a phantasy?
He had stayed long enough, and he now took his leave reluctantly. The
Princess, who would have no ceremony at the Garden House, rose from her
knees and said she would open the gate for him. Hilary flushed with
pleasure at this mark of kindness.
The gate she took him to was a narrow one that stood in a thick-set
hedge of flowering shrubs. When he had passed through he looked back,
and saw the Princess leaning on the gate, framed in gorgeous blossoms.
She smiled and held out her hand to him. The richness of her presence
intoxicated him, and he lost all sense of the apparently impassable gulf
between them.
“You read the words,” he said, “and you give me your hand in mine?”
“I read the words,” she answered, in a soft voice that thrilled him,
“and I give you my hand in yours. Good-bye!”
She had touched his hand for an instant, and now she was gone. Hilary
turned to walk through the flowering hedges to the city. But his heart,
his thought, his soul remained behind. She had read the words, and she
was not angry. She knew of his love for her and she was not angry. She
had read his heart and had not taken offence. What might he not hope
for?
Then came another thought. She had read the words. Then that black room
was no phantasy, but a fact as actual as the sunshine. What were the
powers of this strange creature that he loved? He knew not; but he knew
that he loved her.
* * * * * * * *
An overpowering desire carried him daily on that road between the
flowery hedges to the Garden House. Only sometimes had he the courage to
enter. Most often he lingered at that narrow gate, embosomed in flowers
and looked longingly over it. The first time that he entered after this
visit, in which his secret was written before his eyes, he found the
Princess standing within the gate. She held out her hand to him saying
simply, “I knew you were coming. I have prepared something, and I have
persuaded my aunt that no terrible thing will happen if you are in my
laboratory for a little while. So come with me.”
It was brilliantly lit, this black walled room she called her
laboratory. The great vessel stood in the midst of the floor beneath the
lamp, and from it rose flame and smoke. A strong and vivid perfume
filled the air, and the upper part of the high room was clouded with
grey blue smoke, that shone in the light like silver.
In the chair beside it sat a figure: it was that of a beautiful woman. A
strange mixture of emotions overpowered Hilary. At the first glance he
felt that this figure was the same he had seen the other day; at the
second he recognised his mother. He rushed forward to her and became
aware that she was lifeless; then he turned passionately upon the
Princess with anger and horror in his face.
“What have you done? What have you done?” he cried.
“Nothing,” she said, with a smile. “I have done no harm. Do you not see
that is only an image? My lay figure, as I told you.”
He gave a long look at the inanimate shape that was so perfect a
representation of his mother, and then he turned upon the Princess a
look of more intense horror than before.
“What are you doing?” he asked, in a low voice.
“No harm!” she answered lightly. “Your mother hates and fears me. I
cannot endure that. I am making her love me. I am making her desire your
presence here with me.”
For a while they stood in silence by the side of the vessel and its
flaming contents; then suddenly Hilary cried out: “I cannot bear it! Put
an end to this terrible spell!”
“Yes,” said the Princess, “I will, but not to its results.”
She drew the screen before the seated figure, and threw something into
the vessel that instantly quenched the flame.
Then she led Hilary from the room, and they walked up and down beneath
the trees, talking of things as lovers talk—things that interested
themselves but none other.
When Hilary returned home his mother rose from her couch and held out
her hand to him. She drew him to sit beside her.
“Hilary,” she said, “something tells me you have been with the Princess
Fleta. It is well, and I am glad. She is a good friend for you; ask her
if I shall come to see her.”
Hilary rose without replying. The dew stood on his brow. For the first
time he was conscious of actual fear, and the fear he felt was of the
woman he loved.
(_To be continued._)
A LAW OF LIFE: KARMA.
There is nothing more common to those who know anything about Theosophy
than to be asked:—What is Karma? Karma is a Sanskrit word which has to
be used by those who discuss the idea it conveys, simply because there
is no English word to correspond to it. That is very easy to answer.
Then comes the question:—What is the idea which it conveys? Than this
there is nothing more difficult to answer, and the reason why this is
the case is not far to seek. Let it once be granted that the
constitution of man is complex and complicated, and that the soul has
existed for ages that seem like an eternity, and existed, moreover, in a
garb of flesh which has been changed thousands of times in the course of
those ages. Let this be granted, and, in addition, that no action is
without its effect in the physical, moral, and spiritual worlds, then,
it will be seen, that the answer to the question: “What is Karma,” is
very difficult, if not well-nigh impossible. Still, some endeavour may
be made to give a general idea, though the details of any individual
case can hardly be calculated.
Granting the principle of reincarnation, Karma is the _working_ of the
great law which governs those incarnations; but, taken in its wider
sense, Karma may be defined as a manifestation of the One, Universal,
Divine Principle in the phenomenal world. Thus, it may be further
defined as “the great law of Harmony” which governs the Universe.
But it may be replied that Harmony is not the great law of Nature, but,
on the contrary, lack of harmony and discord. And what proof is there
that Harmony is the law?
When such proof is required, the answer is at once made:—Too short a
view of life and the universe has been taken. The man who denies the
existence of harmony in the universe has transgressed the law and is
experiencing the punishment. He does this unconsciously to himself,
because the law of harmony forms an unconscious impulse to its
re-adjustment when it has been broken. No better illustration can be
given than in the definition of a fugue, which is:—“A musical
composition in contrapuntal style, in which a subject is proposed by one
part, and then responded to by the others according to certain rules.”
Again, in musical chords, the composing notes, if taken by twos and
threes, will be found in discord, but, when taken altogether, produce a
harmony. Harmony is then the just adaptation of things to each other,
and the universe, the personal element of man being eliminated, is
essentially an evidence of harmony; otherwise it could not exist, for it
would fall to pieces and no longer be a universe. To those who find only
discord around them, the note to Rule 5, in the second part of “Light on
the Path,” may convey a meaning. No other words can express it better.
One reason for the apparent disharmony may be given. The desires of man
are, as a rule, devoted to the gain of what may be called his
personality. While such is the case in any man, to the exclusion of
other interests, that man cannot dive deep into his own heart and
perceive the real underlying harmony. He is incapable of understanding
or even of perceiving it, because his attention is solely devoted to
that which produces discord. Naturally, then, to him all things seem out
of joint, the reign of discord is ever present, and he cries out
perpetually against the injustice of the world he lives in. But if he
will but turn his attention from his personality to the greater span of
his life, and endeavour first to see evidence of harmony in those around
him and then in himself, he will find that harmony; and his way will be
made plain to him.
Granting, then, that it is the Great Law of Harmony or Karma which
governs the Universe, and which is the Divine principle under one aspect
manifested in Nature, then it is easy to understand that any action in
violation of Nature’s laws will produce a deviation from the straight
line of harmony; consequently the law of harmony will produce an
adjusting effect. Now, who is to produce that effect? Nature, or the man
who committed the action? Both, or rather, the latter under the
influence of the former. The latter most certainly, unless man is to be
regarded simply as a blind puppet. It is possible to compare the
situation to that of a man whose progress is contingent upon an exact
balance being preserved on a pair of scales in front of him. If his
actions disturb the balance of those scales and add weight to one side
or the other, it is necessary immediately to add a counter-balancing
weight on the opposite side and so restore the balance or harmony. (Of
course this is a physical illustration, and can hardly be carried very
far on the moral plane.) That is to say that the one Divine principle is
divided by man’s actions into two opposing forces of good and evil, and
man’s progress depends on the exertion of his will to preserve harmony
and prevent deviation to one side or the other. Evil only exists in
contradistinction to good, and the preservation of such harmony as we
have and the advance towards Universal Harmony—the abstract divinity—is
what all right-minded persons theoretically aspire to.
It has been thought that, in consequence of the attention paid to the
classics in education, the word Nemesis would replace Karma with
advantage. So perhaps it might have done, had the earliest traditions of
Greek mythology been preserved. But the fatal tendency towards
anthropomorphism set in very strongly even in the palmy days of Greece,
and in consequence Nemesis only pourtrayed the personification of a
human passion. Originally the balancing power, independent of Zeus and
all the Olympian gods, who carried out her decrees, Nemesis became
simply the avenging deity; so much was this the case that in a general
sense she might have been called the tutelary deity of those envious of
their neighbour’s happiness. Between these points Nemesis appears as the
personification of the moral reverence for law, of the natural fear of
committing a wrong action, and hence the personification of conscience.
It was after this period that Nemesis was said to direct human affairs,
with a view to restore the balance between happiness and unhappiness.
But, in earlier times, the idea of Nemesis was divided into those of
_Nemesis_ and _Adrasteia_ (or what Orientalists would call good and evil
Karma), for even then the idea of evil was beginning to be attached to
Nemesis.
But Nemesis was closely linked to both the _Moirae_ (Fates) and the
_Eumenides_ (Furies), who were all the children of Zeus and Night. The
_Moirae_ appear generally as divinities of fate in a strict sense, and
act independently at the helm of necessity. They direct fate, and watch
that the fate assigned to every being _by eternal laws_ shall take its
course (_Aesch_: _Prometheus Vinctus_, 511-515). Zeus, as well as gods
and men, submits to them. They assign their proper functions to the
Erinnyes who inflict the punishment, and are sometimes called their
sisters (_Aesch_: _Eumen_: 335, 962; _Prometheus_ 516, 696, 895). These
latter were always considered to be more ancient than the Olympian gods,
and were therefore not under the rule of Zeus, though they honoured and
esteemed him. The crimes which they especially punished were (1),
violation of the respect due to old age; (2), perjury; (3), murder; (4),
violation of the law of hospitality; (5), improper conduct towards
suppliants; and the punishment was inflicted not only after death but
during life. (It is somewhat curious that these “crimes” are also those
actions which entail the heaviest Karma.) No prayers, sacrifices, or
tears could move them or protect the object of their persecution. When
they feared that he would escape, they called in _Dikè_ to their
assistance, with whom they were closely connected, as justice was said
to be their only object.
Now when the meaning of all these “minor” Greek deities is considered,
and further, if it is considered in connection with the definition of
Karma, it will be seen that all are so many personifications of the main
divisions of the law of ancient Nemesis or Karma. But the one word
cannot, in popular estimation, replace the other; for, as said above,
Nemesis has lost its original meaning, and is almost invariably
associated with the idea of vengeance. Karma, however, has never lost
its essential connection with the law of Harmony, though even in this
case there is some tendency to confine it to the law of cause and
effects, and to consider what is called evil Karma solely in relation to
human life. This is almost inevitable, while the human personality takes
the foremost place in the consideration of each man, and his own
welfare, in time and eternity, is the goal of his endeavours. As said
above, while this is the case man cannot regard the great laws of the
Universe, nor recognise himself as part of it, and thus his life is
confined to the world of effects, and can never enter that of causes.
Thus it is ignorance of the law of Harmony that leads him to struggle in
vain, in this world, for the apparent advantage of surpassing his
neighbour, and—worse—to instinctively carry the struggle beyond death,
and attempt to advance in favour in the so-called heavenly kingdom.
This is the result of the pernicious doctrine of reward and punishment
after death, in heaven or in hell. Nothing could have been found more
calculated to circumscribe the view of life as a whole, and concentrate
man’s attention on temporary matters. It is inevitable that man should
regard his soul as something fashioned after his struggling personality,
and very similar to it; and this view of his personality was not
calculated to agree with the loftiness of the ideas about the soul. From
this point of view he either rejected the idea of soul as altogether
worthless, or else he transferred his interest to the soul’s welfare in
Heaven—in either case concentrating his attention on what is inevitably
transient. It is as though a man lost sight of the fact of respiration
in its component parts of inspiration and expiration; that is to say,
that one respiration is taken as the whole, and the millions of other
respirations in the course of a human life are lost sight of and
forgotten. Thus the man who adapts his life to the ordinary views, with
regard to life on earth and life in Heaven, fixes his thoughts and
aspirations on what is transient, and desires to intensify that. No
truer words were ever spoken than by Christ when he said:—“What shall it
profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul.” It is a
loss which man will inevitably experience if he pursues this purblind
course of endeavour, for he will lose sight of his _real_ soul
altogether, and he—as _he_, that is—will never regain it. He follows a
flickering Will-o’-the-Wisp, and finds his way only into a treacherous
marsh; the result being that the whole of that incarnation is wasted,
and a stumbling block, perhaps, placed in the way of the next. This
danger is, as said, due to neglect or ignorance of the idea of Karma,
and to the purblind view consequently taken of the great scope of human
life.
In the _Theosophist_, of July, 1887, Mr. Subba Row deals with the
doctrine of Karma as contained in the Bhagavadgita. His lecture contains
one of the clearest elucidations of the metaphysical side of the
question which it is possible to put in language, so far as the Kosmic
aspect of Karma is concerned. In it, and the previous lectures, Mr.
Subba Row dealt with three main bases or vehicles[13] (states of matter)
through which the light of the spirit is reflected into the phenomenal
world. These vehicles, when traced to their origin, lead to _prakriti_,
or matter; as opposed to _purusha_, or spirit.
-----
Footnote 13:
Sanskrit Upadhi.
-----
“So Krishna says that all Karma is traceable to Upadhi, and hence to
_Prakriti_. _Karma_ itself depends upon conscious existence. Conscious
existence entirely depends upon the constitution of man’s mind....
_Upadhi_ is the cause of individual existence. Existence itself, I
mean living existence, is, however, traceable to this light (of the
Logos). All conscious existence is traceable to it, and, furthermore,
when spiritual intelligence is developed, it directly springs from
it.... Now it is through the action of this _Karma_ that individual
existence makes its appearance. On account of this _Karmae_ individual
existence is maintained, and it is on account of _Karma_ that man
suffers all the pains and sorrows of earthly existence. Birth, life,
and death, and all the innumerable ills to which human nature is
subject, are endured by mankind owing to this _Karma_.... Thus
_Karma_, being the inevitable result of _Prakriti_, and _Prakriti_
continuing to exist as long as you are a human being, it is useless to
try to get rid of _Karma_.... When you renounce this desire (desire to
do Karma other than from a sense of duty), _Karma_ will become weaker
and weaker in its ability to affect you, till at last you arrive at a
condition in which you are not affected by _Karma_ at all, and that
condition is the condition of _Mukti_.”[14]
-----
Footnote 14:
Liberation or Nirvana.
-----
“Those philosophers who want to reject all _Karma_ pretend to renounce
it altogether. But that is an impossible task. No man, so long as he
is a human being, can ever give up _Karma_ altogether. He is at least
bound to do that which the bare existence of his physical body
requires, unless, indeed, he means to die of starvation, or otherwise
put an untimely end to his life.”
“Supposing you do give up _Karma_—that is abstain from it in action,
how can you keep control over your own minds? It is useless to abstain
from an act, and yet be constantly thinking of it. If you come to the
resolution that you ought to give up _Karma_, you must necessarily
conclude that you ought not even to think about these things. That
being so, let us see in what a condition you will then place
yourselves. As almost all our mental states have some connection with
the phenomenal world, and are somehow or other connected with _Karma_
in its various phases, it is difficult to understand how it is
possible for a man to give up all _Karma_, unless he can annihilate
his mind, or get into an eternal state of _Sushupti_ (_dreamless_
slumber). Moreover, if you have to give up all _Karma_, you have to
give up good _Karma_ as well as bad, for _Karma_, in its widest sense,
is not confined to bad actions. If all the people in the world give up
_Karma_, how is the world to exist? Is it not likely that an end will
then be put to all good impulses, to all patriotic and philanthropic
deeds, that all the good people, who have been and are exerting
themselves in doing unselfish deeds for the good of their fellow men,
will be prevented from working? If you call upon everybody to give up
_Karma_, you will simply create a number of lazy drones, and prevent
good people from benefiting their fellow beings.”
“And furthermore, it may be argued that this is not a rule of
universal applicability. How few are there in the world who can give
up their whole _Karma_, and reduce themselves to a condition of
eternal inactivity. And if you ask these people to follow this course,
they may, instead of giving up _Karma_, simply become lazy, idle
persons, who have not really given up anything. What is the meaning of
the expression, to give up _Karma_? Krishna says that in abstaining
from doing a thing there may be the effects of active _Karma_, and in
active _Karma_ there may be no real Karmic results. If you kill a man,
it is murder, and you are held responsible for it; but suppose you
refuse to feed your old parents and they die in consequence of your
neglect, do you mean to say that you are not responsible for that
_Karma_? You may talk in the most metaphysical manner you please, you
cannot get rid of _Karma_ altogether.”
“Taking all these circumstances into consideration, and admitting the
many mischievous consequences that will follow as the result of
recommending every human being to give up _Karma_, Krishna adds all
that is to be found in the teaching that makes the Logos the means of
salvation, and recommends man—if he would seek to obtain immortality—a
method by following which he is sure to reach it, and not one that may
end in his having to go through another incarnation, or being absorbed
into another spiritual being whose existence is not immortal.”
“The recommendation to practice and obtain self-mastery, Krishna
accepts. But he would add to it more effectual means of obtaining the
desired end—means sufficient in themselves to enable you to reach that
end. He points out that this practise of self-mastery is not only
useful for training in one birth, but is likely to leave permanent
impulses on a man’s soul which come to his rescue in future
incarnations.”...
“Krishna, in recommending his own method, combines all that is good in
the five systems, and adds thereto all those necessary means of
obtaining salvation that follow as inferences from the existence of
the _Logos_, and its real relationship to man and to all the
principles that operate in the cosmos. His is certainly more
comprehensive than any of the theories from which these various
schools of philosophy have started, and it is this theory that he is
trying, in the second six chapters of the Bhagavadgita,to inculcate.”
In the above quoted lecture Karma was considered in its Kosmic and
universal aspect, but no attempt was made to consider it in its
individual aspect as applied to the various great sections of Being on
this planet. The first approach to this is seen in the animal kingdom.
Doubtless, the mineral and vegetable kingdoms are under the law of
Harmony with Nature; it could not possibly be otherwise for they are
closer to what is known as nature and much less individualised. But
there is so little individualisation in these kingdoms that it is hardly
possible to consider them in relation to the law of harmony, or to that
of Cause and Effect on the plane of objectivity. But to anyone who has
thought about the question it is plain that the animal kingdom, in its
individuals, does come at least under the law of cause and effect. This
may practically be called the working of Karma on the physical plane and
by some has been called the law of Compensation, this being a term
expressive of mechanical and physical energy. The word Karma had better
be retained to express the working of the law of harmony on that plane
where moral responsibility begins, and where “the law of compensation
can be modified by will and reason,” and where therefore personal merit
and demerit exists. To quote from an article in the Theosophist on the
Karma of animals:—
“A piece of iron is attracted to a magnet without having any desire in
the matter. If it is exposed to air and water, it may become rusty and
cannot prevent it. A plant or a tree may be straight or crooked on
account of circumstances over which it has no control. An animal
usually follows the instincts of its nature without any merit or
demerit for so doing, a child or an idiot may smilingly kick over a
lamp which may set a whole city on fire; the cause will have its
effect, but the child or the idiot cannot be held responsible for it,
because they have not sufficient intelligence to fully control their
actions or to judge about the consequences. A person can only be held
responsible according to his ability to perceive justice and to
distinguish between good and evil. The power to discriminate properly
is an attribute of the human mind, and the higher that mind is
developed the more it becomes responsible for the effects it produces.
A cat may kill a mouse or an ox gore a man; and to hold them morally
responsible for it would be an act of injustice, cruelty and
stupidity. Whether or not a dog may have sufficient reason to incur
any moral responsibility is a matter of opinion, and no emphatic
affirmation or denial will decide the case: but it is reasonable to
suppose that a dog, though he may have sufficient reason to know what
is good or bad for himself or for those to whom he is attached, has no
moral responsibility.”
Thus, though animals may be under the law of compensation, and under the
law of harmony or Karma, they _are not_ under the law of compensation,
or the law of harmony or Karma in the same way as it applies to human
beings. With humanity, a fresh element has been introduced—the
intellectual, reasoning, and discriminating power. Consequently, while
the universal law of harmony or Karma governs the whole Universe, the
law of Harmony should be applied to the Universe as a whole, and its
manifestations, the laws of Karma and Compensation, should be applied to
man and animal respectively.
It is more possible, perhaps, to consider the question in relation to
the various grades of humanity so far as we can conceive of it and them.
It would be better to commence with the highest and proceed downwards.
All Theosophists, and many who are not, have heard of Mahatmas, and many
have speculated very wrongly about them. In this magazine, and in this
article, it may be possible to write about them without disrespect,
_because_ only through these speculations is it possible to understand
the law of harmony and its relation to man as Karma, and to divinity as
harmony. The word Karma as limited above does not apply to the Mahatma.
“Gazing only upon the eternal the Mahatma feels neither good nor ill,
nor does either good or ill come to him. Personally, he cannot either
suffer or rejoice, and is incapable of emotion, because he is
indifferent to circumstances. But as he developes, his sympathies
increase, until at last his sympathies enter into all beings, and with
them he rejoices and suffers until they also pass beyond the sense of
joy or pain.”
“They do not have good or evil Karma. The glory and good fortune and
happiness, these go to the good men who look for temporary joys. Karma
produces pleasure or pain by the ordering of circumstances. The
Mahatma does not feel pleasure and pain, and is not affected by
circumstances, therefore he is Karmaless. The law of cause and effect
is only called Karma when it concerns temporary and changing
circumstances. The acts of the Mahatma generate spiritual energy which
goes to create the power that shall be his when he is no longer man,
and consequently form an eternal factor in his future; thus, the
Mahatma, being without personal desire, is outside the operation of
the law of Karma.”
In his real condition he is in harmony with Nature, and its agent, and
hence outside Karma. His physical body is however still within its
limits of action. But to him this is a very small matter.
ARCHIBALD KEIGHTLEY, M.B.
(_To be continued._)
THE MYSTERY OF ALL TIME.
The inner light which guides men to greatness, and makes them noble,
is a mystery through all time and must remain so while Time lasts
for us; but there come moments, even in the midst of ordinary life,
when Time has no hold upon us, and then all the circumstance of
outward existence falls away, and we find ourselves face to face
with the mystery beyond. In great trouble, in great joy, in keen
excitement, in serious illness, these moments come. Afterwards they
seem very wonderful, looking back upon them.
What is this mystery, and why is it so veiled, are the burning
questions for anyone who has begun to realise its existence. Trouble
most often rouses men to the consciousness of it, and forces them to
ask these questions when those, whom one has loved better than
oneself, are taken away into the formless abyss of the unknown by
death, or are changed, by the experiences of life, till they are no
longer recognisable as the same; then comes the wild hunger for
knowledge. Why is it so? What is it, that surrounds us with a great
dim cloud into which all loved things plunge in time and are lost to
us, obliterated, utterly taken from us? It is this which makes life
so unbearable to the emotional natures, and which developes
selfishness in narrow hearts. If there is no certainty and no
permanence in life, then it seems to the Egotist, that there is no
reasonable course but to attend to one’s own affairs, and be content
with the happiness of the first person singular. There are many
persons sufficiently generous in temperament to wish others were
happy also, and who, if they saw any way to do it, would gladly
redress some of the existing ills—the misery of the poor, the social
evil, the sufferings of the diseased, the sorrow of those made
desolate by death—these things the sentimental philanthropist
shudders to think of. He does not act because he can do so little.
Shall he take one miserable child and give it comfort when millions
will be enduring the same fate when that one is dead? The inexorable
cruelty of life continues on its giant course, and those who are
born rich and healthy live in pleasant places, afraid to think of
the horrors life holds within it. Loss, despair, unutterable pain,
comes at last, and the one who has hitherto been fortunate is on a
level with those to whom misery has been familiarised by a lifetime
of experience. For trouble bites hardest when it springs on a new
victim. Of course, there are profoundly selfish natures which do not
suffer in this sense, which look only for personal comfort and are
content with the small horizon visible to one person’s sight; for
these, there is but little trouble in the world, there is none of
the passionate pain which exists in sensitive and poetic natures.
The born artist is aware of pain as soon as he is aware of pleasure;
he recognises sadness as a part of human life before it has touched
on his own. He has an innate consciousness of the mystery of the
ages, that thing stirring within man’s soul and which enables him to
outlive pain and become great, which leads him on the road to the
divine life. This gives him enthusiasm, a superb heroism indifferent
to calamity; if he is a poet he will write his heart out, even for a
generation that has no eyes or ears for him; if he desires to help
others personally, he is capable of giving his very life to save one
wretched child from out a million of miserable ones. For it is not
his puny personal effort in the world that he considers—not his
little show of labour done; what he is conscious of is the
over-mastering desire to work with the beneficent forces of
super-nature, to become one with the divine mystery, and when he can
forget time and circumstances, he is face to face with that mystery.
Many have fancied they must reach it by death; but none have come
back to tell us that this is so. We have no proof that man is not as
blind beyond the grave as he is on this side of it. Has he entered
the eternal thought? If not, the mystery is a mystery still.
To one who is entering occultism in earnest, all the trouble of the
world seems suddenly apparent. There is a point of experience when
father and mother, wife and child, become indistinguishable, and
when they seem no more familiar or friendly than a company of
strangers. The one dearest of all may be close at hand and
unchanged, and yet is as far as if death had come between. Then all
distinction between pleasure and pain, love and hate, have vanished.
A melancholy, keener than that felt by a man in his first fierce
experience of grief, overshadows the soul. It is the pain of the
struggle to break the shell in which man has prisoned himself. Once
broken then there is no more pain; all ties are severed, all
personal demands are silenced for ever. The man has forced himself
to face the great mystery, which is now a mystery no longer, for he
has become part of it. It is essentially the mystery of the ages,
and these have no longer any meaning for him to whom time and space
and all other limitations are but passing experiences. It has become
to him a reality, profound, indeed, because it is bottomless, wide,
indeed, because it is limitless. He has touched on the greatness of
life, which is sublime in its impartiality and effortless
generosity. He is friend and lover to all those living beings that
come within his consciousness, not to the one or two chosen ones
only—which is indeed only an enlarged selfishness. While a man
retains his humanity, it is certain that one or two chosen ones will
give him more pleasure by contact, than all the rest of the beings
in the Universe and all the heavenly host; but he has to remember
and recognise what this preference is. It is not a selfish thing
which has to be crushed out, if the love is the love that gives;
freedom from attachments is not a meritorious condition in itself.
The freedom needed is not from those who cling to you, but from
those to whom you cling. The familiar phrase of the lover “I cannot
live without you” must be words which cannot be uttered, to the
occultist. If he has but one anchor, the great tides will sweep him
away into nothingness. But the natural preference which must exist
in every man for a few persons is one form of the lessons of Life.
By contact with these other souls he has other channels by which to
penetrate to the great mystery. For every soul touches it, even the
darkest. Solitude is a great teacher, but society is even greater.
It is so hard to find and take the highest part of those we love,
that in the very difficulty of the search there is a serious
education. We realise when making that effort, far more clearly what
it is that creates the mystery in which we live, and makes us so
ignorant. It is the swaying, vibrating, never-resting desires of the
animal soul in man. The life of this part of man’s nature is so
vigorous and strongly developed from the ages during which he has
dwelt in it, that it is almost impossible to still it so as to
obtain contact with the noble spirit. This constant and confusing
life, this ceaseless occupation with the trifles of the hour, this
readiness in surface emotion, this quickness to be pleased, amused
or distressed, is what baffles our sight and dulls our inner senses.
Till we can use these the mystery remains in its Sphinx-like
silence.
------------------
When the unit thinks only of itself, the whole, which is built of
units perishes, and the unit itself is destroyed.
------------------
So it is throughout nature on every plane of life. This, therefore,
is the first lesson to be learnt.
------------------
What the _true_ occultist seeks, is not knowledge, or growth, or
happiness, or power, for himself; but having become _conscious_ that
the harmony of which he forms part is broken on the outer plane, he
seeks the means to resolve that discord into a higher harmony.
This harmony is Theosophy—Divine or Universal Wisdom—the root whence
have sprung all “religions,” that is all; “bonds which unite men
together,” which is the true meaning of the word religion.
Therefore, Theosophy is not _a_ “religion,” but religion itself, the
very “binding of men together” in one Universal Brotherhood.
THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS OF BUDDHISM.
When a man immersed in the darkness of modern civilization awakens,
however slightly, to the hollowness of his every-day life, he
becomes sensible of a feeling of despair, for he is mentally brought
face to face with what appears to him to be a meaningless yet cruel
destiny. Now to any one so circumstanced, no truer source of
consolation and encouragement can be offered than that which is to
be found in a proper consideration of the “Four Noble Truths” of
Buddhism. But to give this proper consideration to the Truths, or
indeed to promote even a preliminary enquiry into their nature is by
no means an easy task, because the fundamental ideas which they
embody have scarcely any vitality in the present generation; nay
more, they involve for the most part a complete inversion of maxims
commonly accepted as axiomatic in current thought.
It is, however, in the hopes of doing something towards the
elucidation of the matter, that the present exposition is attempted.
The first Noble Truth relates to human suffering. It proclaims that
the conscious, separated, life of individual existence necessarily
implies pain, sorrow and misery; that so long as a man feels that he
is possessed of an _isolated self_, or so long as he regards himself
and his fellow men as _detached personalities_, having antagonistic
or even independent interests, so long must he suffer and be subject
to trouble, grief and disappointment.
This first Noble Truth gives utterance to one aspect of an
inexorable law of universal application, a law from whose operations
no man can, or has, or ever will escape, until he has learnt and in
the fullest sense realized the four Noble Truths.
The first Truth may also be thus expressed: individual existence
necessitates and involves change of state, whether manifested as
birth growth, decay or death, and all changes of state are
accompanied by pain in one form or another on some plane of being;
while those who seem in their own eyes to have escaped from pain, or
those who imagine that others escape from it, are alike deluded, for
all men are overtaken by it soon or late.
The second Noble Truth deals with the cause of pain, and partially
explains its meaning. According to this Truth, it is the desire or
thirst for the continuance of individual life, with its various
sensations and experiences, that constitutes the true basis of all
suffering, whatever the outward form it may assume, and to whatever
plane of consciousness it may belong. This thirst for life, called
in the Sanscrit language Tanha, gives rise in the mind of man to a
delusive belief in the _permanence_ and _reality_ of that separate
personality, which, according to Buddhism, is no more than an
ephemeral mode of individual existence; it further leads him to
suppose that the numerous mental states which in their aggregate
make up the personality, are, in themselves _real_; and hence grows
that rooted belief in the absolute reality of the manifold objects
of sense, and that longing for their possession, that insatiable
longing for the enhancement and for the multiplication of the
experiences associated with these objects.
The second Truth, like the first, presents an aspect of the
universal law already referred to.
This law, the Sanscrit name for which is Karma, is the governing and
controlling power, ordering all individual existence, and by virtue
of which Tanha operates.
The third Noble Truth announces the fact that, as the individual man
grows strong in spiritual knowledge and charity, so Tanha is
gradually dissolved, and there is for him a consequent cessation of
sorrow and of pain. The individuality becoming proportionately freed
from the bondage of Karma, Tanha is indeed a quite necessary adjunct
of man’s incipient growth, for it represents the _creative_ power
which forces the individuality through the earlier stages of its
development, yet, while performing this most useful function, being
in fact indispensable to the lower nature of man, Tanha, at the same
time, forges those Karmic fetters from which the spiritual self
struggles desperately to get free.
As the man’s spiritual nature is evolved, the unconscious creative
energy, in form of Tanha, is gradually replaced by the newly
developed powers of the higher self, the _will_ becomes more and
more completely associated with the spirit, while the man himself,
endowed with true Faith, true Hope, and true Love, becomes a
conscious co-worker with the Universal or Macrocosmic Will, the
“Great Builder.”
The fourth Noble Truth assures us that there is a way by which all
men may, if they only choose, rapidly accomplish this displacement
of Tanha by true Love; this way is called the Noble Eight-fold Path
leading to enlightenment.
Thus:—1. Right fundamental Belief, _i.e._, the right basis mentally
and spiritually upon which to establish true knowledge. 2. Right
Intention, _i.e._, goodwill towards all that lives, singleness of
purpose, correctness and purity of motive. 3. Right Speech, _i.e._,
the use of becoming language, kindly temperate, fair and profitable;
patient yet vigorous; thoughtful, courageous, honest and
discriminating. 4. Right Behaviour _i.e._, active philanthropy. 5.
Right means of Livelihood, _i.e._, honest and useful employment of
one’s time, paying adequate attention to one’s own material needs
and helping others to do the same, yet without care for the morrow.
6. Right Endeavour, _i.e._, putting one’s heart in one’s work. 7.
Right Loneliness, _i.e._, self-contained and harmonious within. 8.
Right Meditation. This is the Sanskrit _Yoga_ and signifies union
with the divine by practising the contemplation of the reality of
being. It is the result of a sustained effort to concentrate the
mind upon the universal, eternal and immutable law of life; the
first stage of such concentration takes the form of an impartial
review or survey of all one’s thoughts, actions, desires, sensations
and experiences from a thoroughly impersonal standpoint. This
Eightfold Path has four stages representing different degrees
of advancement towards Buddhahood or the state of perfect
enlightenment. The true Buddha or Tathâgata is one who has attained
final emancipation from individual existence, whose purified spirit
is freed from the last vestige of Tanha, one upon whom Karma has no
more hold, for he has reached Para Nirvana, the _Eternal_, the
Absolute Being.
ST. GEORGE LANE-FOX.
------------------
THE LAST OF A GOOD LAMA.—Whatever may be said against godless
Buddhism, its influence, wherever it penetrates, is most
beneficent. One finds the Spirit of “Lord Buddha ... most pitiful,
the Teacher of Nirvâna and the Law,” ennobling even the least
philosophical of the dissenting sects of his religion—the Lamäism
of the nomadic Kalmucks. The Caspian Steppes witnessed, only a few
months ago, the solemn cremation and burial of a Mongolian saint,
whose ashes were watered by as many Christian as Lamaic tears. The
high priest to the Russian Calmucks of the Volga died December
26th, 1886, near Vétlyanka, once the seat of the most terrible
epidemics. The Ghelungs had chosen the day of ceremony in
accordance with their sacred books; the hour was fixed
astrologically, and at noon on January 4th, 1887, the imposing
ceremony took place. More than 80,000 people assembling from all
the neighbouring Cossack _stanitzas_ and Calmuck _ooloosses_,
formed a procession surrounding the pillar of cremation. The
corpse having been fixed in an iron arm-chair, used on such
ceremonies, was introduced into the hollow pillar, the flames
being fed with supplies of fresh butter. During the whole burning,
the crowd never ceased weeping and lamenting, the Russians being
most violent in their expressions of sorrow, and with reason. For
long years the defunct Lama had been a kind father to all the poor
in the country, whether Christian or Lamaist. Whole villages of
proletarians had been fed, clothed, and their poll-taxes paid out
of his own private income. His property in pasture lands, cattle,
and tithes was very large, yet the Lama was ever in want of money.
With his death, the poor wretches, who could hardly keep soul in
their bodies, have no prospect but starvation. Thus the tears of
the Christians were as abundant, if not quite as unselfish, as
those of the poor Pagans. Only the year before, the good Lama
received 4,000 roubles from a Calmuck _oolooss_ (camp) and gave
the whole to rebuild a burned down Russian village, and thus saved
hundreds from death by hunger. He was never known during his long
life to refuse any man, woman, or child, in need, whether Pagan or
Christian, depriving himself of every comfort to help his poorer
fellow-creatures. Thus died the last of the Lamas of the priestly
hierarchy sent to the Astrakhan Calmucks from beyond the “Snowy
Range” some sixty years ago. A shameful story is told of how a
travelling Christian pilgrim imposed on the good Lama. The Lama
had entrusted him with 30,000 roubles to be placed in the
neighbouring town; but the Christian pilgrim disappeared, and the
money with him.
THE BIRTH OF LIGHT.
_Translated from Eliphas Levis “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.”_
The “Lucifer” of the Kabalists is not a proscribed and fallen angel,
but the spirit which illuminates and regenerates by fire; he is to
the angels of peace what the comet is to the peaceful constellations
of spring-time.
The fixed star is beautiful, radiant and calm; she drinks in the
aromas of Heaven, and looks lovingly on her sisters; clad in her
dazzling garments, and her brow adorned with diamonds, she smiles as
she sings her morning and her evening hymn; she enjoys an eternal
repose which nothing can disturb, and solemnly she treads the path
assigned to her among the sentinels of light.
But the wandering comet, all bloodstained, and her tresses unloosed,
rushes on from the depths of the sky; she dashes across the track of
the peaceful spheres like a chariot of war breaking the ranks of a
procession of vestals; she dares to breast the burning sword of the
guardians of the sun, and, like a lost spouse who seeks the partner
visioned in her lonely night watches, she forces her way even into
the tabernacle of the King of Day.
Then she rushes out, breathing forth the fires which consume herself
and leaving in her train one long conflagration; the stars pale
before her approach, the herded constellations, which browse upon
the starry flowers in the vast meadows of the sky, seem to flee from
her terrible breath. The grand council of the stars is called, and
universal consternation reigns. At last the fairest of the fixed
stars is charged to speak in the name of the heavenly concourse, and
to propose a truce with the errant messenger.
“My sister,” she says, “why troublest thou the harmony of these
spheres? What harm have we done thee, and why, instead of wandering
at hazard, dost thou not, like us, take up thy settled rank in the
Court of the Sun? Why dost thou not join with us in chanting the
evening hymn, attired, like us, in a robe of white clasped above the
breast by one pure diamond? Why dost thou allow thy tresses,
dripping with the sweat of fire, to float across the vapours of the
night? If thou wouldst but take thy due place among the daughters of
Heaven, how far more lovely thy mien! Thy face no more would be
burnt up by the fatigue of thy unheard-of journeys; thy eyes would
shine forth clear, and thy features smile with the tints of lily and
of rose, like those of thy happy sisters; all the stars would
recognise in thee a friend, and far from fearing thy transit, they
would rejoice at thy approach. For thou wouldst be united to us by
the indissoluble ties of universal harmony, and thy peaceable
existence would be but one voice the more in the anthem of Infinite
Love.”
But the comet replies:
“Deem not, my sister, that I could stray at chance and disturb the
harmony of the spheres. God has traced for me my path, as thine for
thee, and if my course appears to thee uncertain and erratic, it is
because thy rays cannot reach so far as to embrace the outlines of
the great ellipse which has been given me for my career. My burning
tresses are the banner of God; I am the messenger of the Suns, and I
bathe me in their fires that I may distribute them on my path to
those young worlds which have not yet sufficient heat, and to the
declining stars that shiver in their solitude. If I court fatigue in
my long journeyings, if my beauty is less mild than thine, if my
attire less virginal, I am no less than thee a worthy daughter of
the sky. Leave in my hands the awful secret of my destiny, leave to
me the horror which encompasses me, and slander me not if thou canst
not understand me. None the less, shall I fulfil my appointed task.
Happy the stars that take their rest and shine like young queens in
the stately concourse of the Universe; for me, I am cast out, a
wanderer, and claim the Infinite as my only fatherland. They accuse
me of setting on fire the planets which I warm, and of terrifying
the stars which I illume. I am reproached with disturbing the
harmony of the worlds, because I do not revolve round their own
fixed points, and because I bind them one to the other, setting my
face alone toward the only centre of all the Suns. So rest assured,
thou fairest star, I will not deprive thee of one ray of thy so
peaceful light; the rather, I will squander on thee my warmth and my
own life. Who knows, but I may vanish from the sky when I have
consumed myself? My lot will still have been a noble one! For know
that in the Temple of God the fires that burn are not all one. Ye
are the light of the golden torches, but I, the flame of sacrifice.
Let each accomplish her own destiny!”
Her words scarce uttered, the comet shakes her tresses loose, covers
herself with her burning shield, and plunges once more into infinite
space, where she appears to vanish for evermore.
It is thus that Lucifer appears and disappears in the allegories of
the Bible.
One day, so says the book of Job, the sons of God had assembled in
the presence of their Lord, and among them came Lucifer.
To him the Lord said: “Whence comest thou?”
And he replied:
“I have journeyed round the world and travelled throughout it.”
This is how a Gnostic gospel, re-discovered in the East by a learned
traveller, explains, in treating of the symbolical Lucifer, the
genesis of Light.
“Truth which is conscious of itself is living Thought. Truth is the
Thought which is contained within itself; and formulated Thought is
Speech. When the Eternal Thought sought for a _form_ it said: ‘Let
there be Light.’ Therefore this Thought that speaks is the _Word_,
and this Word says: ‘Let there be Light, because the word itself is
the light of the _spirit_.’”
The uncreated light, which is the divine Word, sends forth its
rays because it wishes to be manifest, and when it says, “Let
there be light,” it commands the eyes to open; it creates the
_Intelligences_.
And, when God said: “Let there be light,” Intelligence was made and
light appeared.
Then, the Intelligence which God had breathed forth, like a planet
detached from the Sun, took the form of a splendid Angel and the
heavens saluted him with the name of Lucifer.
Intelligence awoke and it fathomed its own depths as it heard this
apostrophe of the divine Word, “Let there be Light.” It felt itself
to be free, for God had commanded it so to be, and it answered,
raising its head and spreading its wings, “I will not be Slavery.”
“Wilt thou be then Sorrow?” said the uncreated voice.
“I will be Liberty,” answered the Light.
“Pride will seduce thee,” replied the supreme voice, “and thou wilt
give birth to Death.”
“I must needs combat with Death to conquer Life,” said once again
the light created.
God then unloosed from his bosom the thread of splendour which held
back the superb spirit, and as he watched him dive into the night,
cutting in it a path of glory, he loved the child of his thought,
and smiling with a smile ineffable, he murmured to himself: “How
fair a thing was this Light!”
And Sorrow was the condition imposed upon the free being. If the
chief of the angels had not dared confront the depths of night, the
travail of God had not been complete, and the created light could
not have separated itself from the light unrevealed.
Perhaps Lucifer, in plunging into the night, drew with him a shower
of Stars and Suns _by the attraction of his glory_? * * * * * * *
A TRUE THEOSOPHIST.
A very large majority of people have no idea whatever about
Theosophy, and regard Theosophists as more or less crazy members of
a new sect. They naturally deny any superiority to one new sect
among so many, and aver that, as a considerable number of sects have
been “tried in the balances and found wanting,” this one is no
better than its predecessors. Theosophists—the real ones—can only
reply that they are unsectarian and superior to none. They believe
that they have found a good road to the discovery of truth, and wish
to share their discovery—if it can be so called—with others.
The very assumption of superiority would be a contradiction in terms
to the name itself. But, while giving this emphatic denial with
reference to the name “Theosophist,” no attempt is made to assert
that all members of the Theosophical Society are also Theosophists.
True indeed, that when they enter that society, they subscribe to
rules and declare their objects to be such that, were they to carry
them out thoroughly, no other name than Theosophists would be
applicable. Nor does the name imply that, in the studies which
Theosophists make their own, it is necessary that the sole and best
place should be given to studies of Oriental philosophy. That again
would be a contradiction, for it has most emphatically been stated
that “there are those who are ignorant of the Eastern wisdom” who
are nearer to divine wisdom, than some who have devoted their entire
lives to Oriental studies. It is again the old story that, “the
letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”
Still while holding to the assertion that the study of Oriental
wisdom is only one road out of many, it is necessary to remember the
analogy which philology may here present to “religion.” Just as
philology traces all languages to a common root—the Sanskrit or
rather pre-Sanskrit—so the religions of the world can also be traced
to a common root and birth place, identical with the cradle and
birth place of the human race, which ethnology locates on the high
plateaux of Central Asia. Therefore it is, that the study of
Oriental philosophy has something to be urged in its especial
favour, because that philosophy has its home nearer to the source of
the wisdom religion than any other.
Still more must it be borne in mind, that members of the
Theosophical Society are not necessarily Theosophists, for a very
considerable number are attracted merely by the name and through
curiosity. They either do not understand what they profess, or if
they do, they do not practise it. But this is no attempt to run
counter to the proverb, that the tree is known by its fruit,
although there is some amount of injustice in it. All that is
asserted is that, if this argument is used against a Society with
aims and aspirations such as the Theosophical Society has, it can be
used with even more terrible effect against _all_ religions whether
Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhist, etc. The real reason why this has
come to pass, lies in a few words—the cultivation of the individual;
and, as a later result of this, in anthropomorphism. It is only
those individuals who can “grasp their whole individuality firmly,”
and by the force of their “awakened spiritual will, reach out to the
life beyond individuality”—it is only they, who can shake themselves
loose from the curse which has gradually spread over the whole
world. It is in consequence of this growth of individualism that the
“blessings of civilization” have become the curse of mankind, and
every religion, originally altruistic, has become inverted, and the
reign of anti-Christ and hypocrisy has superseded that of Christ and
truth. No sweeping accusation is made against the whole world in
this statement. A dim and misty veil has been thrown over the face
of Truth, and it is as though we saw everything outside the
principal focus of a lens, and consequently, under full faith that
we see the real image, perceive the inverted image. In the time of
Elizabeth, for instance, men learnt to cultivate the individual
within the circle of the race, and to attempt to unite in patriotism
for the benefit of that race or empire. But it is a vain attempt,
and the dissociating effects of this culture will soon be evident in
the impossibility of the attempt. Originally the attempt was to
cultivate the individual, but only with a view to the increase of
that race and with that object as paramount. That is to say, that an
English soldier would cultivate himself to the uttermost in order
that the world should see what English soldiers were. But the time
came when the egoistic element appeared in overwhelming force, and
the cultivation was devoted to the sole aim of making this or that
man stronger than any man of his own race, or any other.
And now another aim has been substituted for the paramount one of
patriotism. Mammon has superseded the latter, and the strength of
the individual is cultivated and devoted to withstanding the
pressure of life, and to getting a start in the great race to
worship at the feet of the demon of cupidity. But again, while
devoting their own lives and worse—the lives of their neighbours—to
this worship, they yet professed to be Christians or members of
other religions. They tried to worship two gods—Mammon on six days
of the week and the other divinity on Sunday, or any day set apart
for his service. But still, in most cases, it was not the divine
instinct of search for the divine in their hearts, but a fear of
wrath to come. It really was a pharisaical idea of “hedging,” to use
a term of racing slang, with reference to the race of life. The end
of it was that Mammon received the real worship of their hearts, and
the other god only lip-service. Thus in the end hypocrisy became
almost as paramount as Mammon. Time still passed on, and man almost
lost sight of any idea of an offended and avenging deity, and any
germ of spirituality was very nearly dead from want of cultivation.
The material needs held him in complete sway, and the spread of
physical science helped him mightily. Losing sight of all the
subtler side of nature, he immersed himself in gross matter, and
utilitarianism was the watchword and rallying cry. In all this
change the age of mechanical inventions took no small part. Man can
hardly be blamed as an individual nor as a whole. It is part of the
great law of evolution, and the working out of the law of the
survival of the fittest.
It may be asked what this has to do with the subject of the article;
but in justification it is averred that a picture is most clearly
seen by its contrast.
Perhaps the best definition of a Theosophist, is that given by the
Alchemist, Thomas Vaughan:
“A Theosophist is one who gives you a theory of the works of God,
which has not a revelation, but an inspiration of his own for
basis.”
“A man once abandoning the old pathway of routine and entering on
the solitary pathway of independent thought—Godward—he is a
Theosophist, an original thinker, a seeker after the Eternal Truth,
with an inspiration of his own to solve the Eternal problems.”
Such a one as this is the subject of the article. Count Tolstoi, the
Russian novelist, is a true Theosophist, and his words and actions
in contradiction and illustration of the foregoing, are taken from
an interview with him by Mr. George Kennan (_Century_, June 1887).
The interview first describes the surroundings amidst which Count
Tolstoi lives, and gives also a description of the Count’s
appearance.
Apparently the first thing which impressed Mr. Kennan was the sight
of “a wealthy Russian noble, and the greatest of living novelists,
shaking hands upon terms of perfect equality with a poor, ragged,
and not over clean droshky driver,” who had been engaged in the
streets.
Then follows a description of the rooms, the furniture &c., which
was observed during the time that Mr. Kennan’s host had retired—not,
indeed, to change his coat, but to put one on after a morning’s
labour in the fields. Mr. Kennan, it seems, had journeyed through
Siberia, and had there promised several of the exiles to visit Count
Tolstoi on his return, and to tell him of their condition. In the
course of conversation on these matters, Mr. Kennan asked Count
Tolstoi whether he did not think that resistance to such oppression
as the exiles had experienced was justifiable?
“That depends,” he replied, “upon what you mean by resistance; if
you mean persuasion, argument, protest, I answer yes; if you mean
violence—no. I do not believe that violent resistance to evil is
ever justifiable under any circumstances.”
He then set forth clearly, eloquently, and with more feeling than
he had yet shown, the views with regard to man’s duty as a member
of society which are contained in his book entitled “My Religion,”
and which are further explained and illustrated in a number of his
recently published tracts for the people. He laid particular
stress upon the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, which, he
said, is in accordance with both the teachings of Christ and the
results of human experience. He declared that violence, as a means
of redressing wrongs, is not only futile, but an aggravation of
the original evil, since it is the nature of violence to multiply
and reproduce itself in all directions. “The Revolutionists,” he
said, “whom you have seen in Siberia, undertook to resist evil by
violence, and what has been the result? Bitterness, and misery,
and hatred, and bloodshed! The evils against which they took up
arms still exist, and to them has been added a mass of previously
non-existent human suffering. It is not in that way that the
kingdom of God is to be realised on earth.”
For a long time I did not suggest any difficulties or raise any
objections.... It is one thing to ask a man in a general way
whether he would use violence to resist evil, and quite another
thing to ask him specifically whether he would knock down a
burglar who was about to cut the throat of his mother. Many men
would say _yes_ to the first question who would hesitate at the
second. Count Tolstoi, however, was consistent. I related to him
many cases of cruelty, brutality, and oppression which had come to
my knowledge in Siberia, and at the end of every recital I said to
him, “Count Tolstoi, if you had been there and had witnessed that
transaction, would you not have interfered with violence?” He
invariably answered “No.” I asked him the direct question whether
he would kill a highwayman who was about to murder an innocent
traveller, provided there were no other way to save the
traveller’s life. He replied, “If I should see a bear about to
kill a peasant in the forest, I would sink an axe in the bear’s
head; but I would not kill a man who was about to do the same
thing.” There finally came into my mind a case which, although
really not worse than many that I had already presented to him,
would, I thought, appeal with peculiar force to a brave,
sensitive, chivalrous man.
This was a case of most brutal treatment of a young girl who was
exiled to Siberia. At a certain town on her journey the governor
ordered that she was to put on the clothing of an ordinary convict.
This she declined to do on the ground that administrative exiles had
the right to wear their own clothing. Furthermore the clothing
supplied to convicts is not always new, and it is quite possible
that it is of the filthiest description and full of vermin. She
argued that she would have been compelled to change at Moscow had it
been necessary, and again declined. The local governor persisted and
ordered that force should be used to effect the change. Accordingly,
in the presence of nine or ten men, the change of clothing was
effected—she was stripped naked, forcibly reclothed, and left
bleeding and exhausted after ineffectual resistance.
“Now,” I said, “suppose all this had occurred in your presence;
suppose that this bleeding, defenceless, half-naked girl had
appealed to you for protection, and had thrown herself into your
arms; suppose that it had been your daughter, would you still have
refused to interfere by an act of violence?”
He was silent. Finally, ignoring my direct question as to what he
personally would have done in such a case, Count Tolstoi said,
“Even under such circumstances violence would not be justifiable.
Let us analyse that situation carefully. I will grant, for the
sake of argument, that the local governor who ordered the act of
violence was an ignorant man, a cruel man, a brutal man—what you
will; but he probably had an idea that he was doing his duty; he
probably believed that he was enforcing a law of the Government to
which he owed obedience and service. You suddenly appear and set
yourself up as a judge in the case; you assume that he is not
doing his duty—that he is committing an act of unjustifiable
violence—and then, with strange inconsistency, you proceed to
aggravate and complicate the evil by yourself committing another
act of unjustifiable violence. One wrong added to another wrong
does not make a right; it merely extends the area of wrong.
Furthermore, your resistance, in order to be effective—in order to
accomplish anything—must be directed against the soldiers who are
committing the assault. But those soldiers are not free agents;
they are subject to military discipline and are acting under
orders which they dare not disobey. To prevent the execution of
the orders you must kill or maim two or three of the soldiers—that
is, kill or wound the only parties to the transaction who are
certainly innocent, who are manifestly acting without malice and
without evil intention. Is that just? Is it rational? But go a
step further: suppose that you do kill or wound two or three of
the soldiers; you may or may not thus succeed in preventing the
completion of the act against which your violence is a protest;
but one thing you certainly will do, and that is, extend the area
of enmity, injustice, and misery. Every one of the soldiers whom
you kill or maim has a family, and upon every such family you
bring grief and suffering which would not have come to it but for
your act. In the hearts of perhaps a score of people you rouse the
anti-Christian and anti-social emotions of hatred and revenge, and
thus sow broadcast the seeds of further violence and strife. At
the time when you interposed there was only one centre of evil and
suffering. By your violent interference you have created
half-a-dozen such centres. It does not seem to me, Mr. Kennan,
that that is the way to bring about the reign of peace and
good-will on earth.”
Mr. Kennan had a manuscript written by one of those prisoners who
took part in the desperate “hunger-strike” of 1884, with which he
had been entrusted to hand on to Count Tolstoi. He read two or three
pages of it, and then, alluding to the Nihilists, condemned their
methods most heartily. Mr. Kennan appeared rather to sympathise with
their motives. Count Tolstoi appears only to do so partially, and,
while he earnestly desires a revolution, declines to have anything
to do with one brought about by violence. Mr. Kennan objected that
violence might close the mouth of the peaceable revolutionist and
prevent his teaching and thoughts from ever becoming public.
“But do you not see,” replied the Count, “that if you claim and
exercise the right to resist by an act of violence what you regard
as evil, every other man will insist upon his right to resist in
the same way what he regards as evil, and the world will continue
to be filled with violence? It is your duty to show that there is
a better way.”
“But,” I objected, “you cannot show anything if somebody smites
you on the mouth every time you open it to speak the truth.”
“You can at least refrain from striking back,” replied the Count;
“you can show by your peaceable behaviour that you are not
governed by the barbarous law of retaliation, and your adversary
will not continue to strike a man who neither resists nor tries to
defend himself. It is by those who have suffered, not by those who
have inflicted suffering, that the world has been advanced.”
I said it seemed to me that the advancement of the world had been
promoted not a little by the protests—and often the violent and
bloody protests—of its inhabitants against wrong and outrage, and
that all history goes to show that a people which tamely submits
to oppression never acquires either liberty or happiness.
“The whole history of the world,” replied the Count, “is a history
of violence, and you can of course cite violence in support of
violence; but do you not see that there is in human society an
endless variety of opinions as to what constitutes wrong and
oppression, and that if you once concede the right of any man to
resort to violence to resist what he regards as wrong, he being
the judge, you authorise every other man to enforce his opinions
in the same way, and you have a universal reign of violence?”
Count Tolstoi considers it necessary to labour for and help the poor
by whom he is surrounded; but he is keenly alive to the danger of
pauperising them. In doing this he runs counter to the ideas of
organised society and the existing traits of human character. He
declines to regard these as sacred and immutable, and is doing what
he can to change them.
“Count Tolstoi then related with great fulness of detail the
history of his change of attitude toward the teaching of Christ,
and the steps by which he was brought to see that that teaching,
rightly understood, furnishes a reasonable solution of some of the
darkest problems of human life. He based upon it not only his
opposition to resistance as a means of overcoming evil, but his
hostility to courts of justice, established churches, class
distinctions, private property, and all civil and ecclesiastical
organisation in existing forms. His frequent references to the New
Testament, and his insistence on the precepts of Christ as
furnishing the only rule for the right government of human
conduct, might lead one to regard Count Tolstoi as a devout and
orthodox Christian, but, judged by a doctrinal standard, he is
very far from being so. He rejects the whole doctrinal framework
of the Christian scheme of redemption, including original sin,
atonement, the triune personality of God, and the divinity of
Christ, and has very little faith in the immortality of the soul.
His religion is a religion of this world, and it is based almost
wholly upon terrestrial considerations. If he refers frequently to
the teachings of Christ, and accepts Christ’s precepts as the
rules which should govern human conduct, it is not because he
believes that Christ was God, but because he regards those
precepts as a formal embodiment of the highest and noblest
philosophy of life, and as a revelation, in a certain sense, of
the Divine will and character. He insists, however, that Christ’s
precepts shall be understood—and that they were intended to be
understood—literally and in their most obvious sense. He will not
recognise nor tolerate any softening or modification of a hard
commandment by subtle and plausible interpretation. If Christ
said, ‘Resist not evil,’ he meant resist not evil. He did not mean
resist not evil if you can help it, nor resist not evil unless it
is unbearable; he meant resist not at all. How unflinchingly Count
Tolstoi faces the logical results of his system of belief I have
tried to show.”
Count Tolstoi’s views as to his own action and practice have been
recently published in an authorised interview which appeared in a
Russian journal. He said:
“People say to me, ‘Well, Lef Nikolaivitch, as far as preaching
goes, you preach; but how about your practice?’ The question is a
perfectly natural one; it is always put to me, and it always shuts
my mouth. ‘You preach,’ it is said, ‘but how do you live?’ I can
only reply that I do not preach—passionately as I desire to do so.
I might preach through my actions, but my actions are bad. That
which I say is not preaching; it is only an attempt to find out
the meaning and the significance of life. People often say to me,
‘If you think that there is no reasonable life outside the
teachings of Christ, and if you love a reasonable life, why do you
not fulfill the Christian precepts?’ I am guilty and blameworthy
and contemptible because I do not fulfill them; but at the same
time I say—not in justification, but in explanation, of my
inconsistency—Compare my previous life with the life I am now
living, and you will see that I am trying to fulfill. I have not,
it is true, fulfilled one eighty-thousandth part, and I am to
blame for it; but it is not because I do not wish to fulfill all,
but because I am unable. Teach me how to extricate myself from the
meshes of temptation in which I am entangled—help me—and I will
fulfill all. I wish and hope to do it even without help. Condemn
me if you choose—I do that myself—but condemn me, and not the path
which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me
where, in my opinion, the path is. If I know the road home, and if
I go along it drunk, and staggering from side to side, does that
prove that the road is not the right one? If it is not the right
one, show me another. If I stagger and wander, come to my help,
and support and guide me in the right path. Do not yourselves
confuse and mislead me, and then rejoice over it and cry, ‘Look at
him! He says he is going home, and he is floundering into the
swamp!’ You are not evil spirits from the swamp; you are also
human beings, and you also are going home. You know that I am
alone—you know that I cannot wish or intend to go into the
swamp—then help me! My heart is breaking with despair because we
have all lost the road; and while I struggle with all my strength
to find it and keep in it, you, instead of pitying me when I go
astray, cry triumphantly, ‘See! He is in the swamp with us!’”
In this report of Count Tolstoi, it is impossible not to recognise
the generous, just, and sympathetic man—the true Theosophist. He may
be mistaken, but he is endeavouring to carry out the precepts of
Christ. Not indeed, doctrinal Christianity, but to put in practice
the actual precepts of the Master he follows. He does this as far as
he can; and even with this little (as he says) he is accused of
quixotism, and is obliged to stay his hand in order to keep up the
example he affords. Why is this. For fear of interested relatives
and the lunatic asylum. Here we have a man endeavouring to carry out
“under an inspiration of his own,” the precepts laid down by the
last of the world’s great teachers. What is the result of his
endeavours? That he is in danger of the same fate that the author of
“Modern Christianity a civilized Heathenism,” threatened Christ
with, were he to return in the XIXth century—the lunatic asylum.
Nothing is so intolerable to modern minds as an example of what they
(unconsciously to themselves) recognise as that which they ought to
follow, but do not. Therefore it has to be put out of sight. Since
madness has been defined as a mental state which is in contradiction
to the average mental state, it is evident that all religious
reformers ought to be put away in a lunatic asylum.
It is quite possible to recognise what an extraordinary effect Count
Tolstoi’s principle of non-resistance to evil would have. Still it
is a strictly Christian one. Christ went further, and ordained that
the other cheek should be offered to the man who smites. It might be
argued that this would result in a tacit acquiescence in evil. But
if it be so, the whole of the Count’s life is a contradiction to
this, and a standing protest against the existence of those who
create, or rather perpetuate, this evil. Every reform, this
included, is a protest against doing at Rome what Romans do, or the
_laisser aller_, which is the indolent curse of human progress.
Count Tolstoi desires to see the reign of Christ on Earth, and in
this accords well with the Theosophists who desire “Universal
Brotherhood.” But neither of these can be effected save by the
cultivation of the inner and spiritual man, so that it shall shine
through and form the guide to the outer and physical man. But
unfortunately the welfare of the latter is taken as the standard at
present and humanity, without the spiritual man as a guide, is left
to flounder in the ditch into which it has fallen.
Those who desire to follow Count Tolstoi, or to become real working
Theosophists, may find something to think about in comparing his
words with his actions. He endeavours to “go about doing good,” and
to help his fellow men on the hard path of life. When it is followed
it will be found that to run counter to the spirit of the age, and
instead of the indolent _laisser aller_, to work not for self, but
for humanity at large, is the hardest task ever set to men. Mankind
as a rule does not want an example or to be worked for; both are
rude awakenings from the lotus-eating state they desire to be left
in. “Let us alone,” is their cry, and they resist with violence any
attempt to rouse them.
But those who desire a greater unity than that which any race or
nation can afford—the unity of the human race—the Universal
Brotherhood—cannot leave them alone. There is a power which impels
Count Tolstoi to protest against the reign of violence, and he truly
replies, that the readiest means of continuing this reign is to meet
violence by violence. Therefore he, by his writings, and his words
and life, endeavours to place before men the noblest philosophy of
life that he recognises, in answer to the appeal which is silently
uttered from the hearts of many men and women in the world.
It is a cry of despair at the ignorance which surrounds them and to
which the Theosophical Society, _according to its avowed aims_, is
an answer. It is best described in the words of Tennyson—
An infant crying in the night,
And with no language but a cry.
A. I. R.
A GHOST’S REVENGE
Early in the year 187—, the singular and distressing attacks of
mental depression from which Sir Selwyn Fox had long been a
sufferer, increased in frequency.
His son Gaston (twenty-four years of age, of medicine by calling and
letters by choice), whose devotion to his father was intense, urged
him to go to London and procure that skilled medical advice which
was not to be had in the neighbourhood of the baronet’s country
seat, in Northumberland. But Sir Selwyn was inflexible in his
determination to see no doctor. Affectionate as his manner always
was with Gaston, he even showed impatience when pressed on this
point; and Gaston, forced to abandon it, fell back on his own skill
in an endeavour to assign some tangible cause for his father’s
malady. But in this he was hopelessly baffled.
Nothing in Sir Selwyn’s present state, no circumstance of his past
history which was known to Gaston (who had rarely been apart from
him since boyhood), excused or explained in any degree the
melancholy which clouded his existence. His great fortune placed him
beyond suspicion or suggestion of pecuniary embarrassment. All the
surroundings of his home were well calculated to administer to the
refined pleasures of a man widely known as an amateur of books and
art. No entanglement of the affections could be supposed seriously
to trouble the peace of one who had passed his meridian, and who,
moreover, cherished still the memory of the wife he had long lost.
He had friendships which, while they attested his worth, would have
been sufficient in themselves to endear most men to life. Yet for
months he had worn the air of a man to whom life was fast becoming
an unendurable burden.
His own skill and experience failing to open to Gaston any method of
coping with a disease whose hidden source and origin he could not
divine, he was on the point of writing to a leading London physician
of his acquaintance, when a circumstance occurred which saved him
from the necessity of this step.
Sir Selwyn was alone in his room one evening when Gaston, who was
reading in a room immediately beneath, heard sounds overhead which
at once sent him upstairs to learn the cause. He had fancied that
his father was speaking in a tone of troubled remonstrance to some
unwelcome visitor, though he felt persuaded that no one, unless a
servant of the house, could be with him at that hour. Hastening to
his father’s room, his footsteps were arrested on the threshold by
the spectacle which the half-opened door revealed to him. Sir Selwyn
sat motionless and rigid in his chair; his face was colourless, and
all the features stiff, while the eyes, dilated and staring, seemed,
though they were fixed on space, to hold within their vision some
object not perceptible to Gaston. This was the more remarkable that
Gaston stood directly in his father’s line of sight, though it was
certain that Sir Selwyn neither looked at him nor saw him. In a
word, it was the gaze of a man who sees, or believes that he sees,
an apparition.
Gaston took a step forward; the sound fell on the baronet’s ear and
broke the spell which held him.
His first look was one of inexpressible shame, succeeded immediately
by one of indescribable relief. If detection were painful, as it
clearly was, it appeared as though the pain were almost lost in the
necessity now forced upon him of disclosing the secret of his
misery. Gaston was at his father’s side in a moment.
“What is it, father?” he cried. “What is it? You have seen
something. Tell me what it is.”
Sir Selwyn, in whose expression exhaustion and pain were mingled,
fixed his eyes for a while on his son’s face before he replied:
“If I should tell you, Gaston, you would not believe it. I do not
believe it myself. And yet I see it, and know that it is there.”
“I shall believe whatever you tell me, father,” answered Gaston.
“Gaston,” began the baronet, “you are a doctor, and have read, read
widely in all branches of science. Tell me, do you believe that we
who are in the body may see and know a spirit from the dead?”
“You believe, father, that you have seen such a spirit?”
“The whole force of my reason cannot persuade me otherwise,”
answered his father. “All the powers of my mind compel me to deny
it, and yet the thing is there before my eyes.”
The baronet had by this time regained his usual calm of manner, and
his voice was resolute and quiet.
“Is it here now, father?” asked Gaston.
“Yes,” answered Sir Selwyn.
“Where, father? Point to me the place where it stands.”
“It stands now at my elbow, side by side with you.”
Gaston started involuntarily, the baronet’s tone bespoke such
absolute conviction. He moved a step, and placed himself immediately
at his father’s elbow.
“Do you see it now, father?” he asked.
“No, for you have taken its place. Yes! I see it again. It is on
this side now, exactly opposite to you.”
There was in all this so little of the tone and manner of the mere
spectre-ridden visionary, that Gaston could not but be impressed,
and his alarm for his father’s state increased proportionately.
He began to question him in the direct matter-of-fact style of a
doctor with his patient, inquiring into the particular nature of the
vision, how often and in what circumstances it presented itself,
whether his father were able to connect it with any event of his
life, or whether it seemed to be causeless, a mere fabric of the
imagination.
His object in this was to bring his father to exert his reason upon
the matter, that so, if possible, he might end by convincing himself
that he was haunted merely by some spectre of the brain. He was,
however, only partially successful, and for this reason, that his
father, while denying—and with perfect honesty of convincement—the
reality of his vision, remained nevertheless persuaded that his
bodily eye beheld it.
“I cannot well remember,” went on Sir Selwyn, “how many years it is
since this spectre first began to haunt me. In the beginning I
thought little of it; my health was more robust then than it has
been in late years, and leading a more active life at that time than
I am able to do at present, I had greater strength, both of mind and
body, to assist me in banishing it from my thoughts and presence.
Indeed, I could then at any time rid myself of the vision by a mere
exertion of will; but I can do so no longer. It torments me now as
it pleases. I am powerless against it.”
“Does the form resemble that of anyone whom you have ever known?”
asked Gaston.
“Yes,” replied Sir Selwyn, after a moment’s pause.
“And the person whose spirit you believe this to be is now dead,
father?”
“Dead many years,” answered Sir Selwyn.
“And what is there in the vision that troubles you so greatly,
father?” asked his son.
“Its presence is tormenting,” replied Sir Selwyn, “because I feel
that there is evil in it; it is malignant, and seems continually to
threaten me.”
“Is it here still, father?”
“No, since we have been speaking it has vanished. I shall see it no
more to-night; but it will return to-morrow, and in the end it will
kill me.”
“No, father, no,” said Gaston affectionately, but gravely. “Let me
entreat you not to give way. You see how this vision, whatever it
may be, vanishes when you begin to reason upon it. The mere fact of
our having discussed it together will enable you to combat it more
resolutely. Do this, and the same power will revive by which you
dispelled the vision when first it troubled you.”
Indeed, the closing words of Sir Selwyn’s confession,
notwithstanding the quiet assurance with which they were spoken, had
practically convinced his son that the case was one of
hallucination. They continued talking on the subject until, at the
baronet’s usual hour of retiring, they separated for the night, when
Gaston was so far satisfied that his arguments appeared at last to
have given his father a somewhat increased measure of
self-confidence.
At breakfast the next day, Sir Selwyn assured his son that he had
slept well, and both in speech and look he was more cheerful than
Gaston had seen him during a considerable period. It seemed, in
short, as though the effect of their conversation the previous night
had already begun to bear out the son’s prediction; nor, at the end
of a week, did this good effect appear to have been in any degree
dissipated. “I have not seen it once,” said Sir Selwyn, in answer to
a question from Gaston. Another week passed, and a third, and the
baronet declared that there had been no recurrence of the visions.
He became very reticent upon the subject, and it was evident that he
now shrank from any allusion to it. Gaston, on his side, was only
too willing to avoid its mention.
It was at this time that Sir Selwyn received a letter from an old
friend of his college days, now holding a high place in the Indian
Government, reminding him of a long-promised visit, and begging him
to fulfil his word without further delay.
A better invitation, thought Gaston, could not have arrived at a
more opportune moment. Their pleasant English home had become
charged for the baronet with associations which were wholly painful;
a new scene and fresher interests would assist to push to completion
the recovery which could not but be long delayed in his present
situation. Sir Selwyn himself was of the same mind, and decided at
once to accept his friend’s invitation.
Then arose in Gaston’s mind the question whether, in the
circumstances, it were well or advisable that his father should make
the journey alone. He thought it not advisable at all, and without
plainly telling this to his father, begged that he might accompany
him. But Sir Selwyn showed a strong reluctance to accede to this
request, which was the more marked that father and son had never yet
been separated on any tour of pleasure. Gaston continued to press
his point, until he perceived, or thought that he perceived, what
was his father’s reason for wishing to take this journey alone.
The thing which Sir Selwyn had striven for years to hide from his
son he had just been forced to reveal to him. It was the sorrowful
secret of his life, a secret which, to the baronet, had something of
shame in it, and the revelation had been beyond measure painful to
him. If, in one sense, the confession which had been wrung from him
had brought father and son more closely together, it had, in another
sense, placed a certain something between them of which the presence
of Gaston was a constant reminder. With Gaston at his father’s side,
the secret too was there. When Gaston’s delicate intuition had
realised this for him, his entreaties to accompany his father were
at an end. It was decided that Sir Selwyn should go to India alone,
and in a fortnight from the receipt of his friend’s invitation he
was on his way.
Gaston was desolate at home, and at the end of ten days or so he
went to Paris, intending to stay a week there and return to England;
but the weather was pleasant, and from Paris he began to wander, in
leasurely fashion, southwards; and before he had quite made up his
mind as to where he wanted to go, he found himself in Rome. Rome was
chilly, and he had lighted on a bad hotel, so he remained but a few
days, and went on to Naples. He would wait to see Rome, he said,
until his father was with him.
After a fortnight in Naples, he was on the point of returning home,
when he received a cable message from his father, forwarded with
letters from England. Sir Selwyn had reached India safely and in
good health, and thought it probable that his stay would be of
somewhat longer duration than his arrangements on leaving England
had contemplated.
The prospect of five or six solitary months in the castle in
Northumberland had no relish for Gaston, so he resolved to extend
his tour by an excursion to Sicily. Accordingly, he took steamer one
evening from Naples to Palermo: the beautiful old city where the
traces yet linger of Saracen and Norman; with the tideless sea in
front, and the purple hills behind, and between the hills and the
sea the little lovely plain of the Shell of Gold. Naples is
beautiful, but brutal; a paradise peopled by savages: an Oriental
languor softens the life of Palermo, as it tinges with melancholy
the national songs; and the rural element which enters so largely
into the character of the whole Sicilian people makes them something
of Arcadians in a modern Arcady.
Gaston felt the charm of the place in an hour; the sense of want of
companionship which had gone with him in his listless wanderings in
Italy, here deserted him; he plucked ripe oranges in the garden of
the hotel, and they became his lotos fruit, for he resolved that his
wanderings should end in Palermo. He would remain here until his
father returned from India.
But it chanced that there were few foreign visitors in Palermo that
season, and within a week of Gaston’s arrival the hotel at which he
stayed was emptied of all its guests, except himself and an old
German baron, and the baron waited only for a steamer to take him to
Malta, on his way to Egypt. An empty hotel in a foreign land is as
cheerful an abode as a catacomb, and Gaston cast about for a change
of quarters.
Strolling one day in a slumbrous corner of the town, where cypress
trees stood sentinels at rusty iron gates, and the air smelled of
lemon groves and roses, he was struck by the aspect of a tenantless
and apparently deserted villa, walled within a garden, which,
untended as it was, retained a certain monastic trimness. A
weather-stained board over the iron gate, which was of fine
workmanship, announced that the villa was to let. Gaston tried the
gate, but it was locked. A broad-hatted priest who was passing at
the moment, observing Gaston’s interest in the villa, stopped, took
a pinch of snuff, and said that if the signor desired to have
particulars of the place, he might obtain them from such a person in
a street close at hand, which he indicated. Gaston thanked the
father for his courtesy, and went to inquire if he could see the
villa, with a view to hiring it for a short time.
At dinner that evening, the baron said that he expected to sail for
Malta on the following day, and expressed his regret at leaving
Gaston alone in the hotel. Gaston replied that he should be sorry to
lose the companionship of the baron, but that he also was about to
leave the hotel, and had taken a villa for the remainder of his stay
in Palermo. He described the villa, and the baron, who spoke English
well, exclaimed with a laugh:
“So! Is that the place? The Villa Torcello then has found a tenant
at last!”
“Has it been long without one?”
“Nearly thirty years.”
“And what is the reason?”
“How! Did they not tell you? The Villa Torcello is the famous
haunted house. Yes, I assure you, a real ghost! Are you not
delighted? You may be able to make a story about it, you know, you
who write novels.”
“And whose is the ghost?” inquired Gaston, whose associations with
this subject were by no means pleasant.
“They ought to have told you about it,” answered the baron. “Some
people do not like ghosts. I do not like them myself, though to be
sure I have never seen a ghost. The house, as you know, is called
the Villa Torcello, but that was not its original name. Years ago it
was called the Villa Verga, after its first owner, Signor Udalrico
Verga, a young Sicilian of good family, who was well known and very
popular in Palermo. He lived there all alone, and was much visited
by a priest, a very handsome young man, a little older than himself,
with whom he was on terms of great affection. One morning, thirty
years ago—I believe it was in this very month—the gardener of the
Signor Verga found his master lying dead in the garden, with a
bullet-hole in the temple. There seemed no reason in the world why
he should have killed himself, and as no weapon was found near the
body, or in any part of the garden, it was concluded that he had
been murdered. Suspicion fell on the priest, though for no cause
except that he had been more intimate with the Signor Verga than
anybody else. They were never known to have had a quarrel, and as
for evidence, not a scrap could be produced against the priest, who,
they say, showed the deepest grief for his friend. Indeed he died,
in great distress of mind, six months afterwards. Some people, who
would always regard him as the murderer, said that remorse for his
crime killed him; but though I have heard this story many times
since I first visited Palermo, I could never see that there was any
reason whatever to suspect the priest.”
“And the murder was never brought home to anyone?”
“It has remained a mystery from that day to this,” replied the
baron. “A year or two after the death of Verga, his brother went to
live in the Villa, changing its name to that of a property of his
own in Calabria, the name which it still bears. But he could not
stay in it, for he said that he saw the spirit of his brother
walking in the garden in the evenings, on the path where the body
was found. Since he left it, the house has never been occupied. As
to the ghost, many stories are told, but the favourite one is that
it haunts the place seeking someone to avenge the murder. That is a
strange notion, don’t you think, Herr Fox?”
The baron added no more to the story, and as he was busy with his
letters during the rest of the evening, Gaston only saw him again to
bid him good-bye on the following morning.
A day or two afterwards, Gaston settled himself in the Villa
Torcello. His coming there created a momentary flutter of excitement
in the quarter where the villa was situated; but this was not known
to Gaston, who had neither friends nor acquaintances in the town.
He wrote to tell his father of his new residence, and to ask him
whether he had visited Palermo in the tour he had made in Italy a
few years before Gaston’s birth. One morning, the post from England
brought him some flattering notices of a book he had published
shortly before leaving, which made him think that it was time to set
to work upon a new story. But the idea he was seeking did not come
to him, and the indolent charm of his surroundings favoured no
severe exertion of the intellect.
He walked in the town until it grew familiar to him; its avenues,
and terraces by the sea, its deep shadowy gardens, its groves of
orange trees and lemon; its narrow streets and the multiplied
variety of the houses, with their odd and glaring contrasts of
colour; its churches, where the religion of the west seems out of
harmony with the architectural and decorative fashions of the east.
Sometimes he hired a carriage and drove out into the country, and
these excursions were usually prolonged throughout the day. On one
such occasion, he was returning late in the afternoon, and the
vetturino was guiding his horses in lazy fashion in and out amongst
a straggling file of mule-carts laden with wine, in a narrow lane on
the outskirts of the town.
“What place is this?” called out Gaston presently, pointing to an
old, discoloured building of considerable extent, which lay on the
left of the road.
“_Il Convento de’ Cappuccini, signor_,” replied the driver, and
(never rejecting a chance to rest) pulled up his horses, adding:
“The signor no see Il Convento? _Ma, è molto curioso, signor_ (but
it’s a queer place).”
Gaston got down from the carriage, and at that moment a sandalled
and brown-robed monk appeared at the entrance to the monastery.
“_Ecco il padre, signor!_” (There’s the father), said the driver,
pointing to the Capucin, who bowed to Gaston with a courteous
indication of readiness to receive him.
Gaston went across, and was presently following the monk through an
outer chamber of the monastery, empty and cold, with bare walls and
a dark stone floor.
The monk stopped at a heavy wooden door, and taking a key from his
girdle, turned to Gaston and said, in a mixture of Italian and
broken English, which is here translated:
“The signor probably wishes to see our subterranean chambers. Many
foreigners come here to see them. It is a very curious sight; we
keep here the bodies of the wealthy Palermitans, whose relatives and
friends assemble every year, on the Feast of All Souls, to visit
them.”
While he was speaking he unlocked the door, which led into a vaulted
passage with a flight of stairs beyond. A faint, sickly smell
pervaded the corridor, which became stronger and more offensive as
they began to descend the steps.
They went down to a dusky place, around which Gaston’s eyes wandered
for a few moments with no certain gaze, until they grew accustomed
to the dimness. The daylight, such feeble daylight as filtered into
that dismal magazine of mummies, was fading fast.
The monk took a bit of candle from a ledge and lighted it; at once a
strange and weird effect was produced.
Thousands of corpses, and skeletons, and horrible hooded figures
which were of neither state, seemed in some manner to be awakened,
seemed to rouse themselves, and take cognisance of Gaston and his
guide.
TIGHE HOPKINS.
(_To be concluded in our next._)
------------------
NOTE.—The Editors regret that they are unable to publish, as
announced, the translation of the “Death of Ivan Ilyitch,” by Count
Tolstoi, a complete translation having just been issued by Messrs.
Vizetelly.
=LITERARY JOTTINGS=
“BUDDHISM IN CHRISTENDOM, OR JESUS THE ESSENE,” by Arthur Lillie,
etc.—A queer and rather thickish volume, of a presumably scientific
character, by an amateur Orientalist. Contents:—Familiar theories,
built on two sacred and time-honoured names, which the author
enshrines between garlands of modern gossip and libels on his
critics, past and present. A true literary sarcophagus inhuming the
decayed bodies of very old, if occasionally correct, theories
jumbled up together with exploded speculations.
The volume—title and symbology—is pregnant with the atmosphere of
the sacred poetry attached to the names of Gautama the Buddha, and
“Jesus the Essene.” To find it sprinkled with the heavy drops of
personal spite, is like gazing at an unclean fly fallen into the
communion-wine of a chalice. One can but wonder and ask oneself,
what shall be the next move in literature? Is it a new “Sacred Book
of the East,” in which one will find the evidence by Policeman
Endacott against Miss Cass welcomed and accepted as an historical
fact? Or shall it be the Pentecostal tongues of fire examined in the
light of the latest improved kerosene lamp?
But a well-informed chronicler at our elbow reports that the author
of _Buddhism in Christendom, or Jesus the Essene_, is a strong
medium who sits daily for spiritual development? This would account
for the wonderfully mixed character of the contents of the volume
referred to. It must be so, since it reads just as such a joint
production would. It is a curious mixture of “spirit” inspiration,
passages bodily taken from the reports of the Society “for
_Spookical_ Research,” as that misguided body was dubbed—for once
wittily—by the _Saturday Review_, and various other little
defamatory trifles besides. The “spirit guides” are proverbially
revengeful and not always wise in their generation. A former work by
the same medium having been three or four years ago somewhat
painfully mangled by a real Sanskrit and Buddhist scholar in India,
the “Spirit Angel” falls foul now of his critics. The wandering
Spook tries to run amuck among them, without even perceiving the
poor, good soul, that he only blots and disfigures with the
corrosive venom of his spite the two noble and sacred characters
whom his medium-author undertakes to interpret before ever he has
learned to understand them....
This places “Lucifer” under the disagreeable necessity of reviewing
the pretentious work at length in one of its future numbers. As the
same mistakes and blunders occur in “Buddhism in Christendom” as in
“Buddha and Early Buddhism,” the magazine must make it its duty, if
not altogether its pleasure, to check the volume of 1883 by that of
1887.
---
It is rumoured that “A CATECHISM ON EVERY-DAY LIFE,” by a
Theosophical writer, is ready for press. Let us hope it will contain
no special theology or dogmas, but only wise advice for practical
life, in its application to the ordinary events in the existence of
every theosophist. The time has come when the veil of illusion is to
be pulled aside entirely, not merely playfully, as hitherto done.
For if mere members of the theosophical body have nothing to risk,
except, perhaps, an occasional friendly stare and laugh at those
who, without any special necessity, as believed, pollute the
immaculate whiteness of their respectable society skirts by joining
an unpopular movement, real theosophists ought to look truth and
fact right in the face. To become a true theosophist—_i.e._ one
thoroughly imbued with altruistic feelings, with a willingness to
forget self, and readiness to help his neighbour to carry the burden
of life—is to become instantaneously transformed into a public
target. It is to make oneself a ready thing for heavy “Mrs. Grundy”
to sit upon: to become the object of ridicule, slander, and
vilification, which will not stop even before an occasional criminal
charge. For some theosophists, every move in the _true theosophical
direction_, is a forlorn-hope enterprise. All this notwithstanding,
the ranks of the “unpopular” society are steadily, if slowly
increasing.
For what does slander and ridicule really matter? When have fools
ever been slandered, or rich and influential men and women
ostracised, however black and soiled in their hearts, or in their
secret lives? Who ever heard of a Reformer’s or an orator’s course
of life running smooth? Who of them escaped from being pelted with
dirt by his enemies?
Gautama Buddha, the great Hindu Reformer, was charged by the
Brahmins with being a demon, whose form was taken by Vishnu, to
encourage men to despise the Vedas, deny the gods, and thus effect
their own destruction.
“Say we not well thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?” said the
Pharisees to Jesus. “He deceiveth the people.... Stone him to
death!”
“He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below,”
says the great English poet. The latter is echoed in prose by the
king of French poets. Writes Victor Hugo:
“You have your enemies; but who has not? Guizot has enemies,
Thiers has enemies, Lamartine has enemies. Have I not been myself
fighting for twenty years? Have I not been for twenty years past
reviled, betrayed, sold, rended, hooted, taunted, insulted,
calumniated? Have not my books been parodied, and my deeds
travestied? I also am beset and spied upon, I also have traps laid
for me, and I have even been made to fall into them. But what is
all that to me? I disdain it. It is one of the most difficult yet
necessary things in life to learn to disdain. Disdain protects and
crushes. It is a breast plate and a club. You have enemies? Why,
it is the story of every man who has done a great deed, created a
new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything which
shines. Do not trouble yourself about it. Do not give your enemies
the satisfaction of thinking that they cause you any feeling, be
disdainful.” (_Choses Vues._)
-------
“THE LATEST ROMANCE OF SCIENCE,” Summarized by a Frenchman.
If the Atomo-mechanical Theory of the Universe has caused
considerable embarrassment to our materialists, and brought some of
their much beloved scientific speculations to grief (see “Concepts
of Modern Physics,” by Stallo), the layman must not be ungrateful to
the great men for other boons received at their hands. Through the
indefatigable labours of the most famous biologists and
anthropologists of the day, the mystery which has hitherto
enshrouded the origin of man is no more. It has vanished into thin
air; thanks to the activity of the _officina_ (workshop, in Queen’s
English), in Haeckel’s brain, or, as a Hylo-Idealist would say, in
the _vesiculo neurine of his hemispherical ganglia_[15]—the origin
of mankind has to be sought in _that_ scientific region, and nowhere
else.
-----
Footnote 15:
Dr. Lewins, the Hylo-Idealist, in his appendices to “What is
Religion?” by C. N.—“On the Brain Theory of Mind and Matter, the
Creed of Physics, Physic and Philosophy.” W. Stewart & Co.
-----
Religiously read by the “Animalists” in its English translation in
Protestant and Monarchical England, the “Pedigree of Man” is now
welcomed with shouts of joy in Roman Catholic Republican France. A
summary has just been compiled of it by a French _savant_, who
rejoices in the name of Topinard. The summary on that “question of
questions” (as Mr. Huxley calls it), is more interesting in reality
than the “Pedigree of Man” itself. It is so deliciously fantastic
and original, that one comes almost to regret that our numerous and
frolicsome ancestors in the Zoological Gardens of Europe and America
seem to show no intention of getting up a subscription list among
themselves, for the raising of a lasting monument to the great
Haeckel. Thus, ingratitude in man must surely be a phenomenon of
_atavism_; another suggestive point being thus gained toward further
proof of man’s descent from the ingrate and heartless, as well as
tailless, pithecoid baboon.
Saith the learned Topinard:—
“At the commencement of what geologists call the _Laurentian
period_ of the Earth, and the fortuitous union of certain elements
of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, under conditions which
_probably_ only took place at that epoch, the first albuminoid
clots were formed. From them, and by spontaneous generation,[16]
the first cellules or cleavage masses took their origin. These
cellules were then sub-divided and multiplied, arranging
themselves in the form of organs, and after a series of
transformations, fixed by Mr. Haeckel at nine in number,
originated certain vertebrata of the genus _Amphioxus
lanceolatus_. The division into sexes was marked out, the spinal
marrow and _chorda dorsalis_ became visible. At the tenth stage
the brain and skull made their appearance, as in the lamprey; at
the eleventh, the limbs and jaws were developed ... the earth was
then only in the _Silurian_ period. At the sixteenth, the
adaptation to terrestrial life ceased. At the seventeenth, which
corresponds to the _Jurassic_ phase of the history of the globe,
the genealogy of man is raised to the kangaroo among the
marsupials. At the eighteenth, he becomes a lemurian; the
_Tertiary period_ commences. At the nineteenth, he becomes
Catarrhinian, that is to say, an ape with a tail, a Pithecian. At
the twentieth he becomes an anthropoid, continuing so throughout
the whole of the _Miocene period_. At the twenty-first he becomes
a man-ape, he does not possess language, nor in consequence the
corresponding brain. Lastly, at the twenty-second, man comes forth
... in his inferior types.”
-----
Footnote 16:
Mark well: when a theosophist or an occultist speaks of
“spontaneous generation,” because for him there exists no
inorganic matter in Kosmos—he is forthwith set down as an
_ignoramus_. To prove the descent of man from the animal, however,
even spontaneous generation from dead or inorganic matter, becomes
an axiomatic and scientific fact.
-----
Happy, privileged man! Hapless evolution-forsaken baboon! We are not
told by science the secret why, while man has had plenty of time to
become, say a Plato, a Newton, a Napoleon, or _even_ a Haeckel, his
poor ancestor should have been arrested in his growth and
development. For, as far as is known, the rump of the cynocephalus
seems as blue and as callous to-day, as it was during the reign of
Psammetichus or Cheops; the macacus must have made as ugly faces at
Pliny 18 centuries back, as he does now at a Darwinian. We may be
told that in the enormous period of time that must have elapsed
since the beginning of evolution, 2,000, or even 10,000, years mean
very little. But then, one does not find even the Moneron any better
off for the millions of years that have rolled away. Yet, between
the gelatinous and thoughtful hermit of the briny deep and man,
there must have elapsed quite sufficient time for some trifling
transformation. That primordial protoplasmic creature, however,
seems to fare no better at the hands of evolution, which has
well-nigh forgotten it.
By this time, one would suppose that this ancestor of ours of stage
_one_, ought to have reached, to say the least, a higher
development: to have become, for instance, the amphibian “sozura” of
the “fourteenth stage,” so minutely and scientifically described by
Mr. Haeckel, and of which De Quatrefages so wickedly says in “The
Human Species” (p. 108), that “it (the sozura) is _equally unknown
to science_.” But we see quite the reverse. This tender-bodied
little one, has remained but a moneron to this very hour: so much
so, that Mr. Huxley, fishing him out from the abysmal ocean depths,
took pity upon him, and gave him a father. He baptized our archaic
ancestor, and named him _Bathybius Haeckelii_....
But all these are mysteries that will, no doubt, be easily explained
to the full satisfaction—of science, by any biologist of Haeckel’s
brain power. As all know, no acrobatic feats, from the top of one
tree to another top, by the swiftest of chimpanzees, can ever
approach, let alone equal, the rapid evolutions of fancy in his
cerebral “officina,” whenever Haeckel is called upon to explain the
inexplicable....
There is one trifle, however, which seems to have the best of even
his capacity for getting out of a scientific dilemma, and this is
_the eighteenth stage_ of his genealogy, in the “Pedigree of Man.”
Man’s evolution from the Monera, _alias_ Bathybius _Haeckelii_, up
to tailed and then tailless man, passes through the marsupials, the
kangaroo, sarrigue, etc. Thus he writes:—
“_Eighteenth stage._ Prosimiæ allied to the Loris (Stenops) and
Makis (Lemur), without marsupial bones, but _with placenta_.”
(“_Pedig. of Man._” p. 77.)
Now it may be perhaps interesting to the profane and the innocent to
learn that no such “prosimiæ,” with placenta, exists in nature. That
it is, in short, another creation of the famous German Evolutionist,
and a child of his own brain. For De Quatrefages has pointed out
several years ago, that:
“The anatomical investigations of MM. Alphonse Milne, Edwards and
Grandidier ... place it beyond all doubt that the prosimiæ of
Haeckel have _no decidua and a diffuse placenta_. They are
_indeciduata_. Far from _any possibility of their being the
ancestors of the apes_, according to the principles laid down by
Haeckel himself, they cannot even be regarded as the ancestors of
the zonoplacential mammals ... and ought to be connected with the
pachydermata, the edentata and the cetacea.” (p. 110.)
But, as that great French _savant_ shows, “Haeckel, without the
least hesitation, adds his _prosimiæ_,” to the other groups in the
“Pedigree of Man,” and “attributes to them ... a discoidal
placenta.” Must the world of the too credulous innocents again
accept on faith these two creatures unknown to Science or man, only
because “the proof of their existence arises _from the necessity of
an intermediate type_?” This necessity, however being one only for
the greater success of their inventor, Haeckel, that Simian Homer
must not bear us ill will, if we do not hesitate to call his
“genealogy” of man a romance of Science of the wildest type.
One thing is very suggestive in this speculation. The discovery of
the absence of the needed placenta in the so-called _prosimiæ_ now
dates several years back. Haeckel knows of it, of course. So does
Mr. Ed. B. Aveling, D.Sc., his translator. Why is the error allowed
to remain uncorrected, and even unnoticed, in the English
translation of the “Pedigree of Man,” of 1887? Do the “members of
the International Library of Science and Free-thought,” fear to lose
some of Haeckel’s admirers were these to learn the truth?
Nevertheless Haeckel’s scientific “Pedigree of Man,” ought to awake
and stir up to action the spirit of private enterprise. What a
charming _Féerie_ could be made of it on the stage of a theatre! A
_corps de ballet_, composed of antediluvian reptiles and giant
lizards, gradually, and stage by stage, metamorphosing themselves
into kangaroos, lemurs, tailless apes and anthropoid baboons, and
finally into a chorus of German biologists!
Such a _Féerie_ would leave “Black Crook,” and “Alice in
Wonder-Land,” nowhere. An intelligent manager, alive to his
interests, would make his fortune were he but to follow the happy
thought.
_Nota bene_:—The suggestion is copyright.
---
THE BOOK OF LIFE, by Sidhartha (also) Vonisa; his discoveries from
“6215 to 6240, Anno Mundi.”
A cross between an _octavo_ and _duodecimo_.
This volume, we see, is highly appreciated by the clergy, by whom,
at this gloomy day of infidelity, even small favours seem to be
thankfully received. The author (profane name unknown) hints, when
he does not state plainly, that he is a reincarnation of Gautama
Buddha, or Siddartha, as also of a few other no meaner historical
personages. The work is a clever steering between the sandbanks of
science and theology. Enough is given in careful agreement with the
former to make it ignore the more abundant concessions to the gods
of the latter—_e.g._, Biblical chronology. The age of the world is
allowed 6240 years from Adam, “seven hundred years after the brown
and black races had been created” (p. 53 “Chronology”); the date of
the earth’s incrustation and globe being left to the imagination of
the reader. A chronological table of the principal historical events
of the world is published on pages 53-56. Among them the birth of
Moses is placed 1572 B.C. The Vedas are shown compiled in India, and
the poems of Homer in Greece, “about 1200 B.C.” Siddartha or Gautama
established Buddhism in India “from 808 to 726,” B.C. we are told.
Last, but not least, of the world epochs and _divine_ signs of the
time, comes the for ever memorable event of March 31st, 1885—namely,
the “Book of Life, Vonisa, was completely written,” and it closes
the list. The reader is notified, moreover, at the line beginning
with A.D. 6240, that the year 1884 C.E. (Christian Era) is the
“beginning of Messianic age and close of Christian age,” which might
account for the appearance and publication in the year following of
the original volume now under review.
The new Messiah declares that “although much of the work consists of
discoveries which are original with the author, yet the reader will
find in the Analytic Index a few hundred out of the many references
which might be given to eminent authorities which were consulted in
its preparation.” Among these, it seems, one has to include some
theosophic writings, as it is stated in the “Book of Life” that—
(_a._) “Seven great forces were concerned in these vast movements
of early creation.”
(_b._) “Seven Ages of the Earth.”
(_c._) “Vayomer Elohim” translated “according to the laws of the
Hebrew language,” means that “seven forces were used as three-fold
factors,” and
(_d._) “That the first human beings were incarnated spirits” (pp.
26-27).
The above four declarations have the approval of theosophy. Whether
the sentence that follows, namely, that “the work of incarnation (of
the _spirits_) took place according to law,” and is “the clearest
hypothesis _which science has to offer concerning the origin of
man_,” will meet with the same approval from Messrs. Huxley,
Haeckel, and Fiske, of the “Atomo-mechanical Theory,” is very
doubtful.
Nor is it so sure that the Ethnological department in the
Anglo-Indian Bureau of Statistics is quite prepared to alter its
census returns in accordance with Siddartha’s declaration, on page
29,that—
“One branch of the brown race was the Dravidian, _which still holds
its place in Northern India_.” (?!)
---
A new book, bearing the title of SPIRIT REVEALED, is nearly ready
for press. It is described as an extraordinary work. Its author is
Wm. C. Eldon Serjeant, F.T.S., a writer of articles on the “Coming
Reformation,” “Sparks from the World of Fire,” &c., &c. The work
claims to “explain the Nature of the Deity, and to discuss His
manifestations on every plane of existence, and to show forth the
form of Christ, whose second coming is expected by Christians, and
to proclaim the advent of the Messiah according to the belief of the
Jews.” “Many subjects, involving questions of considerable obscurity
in reference to the Deity, to the Scriptures, to men, to animals,
and to things generally, are comprehensively treated and explained
in accordance with the Word of the Spirit declared at various times
through the sons of men.”
---
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH:
These reports coming out _ad libitum_, without any definite date,
cannot be regarded as periodical. Depending for their circulation
chiefly on the consummation of what the learned editors offer as
_bonâ fide_ psychic and spiritualistic _exposés_—which the public
accepts as most kind advertisements of the people so attacked—this
publication occupies a position entirely _sui generis_. The
“Proceedings” offer to the public a very useful _manual_, something
between a text and a guidebook, with practical instructions in
diplomatic policy in the domain of the Psychic, in the form of
scientific letters and private detective information. Sensitives
discern in the “Proceedings” (by _telepathic impact_) the
Machiavelian spirit of aristocratic Bismarck, seasoned with an aura
strongly impregnated with the plebeian perfumes of honest
_mouchards_ on duty, but then they are, perhaps, prejudiced. On the
other hand, some Russian spiritualistically inclined members of the
S.P.R. have been heard to say, that the “Proceedings” reminded them
of those of the happily defunct Third Section of the St. Petersburg
Police. Thus, the tutelary “guides” of the learned association of
the British Psychists, may one day turn out to be the departed
spirits of Russian _gendarmes_ after all?
Occasionally when the hunting grounds of this erudite body have
afforded a specially successful chase—after mares’ nests—a
_Supplement_ is added to the “Proceedings,” the magnitude of the
added volume being in inverse ratio to the illumination of its
contents, which are generally offered as a premium to materialism.
Hence, the “Proceedings” may be better described as the fluctuating
and occasional records of a society bent upon giving the lie to its
own name. For “Psychical” research is surely a misnomer, besides
being a delusion and a snare for the unwary. LUCIFER would suggest
as a truer title, “Society for Hylo-_Pseumatical_ Research.” This
would give the S.P.R. the benefit of an open connection with Dr.
Lewins’ unparalleled “Hylo-Idealism”[17]—while it would enable it to
sail under its _true_ colours.
Whether LUCIFER’S advice be accepted or not, the profound philosophy
of the phenomenon baptized “telepathy” and telepathic impact can
only be studied scientifically, in our spasmodic contemporary. This
new Greek stranger is the crowning work of the Psychic Fathers of
our century. It is their “first” and “only” offspring, and is a
_genuine_ discovery as far as its Hellenic name goes. For, bereft of
its Greek appellation, it becomes like America. The genius who
_discovered_ the phenomenon, is like Columbus on whom the Northmen,
and even the Chinamen, had stolen a march centuries before. This
phenomenon can only seem _new_ when thus disguised under a name
solemn and scientific—because incomprehensible to the average
profane. Its plain description in English—as transference of thought
or sensation from a distance—could never hope to have the same ring
of classical learning in it.
Nevertheless, the “Proceedings” with the two additional gigantic
volumes of the psychic “Leviathan,” called “Phantasms of the
Living,” are strongly recommended to invalids. They are priceless in
cases of obstinate _insomnia_, as the best soporific known.
_Directions_: The reader must be careful not to light a match in too
close proximity to the said works.
“THE ADVERSARY.”
-----
Footnote 17:
ύλη “_matter_ as opposed to mind”; therefore _Material-Idealism_—a
contradiction in terms exactly parallel to the name “Psychic” and
the very “anti-psychic” work of the Society referred to. _Pseuma_
should replace _Psyche_, as it seeks for _frauds_ and not
_soul-action_.
-----
------------------
The following books have been received and will be noticed in early
numbers of LUCIFER:—
THE HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS, by Arthur E. Waite, and THE
QUABALAH UNVEILED, by S.L. Mac-Gregor Mathers, from Mr. Redway;
EARTH’S EARLIEST AGES, by G. H. Pember, from Messrs. Hodder and
Stoughton: THE MYSTERY OF THE AGES, by the Countess of Caithness,
from Mr. C. L. H. Wallace; AN ADVENTURE AMONG THE ROSICRUCIANS, by
Dr. F. Hartmann, from the Occult Publishing Company, Boston; and
NINETEENTH CENTURY COMMON SENSE, from the T. B. Lippincott Company,
Boston, U.S.A.
=CORRESPONDENCE=
INTERESTING TO ASTROLOGERS.
ASTROLOGICAL NOTES—No. 1.
_To the Editor of_ LUCIFER.
We are told that, before judging a horary figure, we must ascertain
if it is radical, and to decide this point several rules have been
given. The first is with regard to the number of degrees on the cusp
of the ascendant. Lilly says a figure is rarely radical if the first
two or last three degrees of a sign ascend. Morrison fixes the limit
at the first or second and last two degrees. Pearse gives the limit
as the first and last five degrees, and Raphael as the first and
last three.
All the laws of nature are harmonious and rational; but in the rule
of the first two authorities, this harmony seems absent. Why should
the limit be 1 or 2 degrees at the beginning of the sign and 2 or 3
at the end?
Again, as an exception to the above rule, Lilly says that a figure
may be radical even when 27° or more ascend, if the number
corresponds to his age; and when 1° or 2° ascend, if the querent be
very young, and his appearance agrees with the quality of the signs
ascending. And here again there is the same want of harmony. Why
should the age of the querent have to correspond accurately in one
case and only approximately in the other? Furthermore, no
astrologers seem to have given a logical explanation of these rules.
On reflecting on this problem I reasoned thus. In ♍ 29° 59´ 59´´ ♃
is absolutely without dignity; in ♐ 0° 0´ 1´´ he is in his house
triplicity, and terms, a threefold dignity. Is it conceivable that
this great change of power should be so sudden, as to be
accomplished in less than 2 seconds of space? Analogy shows that it
is probably otherwise, and that as the planets and cusps of houses
have orbs of influence, _so also have the signs_.
If this be true, it supplies the key to the above problem. If only
the first or last few degrees of a sign ascend, then the cusp of the
ascendant is within the orbs of the adjacent signs, and the house is
not ruled solely by the planet which is its proper lord, but also
partly by the planet ruling the adjacent sign; and this must hold
good under all circumstances, even when the number of the degrees
ascending agree with the age of the querent, or the ascending sign
and planets therein describe him.
Furthermore, if this be admitted, it also follows, as a logical
conclusion, that if the first and last few degrees of a sign are on
the cusp of any house, no conclusion can be drawn with certainty
from the aspects of the lord of that house.
The exact limits of the orbs of the signs must be decided by
experience; I am induced to fix the limits at 2° 30´ and 27° 30´.
NEMO.
--------------
_To the Editor of_ LUCIFER.
The belief in the power and efficacy of talismans and amulets was,
at one period of the world’s history, universal. Even during the
XVth century, the latest among the innumerable revivals of
civilisation, the majority of learned and cultured men had a
profound conviction of their reality. But such ideas are now scouted
by popular opinion, because the philosophy underlying them is not
understood. LUCIFER, therefore, would certainly confer a boon on
many by throwing light on the following points:—
(1). Wherein does the power of a talisman lie? (2). How far does its
efficacy depend on the signs traced upon it, and how far on the
power and knowledge of the maker? (3). Granting that will-power and
knowledge are the main factors in imparting to the talisman its
power, how does that power remain attached to it after the death of
the man who made it.
β
=THEOSOPHICAL
AND MYSTIC PUBLICATIONS=
The Theosophist, a magazine of Oriental Philosophy, Art, Literature,
and Occultism. Conducted by H. P. Blavatsky, and H. S. Olcott,
Permanent President of the T. S. Vol. VIII., Nos. 94 and 95, July
and August, 1887. Madras, India. In London, George Redway, 15, York
Street, Covent Garden.
This journal is the oldest of the periodicals of the Theosophical
Society, and has a distinct feature of its own: a number of Hindoo,
Buddhist, and Parsi contributors among the most learned of British
India. No journal is thus more reliable in the occasional
information given in it upon the sacred tenets and scriptures of the
East, since it is derived first hand, and comes from native
scholars, well versed in their respective cults. From time to time
_The Theosophist_ has respectfully corrected mistakes—sins of
omission and commission—by Western Orientalists, and will continue
to perform its proposed task by issuing admirable articles.
As a marked instance of this, the four “Lectures on the Bhagavid
Gita,” by a native scholar, Mr. T. Subba Rao, may be cited. Begun in
the February number, they are now concluded in the July issue. No
better, abler, or more complete exposition on that most
philosophical, as the least understood, of the sacred books of the
East, has ever been given in any work, past or present. In the June
and July numbers, the “Ha-Khoshe-Cah, a Vision of the Infinite,” by
Dr. Henry Pratt, a erudite Kabalist in England, is published.
Some very interesting articles on the “Norse Mythology,” by the
learned Swedish scholar, Mr. C. H. A. Bjerregard (the Astor Library,
New York), may also be found in the last numbers.
_The Theosophist_ is the journal of the Theosophical Society _par
excellence_; the Minutes and records of the Society’s work, being
given monthly in its “Supplements.”
No evil wisher of the said Society, rushing into publicity with
denunciations, and occasionally libellous attacks upon that body,
ought—if he is a fair-minded and _honest_ opponent, of course—to
publish anything without first making himself well acquainted with
the contents of _The Theosophist_, and especially with the
_Supplements_ attached to that journal.
This advice is given in all kindness to our traducers—the learned as
the ignorant—for their direct benefit, though at an evident
disadvantage to theosophy. For, as so many of our critics have been
lately making fools of themselves, in their alleged _exposés_ of our
doctrines, it is to the advantage of our Society to let them go on
undisturbed, and thus turn the laugh on the enemy. Two graphic
instances may be cited. In “Buddhism in Christendom; or, Jesus the
Essene,” by an impolite dabbler in Orientalism, the septenary
doctrine of the Occultists is disfigured out of recognition, and is
met by the unanimous hearty laugh of those who know something of the
subject. Its unlucky author has evidently never opened a serious
theosophical work, unless, indeed, the doctrine is too much above
his head. As a refreshing contrast one finds, in “Earth and Its
Earliest Ages,” by G. H. Pember, an author, who has most
conscientiously studied and understood the fundamental doctrines of
Theosophy.
Thus, notwithstanding his attempt to connect it with the coming
Antichrist, and show its numerous writers pledged to the work of
Satan, “the Prince of the Powers of the Air,”[18] the volume
published by that learned and fair-minded gentleman is a true pearl
in the _anti_-Theosophical literature. The correct enunciation of
knowledge of the tenets he disapproves, as a sincere orthodox
Christian, is remarkable; and his language, dignified, polite, and
entirely free from any personality can but call forth as courteous a
reply from those he arraigns. He has evidently read, and, what is
more, _understood_, what he found in the _Theosophist_, and other
mystic volumes. It shall, therefore, be the pleasure and duty of
LUCIFER, who bears no malice for the personal attack, to review this
interesting volume in its October issue, hoping to see as kind a
notice of “Earth and Its Earliest Ages” in the _Theosophist_ of
Madras.
-----
Footnote 18:
Spiritualists, mystics, and metaphysical Orientalists need not
feel jealous, as they are made to share the same fate, and are
raised to the same dignity with the Theosophists. The writers of
“The Perfect Way,” Mrs. Dr. Kingsford and Mr. E. Maitland, stand
arm-in-arm with the humble writer of “Isis Unveiled” before the
throne of Satan. Mr. Ed. Arnold, of “The Light of Asia,” and the
late Mr. Kenealy, of the “Book of God.” are seen radiating in the
same lethal light of brimstone and sulphur. Mr. C. C. Massey is
shown stuck deep in Antichristian Metaphysics; our kind Lady
Caithness is pointed out in the coils of the “Great Beast” of
Romanism, and charged with “Goddess worship:” and even—ye Powers
of mystical Perception!—Mr. Arthur Lillie’s Buddhist Monotheism is
taken _au grand serieux_!
-----
---
The Path; “a magazine devoted to the Brotherhood of Humanity,
Theosophy in America, and the study of Occult Science, Philosophy,
and Aryan Literature.” Edited by William Q. Judge. Price ten
shillings per annum. New York, U. S. A. P. O. Box, 2659, etc. George
Redway, 15 York Street, Covent Garden, London.
A most excellent and theosophical monthly, full of philosophical
literature by several well-known mystics and writers. The best
publication of its kind in the United States, and one that ever
fulfils what it promises, giving more food for thought than many of
the larger periodicals. Its August number is very interesting and
fully up to its usual mark.
Jasper Niemann continues his excellent reflections in “Letters on
the True.” Mr. E. D. Walker, in an article upon “The Poetry of
Reincarnation in Western Literature,” cites the verses of
Wordsworth, Tennyson, Dean Alford, Addison, H. Vaughan, Browning,
etc., in proof of the fact that these poets were tinctured, if not
imbued, with the philosophy of reincarnation. B. N. Acle continues
_Notes on the Astral Light_, from Eliphas Levi. He cites the
startling and lurid enunciation of that epigrammatical occultist,
who says that “He who dies without forgiving his enemy, hurls
himself into Eternity armed with a dagger, and devotes himself to
the horror of eternal murder.” “_The Symbolism of the Equilateral
Triangle_,” by Miss Lydia Bell, shows how much wisdom can be
extracted from a little symbol when you know how to look for it
there.
S. B. makes some very pertinent remarks upon _Theosophical Fiction_,
the growth of which is one sign of the times. “A true picture of
life, either real or potential, which is found in a work of fiction,
makes such reading one of the best sources of learning.” Thanks to
the education which it is receiving from the more solid literature
of theosophy, the public is becoming more critical, and has already
formed a “standard of probability” for marvellous phenomena, which
acts as a healthy check upon outside writers of fiction, who are
therefore no longer able to trust entirely “to their imagination for
their acts, and to their memory for their fancies.” Novel readers
now like their supernatural not to be _unnaturally_ supernatural,
even if they do have to take it in minute doses, disguised in their
favourite draught of love, murder and small talk. _The Higher
Carelessness_ (No. 7 of _Thoughts in Solitude_), by “Pilgrim,” is
full of deep and beautiful reflections. This writer, like “American
Mystic” whose article on the puzzling question, “_Am I my Brothers
Keeper_,” comes next, has advanced some way upon the path of
knowledge, and the thoughts of both of them have a special interest
for contemplative and self-examining readers. “American Mystic,”
by-the-bye, gives a new and striking turn to a phrase too often
misunderstood. “Resist not evil” he quotes and explains that
resistance, fierce and personal, to evil befalling oneself, is what
is meant. _Christianity—Theosophy_, by Mr. Wm. H. Kembal, seeks to
show that the fundamental aim of both, namely the Brotherhood of
Humanity, is the same, and that they can and ought to unite their
forces.
_Julius_, in _Tea Table Talk_, is as crisp, weird, and
slyly-sentimental as ever.
---
Le Lotus: “Revue des Hautes Etudes Théosophiques. Tendant à
favorises le rapprochement entre l’Orient et l’Occident.” Sous
l’inspiration de H. P. Blavatsky (nominally; but edited, in reality,
by our able brother, F. K. Gaboriau, F.T.S.). Georges Carré, 112
Boulevard St. Germain, Paris. Subscription 15 fr. per annum.
An excellent monthly, presenting yet another aspect of theosophy;
inspired by the desire to benefit the struggling masses of humanity,
and to diffuse the true spirit of solidarity among men. The August
number, besides translations of selected articles from the
_Theosophist_, of special interest to its French readers, contains a
capital article on “Freemasons and Theosophists,” the continuation
of a series of studies on “Initiation,” and a discussion of the
much-vexed question whether the “Will to Live” spoken of in the
“Elixir of Life” is selfish or not. In the last few pages, the
serious character of the journal is relieved by those brilliant
sparkles of French wit to which that language lends itself so
admirably.
Brief notes on books, articles in the press, pamphlets, &c., give
ample scope for caustic raillery, as well as appreciative comment,
and the editor ought to be specially congratulated on this
department of his review.
---
L’Aurore: Revue mensuelle sous la direction de Lady Caithness,
Duchesse de Pomar. George Carré, 112 Boulevard St. Germain, Paris.
Subscription, 15fr. per annum.
The Mystic and Catholic Journal of Aristocratic France, somewhat
tinged with humanitarianism, and showing the influence of the higher
phases of modern spiritualism. The subject of reincarnation is its
principal feature, and a mystical romance, _Amour Immortel_, gives
its various phases. _L’Aurore_ is admirably conducted. Its articles
are always in good taste, and perfectly adapted to the special
public it appeals to.
---
The Occult Word: A monthly journal in the interest of Theosophy.
Mrs. J. W. Cables, 40, Ambrose Street, Rochester, N. Y., U.S.A.
Subscription, 1 dollar per annum.
Brought out more in the style of a newspaper, this journal is
another proof of the vitality of the Theosophic movement. It is more
Christian in its tone and phraseology, and shows less traces of the
influence of Eastern thought, than the publications already
mentioned. Some thoughts in it are remarkably good, and its tendency
most excellent. A most worthy little periodical.
---
The Occultist: A monthly journal of Psychological and Mystical
Research. Edited by Mr. J. Thomas, F.T.S. London agent, E. W. Allen,
4 Ave Maria Lane, E.C. Subscription, 1 shilling per annum.
As its price indicates, a tiny and unambitious publication of four
pages, but one that contains, from time to time, thoughtful and
suggestive articles. Its existence testifies to the devotion of its
proprietor and editor to the cause of truth.
---
The Sphinx: “A monthly journal, devoted to the historical and
experimental proof of the supersensuous conception of the world on a
monistic basis.” Edited by Hübbe Schleiden, Dr. J. U. Th. Griebens
Verlag, Leipzig; and George Redway, London. Subscription, 12s. 6d.
per annum.
As its title page implies, a learned and philosophical journal,
doing its work with true German thoroughness and permeated with a
real spirit of earnest investigation. It appeals, mainly, to
thinkers and students—a numerous class in Germany, but somewhat
sparsely represented in England. Dr. Carl Du Prel, the leader of the
new school of transcendental philosophy in that country, is its
leading contributor. But it contains from time to time articles of
great interest to students of occultism.
---
TRANSACTIONS OF THE “LONDON LODGE” OF THE T. S., NOS. 12 AND 13.—Two
able and interesting papers by Mr. A. P. Sinnett; the first on
“Buddha’s Teaching,” the second on “The Relations of the Lower and
Higher Self.” Dealing with Buddhism, Mr. Sinnett exposes several of
the current misconceptions regarding Buddhist doctrines. Notably
among these stand the utterly false ideas, current in the West, that
Buddha recognised no conscious existence for the individual after
death, and that Nervana is synonymous with annihilation. Mr. Sinnett
draws a happy comparison between these misconceptions and the
strange blindness shown by European scholars in accepting the
allegorical legend that Buddha’s death was occasioned by eating
roast _boar_, as a literal fact.
In his second paper, Mr. Sinnett follows up a line of thought
originated by him in an earlier number of the “Transactions.” He
explains his views with clearness, and adds considerably to the
details of the outline sketched in his previous paper. But, as
LUCIFER hopes shortly to deal with this subject at length, it is
unnecessary to enter into a detailed examination of Mr. Sinnett’s
views at present.
---
The Esoteric: “A Magazine of Advance and Practical Esoteric
Thought.” Boston, U.S.A. Subscription 6s. per annum.
Principal feature—the identification of each issue with one of the
signs of the Zodiac, which are held to be “important and real
divisions of time or states of man’s life.” Contents—eighteen short
articles, occupying 62 pages, the substance of which has been mainly
gleaned from various mystic authors, and harmonizes well with some
Theosophical teachings.
=FROM THE NOTE BOOK OF AN UNPOPULAR PHILOSOPHER=
THE ESOTERIC VALUE OF CERTAIN WORDS AND DEEDS IN SOCIAL LIFE.
A definition of _Public Opinion_. The gathering of a few fogies
positively electrified by fanaticism and force of habit, who act on
the many noodles negatively electrified by indifference. The
acceptation of uncharitable views on “suggestion” by “telepathic
impact” (what ever that may mean). The work of unconscious
psychology.
_Sympathetic grief._—The expression thereof in Society, for one’s
sorrow, is like a solemn funeral procession, in which the row of
mourning coaches is long, indeed, but the carriages of which are all
empty.
_Mutual exchange of compliments._—Expressions of delight and other
acting in cultured society are the fig-leaves of the civilised Adams
and Eves. These “aprons” to conceal truth are fabricated incessantly
in social Edens, and their name is—_politeness_.
_Keeping the Sabbath._—Throwing public contumely on, and parading
one’s superiority over Christ, “one greater than the temple” and
Sabbath, who stood for his disciples’ rights to “break” the Sabbath,
for the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for Sabbath (Matt.
xii. and Mark ii., etc.).
_Attending Divine Service._—Breaking the express commandment of
Jesus. Becoming “as the hypocrites are,” who love to pray in
Synagogue and Temples, “that they may be seen of men.” (Matt.vi.)
_Taking the Oath, on the Bible._—A Christian law, devised and
adopted to perpetuate and carry out the unequivocal commandment of
the Founder of Christianity, “Swear not at all, neither by heaven
nor by the earth” (Matt. v.). As the heaven and the earth are
supposed to have been created _only_ by God, a book written by _men_
thus received the prerogative over the former.
_Unpopularity._—We hate but those whom we envy or fear. Hatred is a
concealed and forced homage rendered to the person hated; a tacit
admission of the superiority of the unpopular character.
The true value of _back-biting and slander_. A proof of the fast
coming triumph of the victim chosen. The bite of the fly when the
creature feels its end approaching.
_A Few Illustrations to the Point from Schopenhauer._
Socrates was repeatedly vilified and thrashed by the opponents of
his philosophy, and was as repeatedly urged by his friends to have
his honour avenged in the tribunals of Athens. Kicked by a rude
citizen, in the presence of his followers, one of these expressed
surprise for his not resenting the insult, to which the Sage
replied:
“Shall I then feel offended, and ask the magistrate to avenge me, if
I also happen to be kicked by an ass?”
To another remark whether a certain man had abused and called him
names, he quietly answered:
“No; for none of the epithets he used can possibly apply to me.”
(From Plato’s “Georgics”)
The famous cynic, Cratus, having received from the musician
Nicodromus a blow which caused his face to swell, coolly fixed a
tablet upon his brow, inscribed with the two words, “_Nicodromus
facit_.” The flute player hardly escaped with his life from the
hands of the populace, which viewed Cratus as a household god.
Seneca, in his work “_De Constanta Sapientis_,” treats most
elaborately of insults in words and deeds, or _contumelia_, and then
declares that no Sage ever pays the smallest attention to such
things.—“Well, yes!” the reader will exclaim, “but these men were
all of them _Sages_!”—“And you, are you then only _fools_? Agreed!”
LUCIFER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOL. I. LONDON, OCTOBER 15TH, 1887. NO. 2.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE LADY OF LIGHT.
(_Written for_ LUCIFER.)
Star of the Day and the Night!
Star of the Dark that is dying;
Star of the Dawn that is nighing,
Lucifer, Lady of Light![19]
* *
Still with the purest in white,
Still art thou Queen of the Seven;
Thou hast not fallen from Heaven
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
* *
How large in thy lustre, how bright
The beauty of promise thou wearest!
The message of Morning thou bearest,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
* *
Aid us in putting to flight
The Shadows that darken about us,
Illumine within, as without, us,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
* *
Shine through the thick of our fight;
Open the eyes of the sleeping;
Dry up the tears of the weeping,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
* *
Purge with thy pureness our sight,
Thou light of the lost ones who love us,
Thou lamp of the Leader above us,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
* *
Shine with transfiguring might,
Till earth shall reflect back as human
Thy Likeness, Celestial Woman,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
* *
With the flame of thy radiance smite
The clouds that are veiling the vision
Of Woman’s millennial mission,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
* *
Shine in the Depth and the Height,
And show us the treasuries olden
Of wisdom, the hidden, the golden,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
GERALD MASSEY.
-----
Footnote 19:
The reader well versed in symbology and theogony is, of course,
aware that every god and goddess of the ancient pantheons is
androgynous in his or her genealogy. Thus our Lucifer, the
“Morning Star,” being identical with Venus, is, therefore, the
same as the Chaldean Istar, or the Jewish Astoreth, to whom the
Hebrews offered cakes and buns, addressing her as the Lady of
Light and the Queen of Heaven. She is the “great star,”
_Wormwood_, whom the misanthropical St. John sees falling down to
the earth in _Revelation_ (Chapter viii.), as her great rival is
_Aima_, the fruitful mother, or the third Sephiroth Binah (IHVH
ALHIM, or the female Jah-hovah), the “woman with child,” in
Chapter xii. of the same.
-----
THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
It is intensely interesting to follow season after season the rapid
evolution and change of public thought in the direction of the
mystical. The educated mind is most undeniably attempting to free
itself from the heavy fetters of materialism. The ugly caterpillar
is writhing in the agonies of death, under the powerful efforts of
the psychic butterfly to escape from its science-built prison, and
every day brings some new glad tidings of one or more such mental
births to light.
As the New York “Path” truly remarks in its September issue, when
“Theosophical and kindred topics ... are made the texts for novels,”
and, we may add, scientific essays and _brochures_, “the implication
is that interest in them has become diffused through all social
ranks.” That kind of literature is “paradoxically proof that
Occultism has passed beyond the region of careless amusement and
entered that of serious enquiry.” The reader has but to throw a
retrospective glance at the publications of the last few years to
find that such topics as Mysticism, Magic, Sorcery, Spiritualism,
Theosophy, Mesmerism, or, as it is now called, Hypnotism, all the
various branches in short of the _Occult_ side of nature, are
becoming predominant in every kind of literature. They visibly
increase in proportion to the efforts made to discredit the
movements in the cause of truth, and strangle enquiry—whether on the
field of theosophy or spiritualism—by trying to besmear their most
prominent heralds, pioneers and defenders, with tar and feathers.
The key-note for mystic and theosophic literature was Marion
Crawford’s “Mr. Isaacs.” It was followed by his “Zoroaster.” Then
followed “The Romance of Two Worlds,” by Marie Corelli; R. Louis
Stephenson’s “Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll;” “The Fallen Idol,” by
Anstey; “King Solomon’s Mines” and the thrice famous “She,” by Rider
Haggard; “Affinities” and “The Brother of the Shadow,” by Mrs.
Campbell Praed; Edmund Downey’s “House of Tears,” and many others
less noticeable. And now there comes a fresh outburst in Florence
Marryat’s “Daughter of the Tropics,” and F. C. Philips’ “Strange
Adventures of Lucy Smith.” It is unnecessary to mention in detail
the literature produced by avowed theosophists and occultists, some
of whose works are very remarkable, while others are positively
scientific, such as S. L. Macgregor Mathers’ “Kabbalah Unveiled,”
and Dr. F. Hartmann’s “Paracelsus,” “Magic, White and Black,” &c. We
have also to note the fact that theosophy has now crossed the
Channel, and is making its way into French literature. “La France”
publishes a strange romance by Ch. Chincholle, pregnant with
theosophy, occultism and mesmerism, and called “_La Grande
Pretresse_,” while _La Revue politique et litteraire_ (19 Feb. 1887,
_et seq._) contained over the signature of Th. Bentzon, a novel
called _Emancipée_, wherein esoteric doctrines and adepts are
mentioned in conjunction with the names of well-known theosophists.
A sign of the times!
Literature—especially in countries free from government
censorship—is the public heart and pulse. Besides the glaring fact
that were there no demand there would be no supply, current
literature is produced only to please, and is therefore evidently
the mirror which faithfully reflects the state of the public mind.
True, Conservative editors, and their submissive correspondents and
reporters, still go on slashing occasionally in print the fair faces
of mystic spiritualism and theosophy, and some of them are still
found, from time to time, indulging in a _brutal_ personal attack.
But they do no harm on the whole, except perhaps to their own
editorial reputations, as such editors can never be suspected of an
exuberance of culture and good taste after certain ungentlemanly
personal attacks. They do good on the contrary. For, while the
theosophists and spiritualists so attacked, may view the
Billingsgate poured upon them in a true Socratean spirit, and
console themselves with the knowledge that none of the epithets used
can possibly apply to them, on the other hand, _too much_ abuse and
vilification generally ends by awakening the public sympathy for the
victim, in the right-minded and the impartial, at any rate.
In England people seem to like fair play on the whole. It is not
_bashi-boozook_-like actions, the doughty deeds of those who
delight in mutilating the slain and the wounded, that can find
sympathy for any great length of time with the public. If—as
maintained by our lay enemies and repeated by some _naïf_ and too
sanguine missionary organs—Spiritualism and Theosophy are “dead as
a door-nail” (_sic_, _vide_ American Christian periodicals),—aye,
“dead and buried,” why, in such case, good Christian fathers, not
leave the dead at rest till “Judgment Day”? And if they are not,
then editors—the profane as well as the clerical—why should you
still fear? Do not show yourselves such cowards if you have the
truth on your side. _Magna est veritas et prevalebit_, and “murder
will out,” as it always has, sooner or later. Open your columns to
_free_ and fearless discussion, and do as the theosophical
periodicals have ever done, and as LUCIFER is now preparing to do.
The “bright Son of the morning” fears no light. He courts it, and
is prepared to publish any inimical contributions (couched, of
course, in decent language), however much at variance with his
theosophical views. He is determined to give a fair hearing in any
and every case, to both contending parties and allow things and
thoughts to be judged on their respective merits. For why, or what
should one dread when fact and truth are one’s only aim? _Du choc
des opinions jaillit la verité_ was said by a French philosopher.
If Theosophy and Spiritualism are no better than “gigantic frauds
and will-o’-the-wisps of the age” why such _expensive_ crusades
against both? And if they are not, why should Agnostics and
searchers after truth in general, help bigoted and narrow-minded
materialists, sectarians and dogmatists to hide our light under a
bushel by mere brutal force and usurped authority? It is easy to
surprise the good faith of the fair-minded. Still easier to
discredit that, which by its intrinsic strangeness, is already
unpopular and could hardly be credited in its palmiest days. “We
welcome no supposition so eagerly as one which accords with and
intensifies our own prejudices” says, in “Don Jesualdo,” a popular
author. Therefore, _facts_ become often cunningly concocted
“frauds;” and self-evident, glaring lies are accepted as gospel
truths at the first breeze of Don Basilio’s _Calumnia_, by those
to whose hard-crusted pre-conceptions such slander is like
heavenly dew.
But, beloved enemies, “the light of Lucifer” may, after all, dispel
some of the surrounding darkness. The mighty roaring voice of
denunciation, so welcome to those whose little spites and hates and
mental stagnation in the grasp of the social respectability it
panders to, may yet be silenced by the voice of truth—“the still
small voice”—whose destiny it ever was to first preach in the
desert. That cold and artificial light which still seems to shine so
dazzlingly over the alleged iniquities of professional mediums and
the supposed sins of commission and omission of _non-professional_
experimentalists, of free and independent theosophists, may yet be
extinguished at the height of all its glory. For it is not quite the
perpetual lamp of the alchemist philosopher. Still less is it that
“light which never shone on sea or land,” that ray of divine
intuition, the spark which glimmers latent in the spiritual,
never-erring perceptions of man and woman, and which is now
awakening—for its time is at hand. A few years more, and the
Aladdin’s lamp, which called forth the ministering genius thereof,
who, making three salutes to the public, proceeded forthwith to
devour mediums and theosophists, like a juggler who swallows swords
at a village fair, will get out of order. Its light, over which the
anti-theosophists are crowing victory to this day, shall get dim.
And then, perhaps, it will be discovered that what was claimed as a
direct ray from the source of eternal truth was no better than a
penny rush-light, in whose deceitful smoke and soot people got
hypnotized, and saw everything upside down. It will be found that
the hideous monsters of fraud and imposture had no existence outside
the murky and dizzied brains of the Aladdins on their journey of
discovery. And that, finally, the good people who listened to them,
had been all the time seeing sights and hearing things under
unconscious and mutual _suggestion_.
This is a scientific explanation, and requires no black magicians or
_dugpas_ at work; for “suggestion” as now practised by the sorcerers
of science is—_dugpaship_ itself, _pur sang_. No Eastern “adept of
the _left_ hand” can do more mischief by his infernal art than a
grave hypnotiser of the Faculty of Medicine, a disciple of Charcot,
or of any other scientific _light_ of the first magnitude. In Paris,
as in St. Petersburg, crimes have been committed under “suggestion.”
Divorces have occurred, and husbands have nearly killed their wives
and their supposed co-respondents, owing to tricks played on
innocent and respectable women, who have thus had their fair name
and all their future life blasted for ever. A son, under such
influence, broke open the desk of an avaricious father, who caught
him in the act, and nearly shot him in a fit of rage. One of the
keys of Occultism is in the hands of science—cold, heartless,
materialistic, and crassly ignorant of the other truly psychic side
of the phenomenon: hence, powerless to draw a line of demarcation
between the physiological and the purely spiritual effects of the
disease inoculated, and unable to prevent future results and
consequences of which it has no knowledge, and over which it has,
therefore, no control.
We find in the “Lotus” of September, 1887, the following:—
A French paper, the _Paris_, for August 12th, contains a long and
excellent article by G. Montorgueil, entitled, _The Accursed
Sciences_, from which we extract the following passage, since we
are, unfortunately, unable to quote the whole:—
“Some months ago, already, in I forget what case, the question of
‘suggestion’ was raised and taken account of by the judges. We
shall certainly see people in the dock accused of occult
malpractices. But how will the prosecution go to work? What
arguments will it bring to bear? The crime by ‘suggestion’ is the
ideal of a crime without proof. In such a case the gravest charges
will never be more than presumptions, and fugitive presumptions.
On what fragile scaffolding of suspicions will the charge rest? No
examination, but a moral one, will be possible. We shall have to
resign ourselves to hearing the Solicitor-general say to the
accused: ‘Accused, it appears from a perquisition made into your
brain, etc.’
Ah, the poor jurymen! it is they who are to be pitied. Taking
their task to heart, they already have the greatest difficulty in
separating the true from the false, even in rough and ready cases,
the facts of which are obvious, all the details of which are
tangible and the responsibilities clear. And we are going to ask
them on their soul and conscience to decide questions of black
magic! Verily their reason will not hold out through the
fortnight; it will give way before that and sink into thaumaturgy.
We move fast. The strange trials for sorcery will blossom anew;
somnabules who were merely grotesque will appear in a tragic
light; the coffee grounds, which so far only risked the police
court, will hear their sentence at the assizes. The evil eye will
figure among criminal offences. These last years of the XIXth
century will have seen us step from progress to progress, till we
reach at last this judicial enormity: a second Laubardemont
prosecuting another Urbain Grandier.”
Serious, scientific, and political papers are full of earnest
discussions on the subject. A St. Petersburg “Daily” has a long
_feuilleton_ on the “Bearing of _Hypnotic Suggestions_ upon Criminal
Law.” “Cases of Hypnotism with criminal motives have of late begun
to increase in an ever progressing ratio,” it tells its readers. And
it is not the only newspaper, nor is Russia the only country where
the same tale is told. Careful investigations and researches have
been made by distinguished lawyers and medical authorities. Data
have been assiduously collected and have revealed that the curious
phenomenon,—which sceptics have hitherto derided, and young people
have included among their evening _petits jeux innocents_,—is a new
and terrible danger to state and society.
Two facts have now become patent to law and science:—
(I.) _That, in the perceptions of the hypnotised subject, the
visionary representations called forth by “suggestion,” become
real existing actualities, the subject being, for the moment,
the automatic executor of the will of the hypnotiser; and_—
(II.) _That the great majority of persons experimented upon, is
subject to hypnotic suggestion._
Thus Liébeault found only _sixty_ subjects intractable out of the
_seven hundred_ he experimented upon; and Bernheim, out of 1,014
subjects, failed with only _twenty-six_. The field for the
natural-born _jadoo-wala_ (sorcery-mongers), is vast indeed! Evil
has acquired a play-ground on which it may now exercise its sway
upon many a generation of unconscious victims. For crimes undreamt
of in the waking state, and felonies of the blackest dye, are now
invited and encouraged by the new “accursed science.” The real
perpetrators of these deeds of darkness may now remain for ever
hidden from the vengeance of human justice. The hand which executes
the criminal suggestion is only that of an irresponsible automaton,
whose memory preserves no trace of it, and who, moreover, is a
witness who can easily be disposed of by compulsory suicide—again
under “suggestion.” What better means than these could be offered to
the fiends of lust and revenge, to those dark Powers—called human
passions—ever on the look out to break the universal commandment:
“Thou shalt not steal, nor murder, nor lust after thy neighbour’s
wife?” Liébeault _suggested_ to a young girl that she should poison
herself with prussic acid, and she swallowed the supposed drug
without one moment’s hesitation; Dr. Liégois _suggested_ to a young
woman that she owed him 5,000 francs, and the subject forthwith
signed a cheque for the amount Bernheim _suggested_ to another
hysterical girl a long and complicated vision with regard to a
criminal case. Two days after, although the hypnotiser had not
exercised any new pressure upon her in the interim, she repeated
distinctly the whole suggested story to a lawyer sent to her for the
purpose. Had her evidence been seriously accepted, it would have
brought the accused to the guillotine.
These cases present two dark and terrible aspects. From the moral
stand point, such processes and _suggestions_ leave an indelible
stain upon the purity of the subject’s nature. Even the innocent
mind of a ten year old child can thus be innoculated with vice, the
poison-germ of which will develop in his subsequent life.
On the judicial aspect it is needless to enter in great detail.
Suffice to say that it is this characteristic feature of the
hypnotic state—the absolute surrender of will and self-consciousness
to the hypnotiser—which possesses such importance, from its bearing
upon crime, in the eyes of legal authorities. For if the hypnotiser
has the subject entirely at his beck and call, so that he can cause
him to commit any crime, acting, so to say, invisibly within him,
then what are not the terrible “judicial mistakes” to be expected?
What wonder then, that the jurisprudence of one country after the
other has taken alarm, and is devising, one after the other,
measures for repressing the exercise of hypnotism! In Denmark it has
just been forbidden. Scientists have experimented upon sensitives
with so much success that a hypnotised victim has been jeered and
hooted through the streets on his way to commit a crime, which he
would have completed unconsciously, had not the victim been warned
beforehand by the hypnotiser.
In Brussels a recent and sad case is well-known to all. A young girl
of good family was seduced while in a hypnotised state by a man who
had first subjected her to his influence at a social gathering. She
only realised her condition a few months later, when her relatives,
who divined the criminal, forced her seducer to make the only
possible reparation—that of marrying his victim.
The French Academy has just been debating the question:—how far a
hypnotised subject, from a mere victim, can become a regular tool of
crime. Of course, no jurist or legislator can remain indifferent to
this question; and it was averred that the crimes committed under
_suggestion_ are so unprecedented that some of them can hardly be
brought within the scope of the law. Hence the prudent legal
prohibition, just adopted in France, which enacts that no person,
save those legally qualified to exercise the medical profession,
shall hypnotise any other person. Even the physician who enjoys such
legal right is permitted to hypnotise a person only in the presence
of another qualified medical man, and with the written permission of
the subject. Public _séances_ of hypnotism are forbidden, and they
are strictly confined to medical _cliniques_ and laboratories. Those
who break this law are liable to a heavy fine and imprisonment.
But the keynote has been struck, and many are the ways in which this
_black art_ may be used—laws notwithstanding. That it will be so
used, the vile passions inherent in human nature are sufficient
guarantee.
Many and strange will be the romances yet enacted; for truth is
often stranger than fiction, and what is thought fiction is still
more often truth.
No wonder then that occult literature is growing with every day.
Occultism and sorcery are in the air, with no true philosophical
knowledge to guide the experimenters and thus check evil results.
“Works of _fiction_,” the various novels and romances are called.
“Fiction” in the arrangement of their characters and the adventures
of their heroes and heroines—admitted. Not so, as to the _facts_
presented. These are _no fictions_, but true _presentiments_ of what
lies in the bosom of the future, and much of which is already
born—nay corroborated by _scientific_ experiments. Sign of the
times! Close of a psychic cycle! The time for phenomena with, or
through mediums, whether professional or otherwise, is gone by. It
was the early season of the blossoming, of the era mentioned even in
the Bible;[20] the tree of Occultism is now preparing for
“fruiting,” and the Spirit of the Occult is awakening in the blood
of the new generations. If the old men only “dream dreams,” the
young ones see already visions,[21] and—record them in novels and
works of fiction. Woe to the ignorant and the unprepared, and those
who listen to the syrens of materialistic science! For indeed,
indeed, many will be the unconscious crimes committed, and many will
be the victims who will innocently suffer death by hanging and
decapitation at the hands of the righteous judges and the _too
innocent_ jurymen, both alike ignorant of the fiendish power of
“SUGGESTION.”
-----
Footnote 20:
“It shall come to pass that I will pour out my Spirit upon all
flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men
shall dream dreams; your young men shall see visions” (Joel ii.
28).
Footnote 21:
It is curious to note that Mr. Louis Stevenson, one of the most
powerful of our imaginative writers, stated recently to a reporter
that he is in the habit of constructing the plots of his tales in
_dreams_, and among others that of Dr. Jekyll. “I dreamed,” he
continued, “the story of ‘Olalla’ ... and I have at the present
moment two unwritten stories which I have likewise dreamed....
Even when fast asleep I know that it is I who am inventing.”...
But who knows whether the idea of “invention” is not also “a
dream”!
-----
[Illustration: decorative separator]
SELF-KNOWLEDGE.
The first necessity for obtaining self-knowledge is to become
profoundly conscious of ignorance; to feel with every fibre of the
heart that one is _ceaselessly_ self-deceived.
The second requisite is the still deeper conviction that such
knowledge—such intuitive and certain knowledge—can be obtained by
effort.
The third and most important is an indomitable determination to
obtain and face that knowledge.
Self-knowledge of this kind is unattainable by what men usually call
“self-analysis.” It is not reached by reasoning or any brain
process; for it is the awakening to consciousness of the Divine
nature of man.
To obtain this knowledge is a greater achievement than to command
the elements or to know the future.
COMMENTS ON “LIGHT ON THE PATH.”
BY THE AUTHOR; (_continued_).
“Before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness.”
The first four rules of Light on the Path are, undoubtedly, curious
though the statement may seem, the most important in the whole book,
save one only. Why they are so important is that they contain the
vital law, the very creative essence of the astral man. And it is
only in the astral (or self-illuminated) consciousness that the
rules which follow them have any living meaning. Once attain to the
use of the astral senses and it becomes a matter of course that one
commences to use them; and the later rules are but guidance in their
use. When I speak like this I mean, naturally, that the first four
rules are the ones which are of importance and interest to those who
read them in print upon a page. When they are engraved on the man’s
heart and on his life, unmistakably then the other rules become not
merely interesting, or extraordinary, metaphysical statements, but
actual facts in life which have to be grasped and experienced.
The four rules stand written in the great chamber of every actual
lodge of a living Brotherhood. Whether the man is about to sell his
soul to the devil, like Faust; whether he is to be worsted in the
battle, like Hamlet; or whether he is to pass on within the
precincts; in any case these words are for him. The man can choose
between virtue and vice, but not until he is a man; a babe or a wild
animal cannot so choose. Thus with the disciple, he must first
become a disciple before he can even see the paths to choose
between. This effort of creating himself as a disciple, the
re-birth, he must do for himself without any teacher. Until the four
rules are learned no teacher can be of any use to him; and that is
why “the Masters” are referred to in the way they are. No real
masters, whether adepts in power, in love, or in blackness, can
affect a man till these four rules are passed.
Tears, as I have said, may be called the moisture of life. The soul
must have laid aside the emotions of humanity, must have secured a
balance which cannot be shaken by misfortune, before its eyes can
open upon the super-human world.
The voice of the Masters is always in the world; but only those hear
it whose ears are no longer receptive of the sounds which affect the
personal life. Laughter no longer lightens the heart, anger may no
longer enrage it, tender words bring it no balm. For that within, to
which the ears are as an outer gateway, is an unshaken place of
peace in itself which no person can disturb.
As the eyes are the windows of the soul, so are the ears its
gateways or doors. Through them comes knowledge of the confusion of
the world. The great ones who have conquered life, who have become
more than disciples, stand at peace and undisturbed amid the
vibration and kaleidoscopic movement of humanity. They hold within
themselves a certain knowledge, as well as a perfect peace; and thus
they are not roused or excited by the partial and erroneous
fragments of information which are brought to their ears by the
changing voices of those around them. When I speak of knowledge, I
mean intuitive knowledge. This certain information can never be
obtained by hard work, or by experiment; for these methods are only
applicable to matter, and matter is in itself a perfectly uncertain
substance, continually affected by change. The most absolute and
universal laws of natural and physical life, as understood by the
scientist, will pass away when the life of this universe has passed
away, and only its soul is left in the silence. What then will be
the value of the knowledge of its laws acquired by industry and
observation? I pray that no reader or critic will imagine that by
what I have said I intend to depreciate or disparage acquired
knowledge, or the work of scientists. On the contrary, I hold that
scientific men are the pioneers of modern thought. The days of
literature and of art, when poets and sculptors saw the divine
light, and put it into their own great language—these days lie
buried in the long past with the ante-Phidian sculptors and the
pre-Homeric poets. The mysteries no longer rule the world of thought
and beauty; human life is the governing power, not that which lies
beyond it. But the scientific workers are progressing, not so much
by their own will as by sheer force of circumstances, towards the
far line which divides things interpretable from things
uninterpretable. Every fresh discovery drives them a step onward.
Therefore do I very highly esteem the knowledge obtained by work and
experiment.
But intuitive knowledge is an entirely different thing. It is not
acquired in any way, but is, so to speak, a faculty of the soul; not
the animal soul, that which becomes a ghost after death, when lust
or liking or the memory of ill-deeds holds it to the neighbourhood
of human beings, but the divine soul which animates all the external
forms of the individualised being.
This is, of course, a faculty which indwells in that soul, which is
inherent. The would-be disciple has to arouse himself to the
consciousness of it by a fierce and resolute and indomitable effort
of will. I use the word indomitable for a special reason. Only he
who is untameable, who cannot be dominated, who knows he has to play
the lord over men, over facts, over all things save his own
divinity, can arouse this faculty. “With faith all things are
possible.” The sceptical laugh at faith and pride themselves on its
absence from their own minds. The truth is that faith is a great
engine, an enormous power, which in fact can accomplish all things.
For it is the covenant or engagement between man’s divine part and
his lesser self.
The use of this engine is quite necessary in order to obtain
intuitive knowledge; for unless a man believes such knowledge exists
within himself how can he claim and use it?
Without it he is more helpless than any drift-wood or wreckage on
the great tides of the ocean. They are cast hither and thither
indeed; so may a man be by the chances of fortune. But such
adventures are purely external and of very small account. A slave
may be dragged through the streets in chains, and yet retain the
quiet soul of a philosopher, as was well seen in the person of
Epictetus. A man may have every worldly prize in his possession, and
stand absolute master of his personal fate, to all appearance, and
yet he knows no peace, no certainty, because he is shaken within
himself by every tide of thought that he touches on. And these
changing tides do not merely sweep the man bodily hither and thither
like driftwood on the water; that would be nothing. They enter into
the gateways of his soul, and wash over that soul and make it blind
and blank and void of all permanent intelligence, so that passing
impressions affect it.
To make my meaning plainer I will use an illustration. Take an
author at his writing, a painter at his canvas, a composer listening
to the melodies that dawn upon his glad imagination; let any one of
these workers pass his daily hours by a wide window looking on a
busy street. The power of the animating life blinds sight and
hearing alike, and the great traffic of the city goes by like
nothing but a passing pageant. But a man whose mind is empty, whose
day is objectless, sitting at that same window, notes the passers-by
and remembers the faces that chance to please or interest him. So it
is with the mind in its relation to eternal truth. If it no longer
transmits its fluctuations, its partial knowledge, its unreliable
information to the soul, then in the inner place of peace already
found when the first rule has been learned—in that inner place there
leaps into flame the light of actual knowledge. Then the ears begin
to hear. Very dimly, very faintly at first. And, indeed, so faint
and tender are these first indications of the commencement of true
actual life, that they are sometimes pushed aside as mere fancies,
mere imaginings.
But before these are capable of becoming more than mere imaginings,
the abyss of nothingness has to be faced in another form. The utter
silence which can only come by closing the ears to all transitory
sounds comes as a more appalling horror than even the formless
emptiness of space. Our only mental conception of blank space is, I
think, when reduced to its barest element of thought, that of black
darkness. This is a great physical terror to most persons, and when
regarded as an eternal and unchangeable fact, must mean to the mind
the idea of annihilation rather than anything else. But it is the
obliteration of one sense only; and the sound of a voice may come
and bring comfort even in the profoundest darkness. The disciple,
having found his way into this blackness, which is the fearful
abyss, must then so shut the gates of his soul that no comforter can
enter there nor any enemy. And it is in making this second effort
that the fact of pain and pleasure being but one sensation becomes
recognisable by those who have before been unable to perceive it.
For when the solitude of silence is reached the soul hungers so
fiercely and passionately for some sensation on which to rest, that
a painful one would be as keenly welcomed as a pleasant one. When
this consciousness is reached the courageous man by seizing and
retaining it, may destroy the “sensitiveness” at once. When the ear
no longer discriminates between that which is pleasant or that which
is painful, it will no longer be affected by the voices of others.
And then it is safe and possible to open the doors of the soul.
“Sight” is the first effort, and the easiest, because it is
accomplished partly by an intellectual effort. The intellect can
conquer the heart, as is well known in ordinary life. Therefore,
this preliminary step still lies within the dominion of matter. But
the second step allows of no such assistance, nor of any material
aid whatever. Of course, I mean by material aid the action of the
brain, or emotions, or human soul. In compelling the ears to listen
only to the eternal silence, the being we call man becomes something
which is no longer man. A very superficial survey of the thousand
and one influences which are brought to bear on us by others will
show that this must be so. A disciple will fulfil all the duties of
his manhood; but he will fulfil them according to his own sense of
right, and not according to that of any person or body of persons.
This is a very evident result of following the creed of knowledge
instead of any of the blind creeds.
To obtain the pure silence necessary for the disciple, the heart and
emotions, the brain and its intellectualisms, have to be put aside.
Both are but mechanisms, which will perish with the span of man’s
life. It is the essence beyond, that which is the motive power, and
makes man live, that is now compelled to rouse itself and act. Now
is the greatest hour of danger. In the first trial men go mad with
fear; of this first trial Bulwer Lytton wrote. No novelist has
followed to the second trial, though some of the poets have. Its
subtlety and great danger lies in the fact that in the measure of a
man’s strength is the measure of his chance of passing beyond it or
coping with it at all. If he has power enough to awaken that
unaccustomed part of himself, the supreme essence, then has he power
to lift the gates of gold, then is he the true alchemist, in
possession of the elixir of life.
It is at this point of experience that the occultist becomes
separated from all other men and enters on to a life which is his
own; on to the path of individual accomplishment instead of mere
obedience to the genii which rule our earth. This raising of himself
into an individual power does in reality identify him with the
nobler forces of life and make him one with them. For they stand
beyond the powers of this earth and the laws of this universe. Here
lies man’s only hope of success in the great effort; to leap right
away from his present standpoint to his next and at once become an
intrinsic part of the divine power as he has been an intrinsic part
of the intellectual power, of the great nature to which he belongs.
He stands always in advance of himself, if such a contradiction can
be understood. It is the men who adhere to this position, who
believe in their innate power of progress, and that of the whole
race, who are the elders brothers, the pioneers. Each man has to
accomplish the great leap for himself and without aid; yet it is
something of a staff to lean on to know that others have gone on
that road. It is possible that they have been lost in the abyss; no
matter, they have had the courage to enter it. Why I say that it is
possible they have been lost in the abyss is because of this fact,
that one who has passed through is unrecognizable until the other
and altogether new condition is attained by both. It is unnecessary
to enter upon the subject of what that condition is at present. I
only say this, that in the early state in which man is entering upon
the silence he loses knowledge of his friends, of his lovers, of all
who have been near and dear to him; and also loses sight of his
teachers and of those who have preceded him on his way. I explain
this because scarce one passes through without bitter complaint.
Could but the mind grasp beforehand that the silence must be
complete, surely this complaint need not arise as a hindrance on the
path. Your teacher, or your predecessor may hold your hand in his,
and give you the utmost sympathy the human heart is capable of. But
when the silence and the darkness comes, you lose all knowledge of
him; you are alone and he cannot help you, not because his power is
gone, but because you have invoked your great enemy.
By your great enemy, I mean yourself. If you have the power to face
your own soul in the darkness and silence, you will have conquered
the physical or animal self which dwells in sensation only.
This statement, I feel, will appear involved; but in reality it is
quite simple. Man, when he has reached his fruition, and
civilization is at its height, stands between two fires. Could he
but claim his great inheritance, the encumbrance of the mere animal
life would fall away from him without difficulty. But he does not do
this, and so the races of men flower and then droop and die and
decay off the face of the earth, however splendid the bloom may have
been. And it is left to the individual to make this great effort; to
refuse to be terrified by his greater nature, to refuse to be drawn
back by his lesser or more material self. Every individual who
accomplishes this is a redeemer of the race. He may not blazon forth
his deeds, he may dwell in secret and silence; but it is a fact that
he forms a link between man and his divine part; between the known
and the unknown; between the stir of the market-place and the
stillness of the snow-capped Himalayas. He has not to go about among
men in order to form this link; in the astral he _is_ that link, and
this fact makes him a being of another order from the rest of
mankind. Even so early on the road towards knowledge, when he has
but taken the second step, he finds his footing more certain, and
becomes conscious that he is a recognised part of a whole.
This is one of the contradictions in life which occur so
constantly that they afford fuel to the fiction writer. The
occultist finds them become much more marked as he endeavours to
live the life he has chosen. As he retreats within himself and
becomes self-dependent, he finds himself more definitely becoming
part of a great tide of definite thought and feeling. When he has
learned the first lesson, conquered the hunger of the heart, and
refused to live on the love of others, he finds himself more
capable of inspiring love. As he flings life away it comes to him
in a new form and with a new meaning. The world has always been a
place with many contradictions in it, to the man; when he becomes
a disciple he finds life is describable as a series of paradoxes.
This is a fact in nature, and the reason for it is intelligible
enough. Man’s soul “dwells like a star apart,” even that of the
vilest among us; while his consciousness is under the law of
vibratory and sensuous life. This alone is enough to cause those
complications of character which are the material for the
novelist; every man is a mystery, to friend and enemy alike, and
to himself. His motives are often undiscoverable, and he cannot
probe to them or know why he does this or that. The disciple’s
effort is that of awaking consciousness in this starry part of
himself, where his power and divinity lie sleeping. As this
consciousness becomes awakened, the contradictions in the man
himself become more marked than ever; and so do the paradoxes
which he lives through. For, of course man creates his own life;
and “adventures are to the adventurous” is one of those wise
proverbs which are drawn from actual fact, and cover the whole
area of human experience.
Pressure on the divine part of man re-acts upon the animal part. As
the silent soul awakes it makes the ordinary life of the man more
purposeful, more vital, more real, and responsible. To keep to the
two instances already mentioned, the occultist who has withdrawn
into his own citadel has found his strength; immediately he becomes
aware of the demands of duty upon him. He does not obtain his
strength by his own right, but because he is a part of the whole;
and as soon as he is safe from the vibration of life and can stand
unshaken, the outer world cries out to him to come and labour in it.
So with the heart. When it no longer wishes to take, it is called
upon to give abundantly.
“Light on the Path” has been called a book of paradoxes, and very
justly; what else could it be, when it deals with the actual
personal experience of the disciple?
To have acquired the astral senses of sight and hearing; or in other
words to have attained perception and opened the doors of the soul,
are gigantic tasks and may take the sacrifice of many successive
incarnations. And yet, when the will has reached its strength, the
whole miracle may be worked in a second of time. Then is the
disciple the servant of Time no longer.
These two first steps are negative; that is to say they imply
retreat from a present condition of things rather than advance
towards another. The two next are active, implying the advance into
another state of being.[22]
Δ
(_To be continued._)
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Footnote 22:
The correspondence with reference to these “Comments” will be
found in the Correspondence columns.
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WILL AND DESIRE.
WILL is the exclusive possession of man on this our plane of
consciousness. It divides him from the brute in whom instinctive
desire only is active.
DESIRE, in its widest application, is the one creative force in the
Universe. In this sense it is indistinguishable from Will; but we
men never know desire under this form while we remain only men.
Therefore Will and Desire are here considered as opposed.
Thus Will is the offspring of the Divine, the God in man; Desire the
motive power of the animal life.
Most men live in and by desire, mistaking it for will. But he who
would achieve must separate will from desire, and make his will the
ruler; for desire is unstable and ever changing, while will is
steady and constant.
Both will and desire are absolute _creators_, forming the man
himself and his surroundings. But will creates intelligently—desire
blindly and unconsciously. The man, therefore, makes himself in the
image of his desires, unless he creates himself in the likeness of
the Divine, through his will, the child of the light.
His task is twofold: to awaken the will, to strengthen it by use and
conquest, to make it absolute ruler within his body; and, parallel
with this, to purify desire.
Knowledge and will are the tools for the accomplishment of this
purification.
A LAW OF LIFE: KARMA.
(_Continued._)
In illustration of the Mahatmic condition, it may be well to quote
some extracts from “Five Years of Theosophy,” on pp. 215, _et seq._
“The principal object of the Yogi is to realise the oneness of
existence, and the practice of morality is the most powerful means
to that end. The principal obstacle to this realization is the
inborn habit of man of always placing himself at the centre of the
Universe. Whatever a man might act, think, or feel, the
irrepressible personality is sure to be the central figure. This, as
will appear on reflection, is that which prevents every individual
from filling his proper sphere in existence, where he only is in
place, and no other individual is. The realization of this harmony
is the practical objective aspect of the ‘Grand Problem.’.... It
availeth nothing to intellectually grasp the notion of your being
everything ... if it is not realized in daily life. To confuse ‘meum
and tuum’ in the vulgar sense is but to destroy the harmony of
existence by a false assertion of ‘I,’ and is as foolish as the
attempt to nourish the legs at the expense of the arms. You cannot
be one with Nature, unless all your acts, thoughts, and feelings,
synchronize with the onward march of Nature. What is meant by a
Brahmajnani being beyond the reach of Karma, can be realised only by
a man who has found out his exact position in harmony with the one
Life in Nature; that man can see how a Brahmajnani can act only in
unison with Nature, and never in discord with it.”
“To use the phraseology of old occult writers, the Brahmajnani is a
real co-worker with Nature.... Many have fallen into the error of
supposing that a human being can escape the operation of the law of
Karma by adopting a condition of masterly inactivity, entirely
losing sight of the fact that even a rigid abstinence from physical
acts does not produce inactivity on the higher astral and spiritual
planes.... Such a supposition is nothing short of a delusion....
There is a tendency in every department of Nature for an act to
repeat itself. The Karma acquired in the last preceding birth is
always trying to forge fresh links in the chain, and thereby lead to
continued material existence. This tendency can only be counteracted
by unselfishly performing all the duties pertaining to the sphere in
which a person is born. Such a course can alone produce purification
of the mind, without which the capacity of perceiving spiritual
truths can never be acquired.”
Such a moral standard as this may be considered as the main working
factor in the existence of a Mahatma. He exists by, through, and in
harmony, and, as Mahatma, is harmony itself. It is impossible to
carry these speculations further, for beyond the fact that these
considerations are in analogy with the great law of nature, ordinary
human intelligence can gain nothing from them. The Mahatma is a
Mahatma, and only those who have reached that supreme condition can
describe it, and even then it is doubtful whether words would
express it. The word Mahatma has been used with some hesitation, as
it might possibly require an article of great length to give the
least idea of what it means. But some idea of the true position of
these exalted beings (known in India and Tibet by this name) may be
gathered from the foregoing pages if any conception of the
connection of humanity with the law of Karma, and also of liberated
humanity with the law of harmony, can be obtained.
In the preceding pages especial reference has been made to the fact
that the Mahatma, as such, has no Karma, but it is by no means
intended to convey the idea that all who enter Occultism, and even
those who have progressed a very long way on the Path of Life, are
Mahatmas. Nay, more! There are many of them who are very holy, and
even exalted, beings, but who are still subject to the law of Karma,
as applied to ordinary humanity. But they have acquired self-mastery
to an extraordinary degree, and their whole attention is “fixed on
the eternal.” Thus, so far as they are concerned, they generate no
new Karma in the restricted sense, but only progress towards
Universal Harmony.
To put it shortly, they exhaust their old Karma of past lives, and
devote themselves to the production of Harmony.
It is important to bear this in mind when the attention is turned to
the Karmic condition of ordinary humanity. For we are at once
brought face to face with the old and much disputed question between
free-will and predestination.
At this point, therefore, it will be necessary to enter, at some
length, on this question, because it has been supposed that the idea
of Karma is identical, or nearly so, with that of predestination.
Consequently, it will be necessary to attempt a definition of what
Free-will and Will are. Will, to the ordinary man, is known
according to his experience as the power to do or not to do an
action. So far, he is perfectly right, but, as usual, man limits the
action of his will to the physical plane, and takes no account of
even the mental plane. Even if he does not commit an action, he
cannot help thinking about it, because he has desired to do it—even
if he has repressed that desire. Nothing is more common than to hear
anyone say, “I can’t help my likes and dislikes,” or, in other
words, their attractions and repulsions, desires and the reverse.
Consequently, until a man can control his desires, those desires
control his will, and, consequently, predestination appears to rule
the day. Thus we find that it is desire which impels man onward on
his course, and governs that course to a very large extent, and this
is the principle which is at its highest development in mankind as a
rule. Now if it be granted that the human personality—a transient
thing—has been constituted by man’s vanity as the centre of the
Universe, it is plain that the combination of this principle of
desire with the pronounced personality, will only serve to intensify
this personality and bind man fast to it. Man thus constituted is a
prisoner, and, more often than not, is so attached to his prison
that he prefers to flutter his wings against the bars of his cage,
instead of endeavouring to escape. But are there any means of
escape:—it may be asked? Desire binds man fast to his personality,
and intensifies one personality against another. Hence it is
productive of strife and discord, and militates strongly against the
law of universal harmony, or Karma, in this aspect. Thus desire and
Karma would seem to be in complete opposition, and desire cannot be
said to be a consequence of Karma. But really this is a confusion of
terms, for all this only exists in the world of effects and not in
that of causes. Desire is an effect of the accentuated personality,
and in its turn produces that personality. This constitutes the
prison, and the only means of escape from this prison of discord is
the endeavour to produce harmony in its place. Thus, therefore, we
have a definition of will as being not only that which represses a
desire, but also an emanation of the one divine principle, and
proceeding from the divine in man. In one sense, this will, this
harmonizer of the discord, is identical with Karma. As a
consequence, we can see that Karma produces punishment. That
punishment arises from the fact that the assertion of both desire
and will in any man makes him the battle-field of two opposing
forces—the desire to do anything, and thus gratify the desire, and
the will to repress it. Thus man must be a co-worker with nature and
the law of harmony. He has to repress the Typhonic principle of
desire and dissipate its energy. If he does not, it will bind him
more firmly to his “personal centre,” accentuate his punishment, and
hang like a millstone round his neck in the shape of Karmic effects,
which generate fresh tendencies and desires.
The real function of will is to promote harmony between man and the
great law by repressing desire. Liberation from the _effects_ of
Karma will come to the man who grasps his whole individuality firmly
(not merely his personality), and, by the force of his awakened
_spiritual_ will, recognises this individuality as not himself, but
as a thing to use in passing beyond the life of the individuality.
Thus the direction of will should be towards realizing one’s
aspirations, and so give man “a glimpse into the eternal;” the lower
consciousness will mirror these aspirations, even unconsciously to
itself, and then itself aspires and is elevated if all is in accord.
But this is not free-will in the ordinary sense of the term; and it
does not seem possible that such should exist in view of the ideas
of Karmic effects and of reincarnation. It is in these two that lie
all the objections to free-will, because too short a view has been
taken of human life. In the dim vistas of time, and the countless
incarnations which have taken place in them, it will at once be seen
that the individual being has generated innumerable causes, the
effects of which are still to be experienced. Thus it is free-will
that man has, but not in the ordinary sense; it is free-will limited
by countless other free-wills around him—limited too and
circumscribed by his own acts. Man makes himself a prisoner, and
believes himself free. He is right in his belief in a measure, for
in virtue of the will he is free—to aspire and soar into the sublime
heights of his own higher nature. He is a prisoner and predestined
when he confines himself to his personality. Karma is at once his
gaoler and his liberator, and the decision lies in the intensity of
his aspirations, and is therefore in his own hands. Thus from the
personal view predestination is true, but not from that of the
spirit, which is free. From the latter view, and to a reasoning
mind, the Calvinistic doctrine sounds little short of blasphemy. It
is most certainly a contradiction in terms to speak of God as an
all-wise, all-powerful and entirely just God, and then to speak of
predestination as one of his laws, a law which, in face of the above
qualities, and with that of mercy in addition, dooms countless
millions to an eternity of pain and suffering as punishment, and
that too before they are even born. When the apparent injustice of
the lives of men is viewed and argued, it is because men forget what
they have done in previous lives, in which they have violated the
law in a very material direction, which leads them into these
positions and from which they have to escape.
Thus the aspirations of man constitute that which sets man free, and
which therefore represent his free-will. It is then well to
endeavour to trace these aspirations in man with regard to Karma.
The second section of the third part of “Light on the Path,” speaks
on this point with no uncertain voice. The Occultist must pluck and
eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and step on either the good
or the evil path. And to do this knowingly produces great Karmic
results. The mass of men walk waveringly, uncertain as to their
goal, their standard of life is indefinite; the Occultist cannot be
half-hearted, nor can he return when he has passed the threshold.
“The individuality has approached the state of responsibility by
reason of growth; it cannot recede from it.” The one means of escape
from Karma is for the Occultist to live in the Eternal. But below
this—the threshold—many men aspire. On this point, we may quote,
“Five Years of Theosophy,” p. 226.
“The unintelligent aspiration towards goodness propagates itself and
leads to good lives in the future; the intelligent aspiration
propagates itself in the same way, plus the propagation of
intelligence; and this distinction shows the gulf of difference
which may exist between the growth of a human soul, which merely
drifts along the stream of time, and that of one which is
consciously steered by an intelligent purpose throughout. The human
Ego, which acquires the habit of seeking for knowledge, becomes
invested, life after life, with the qualifications which ensure the
success of such a search, until the final success, achieved at some
critical period of its existence, carries it right up into the
company of those perfected Egos, which are the fully developed
flowers only expected from a few of the thousand seeds.”
“Now it is clear that a slight impulse in a given direction, even on
the physical plane, does not produce the same effect as a stronger
one; so exactly in this matter of engendering habits which are
required to persist in their operation through a succession of lives
it is quite obvious that the strong impulse of a very ardent
aspiration towards knowledge will be more likely than a weaker one
to triumph over the so-called accidents of nature.”
These considerations bring us to the question of those habits of
life which are more immediately associated with the pursuit of
occult science. It will be quite plain that the generation within
his own nature of affinities in the direction of spiritual progress
is a matter which has very little to do with the outer circumstances
of a man’s daily life. It cannot be dissociated from what may be
called the outer circumstances of his moral life, for an occult
student, whose moral nature is consciously ignoble, and who combines
the pursuit of knowledge with the practice of wrong, becomes by that
condition of things a student of sorcery rather than of true
Occultism.
Thus so far traced Karma in one of its aspects is, “the ethical law
of causation.” This law descends in its action below the moral
plane, and is observed as the law of compensation on the physical
plane. Thus the physical, intellectual and emotional planes, are all
affected by Karma. The key to the situation is the mind; and, as we
have seen, the liberation of the mind must be the most difficult
task. If the powers of the mind are concentrated on the attainment
of the highest ideal, Karma has no basis in which to inhere and
consequently the tendency to commit actions from lower motives is
annihilated. Even repentance, from this point of view, is a mistake,
as it necessarily draws the mind back to the actions and motives
repented of. Consequently by the exertion of free will, in the
aspiration to realize the ideal, man becomes his own Saviour; and
the true way to do this is to look neither for reward nor
punishment; to detach the mind from all considerations below that of
the spiritual life, and to live only in the Eternal.
ARCHIBALD KEIGHTLEY, M.B.
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“The great watch-word of the True is this:—in last analysis all
things are divine.”—(_Jasper Niemand in the “Path”_).
A GHOST’S REVENGE.
(_Conclusion._)
Gaston paused at the entrance to the chamber, and even detected
himself in taking an involuntary step backwards, for the singular
illusion was heightened by the circumstance that many of the figures
which were suspended perpendicularly from the walls, and had fallen
a little forward, looked as though they were trying to let
themselves down. But the monk, nothing concerned, went stolidly on
down the long narrow chamber, which had other chambers, or
corridors, leading out of it in several directions. To speak more
correctly, there was a series of vaults, branching several ways,
some of which were shut off from the rest by open-work screens or
gates of wool.
The walls on either side were piled high with coffins, the greater
number of which had one of their sides of glass, exposing to view
the hideous shrouded tenants. By whatever art it had been sought to
preserve these bodies from decay, Nature had declared in every
instance that it should not be, and no ghastlier assemblage of
mummified and mouldering corpses could have mocked the grief of the
relatives who should have given their dead to the grave. On the
blackened and distorted faces of some, it was not difficult to read
a look of supplication which the parted and fleshless lips seemed
striving to translate in this way: “Take us away from this dreadful
place and hide us in the decent earth.”
They lay there, all of them, in their coffins, in wrappings of
linen, silk, and velvet; men, and women, and children, and little
infants; priests, nobles, merchants—a world of dead ones; hundreds
and thousands of them.
Upon the faces of some, decay seemed working with a kind of
fantastic cruelty: punching a hole in the cheek or forehead; pushing
one eye from its socket, and leaving the other; stripping the skin
from one side of the face, and leaving it like a bit of wrinkled
parchment on the other.
Some were made to laugh from ear to ear; some had the corners of the
mouth drawn down and the features twisted, as though pain haunted
them in death; others looked defiant, derisive, amazed, indignant.
The majesty of death had fled from all of them, mockery and shame
had come to take its place. The worms were being avenged on these
who should have gone to feed them. Silent and rotting, they had no
part in either world; and shrinking continually within their
coffins, they cried mutely on decay to hasten his work, and give
them the boon of nothingness.
Above the line of coffins, on both sides of the chamber, hundreds of
clothed and hooded creatures—skeletons in all except the face, which
for the most part retained its covering of dried and tarnished
skin—were suspended from the walls. Each had a ticket pinned to its
dress, bearing the name and the date of death.
It was these figures on the walls which gave the chamber its most
dreadful aspect. Some were suspended by the neck, like suicides left
there for an example. Others in various gruesome fashions parodied
the attitudes of life. There was a grotesque group composed of three
figures which had tumbled together in such a manner that the two on
either side appeared to whisper into the ears of the third. Some had
the neck awry, the head on one side, in a listening or questioning
attitude; of others the head had sunk forward on the narrow breast.
The jaw of some had dropped, and protruded a row of teeth, with a
savage or jeering air.
Every variety of grimace and grin was shown on those appalling
faces; and as Gaston passed down the chamber fingers poked at him
from gaping sleeves; he was laughed at, mocked at, scowled at; and
when he looked behind him, all these skeletons were laughing,
mocking, and scowling at one another. Many of the faces were little
else but grinning mouths, and to those whose mouths stood wide open
his imagination gave voices, so that the vaults seemed filled with
the cries and laughter of the dead.
The monk went steadily on in front of him, waving his candle to and
fro; and as the smell was nauseate and oppressed the nostrils, he
spat occasionally upon the floor.
His bit of candle burnt itself out before he had taken Gaston
completely round, and he returned to fetch another, leaving Gaston
in a corner of the vault where the light was a mere glimmer. Right
opposite to him in this place was a massive coffin with rich
chasings, whose grisly inmate was wrapped from head to foot in a
mantle of black velvet. Every particle of flesh had melted from the
face, the hair had fallen from the head, the eyeless sockets stared
from the depths of the velvet hood. The skeleton was richly dight
and finely housed; it was Death himself lying in state.
The monk came up with a fresh candle, and Gaston stooped down and
peered into the coffin. Above the figure’s head was affixed a
miniature on ivory, which represented a young man in the first prime
of life, of a refined and beautiful countenance. In the folds of the
mantle a card had tumbled, and stooping lower, Gaston read on it the
name of Udalrico Verga. There was a small round hole in the skull,
just over the left temple.
“_Ucciso_, signor!” (Murdered!) said the monk, behind him.
The Italian word sounded softly in the lips of the monk; but there
was the tell-tale hole in the forehead.
This then was the hero and the victim of that old tragedy; this was
the end of him! But for his punctured skull, he might have changed
places with any of the least repulsive of his skeleton companions.
But his little bullet-hole marked him out from all of them.
Curiously, the hood had slipped off from the left side of the skull,
and as this was the side next to the spectator, the bullet-hole
compelled attention to itself at once.
The story of the murder which the baron had told to Gaston, and with
which his thoughts had many times been occupied in the Villa
Torcello, came before him again; and looking at the stark remains of
the victim of that forgotten crime, he felt a sudden and
irresistible longing to know its secret. If he could win it from the
coffin there! But the grim rest within would be disturbed no more.
And the young man pictured there beside the skeleton? Murder had no
meaning for him; he had not come to know it when he was pictured
thus. The face impressed Gaston strangely. He looked at it long,
till he began to fancy that behind its delicate beauty he saw the
tokens of a latent sensuality. But it was a face of singular
sweetness, and if any evil were there, it existed only in the
colourless form of a suggestion.
And the priest, who had died a suspect? Was _he_ here, and did death
whisper anything against him? No, the monk said; the priest was a
native of Syracuse, and after his death his body had been carried
there.
Gaston had seen enough; the chamber and its horrid tenants had given
him a sense of physical sickness; and, above all, some curious
malign influence seemed to issue from the coffin of Udalrico Verga,
which was working its way into his brain.
The words of the Baron came into his mind: “They say the spirit
haunts the place, seeking some one to avenge the murder.”
Placing a five-franc note in the hand of the monk, he left the
chamber and the monastery at once; and entering the carriage, he was
driven home.
By morning he had shaken off the morbid effects of his visit to the
Capucins’; but his imagination had become the seat of a vague and
indefinable oppression. This, at length, when analysed, resolved
itself into a certain feeling of injury on account of Udalrico
Verga. The wonderful amiableness, joined to an almost womanly
beauty, of the face he had seen imaged in the coffin, had touched
his sympathies; and now the memory of it began to lay hold on his
affections. For what cause, and by whose hand, had the young
Udalrico died so brutally?
The tale of the murder stuck in his mind; it possessed him; it would
not be dislodged. And the tale, though begun a whole generation
since, was still unfinished. It told that Verga had been murdered;
but who had murdered him?
This question uttered itself again and again; it grew importunate.
One evening in particular it became a kind of clamour in his ears;
when, walking by moonlight in the garden of the villa, he was
suddenly conscious that a presence other than his own was with him.
Turning about, he beheld vividly, at a distance from him of twelve
or fifteen paces, the figure of a young and elegant man. The view of
this figure which his eyes took in, and the impression which it made
upon his mind, were so distinct, that, but for a single
circumstance, he would have suspected nothing abnormal in the
appearance. The features were those of Udalrico Verga.
His reason still urging him to reject the testimony of his sight,
Gaston advanced nearer to the figure. It remained motionless,
outlined distinctly in the moonlight, on the path bordered by a row
of pepper trees where the body of Verga had been found. Again Gaston
went forward; he could now by stretching out his hand almost have
touched the figure; his eyes looked straight into the eyes of the
man whom he knew to have lain for thirty years in his coffin. While
gazing fixedly and with fascination upon this creature from the
grave, which, though he knew it to be bodiless, seemed full real to
him, Gaston felt his senses being subdued; and, before he could
exert will enough to repel an influence which flowed in upon him as
it were waves of blinding light, he was rapt out of himself, and
held for the space of a minute or so in what is best described as a
magnetic sleep or trance. He remained upright and rigid; his brain a
whirl of excitement, with an accompanying painful consciousness; the
body of the emotion being a confused and very indefinite feeling of
fear—whether for himself or for some other person, he did not know.
This feeling becoming slightly more definite, he knew that the fear
he felt was not for himself, but for another; yet who that other
was, he could not tell. It was the same when a voice said plainly in
his ear, that what had been begun must be finished; the voice was
piercing in its clearness, and he knew that it was the voice of one
dear to him; but whose, he could not divine.
This curious sleep lasted, as I have said, for about a minute; and
when Gaston awoke he was standing precisely as he had been when
seized in the trance. He looked for the apparition; it was not
there. He moved to the path, placed himself on the very spot where,
but a minute before, the form in the likeness of Udalrico Verga had
stood. There was nothing. He looked round him; from this path he
could see over the whole garden; it slept motionless in the
moonlight, and his was the only figure in it. Gaston returned to the
house in a condition of extreme nervous excitement.
In this condition, and almost before he had reached the room in
which he usually sat, the story of the murder was flashed in upon
his mind; he read it as plainly as if it were traced in English
characters on the wall before him. Fancying himself still under some
abnormous influence, which when it passed away would carry the story
with it, he at once sat down and committed an abstract of it to
paper.
All that night, the story swam in his brain, and rising early next
morning, he resolved—or rather was impelled—to commence writing it
immediately. He did so, and in the full light of day the wraith of
Udalrico Verga stood beside him, and he plainly saw it, during the
whole time his pen was at work. But the vision had no longer any
weakening or retarding effect upon his brain; rather its effects
were quickening and coercive; and these effects increased, till it
became a certainty to him that from the visible presence of the
spirit of Verga he drew the main strength of his inspiration. The
story grew under his pen to an elaborate romance, upon which,
sustained throughout by an elation of mind that allowed little
repose to the body, he was at work during many weeks.
In all this time, he never passed beyond the grounds of the villa,
and when, by-and-bye, his face began to show marks of the mental and
bodily stress to which his task subjected him, the peasant people of
the town, who saw him walking in the garden sometimes of an evening,
used to say:
“There is the English signor who went to live in the Villa Torcello
eleven weeks ago; he used to go out every day, but it is nine weeks
since he passed the gate. He cannot get out any more. He has seen
the ghost of the Signor Verga, and it keeps him there. He grows like
a ghost himself.”
But the story was finished at length, and Gaston sent the manuscript
to his publishers in London. The ghost of Verga, which had remained
visibly before him during the whole period of composition, vanished
on the day the work was ended, and was never seen by him again. He
went out every day as he had done formerly, and exercise brought
back the colour to his face, and restored the tone of his mind. At
this time he thought no more about the story than that it was a
strange one, which had come to him in a strange manner, and that it
ought to bring him the fame in fiction which he coveted.
A letter from Sir Selwyn, in which he said that he was on the point
of starting for home, determined Gaston to return thither at once,
that he might have everything in readiness for his father’s coming.
On the evening before his departure, while sorting a bundle of
papers, he came upon a portion of manuscript of his story which he
remembered having set aside as needing to be re-cast. He took it up
and began to read it.
The tragedy which formed the climax of the romance, had this
feature, that the man who was murdered had (unconsciously, and by a
singular operation of fate) planned his own death in planning that
of the friend whom he falsely believed to have betrayed him in love.
The chapter upon which Gaston had lighted, was devoted to a minute
analysis of the character of the man whom blind force of
circumstance had driven to an act of murder which his affection for
its victim had rendered abhorrent in the highest degree.
So remote from the ordinary had been the conditions under which the
story was composed, and so small (it had seemed to Gaston) was the
share of its inspiration which his own brain could claim, that now,
within a few weeks of its composition, he read it almost as the work
of another.
This exotic notion, that his own was not his own, deepened as he
read further into the chapter, for something was there which
disquieted him. Some shadowy unembodied likeness, and yet no
likeness, but a faint whispering of resemblance; some voiceless hint
that was but the failure of an echo. He turned back, and read again.
It was not there, he had deceived himself. He shut the page, his
mind at ease.
In a week from this time, he was home again, awaiting the coming of
his father. Sir Selwyn landed in England a month later, and Gaston,
who received him at the vessel’s side, was shocked at his
appearance. Sir Selwyn’s handsome face seemed not so much to have
aged as to have withered; the body, too, was shrunken, and
desiccated, as though the vital fluids were exhausted. The nervous
irritation of manner which had characterised an earlier stage of the
disease, had given way to a species of torpor, in which even speech
seemed an effort. It was the mental and bodily paralysis of
melancholia in its acutest form.
The journey home was a sad one. What little Sir Selwyn said, told
the story of the renewal of his sufferings, which dated from the day
that he had written to Gaston of his intention to return to England.
“But I am persuaded,” he said in conclusion, “that it draws near the
end.”
Strangely enough, however, as Gaston thought, and quite contrary to
his expectations, the sight of his beautiful home revived Sir
Selwyn’s spirits. They dined together, and the baronet showed a
brighter face over his wine. He sent for his bailiff, and spent an
hour or more discussing the affairs of his estate. Afterwards, he
walked with Gaston through the gardens and park, and began, for the
first time, to talk of his travels. Then he questioned Gaston about
his Italian tour, and said:
“What did you do with yourself all those weeks in Palermo? You
mentioned no writing; but I am sure your pen was not idle so long.”
“No,” said Gaston. “I wrote a famous story there. I did not mean to
tell you of it until it was published. It was to be a surprise, for
this is the book that is to make me famous.”
“Come, that sounds well!” said Sir Selwyn. “But you are beginning to
be famous already. What could have been better than the reviews of
your last book which you sent me?”
“Oh, but this one will do twice as much for me!” laughed Gaston.
“I am glad you feel that. No one could be more delighted than I am
to hear it. Have you dedicated it to me, Gaston?”
“Otherwise, my dear father, it would be no book of mine.”
“Thank you, Gaston. You know how dear your fame is to me.”
In another month, during which Sir Selwyn’s health, with some
fluctuations, had shown, on the whole, a disposition towards
improvement, Gaston’s romance was published.
On the day on which some copies were forwarded to him from the
publishers, he had gone on business to the neighbouring town, and
did not return until late in the evening.
Sir Selwyn’s valet, an old and devoted servant who had been with his
master for many years, met him at the door, pale, and terrified.
“Sir Selwyn has been taken strangely ill, sir,” he said. “We can
none of us tell what is the matter with him. He rang his bell an
hour ago, and when I went upstairs he was looking like a ghost,
sitting up quite stiff in his arm-chair, with one of your new books
in his hand. It seemed like a dead man speaking when he asked how
soon you could return, and said that no doctor was to be sent for.
He would not let me stay with him either, and, indeed, though I’ve
known Sir Selwyn these forty years, I believe I should have been
almost afraid to do so sir, he looked so terrible. I remained close
outside; but there’s not been a sound in his room ever since, sir.”
Fears which, even in thought, he dared not shape, came like a wave
upon Gaston, as he hurried to his father’s room.
Death, or his image, sat there, in Sir Selwyn’s chair; or rather,
the baronet’s aspect, as Gaston beheld him, grey and rigid, was like
the phantom Life-in-Death; as though a corpse had been galvanised
for a moment into a ghastly appearance of life. The jaw had begun to
fall and the eyes were large and glassy; but the regular rising and
falling of the breast showed that mechanical life was not yet
extinct. Open on the ground beside Sir Selwyn lay Gaston’s new
romance.
The spirit had all but taken its departure; but when Gaston bent
over his father and pleaded for recognition, there was a faint
twitching of the brow, and a half-convulsive movement of the whole
body, as though the spirit were trying to force an entrance again;
and Sir Selwyn, by an effort, fixed his eyes on his son’s face. His
voice struggled in his throat, and he said, with a pause between
every word:
“When I knelt beside him—for I still loved him—he said: ‘You have
killed me, but I will never leave you, and one day I will come back
from the grave and kill _you_’ He has kept his word. This is not
your book, Gaston, _it-is-Udalrico’s_. This is my——”
The voice stopped. Sir Selwyn was dead. The Ghost of Udalrico Verga
was avenged.
TIGHE HOPKINS.
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.
The problem of the origin of evil can be philosophically approached
only if the archaic Indian formula is taken as the basis of the
argument. Ancient wisdom alone solves the presence of the universal
fiend in a satisfactory way. It attributes the birth of Kosmos and
the evolution of life to the breaking asunder of primordial,
manifested UNITY, into plurality, or the great illusion of form.
HOMOGENEITY having transformed itself into Heterogeneity, contrasts
have naturally been created: hence sprang what we call EVIL, which
thenceforward reigned supreme in this “Vale of Tears.”
Materialistic Western philosophy (so mis-named) has not failed to
profit by this grand metaphysical tenet. Even physical Science, with
Chemistry at its head, has turned its attention of late to the first
proposition, and directs its efforts toward proving on irrefutable
data the homogeneity of primordial matter. But now steps in
materialistic Pessimism, a teaching which is neither philosophy nor
science, but only a deluge of meaningless words. Pessimism, in its
latest development, having ceased to be pantheistic, and having
wedded itself to materialism, prepares to make capital out of the
old Indian formula. But the atheistic pessimist soars no higher than
the terrestrial homogeneous plasm of the Darwinists. For him the
_ultima thule_ is earth and matter, and he sees, beyond the _prima
materia_, only an ugly void, an empty nothingness. Some of the
pessimists attempt to poetize their idea after the manner of the
whitened sepulchres, or the Mexican corpses, whose ghastly cheeks
and lips are thickly covered with rouge. The decay of matter pierces
through the mask of seeming life, all efforts to the contrary
notwithstanding.
Materialism patronises Indian metaphora and imagery now. In a new
work upon the subject by Dr. Mainländer, “Pessimism and Progress,”
one learns that Indian Pantheism and German Pessimism are
_identical_; and that it is the breaking up of homogeneous matter
into heterogeneous material, the transition from uniformity to
multiformity, which resulted in so unhappy a universe. Saith
Pessimism:—
“This (transition) is precisely the original mistake, the
_primordial sin_, which the whole creation has now to expiate by
heavy suffering; it is just that _sin_, which, having launched
into existence all that lives, plunged it thereby into the abysmal
depths of evil and misery, to escape from which there is but one
means possible, _i.e._, by putting _an end to being itself_.”
This interpretation of the Eastern formula, attributing to it the
first idea of escaping the misery of life by “putting an end to
being”—whether that being is viewed as applicable to the whole
Kosmos, or only to individual life—is a gross misconception. The
Eastern pantheist, whose philosophy teaches him to discriminate
between Being or ESSE and conditioned existence, would hardly
indulge in so absurd an idea as the postulation of such an
alternative. He knows he can put an end to _form_ alone, not to
_being_—and that only on this plane of terrestrial illusion. True,
he knows that by killing out in himself _Tanha_ (the unsatisfied
desire for existence, or the “_will_ to live”)—he will thus
gradually escape the curse of re-birth and _conditioned_ existence.
But he knows also that he cannot kill or “put an end,” even to his
own little life except as a personality, which after all is but a
change of dress. And believing but in One Reality, which is eternal
_Be-ness_, the “_causeless_ CAUSE” from which he has exiled himself
unto a world of forms, he regards the temporary and progressing
manifestations of it in the state of _Maya_ (change or illusion), as
the greatest evil, truly; but at the same time as a process in
nature, as unavoidable as are the pangs of birth. It is the only
means by which he can pass from limited and conditioned lives of
sorrow into eternal life, or into that absolute “Be-ness,” which is
so graphically expressed in the Sanskrit word _sat_.
The “Pessimism” of the Hindu or Buddhist Pantheist is metaphysical,
abstruse, and philosophical. The idea that matter and its Protean
manifestations are the source and origin of universal evil and
sorrow is a very old one, though Gautama Buddha was the first to
give to it its definite expression. But the great Indian Reformer
assuredly never meant to make of it a handle for the modern
pessimist to get hold of, or a peg for the materialist to hang his
distorted and pernicious tenets upon! The Sage and Philosopher, who
sacrificed himself for Humanity by _living for it, in order to save
it_, by teaching men to see in the sensuous existence of matter
misery alone, had never in his deep philosophical mind any idea of
offering a premium for suicide; his efforts were to release mankind
from too strong an attachment to life, which is the chief cause of
Selfishness—hence the creator of mutual pain and suffering. In his
personal case, Buddha left us an example of fortitude to follow: in
living, not in running away from life. His doctrine shows evil
immanent, _not in matter_ which is eternal, but in the illusions
created by it: through the changes and transformations of matter
generating life—because these changes are conditioned and such life
is ephemeral. At the same time those evils are shown to be not only
unavoidable, but necessary. For if we would discern good from evil,
light from darkness, and appreciate the former, we can do so only
through the contrasts between the two. While Buddha’s philosophy
points, in its dead-letter meaning, only to the dark side of things
on this illusive plane; its esotericism, the hidden soul of it,
draws the veil aside and reveals to the Arhat all the glories of
LIFE ETERNAL in _all the Homogeneousness of Consciousness and
Being_. Another absurdity, no doubt, in the eyes of materialistic
science and even modern Idealism, yet a _fact_ to the Sage and
esoteric Pantheist.
Nevertheless, the root idea that evil is born and generated by the
ever increasing complications of the homogeneous material, which
enters into form and differentiates more and more as that form
becomes physically more perfect, has an esoteric side to it which
seems to have never occurred to the modern pessimist. Its
dead-letter aspect, however, became the subject of speculation with
every ancient thinking nation. Even in India the primitive thought,
underlying the formula already cited, has been disfigured by
Sectarianism, and has led to the ritualistic, purely dogmatic
observances of the _Hatha Yogis_, in contradistinction to the
philosophical Vedantic _Raja Yoga_. Pagan and Christian exoteric
speculation, and even mediæval monastic asceticism, have extracted
all they could from the originally noble idea, and made it
subservient to their narrow-minded sectarian views. Their false
conceptions of matter have led the Christians from the earliest day
to identify woman with Evil and matter—notwithstanding the worship
paid by the Roman Catholic Church to the Virgin.
But the latest application of the misunderstood Indian formula by
the Pessimists in Germany is quite original, and rather unexpected,
as we shall see. To draw any analogy between a highly metaphysical
teaching, and Darwin’s theory of physical evolution would, in
itself, seem rather a hopeless task. The more so as the theory of
natural selection does not preach any conceivable extermination of
_being_, but, on the contrary, a continuous and ever increasing
development of _life_. Nevertheless, German ingenuity has contrived,
by means of scientific paradoxes and much sophistry, to give it a
semblance of philosophical truth. The old Indian tenet itself has
not escaped litigation at the hands of modern pessimism. The happy
discoverer of the theory, that the origin of evil dates from the
protoplasmic _Amœba_, which divided itself for procreation, and thus
lost its immaculate homogeneity, has laid claim to the Aryan archaic
formula in his new volume. While extolling its philosophy and the
depth of ancient conceptions, he declares that it ought to be viewed
“as the most profound truth _precogitated_ and _robbed_ by the
ancient sages from modern thought”!!
It thus follows that the deeply religious Pantheism of the Hindu and
Buddhist philosopher, and the occasional vagaries of the pessimistic
materialist, are placed on the same level and identified by “modern
thought.” The impassable chasm between the two is ignored. It
matters little, it seems, that the Pantheist, recognising no reality
in the manifested Kosmos, and regarding it as a simple illusion of
his senses, has to view his own existence also as only a bundle of
illusions. When, therefore, he speaks of the means of escaping from
the sufferings of objective life, his view of those sufferings, and
his motive for putting an end to existence are entirely different
from those of the pessimistic materialist. For him, pain as well as
sorrow are illusions, due to attachment to this life, and ignorance.
Therefore he strives after eternal, changeless life, and absolute
consciousness in the state of Nirvana; whereas the European
pessimist, taking the “evils” of life as _realities_, aspires when
he has the time to aspire after anything except those said mundane
_realities_, to annihilation of “being,” as he expresses it. For the
philosopher there is but one real life, _Nirvanic bliss_, which is a
state differing in kind, not in degree only, from that of any of the
planes of consciousness in the manifested universe. The Pessimist
calls “Nirvana” superstition, and explains it as “cessation of
life,” life for him beginning and ending on earth. The former
ignores in his spiritual aspirations even the integral homogeneous
unit, of which the German Pessimist now makes such capital. He knows
of, and believes in only the direct cause of that unit, eternal and
_ever living, because the ONE uncreated_, or rather not evoluted.
Hence all his efforts are directed toward the speediest reunion
possible with, and return to his _pre_-primordial condition, after
his pilgrimage through this illusive series of visionary lives, with
their unreal phantasmagoria of sensuous perceptions.
Such pantheism can be qualified as “pessimistic” only by a believer
in a personal Providence; by one who contrasts its negation of the
reality of anything “created”—_i.e._ conditioned and limited—with
his own blind and unphilosophical faith. The Oriental mind does not
busy itself with extracting evil from every radical law and
manifestation of life, and multiplying every phenomenal quantity by
the units of very often imaginary evils: the Eastern Pantheist
simply submits to the inevitable, and tries to blot out from his
path in life as many “descents into rebirth” as he can, by avoiding
the creation of new _Karmic_ causes. The Buddhist philosopher knows
that the duration of the series of lives of every human being—unless
he reaches Nirvana “artificially” (“takes the kingdom of God by
violence,” in Kabalistic parlance), is given, allegorically, in the
_forty-nine days_ passed by Gautama the Buddha under the Bo-tree.
And the Hindu sage is aware, in his turn, that he has to light the
_first_, and extinguish the _forty-ninth fire_[23] before he reaches
his final deliverance. Knowing this, both sage and philosopher wait
patiently for the natural hour of deliverance; whereas their unlucky
copyist, the European Pessimist, is ever ready to commit, as to
preach, suicide. Ignorant of the numberless heads of the hydra of
existences he is incapable of feeling the same philosophical scorn
for life as he does for death, and of, thereby, following the wise
example given him by his Oriental brother.
-----
Footnote 23:
This is an esoteric tenet, and the general reader will not make
much out of it. But the Theosophist who has read “Esoteric
Buddhism” may compute the 7 by 7 of the _forty-nine_ “days,” and
the _forty-nine_ “fires,” and understand that the allegory refers
esoterically to the seven human consecutive root-races with their
seven subdivisions. Every monad is born in the first and obtains
deliverance in the last seventh race. Only a “Buddha” is shown
reaching it during the course of one life.
-----
Thus, philosophical pantheism is very different from modern
pessimism. The first is based upon the correct understanding of the
mysteries of being; the latter is in reality only one more system of
evil added by unhealthy fancy to the already large sum of real
social evils. In sober truth it is no philosophy, but simply a
systematic slander of life and being; the bilious utterances of a
dyspeptic or an incurable hypochondriac. No parallel can ever be
attempted between the two systems of thought.
The seeds of evil and sorrow were indeed the earliest result and
consequence of the heterogeneity of the manifested universe. Still
they are but an illusion produced by the law of contrasts, which, as
described, is a fundamental law in nature. Neither good nor evil
would exist were it not for the light they mutually throw on each
other. _Being_, under whatever form, having been observed from the
World’s creation to offer these contrasts, and evil predominating in
the universe owing to _Ego_-ship or selfishness, the rich Oriental
metaphor has pointed to existence as expiating the mistake of
nature; and the human soul (psüche), was henceforth regarded as the
scapegoat and victim of _unconscious_ OVER-SOUL. But it is not to
Pessimism, but to Wisdom that it gave birth. Ignorance alone is the
willing martyr, but knowledge is the master of natural Pessimism.
Gradually, and by the process of heredity or _atavism_, the latter
became innate in man. It is always present in us, howsoever latent
and silent its voice in the beginning. Amid the early joys of
existence, when we are still full of the vital energies of youth, we
are yet apt, each of us, at the first pang of sorrow, after a
failure, or at the sudden appearance of a black cloud, to accuse
_life_ of it; to feel _life_ a burden, and often to curse our being.
This shows pessimism in our blood, but at the same time the presence
of the fruits of ignorance. As mankind multiplies, and with it
suffering—which is the natural result of an increasing number of
units that generate it—sorrow and pain are intensified. We live in
an atmosphere of gloom and despair, but this is because our eyes are
downcast and rivetted to the earth, with all its physical and
grossly material manifestations. If, instead of that, man proceeding
on his life-journey looked—not heavenward, which is but a figure of
speech—but _within himself_ and centred his point of observation on
the _inner_ man, he would soon escape from the coils of the great
serpent of illusion. From the cradle to the grave, his life would
then become supportable and worth living, even in its worst phases.
Pessimism—that chronic suspicion of lurking evil everywhere—is thus
of a two-fold nature, and brings fruits of two kinds. It is a
natural characteristic in physical man, and becomes a curse only to
the ignorant. It is a boon to the spiritual; inasmuch as it makes
the latter turn into the right path, and brings him to the discovery
of another as fundamental a truth; namely, that all in this world is
only _preparatory_ because transitory. It is like a chink in the
dark prison walls of earth-life, through which breaks in a ray of
light from the eternal home, which, illuminating the _inner_ senses,
whispers to the prisoner in his shell of clay of the origin and the
dual mystery of our being. At the same time, it is a tacit proof of
the presence in man of that _which knows, without being told_,
viz:—that there is another and a better life, once that the curse of
earth-lives is lived through.
This explanation of the problem and origin of evil being, as already
said, of an entirely metaphysical character, has nothing to do with
physical laws. Belonging as it does altogether to the spiritual part
of man, to dabble with it superficially is, therefore, far more
dangerous than to remain ignorant of it. For, as it lies at the very
root of Gautama Buddha’s ethics, and since it has now fallen into
the hands of the modern Philistines of materialism, to confuse the
two systems of “pessimistic” thought can lead but to mental suicide,
if it does not lead to worse.
Eastern wisdom teaches that spirit has to pass through the ordeal of
incarnation and life, and be baptised with matter before it can
reach experience and knowledge. After which only it receives the
baptism of soul, or self-consciousness, and may return to its
original condition of a god, _plus_ experience, ending with
omniscience. In other words, it can return to the original state of
the homogeneity of primordial essence only through the addition of
the fruitage of Karma, which alone is able to create an absolute
_conscious_ deity, removed but one degree from the absolute ALL.
Even according to the letter of the Bible, evil must have existed
before Adam and Eve, who, therefore, are innocent of the slander of
the original sin. For, had there been no evil or sin before them,
there could exist neither tempting Serpent nor a Tree of Knowledge
of _good and evil_ in Eden. The characteristics of that apple-tree
are shown in the verse when the couple had tasted of its fruit: “The
eyes of them both were opened, and _they knew_” many things besides
knowing they were naked. Too much knowledge about things of matter
is thus rightly shown an evil.
But so it is, and it is our duty to examine and combat the new
pernicious theory. Hitherto, pessimism was kept in the regions of
philosophy and metaphysics, and showed no pretensions to intrude
into the domain of purely physical science, such as Darwinism. The
theory of evolution has become almost universal now, and there is no
school (save the Sunday and missionary schools) where it is not
taught, with more or less modifications from the original programme.
On the other hand, there is no other teaching more abused and taken
advantage of than evolution, especially by the application of its
fundamental laws to the solution of the most compound and abstract
problems of man’s many sided existence. There, where psychology and
even philosophy “fear to tread,” materialistic biology applies its
sledge-hammer of superficial analogies, and prejudged conclusions.
Worse than all, claiming man to be only a higher animal, it
maintains this right as undeniably pertaining to the domain of the
science of evolution. Paradoxes in those “domains” do not rain now,
they pour. As “man is the measure of all things,” therefore is man
measured and analyzed by the animal. One German materialist claims
spiritual and psychic evolution as the lawful property of physiology
and biology; the mysteries of embryology and zoology alone, it is
said, being capable of solving those of consciousness in man and the
origin of his soul.[24] Another finds justification for suicide in
the example of animals, who, when tired of living, put an end to
existence by starvation.[25]
-----
Footnote 24:
Haeckel.
Footnote 25:
Leo Bach.
-----
Hitherto pessimism, notwithstanding the abundance and brilliancy of
its paradoxes, had a weak point—namely, the absence of any real and
evident basis for it to rest upon. Its followers had no living,
guiding thought to serve them as a beacon and help them to steer
clear of the sandbanks of life—real and imaginary—so profusely sown
by themselves in the shape of denunciations against life and being.
All they could do was to rely upon their representatives, who
occupied their time very ingeniously if not profitably, in tacking
the many and various evils of life to the metaphysical propositions
of great German thinkers, like Schopenhauer and Hartmann, as small
boys tack on coloured tails to the kites of their elders and rejoice
at seeing them launched in the air. But now the programme will be
changed. The Pessimists have found something more solid and
authoritative, if less philosophical, to tack their jeremiads and
dirges to, than the metaphysical _kites_ of Schopenhauer. The day
when they agreed with the views of this philosopher, which pointed
at the Universal WILL as the perpetrator of all the World-evil, is
gone to return no more. Nor will they be any better satisfied with
the hazy “Unconscious” of von Hartmann. They have been seeking
diligently for a more congenial and less metaphysical soil to build
their pessimistic _philosophy_ upon, and they have been rewarded
with success, now that the cause of Universal Suffering has been
discovered by them in the fundamental laws of physical development.
Evil will no longer be allied with the misty and uncertain Phantom
called “WILL,” but with an actual and obvious fact: the Pessimists
will henceforth be towed by the Evolutionists.
The basic argument of their representative has been given in the
opening sentence of this article. The Universe and all on it
appeared in consequence of the “breaking asunder of UNITY into
_Plurality_.” This rather dim rendering of the Indian formula is not
made to refer, as I have shown, in the mind of the Pessimist, to the
one Unity, to the Vedantin abstraction—Parabrahm: otherwise, I
should not certainly have used the words “breaking up.” Nor does it
concern itself much with Mulaprakriti, or the “Veil” of Parabrahm;
nor even with the first manifested primordial matter, except
inferentially, as follows from Dr. Mainländer’s exposition, but
chiefly with terrestrial _protoplasm_. Spirit or deity is entirely
ignored in this case; evidently because of the necessity for showing
the whole as “the lawful domain of physical Science.”
In short, the time-honoured formula is claimed to have its basis and
to find its justification in the theory that from “a few, perhaps
one, single form of the very simplest nature” (Darwin), “all the
different animals and plants living to-day, and all the organisms
that have ever lived on the earth,” have gradually developed. It is
this axiom of Science, we are told, which justifies and demonstrates
the Hindu philosophical tenet. What is this axiom? Why, it is this:
Science teaches that the series of transformations through which the
seed is made to pass—the seed that grows into a tree, or becomes an
_ovum_, or that which develops into an animal—consists in every case
in nothing but the passage of the fabric of that seed, from the
homogeneous into the heterogeneous or compound form. This is then
the scientific verity which checks the Indian formula by that of the
Evolutionists, identifies both, and thus exalts ancient wisdom by
recognizing it worthy of modern materialistic thought.
This philosophical formula is not simply corroborated by the
individual growth and development of isolated species, explains our
Pessimist; but it is demonstrated in general as in detail. It is
shown justified in the evolution and growth of the Universe as well
as in that of our planet. In short, the birth, growth and
development of the whole organic world in its integral totality, are
there to demonstrate ancient wisdom. From the universals down to the
particulars, the organic world is discovered to be subject to the
same law of ever increasing elaboration, of the transition from
unity to plurality as “the fundamental formula of the evolution of
life.” Even the growth of nations, of social life, public
institutions, the development of the languages, arts and sciences,
all this follows inevitably and fatally the all-embracing law of
“the breaking asunder of unity into plurality, and the passage of
the homogeneous into multiformity.”
But while following Indian wisdom, our author exaggerates this
fundamental law in his own way, and distorts it. He brings this
law to bear even on the historical destinies of mankind. He makes
these destinies subservient to, and a proof of, the correctness of
the Indian conception. He maintains that humanity as an integral
whole, in proportion as it develops and progresses in its
evolution, and separates in its parts—each becoming a distinct and
independent branch of the unit—drifts more and more away from its
original healthy, harmonious unity. The complications of social
establishment, social relations, as those of individuality, all
lead to the weakening of the vital power, the relaxation of the
energy of feeling, and to the destruction of that integral unity,
without which no inner harmony is possible. The absence of that
harmony generates an inner discord which becomes the cause of the
greatest mental misery. Evil has its roots in the very nature of
the evolution of life and its complications. Every one of its
steps forward is at the same time a step taken toward the
dissolution of its energy, and leads to passive apathy. Such is
the inevitable result, he says, of every progressive complication
of life; because evolution or development is a transition from the
homogeneous to the heterogeneous, a scattering of the whole into
the many, etc. etc. This terrible law is universal and applies to
all creation, from the infinitesimally small up to man for, as he
says, it is a fundamental law of nature.
Now, it is just in this one-sided view of physical nature, which the
German author accepts without one single thought as to its spiritual
and psychic aspect, that his school is doomed to certain failure. It
is not a question whether the said law of differentiation and its
fatal consequences may or may not apply, in certain cases, to the
growth and development of the animal species, and even of man; but
simply, since it is the basis and main support of the whole new
theory of the Pessimistic school, whether it is really a _universal_
and fundamental law? We want to know whether this basic formula of
evolution embraces the whole process of development and growth in
its entirety; and whether, indeed, it is within the domain of
physical science or not. If it is “nothing else than the transition
from the homogeneous state to the heterogeneous,” as says
Mainländer, then it remains to be proved that the given process
“produces that complicated combination of tissues and organs which
forms and completes the perfect animal and plant.”
As remarked already by some critics on “Pessimism and Progress,” the
German Pessimist does not doubt it for one moment. His supposed
discovery and teaching “rest wholly on his certitude that
development and the fundamental law of the complicated process of
organization represent but one thing: the transformation of unity
into plurality.” Hence the identification of the process with
dissolution and decay, and the weakening of all the forces and
energies. Mainländer would be right in his analogies were this law
of the differentiation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous to
really represent the fundamental law of the evolution of life. But
the idea is quite erroneous—metaphysically as well as physically.
Evolution does not proceed in a straight line; _no more_ than any
other process in nature, but journeys on _cyclically_, as does all
the rest. The cyclic serpents swallow their tails like the Serpent
of Eternity. And it is in this that the Indian formula, which is a
Secret Doctrine teaching, is indeed corroborated by the natural
Sciences, and especially by biology.
This is what we read in the “Scientific Letters” by an anonymous
Russian author and critic.
“In the evolution of isolated individuals, in the evolution of the
organic world, in that of the Universe, as in the growth and
development of our planet—in short wherever any of the processes
of progressive complexity take place, there we find, apart from
the transition from unity to plurality, and homogeneity to
heterogeneity a _converse transformation—the transition from
plurality to unity, from the heterogeneous to the homogeneous_....
Minute observation of the given process of progressive complexity
has shown, that what takes place in it is not alone the separation
of parts, but also their mutual absorption.... While one portion
of the cells merge into each other and unite into one uniform
whole, forming muscular fibres, muscular tissue, others are
absorbed in the bone and nerve tissues, etc. etc. The same takes
place in the formation of plants....”
In this case material nature repeats the law that acts in the
evolution of the psychic and the spiritual: both descend but to
re-ascend and merge at the starting-point. _The homogeneous
formative mass or element differentiated in its parts, is gradually
transformed into the heterogeneous; then, merging those parts into a
harmonious whole, it recommences a converse process, or
reinvolution, and returns as gradually into its primitive or
primordial state._
Nor does Pessimism find any better support in pure Materialism, as
hitherto the latter has been tinged with a decidedly optimistic
bias. Its leading advocates have, indeed, never hesitated to sneer
at the theological adoration of the “glory of God and all his
works.” Büchner flings a taunt at the pantheist who sees in so “mad
and bad” a world the manifestation of the Absolute. But, on the
whole, the materialists admit a balance of good over evil, perhaps
as a buffer against any “superstitious” tendency to look out and
hope for a better one. Narrow as is their outlook, and limited as is
their spiritual horizon, they yet see no cause to despair of the
drift of things in general. The _pantheistic_ pessimists, however,
have never ceased to urge that a despair of conscious being is the
only legitimate outcome of atheistic negation. This opinion is, of
course, axiomatic, or ought to be so. If “in this life only is there
hope,” the tragedy of life is absolutely without any _raison d’être_
and a perpetuation of the drama is as foolish as it is futile.
The fact that the conclusions of pessimism have been at last
assimilated by a certain class of atheistic writers, is a striking
feature of the day, and another sign of the times. It illustrates
the truism that the void created by modern scientific negation
cannot and can never be filled by the cold prospects offered as a
_solatium_ to optimists. The Comtean “enthusiasm of Humanity” is a
poor thing enough with annihilation of the Race to ensue “as the
solar fires die slowly out”—if, indeed, _they do die_ at all—to
please physical science at the computed time. If all present sorrow
and suffering, the fierce struggle for existence and all its
attendant horrors, go for nothing in the long run, if MAN is a mere
ephemeron, the sport of blind forces, why assist in the perpetuation
of the farce. The “ceaseless grind of matter, force and law,” will
but hurry the swarming human millions into eternal oblivion, and
ultimately leave no trace or memory of the past, when things return
to the nebulosity of the fire-mist, whence they emerged. Terrestrial
life is no object in itself. It is overcast with gloom and misery.
It does not seem strange, then, that the Soul-blind negationist
should prefer the pessimism of Schopenhauer to the baseless optimism
of Strauss and his followers, which, in the face of their teachings,
reminds one of the animal spirits of a young donkey, after a good
meal of thistles.
One thing is, however, clear: the absolute necessity for some
solution, which embraces the facts of existence on an optimistic
basis. Modern Society is permeated with an increasing cynicism and
honeycombed with disgust of life. This is the result of an
utter ignorance of the operations of Karma and the nature of
Soul-evolution. It is from a mistaken allegiance to the dogmas of a
mechanical and largely spurious theory of Evolution, that Pessimism
has risen to such undue importance. Once the basis of the Great Law
is grasped—and what philosophy can furnish better means for such a
grasp and final solution, than the esoteric doctrine of the great
Indian Sages—there remains no possible _locus standi_ for the recent
amendments to the Schopenhauerian system of thought or the
metaphysical subtleties, woven by the “philosopher of the
Unconscious.” The reasonableness of _Conscious_ Existence can be
proved only by the study of the primeval—now esoteric—philosophy.
And it says “there is neither death nor life, for both are
illusions; being (or _be-ness_) is the only reality.” This paradox
was repeated thousands of ages later by one of the greatest
physiologists that ever lived. “Life is Death” said Claude Bernard.
The organism lives because its parts are ever dying. The survival of
the fittest is surely based on this truism. The life of the superior
whole requires the death of the inferior, the death of the parts
depending on and being subservient to it And, as life is death, so
death is life, and the whole great cycle of lives form but ONE
EXISTENCE—_the worst day of which is on our planet_.
He who KNOWS will make the best of it For there is a dawn for every
being, when once freed from illusion and ignorance by Knowledge; and
he will at last proclaim in truth _and all Consciousness_ to
Mahamaya:—
“BROKEN THY HOUSE IS, AND THE RIDGE-POLE SPLIT!
DELUSION FASHIONED IT!
SAFE PASS I THENCE—DELIVERANCE TO OBTAIN.”...
H. P. B.
[Illustration: decorative separator]
“Man will regain his lost Eden on that day when he can look at
every desire in the broad, quiet light of this question:—How can I
give desire such vent as shall conduce to the benefit of other
men?”—(_Jasper Niemand in the “Path”_).
THE GREAT PARADOX.
Paradox would seem to be the natural language of occultism. Nay
more, it would seem to penetrate deep into the heart of things, and
thus to be inseparable from any attempt to put into words the truth,
the reality which underlies the outward shows of life.
And the paradox is one not in words only, but in action, in the very
conduct of life. The paradoxes of occultism must be lived, not
uttered only. Herein lies a great danger, for it is only too easy to
become lost in the intellectual contemplation of the path, and so to
forget that the road can only be known by treading it.
One startling paradox meets the student at the very outset, and
confronts him in ever new and strange shapes at each turn of the
road. Such an one, perchance, has sought the path desiring a guide,
a rule of right for the conduct of his life. He learns that the
alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end of _life_ is
selflessness; and he feels the truth of the saying that only in the
profound unconsciousness of self-forgetfulness can the truth and
reality of being reveal itself to his eager heart.
The student learns that this is the one law of occultism, at once
the science and the art of living, the guide to the goal he desires
to attain. He is fired with enthusiasm and enters bravely on the
mountain track. He then finds that his teachers do not encourage his
ardent flights of sentiment; his all-forgetting yearning for the
Infinite—on the outer plane of his actual life and consciousness. At
least, if they do not actually damp his enthusiasm, they set him, as
the first and indispensable task, _to conquer and control his body_.
The student finds that far from being encouraged to live in the
soaring thoughts of his brain, and to fancy he has reached that
ether where is true freedom—to the forgetting of his body, and his
external actions and personality—he is set down to tasks much nearer
earth. All his attention and watchfulness are required on the outer
plane; he must never forget himself, never lose hold over his body,
his mind, his brain. He must even learn to control the expression of
every feature, to check the action of each muscle, to be master of
every slightest involuntary movement. The daily life around and
within him is pointed out as the object of his study and
observation. Instead of forgetting what are usually called the petty
trifles, the little forgetfulnesses, the accidental slips of tongue
or memory, he is forced to become each day more conscious of these
lapses, till at last they seem to poison the air he breathes and
stifle him, till he seems to lose sight and touch of the great world
of freedom towards which he is struggling, till every hour of every
day seems full of the bitter taste of self, and his heart grows sick
with pain and the struggle of despair. And the darkness is rendered
yet deeper by the voice within him, crying ceaselessly, “forget
thyself. Beware, lest thou becomest self-concentrated—and the giant
weed of spiritual selfishness take firm root in thy heart; beware,
beware, beware!”
The voice stirs his heart to its depths, for he feels that the words
are true. His daily and hourly battle is teaching him that
self-centredness is the root of misery, the cause of pain, and his
soul is full of longing to be free.
Thus the disciple is torn by doubt. He trusts his teachers, for he
knows that through them speaks the same voice he hears in the
silence of his own heart. But now they utter contradictory words;
the one, the inner voice, bidding him forget himself utterly in the
service of humanity; the other, the spoken word of those from whom
he seeks guidance in his service, bidding him _first_ to conquer his
body, his outer self. And he knows better with every hour how badly
he acquits himself in that battle with the Hydra, and he sees seven
heads grow afresh in place of each one that he has lopped off.
At first he oscillates between the two, now obeying the one, now the
other. But soon he learns that this is fruitless. For the sense of
freedom and lightness, which comes at first when he leaves his outer
self unwatched, that he may seek the inner air, soon loses its
keenness, and some sudden shock reveals to him that he has slipped
and fallen on the uphill path. Then, in desperation, he flings
himself upon the treacherous snake of self, and strives to choke it
into death; but its ever-moving coils elude his grasp, the insidious
temptations of its glittering scales blind his vision, and again he
becomes involved in the turmoil of the battle, which gains on him
from day to day, and which at last seems to fill the whole world,
and blot out all else beside from his consciousness. He is face to
face with a crushing paradox, the solution of which must be lived
before it can be really understood.
In his hours of silent meditation the student will find that there
is one space of silence within him where he can find refuge from
thoughts and desires, from the turmoil of the senses and the
delusions of the mind. By sinking his consciousness deep into his
heart he can reach this place—at first only when he is alone in
silence and darkness. But when the need for the silence has grown
great enough, he will turn to seek it even in the midst of the
struggle with self, and he will find it. Only he must not let go of
his outer self, or his body; he must learn to retire into this
citadel when the battle grows fierce, but to do so without losing
sight of the battle; without allowing himself to fancy that by so
doing he has won the victory. That victory is won only when all is
silence without as within the inner citadel. Fighting thus, from
within that silence, the student will find that he has solved the
first great paradox.
But paradox still follows him. When first he thus succeeds in thus
retreating into himself, he seeks there only for refuge from the
storm in his heart. And as he struggles to control the gusts of
passion and desire, he realises more fully what mighty powers he has
vowed himself to conquer. He still feels himself, apart from the
silence, nearer akin to the forces of the storm. How can his puny
strength cope with these tyrants of animal nature?
This question is hard to answer in direct words; if, indeed, such an
answer can be given. But analogy may point the way where the
solution may be sought.
In breathing we take a certain quantity of air into the lungs, and
with this we can imitate in miniature the mighty wind of heaven. We
can produce a feeble semblance of nature: a tempest in a tea-cup, a
gale to blow and even swamp a paper boat. And we can say: “I do
this; it is my breath.” But we cannot blow our breath against a
hurricane, still less hold the trade winds in our lungs. Yet the
powers of heaven are within us; the nature of the intelligences
which guide the world-forces is blended with our own, and could we
realise this and forget our outer selves, the very winds would be
our instruments.
So it is in life. While a man clings to his outer self—aye, and even
to any one of the forms he assumes when this “mortal coil” is cast
aside—so long is he trying to blow aside a hurricane with the breath
of his lungs. It is useless and idle such an endeavour; for the
great winds of life must, sooner or later, sweep him away. But if he
changes his attitude _in himself_, if he acts on the faith that his
body, his desires, his passions, his brain, are not himself, though
he has charge of them, and is responsible for them; if he tries to
deal with them as parts of nature, then he may hope to become one
with the great tides of being, and reach the peaceful place of safe
self-forgetfulness at last.
“FAUST.”
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“Fear is the slave of pain and Rebellion her captive; Endurance
her free companion and Patience her master. And the husband of
Pain is Rapture. But the souls are few in whom that marriage is
consummated.” (L. S. C.).
=THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT=:
_THE TRUE STORY OF A MAGICIAN_.[26]
(_Continued._)
---------------------
BY MABEL COLLINS,
Author of “THE PRETTIEST WOMAN IN WARSAW,” &c., &c.,
And Scribe of “THE IDYLL OF THE WHITE LOTUS,” and “THROUGH THE GATES
OF GOLD.”
---------------------
-----
Footnote 26:
The sub-title, “a tale of love and magic,” having been
simultaneously used by myself, Mr. Joseph Hutton, and another
author, I think it best to change mine for one certainly less
pretty, but equally descriptive. Is not this simultaneous use also
a “sign of the times”?
-----
CHAPTER III.
In a chapel of the great Cathedral in the city there was at certain
hours always a priest who held there his confessional.
To him went Hilary some days later. In the interim he had not seen
the Princess. His soul had been torn hither and thither, to and fro.
His passion for the beautiful girl held him fast, while his horror
of the magician repelled him from her. He went to the Cathedral in
the afternoon determined that he would reveal all his distress to
the priest. Father Amyot was in his confessional, but some one was
with him, for the curtain was drawn. Hilary knelt down at the small
altar of the chapel there to wait. Presently there was a slight
sound; he turned his head to see if the confessional was now free.
The Princess Fleta stood beside him, her eyes fixed on him; it was
she who at this instant only had risen from her knees in the
confessional. Hilary, amazed and dumb with wonder, could only gaze
upon her. She kept her strange and fascinating eyes fixed on his for
a moment and then turned and with swift, soft steps left the chapel.
Hilary remained kneeling motionless before the altar, his mind
absorbed in what was hardly so much thought as amazement. Fleta was
not then what he thought her. If she were sensitive to religious
impressions she could not be the cold magician which she had
appeared to him to be when he recollected the last scene in the
laboratory. Perhaps after all she used her power generously and for
good. He began to see her in another light. He began to worship her
for her goodness as well as for her strong attractions. His heart
leaped with joy at the thought that her soul was as beautiful as her
body. He rose from his knees and turned instinctively and without
thought to follow her. As he did so he passed Father Amyot, who
seeing that no one else came immediately to the confessional, had
left it and flung himself at full length upon the ground before the
altar. He wore a long robe of coarse white cloth, tied at the waist
with a black cord; a hood of the same cloth covered his shaven head.
He was like a skeleton, perfectly fleshless and emaciated. His face
lay sideways on the stone; he seemed unconscious, so profound was
his abstraction. The eyes were open but had no sight in them. They
were large grey blue eyes, full of a profound melancholy which gave
them an appearance as if tears stood in them. This melancholy
affected Hilary strangely; it touched his heart, made thrill and
vibrate some deeply sensitive cord in his nature. He stood gazing a
moment at the prostrate figure, and then with a profound obeisance
left the chapel.
The Princess Fleta had her horse waiting for her. She was a constant
and daring rider, and seldom entered the city except on horseback,
to the amazement of the court ladies, who in the city rode in
carriages that they might dress beautifully. But Fleta had no vanity
of this kind. Probably no other girl of her age would have willingly
adopted the hideous dress of the witch and worn it before so many
curious eyes. Her own beauty and her own appearance was a subject of
but the slightest thought to her. She would walk down the
fashionable promenade in her riding habit among the magnificent
toilettes of the Court ladies. This she was doing now while a
servant led her horse up and down. Hilary watched her from a
distance, unable to summon courage to approach her in the midst of
such a throng of personages. But presently Fleta saw him and came
with her swift light step towards him. “Will you walk with me?” she
asked. “There is no one here to be my companion but you.”
“And why is that?” asked Hilary, as with flushed face and eager
steps he accompanied her.
“Because there are none that sympathise with me. You alone have
entered my laboratory.”
“But would not any of these be glad to come if you would admit
them?”
“Not one would have the courage, except perhaps some few wild
spirits who would dare anything for mere excitement. And they would
not please me.”
Hilary was silent. Her words showed him very plainly that he pleased
her. But there was a chill in his nature which now asserted itself.
Here in the midst of so many people her hold on him was lessened,
and he doubted her more than ever. Was she merely playing with him
for her own amusement? Her high position gave her this power and he
could not resent it, for even to be her favourite for a day would be
accounted by any man an honour and a thing to boast of. And Hilary
was being signalled out for public honour. He felt the envious
glances of the men whom he met, and immediately a cold veil fell on
his heart. He desired no such envy. To his mind love was a thing
sacred. His scorn of life and doubt of human nature awakened at this
moment of triumph. He did not speak, but the Princess answered his
thought.
“We will go away from here,” she said. “In the country you are a
creature of passion. Here you become a cynic.”
“How do you know my heart?” he asked.
“We were born under the same star,” she answered quietly.
“That is no sufficient answer,” he replied. “It conveys no meaning
to me, for I know nothing of the mysterious sciences you study.”
“Come then with me,” she answered, “and I will teach you.”
She signed to her servant, who brought her horse; she mounted and
rode away with merely a smile to Hilary. She knew that in spite of
the chill that was on him he would hunger for her in her absence and
soon follow. And so he did. The pavements appeared empty though
crowds moved over them; the city seemed lifeless and dull, though it
was one of the gayest in the world. He turned from the streets, and
walking into the country, found himself very soon at the narrow
wicket gate of the Princess Fleta’s Garden House.
She was wandering up and down the avenue between the trees. Her
dress was white now, and very long and soft, falling in great folds
from her shoulders. As she moved slowly to and fro, the dancing
sunlight playing on her splendid form, it seemed to Hilary that he
saw before him not a mere woman, but a priestess. Her late visit to
the Cathedral recurred to him; if the religious soul was in her,
might she not, indeed, spite of her strange acts, be no magician,
but a priestess? He returned to his former humour and was ready to
worship at her feet. She greeted him with a smile that thrilled him;
her eyes read his very soul, and her smile brought to it an
unutterable joy. She turned and led the way to the house and Hilary
followed her.
She opened her laboratory door, and immediately Hilary became aware
of the strong odour of some powerful incense. The dim smoke was
still in the room but the flame had all died away in the vessel. By
the side of the vessel lay a prostrate figure. Hilary uttered a cry
of amazement and of horror as he recognised Father Amyot. He turned
such a look of dismay upon the Princess that she answered his
thought in a haughty tone which she had never before used in
addressing him.
“It is not time yet to ask me the meaning of what you may see here.
Some day, perhaps, when you know more, you may have the right to
question me: but not now. See, I can change this appearance that
distresses you, in a moment.”
She raised the prostrate figure, and flung off from it the white
robe that resembled Father Amyot’s. Beneath, it was clothed in a
dull red garment such as Hilary had first seen it in. With a few
swift touches of her hand the Princess changed the expression of the
face. Father Amyot was gone, and Hilary saw sitting in the chair
before him that unindividualised form and face which at his visit to
the laboratory had affected him with so much horror. The Princess
saw the repugnance still in his face, and with a laugh opened the
screen with which she had hidden the figure before.
“Now,” she said, “come and sit beside me on this couch.”
But before she left the great vessel she threw in more incense and
lit it. Already Hilary was aware that the fumes of that which had
been already burned had affected his brain. The red figures moved
upon the black wall, and he watched them with fascinated eyes.
They shaped themselves together not, this time, into words, but into
forms. And the wall instead of black became bright and luminous. It
was as though Hilary and Fleta sat alone before an immense stage.
They heard the spoken words and saw the gestures and the movements
of these phantasmal actors as clearly and with as much reality as
though they were creatures of flesh and blood before them. It was a
drama of the passions; the chief actors were Hilary and Fleta
themselves. Hilary almost forgot that the real Fleta was at his
side, so absorbed was he in the action of the phantasmal Fleta.
He was bewildered, and he could not understand the meaning of what
he saw, clearly though the drama was enacted in front of him. He saw
the orchard full of blossoming trees; he saw the splendid savage
woman. He knew that he himself and this Fleta at his side, were in
some strange way playing a part under this savage guise; but how or
what it was he could not tell. Fleta laughed as she watched his
face. “You do not know who you are,” she cried. “That is a great
loss and makes life much more difficult. But you will know by and
bye if you are willing to learn. Come, let us look at another and a
very different page of life.”
The stage grew dark and moving shadows passed to and fro upon it,
great shadows that filled Hilary’s soul with dread. At last they
drew back and left a luminous space where Fleta herself was visible.
Fleta, in this same human shape that she wore now, yet strangely
changed. She was much older and yet more beautiful; there was a
wonderful fire in her brilliant eyes. On her head was a crown, and
Hilary saw that she had great powers to use or abuse—it was written
on her face. Then something drew his eyes down and he saw a figure
lying helpless at her feet—why was it so still?—it was alive!—yes,
but it was bound and fettered, bound hand and foot.
“Are you afraid?” broke out Fleta’s voice with a ring of mocking
laughter in it. “Surely you are not afraid—why should I not reign?
why should you not suffer? You are a cynic; is there anything good
to be expected?”
“Perhaps not,” said Hilary. “It may be that you are heartless and
false. And yet, as I stand here now, I feel that though you may
betray me by and bye, and take my life and liberty from me, yet I
love your very treachery.”
Fleta laughed aloud, and Hilary stood silent, confused by the words
he had spoken hastily without pausing to think whether they were fit
to speak or not. Well, it was done now. He had spoken of his love.
She could refuse ever to see him again and he would go into the
outer darkness.
“No,” she said, “I shall not send you away. Do you not know, Hilary
Estanol, that you are my chosen companion? Otherwise would you be
here with me now? The word love does not alarm me; I have heard it
too often. Only I think it very meaningless. Let us put it aside for
the present. If you let yourself love me you must suffer; and I do
not want you to suffer yet. When pain comes to you the youth will go
from your face; you do not know how to preserve it, and I like your
youth.”
Hilary made no answer. It was not easy to answer such a speech, and
Hilary was not in the humour for accomplishing any thing difficult.
His brain was confused by the fumes of the incense and by the
strange scenes so mysteriously enacted before his eyes. He scarcely
knew what Fleta this was that stood beside him. And yet he knew he
loved her though he distrusted her! With each moment that he passed
by her side he worshipped her more completely, and the disbelief
interfered less and less with his proud joy in being admitted to her
intimacy.
“Now,” said Fleta, “I want you to do a new thing. I want you to
exercise your will and compel my servants who have been pleasing us
with phantasies, to show us a phantasy of your own creation. You can
do this very well, if you will. It only needs that you shall not
doubt you can do it. Ah! how quickly does the act follow the
thought!” She uttered the last words with a little cry of amused
pleasure. For the dim shadows had rapidly masked the stage and then
again withdrawn, leaving the figure of Fleta very clearly visible,
beautiful and passionate, her face alight with love, held clasped in
Hilary’s arms, her lips pressed close to his.
The real Fleta who sat beside him rose now with a shake of her head,
and a laugh which was not all gay. The shadows closed instantly over
the stage, and a moment later the illusion was all destroyed and the
solid wall was there before Hilary’s eyes. He had become so
accustomed to witness the marvellous inside this room that he did
not pause to wonder; he followed Fleta as she crossed to the door,
and tried to attract her attention.
“Forgive me, my Princess,” he murmured over and over again.
“Oh, you are forgiven,” she said at last lightly. “You have not
offended, so it is easy for me to forgive. I do not think a man can
help what is in his heart; at all events, no ordinary man can. And
you, Hilary, have consented to be like the rest. Are you content?”
“No!” he answered, instantly. And as he spoke he understood for the
first time the fever that had stirred him all through his short
bright life. “Content! How should I be? Moreover, is not our star
the star of restlessness and action?”
For the first time, Fleta turned on him a glance of real tenderness
and emotion. When he said the words “our star,” it seemed as if he
had touched her heart.
“Ah!” she said, “How sorely I long for a companion!”
Then she turned from him very abruptly, and almost before he knew
she had moved she had opened the door, and was standing outside
waiting for him. “Come!” she said impatiently. He followed her
immediately, for he had no choice but to do so; yet he was
disappointed. He was more deeply disappointed when he found that she
led the way with swift steps into the room where her aunt sat.
Arrived there, Fleta threw herself into a chair, took up a great
golden fan and began to fan herself, while she talked about the
gossip of the Court. The change was so sudden that for some moments
Hilary could not follow her. He stood bewildered, till the aunt
pushed a low chair towards him; and he felt then that the old lady
was not surprised at his manner, but only sorry for him. And then
suddenly the cynic re-asserted itself in his heart. A thought that
bit like flame suddenly started into life. Had the bewildered
emotion that had been, as he knew, visible on his face, been seen on
others before; was Fleta not only playing with him, but playing with
him as she had played with many another lover? The thought was more
hateful than any he had ever suffered from; it wounded his vanity,
which was more tender and delicate than his heart.
Fleta gave him no opportunity of anything but talk such as seemed in
her stately presence too trivial to be endured, and so at last he
rose and went his way. Fleta did not accompany him to the gate this
time. She left him to go alone, and he felt as if she had withdrawn
her favour in some degree; and yet perhaps that was foolish, he told
himself, for after all, both he and she had said too much to-day.
Fleta was betrothed. She had been betrothed at her christening.
Before long her marriage would take place; and then that crown seen
in the vision would be placed on her head. Had it needed the vision
to bring that fact to his mind, asked Hilary of himself? If so,
’twas time, he bitterly added, for Fleta was not a woman who was
likely to give up a crown for the sake of love! His heart rose
fiercely within him as he thought of all this. Why had she tempted
him to speak of love? For surely he never would have dared to so
address her had she not tempted him; so he thought.
If he could have seen Fleta now! As soon as he left the room she had
risen and slowly moved back to her laboratory. Entered there, she
drew away a curtain which concealed a large mirror let deep into the
wall. She did this resolutely, yet as if reluctantly. Immediately
her gaze became fixed on the glass. She saw Hilary’s figure within
it moving on his way towards the city. She read his thoughts and his
heart. At last she dropped the curtain with a heavy sigh, and let
her arms fall at her side with a gesture that seemed to mean
despair; certainly it meant deep dejection. And presently some great
tears dropped upon the floor at her feet
None, since Fleta was born, had seen her shed tears.
CHAPTER IV.
Father Amyot on the next morning sent a message to Hilary praying
him to come and see him. This Hilary did at once, and in much
perplexity as to what the reason of such a summons could be. He went
straight to the Cathedral, for there he knew the ascetic priest
passed all his time. He found him, as he expected, prostrate before
the altar, and almost in the same attitude he had seen him in
yesterday. Horribly too it reminded him of the attitude of that
figure lying on the floor of Fleta’s laboratory when he had entered
it. He had to touch Father Amyot to attract his attention; then at
once the priest rose and led the way out of the Cathedral into the
cloisters, which joined it to the monastery close at hand. He went
on, without speaking, his head drooped. Hilary could but follow. At
last they reached a bare cell in which was no furniture but a
crucifix and a perpetual lamp burning before it, and against the
wall a bench.
Here Father Amyot sat down, and he motioned with his hand to Hilary
to sit beside him.
Then he fell into a profound reverie; and Hilary watching him,
wondered much what was in his mind. Was Fleta even now working her
spells upon him and moulding his thoughts according to her will?
It almost seemed like it, for her name was the first word he uttered
“The Princess Fleta,” he commenced, “is about to go upon a long and
dangerous journey.”
Hilary started and turned his face away, for he knew that he had
turned pale. Was she really going to leave the city! How unexpected!
how terrible!
“In a very short time,” went on Father Amyot, “the Princess will be
married and she has a mission which she desires to accomplish before
her wedding, and she says that you can assist her in this. It is for
the fulfilment of this mission that she is undertaking the journey I
speak of; supposing you should agree to help her you would have to
accompany her.”
Hilary made no answer. He had no answer ready. His breath was taken
away and he could not recover it all in an instant. The whole thing
seemed incredible; he felt it to be impossible; and yet a conviction
was already falling on him that it would take place.
“Of course,” resumed Father Amyot, seeing that Hilary was not
disposed to speak, “you will want to know your errand, you will want
to know why you are going on this journey. This it will be
impossible for you to know. The Princess does not choose to inform
any one of what her errand is.”
“Not even the person whom she says can help her?” exclaimed Hilary
in amazement
“Not even you.”
“Well,” said Hilary rising with a gesture of indignation, “let her
find some one else to go blindly in her wake. I am not the man.”
So saying he walked across the cell to the doorway, forgetting even
to say good-bye to Father Amyot.
But the priest’s voice arrested him.
“You would travel alone, save for one attendant.”
Hilary turned and faced the priest in amazement.
“Oh, impossible!” he exclaimed, “——yet it is true.”
To Hilary the cynic, the thing suddenly assumed an intelligible
form. Fleta wanted to take a journey in which she would prefer a
companion because of its danger; yet she could not give her
confidence to any one. She proposed to herself to use his love for
her; she offered him her society as a bribe to take care of her, to
ask no questions and tell no tales. The idea did not please him.
“I have heard of princesses risking anything, relying on the power
of their position; I have heard that the royal caprice is not to be
measured by the reason of other men and women. Perhaps it is so. But
Fleta! I thought her different even from her own family.”
These were the first thoughts that came into his mind. His ready
conclusion was that Fleta was willing that he should be her lover if
he would be her servant also. But immediately afterwards came the
fair vision of Fleta herself in her white robes, and with the face
of a priestess. Her purpose was inscrutable, like herself. He
confessed this as he stood there, surging doubts in his mind. And
then suddenly a fragrance came across his sense—a strong perfume,
that he associated with Fleta’s dress—and next a breath of incense.
His brain grew dizzy; he staggered back and leaned against the wall.
He no longer appeared to himself to be in Father Amyot’s cell—he was
in Fleta’s laboratory, and her hand touched his face, her breath was
on his brow. Ah, what madness of joy to be with her! To travel with
her, to be her associate and companion to pass all the hours of the
day by her side. Suddenly he roused himself, and, starting forward,
approached Father Amyot.
“I will go,” he said.
“It will cost you dear,” said the priest. “Think again before you
decide.”
“It is useless to think,” cried Hilary. “Why should I think? I
feel—and to feel is to live.”
Father Amyot seemed not to hear his words. He was apparently already
buried in prayer. Evidently he had said all that he intended to say;
and Hilary, after a glance at him, turned and left the cell. He knew
the priest’s moods too well to speak again, when once that deep
cloud of profound abstraction had descended on his face.
He went away, passing back as he had come, through the Cathedral. At
the high altar he paused an instant, and then knelt and murmured a
prayer. It was one he had learned, and he scarce attached any
meaning to the familiar words. But it comforted him to feel that he
had prayed, be it never so meaningless a prayer. For Hilary had been
reared in all the habits of the devout Catholic.
Then he went out and took his way towards the Garden House, walking
with long strides. He was determined to know the truth, and that at
once. Amid all the brilliant men who crowded her father’s Court was
he indeed the only one who could touch her heart? An hour ago he
would have laughed at any one who had told him he had touched it;
yet now he believed he had. And what intoxication that belief was!
For the first time he began to feel the absolute infatuation of
love. And looking back it seemed to him that an hour ago he had not
loved Fleta—that he had never loved her till this minute.
He found her standing at the gate, among the flowers. She was
dressed in white, and some crimson roses were fastened at her neck.
Her face was like a child’s, full of gaiety and gladness. Hilary’s
heart bounded with the delight it gave him to see her like this. She
opened the gate for him, and together they walked towards the house.
“I have been to see Father Amyot,” said Hilary. “He sent for me this
morning.”
“Yes,” answered Fleta, quietly. “He had a message to you from me.
Are you willing to undertake a tiresome task for one you know so
little?”
“My Princess,” murmured Hilary, bending his head as he spoke.
“But not your Queen,” said Fleta, with a laugh full of the glorious
insolence only possible to one who had the royal blood in her veins,
and knew that a crown was waiting for her.
“Yes, my Queen,” said Hilary.
“If you call me that,” said Fleta, quickly, and in a different tone,
“you recognise a royalty not recognised by courtiers.”
“Yes,” replied Hilary simply.
“The royalty of power,” added Fleta, significantly, and with a
penetrating look into his eyes.
“Call it what you will,” answered Hilary, “you are my Queen. From
this hour I give allegiance.”
“Be it so,” said Fleta, with a light girlish laugh, “Be ready then,
tomorrow at noon. I will tell you where to meet me. I will send a
message in the morning.”
Suddenly a recollection crossed Hilary’s mind which had hitherto
been blotted out from it. “My mother,” he said.
“Oh,” said Fleta, “I have been to see Madame Estanol. My father goes
into the country to-day and she believes you go with him. She is
glad you should join the Court.”
“Strange,” said Hilary, unthinkingly, “for she has always set her
face against it.” Then the smile on Fleta’s face made him think his
words foolish.
“It is as my Queen orders. Seemingly, men and women obey her even in
their inmost hearts.”
“No,” said Fleta, with a sigh, “that is just what they do not! It is
that power which I have yet to obtain. They obey me, yes, but
against the dictates of their inmost hearts. If you really loved me,
we could obtain that power; but you are like the others. You do not
love me with your inmost heart!”
“I do not!” exclaimed Hilary, in amazement, stunned by her words.
“No,” she answered, mournfully, “you do not. If you really loved me
you would not calculate chances and risks, you would not consider
whether I am profligate or virtuous, whether I am my father’s
daughter or a child of the stars! I tell you, Hilary Estanol, if you
were capable of loving me truly, you might find your way to the gods
with me and even sit among them. But it is not so with you. You
vacillate even in your love. You cannot give yourself utterly. That
means grief to you, for you cannot find perfect pleasure in a thing
which you take doubtingly and give but by halves. Still you shall
travel with me; and you shall be my companion and friend. There is
none other to whom I would give this chance. How do you think you
will reward me? Oh, I know too well. Go now, but be ready when I
send for you.”
So saying she turned and went into the house, leaving him in the
garden. For a few moments he stood there embarrassed, not knowing
which way to turn or what to do. But he was not annoyed or
disturbed, as his vanity might have led him to be at another time,
by such cavalier treatment. He was aghast, horrified. Was this the
girl he loved! this tyrant, this proud spirit, this strange woman,
who before he had wooed her reproached him with not loving her
enough! Within him lurked a conventional spirit, strong under all
circumstances, even those of the most profound emotion, and Fleta’s
whole conduct shocked and distressed that spirit so that it groaned,
and more, upbraided him with his mad love. But the fierce growth of
that love could not be checked. He might suffer because it lived,
but he was not strong enough to kill it.
He turned and walked away from the house and slowly returned to the
city. He was ashamed and disheartened. His love seemed to disgrace
him. He had entertained lofty ideas which now were discarded for
ever. For he knew that to-morrow he would start upon a long journey,
the end of which was to him unknown, by the side of a girl whom he
could never marry, yet of whom he was the avowed lover. Well, be it
so. Hilary began to look at these things from a fatalistic point of
view; his weakness led him to shrug his shoulders and say that his
fate was stronger than himself. So he went home gloomily yet with a
burning and feverish heart. He immediately set to work making ready
for his departure for an indefinite period. His mother he found was
prepared for this, as Fleta had told him; and more—seemed to regard
Fleta as a kind of gentle goddess who had brought good fortune into
his path.
“I have always resisted the idea of your hanging about the Court,”
she said, “but it is different if indeed the King wishes to have you
with him. That must lead to your obtaining some honourable post.
What I dreaded was your becoming a mere useless idler. And I am glad
you are going into the country, dear, for you are looking very pale
and quite ill.”
Hilary assented tacitly and without comment to the deceit with which
Fleta had paved the way for him.
(_To be continued._)
[Illustration: decorative separator]
“Spirituality is not what we understand by the words ‘virtue’ or
‘goodness.’ It is the power of perceiving formless, spiritual
essences.”—(_Jasper Niemand in the “Path.”_)
“The discovery and right use of the true essence of Being—this is
the whole secret of life.”—(_Jasper Niemand in the “Path.”_)
------------------
DESIRE MADE PURE.
When desire is for the purely abstract—when it has lost all trace or
tinge of “self”—then it has become pure.
The first step towards this purity is to kill out the desire for the
things of matter, since these _can_ only be enjoyed by the separated
personality.
The second is to cease from desiring for oneself even such
abstractions as power, knowledge, love, happiness, or fame; for they
are but selfishness after all.
Life itself teaches these lessons; for all such objects of desire
are found Dead Sea fruit in the moment of attainment. This much we
learn from experience. Intuitive perception seizes on the _positive_
truth that satisfaction is attainable only in the infinite; the will
makes that conviction an actual fact of consciousness, till at last
all desire is centred on the Eternal.
THOUGHTS ON THEOSOPHY.
“The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life,” this is the
keynote of all true reform. Theosophy is the vehicle of the spirit
that gives life, consequently nothing _dogmatic_ can be truly
_theosophical_.
It is incorrect, therefore, to describe a _mere_ unearthing of dead
letter dogmas as “Theosophic work.”
When a word, phrase, or symbol, having been once used for the
purpose of suggesting an idea _new_ to the mind or minds being
operated on, is insisted upon irrespective of the said idea, it
becomes a dead letter dogma and loses its vitalising power, and
serves rather as an obstruction to, than as vehicle of the spirit;
but, alas, this insistance upon the letter is too often carried on
under the honoured name of “Theosophy.”
A man cannot acquire an idea _new to him_ unless it _grows_ in his
mind.
The mere familiarity with the _sound_ of a word, or a phrase, or the
mere familiarity with the _appearance_ of a symbol, does not, of
_necessity_, involve the possession of the idea properly associated
with the said word, phrase or symbol. To insist, therefore, on the
contrary cannot be theosophical; but would be better described as
_un_theosophical.
It would certainly be theosophical work to point out kindly and
temperately how certain words, phrases and symbols appear to have
been misunderstood or misapplied, how various claims and professions
may be excessive or confused as a consequence of ignorance or
vanity, or both. But it is quite another thing to condemn a man or a
body of men _outright_, for certain errors in judgment or action;
even though they were the result of vanity, greed or hypocrisy;
indeed such wholesale condemnation would, on the contrary, be
untheosophical.
The one eternal, immutable law of life alone can judge and condemn a
man absolutely. “Vengeance is _mine_, saith the Lord.”
Were I asked how I would dare attempt “to dethrone the gods,
overthrow the temple, destroy the law which feeds the priests and
props the realm; I should answer as the Buddha is made to answer in
the _Light of Asia_: ‘What thou bidst me keep is form which passes
while the free truth stands; get thee to thy darkness.’”
“What good gift hath my brother but it comes from search and strife
(inward) and loving sacrifice.”
*
* *
=Correspondence=
---
ARE THE TEACHINGS ASCRIBED TO JESUS CONTRADICTORY?
There are none so blind as those who won’t see, excepting those who
can’t!
In _Light_, for September 10th, there is a letter from Dr. Wyld, who
writes as follows: “In the last number of _Light_ there is a
quotation from the _Spiritual Reformer_ in which the writer shows
the absurdity of the idea that Jesus was not an historic being. But
while thanking the writer for this contribution, I would take the
strongest objection to his assertion that many of Christ’s teachings
are contradictory and mistaken. This is an assertion occasionally
made by Spiritualists, and whenever I have met with it I have asked
for evidence of the assertion, but hitherto I have received none.”
But that might surely have been easily supplied. Here, for example,
are a few very direct contradictions in the speaker’s own words.
Every one knows how secret were the teachings in their nature; how
secretly they were conveyed in private places apart; how secretly
his secrets were to be kept; and yet in presence of the High Priest
Jesus makes the astounding declaration: “_I have spoken openly to
the world; I always taught in synagogues; and in secret spake I
nothing._”—John xviii. 20.
Jesus, in keeping with the mythical character, is made to claim
equality and identity with the Father. He says (John x. 30), “_I and
my Father are one_;” but in the same book (John xiv. 28), he says,
“_The Father is greater than I_”—(Cf. Matthew xxiv. 36.) Again, he
claims superiority over his Father. “_The Father judgeth no man, but
hath committed all judgment to the Son. As I hear I judge_” (John v.
22, 30). And then in the same gospel he says, “_I judge no man_,”
(John viii. 15.) “_If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge
him not; for I came not to judge the world_,” (John xii. 47). Again,
“_I am one that bear witness of myself. Though I bear witness of
myself, yet my record is true_,” (John viii. 14, 18); which is
contradicted by (John v. 31) “_If I bear witness of myself, my
witness is not true_.” He says (John v. 33, 34) that “_John bare
witness unto the truth, but I receive not testimony from man_,” and
then tells the disciples, who are supposed to have been men, that
“_they also shall bear witness_” to or of him (John xv. 27). Again
he says, “_Let your light so shine before men that they may see your
good works_,” (Matthew v. 16). But “_Take heed that ye do not your
alms before men to be seen of them_.” (Matthew vi. 1).
“_Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right
cheek, turn to him the other also_,” (Matthew v. 39); for “_all that
take the sword, shall perish with the sword_,” (Matthew xxvi. 52).
Nevertheless, “_He that hath no sword let him sell his garment and
buy one_,” (Luke xxii. 36). “_I came not to send Peace but a
Sword_,” (Matthew x. 34). “_Be not afraid of them that kill the
body_,” (Luke xii. 4). Nevertheless “_Jesus would not walk in Jewry
because the Jews sought to kill him_,” (John vii. 1).
I merely ask, for the sake of information, are these statements
contradictory or are they not?
I will but offer one or two specimens of the more serious and
fundamental contradictions in the _olla podrida_ of teaching
assigned to Jesus. The teaching of the alleged founder of
Christianity in the Gospel according to Matthew (ch. xix. 12), is
that of the Saboi, the self-mutilators, who are still extant as the
Russian Skoptsi[27] and who emasculate themselves to save their
spermatic souls, as Origen is reputed to have done. Jesus is made to
say, “_There are Eunuchs which made themselves Eunuchs for the
Kingdom of Heaven’s sake_. He that is able to receive it, let him
receive it.” And then in the opening verses of the very next
chapter, the same teacher says, “_Suffer little children and forbid
them not, to come unto me; for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven_.”
But those who became Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake could
not be suffering the little children to come unto him or to them.
They would be forbidding them to come at all. If the Kingdom of
Heaven be _such_ as the children of Eunuchs it must be non-extant.
As Hood’s deaf shopman said of the crackers going off, there were so
many reports he did not know _which_ to believe.
-----
Footnote 27:
Of whom there are large colonies along the Black Sea and the coast
of Imeretia and Poti.
-----
And where is the sense of talking so much nonsense about the “Golden
Rule” or the Divine humanity on behalf of one who carried on the
blindest warfare against human nature itself? Who declared that “_If
any man come to me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and
children, and brothers and sisters, and his own life also, he cannot
be my disciple_” (Luke xiv. 26). And who promised that every
follower of his who “_left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife,
or children, for the Kingdom of God’s sake should receive manifold
more in the present and in the world to come life everlasting_.”
Well may the grateful Musselman cry in his adorations, “_Thank God_
OUR _Father has no Son!_”
But, I do not charge these contradictory sayings and teachings to
any personal character. The collectors are but making use of the
_Kurios_, the Lord of the pre-Christian Mythos, the mystical Christ
of the Gnostics, as a puppet to represent them and their divers
doctrines. They make the human image of a God of Love to be the
preacher of everlasting punishment, and the bearer of a fan with
which he fans the fires of hell; a false foreteller of that which
never came to pass, and the forerunner of a fulfilment which did not
follow. In short, they make this Marionette Messiah dance to any
particular tune they play.
Jesus is posed as the original revealer of a father in Heaven,
whereas the doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood was taught in three
different Egyptian Cults during some four thousand years previously.
Dr. Wyld implies that I deny the existence of a personal Jesus. That
is the misrepresentation of ignorance. But the sole historical Jesus
acknowledged by me is the only one who was ever known to the Jews,
to Celsus, to Epiphanius, as the descendant of JOSEPH Pandira, he,
who according to Irenæus, lived to be over fifty years of age.
This, I admit, was not the kind of Jesus whom the Christians find in
the Gospels and honour as a God.
The Gospel histories do not contain the biography of Ben-Pandira,
the son of Joseph. Nor was it intended that they should. Their Jesus
is the mythical Christ, the Horus of 12 years, and the adult Horus
of 30 years; the Lord of the age, Æon or Cycle, who came and went,
and was to come again for those who possessed the Gnosis.
Another writer in _Light_, a week earlier, could not understand how
any one can deny the personal existence of the “Historical Christ!”
The _Historical Christ_! You might as well demand our belief in the
historical Chronos—Time, in person—or the historical Ghost, in man
or out of him. If the writer knew anything of the pre-Christian
Spiritualism—anything of the true nature or even the meaning of the
name—he would perceive the Historic Impossibility of the personal
Christ. An “Historical Christ” is as much a nonentity as the
historical Mrs. Harris. But, _cui bono?_ I have no hope in these
matters of any orthodox Christian Spiritualists. They have to learn
the primary lesson, at last, that Historic Christianity was not
founded on our facts _until it had buried them_! That it was the
negation of Gnosticism, the antithesis of phenomenal Spiritualism.
That it substituted faith for facts; a physical resurrection for a
spiritual continuity, and a corporeal Christ for the trans-corporeal
man.
The Christian Revelation leaves no room for modern Spiritualism, and
they are logically, truly Christians who reject it! It recognises no
other rising again except at the last day, and then only for the few
who believed in Jesus (John vi. 40). The Christians have no other
world but one at the end of this; no other spirits extant excepting
their physical Christ and the devil.
People who will see nothing contradictory in direct opposites, no
difference betwixt black and white, but rather the necessary duality
of antiphonal truth, who can accept a misinterpretation of mythology
for the Word of God, are of little account as witnesses for
Spiritualism. They who tell a story about the whale swallowing Jonah
are not likely to be credited when they come with another that looks
very like Jonah swallowing the whale. Professed believers in the
literal truth of the Gospel fables are of necessity “_Suspects_” as
witnesses for abnormal and extraordinary facts.
Pointing to his antagonist on the platform, O’Connel once enquired
of his audience, “Can ye believe a single word that a gentleman says
who wears a waistcoat of _that_ colour?” It was yellow, and they
couldn’t.
What is the use of taking your “Bible oath” that this thing is true,
if the Book you are sworn upon is a magazine of falsehoods already
exploded or just going off?
Moreover, the Christian Priesthood has been preaching through all
these centuries that the dead do _not_ return; and the living have
believed them.
Dr. Sprenger has calculated that nine million persons have been put
to death as Witches, Wizards, or Mediums, since 1484, when Pope
Innocent VIII. issued his Bull against Spiritualism and all its
practices, which were considered to be the works of the devil.
Besides, if the Christian scheme of damnation be true, as assigned
to the teaching of Jesus, no humane person should want to know that
there is any hereafter.
Spiritualism can make no headway where it has to draw after it this
dead weight of a tail.
Christian Spiritualism also ostentatiously proclaims that it has
nothing in the world to do with “Woman’s Rights,” “Vaccination,” or
any such merely human interests. It would seek to create an interest
in another life, whilst ignoring the vital interests of this. But
that is to sign its own death-warrant and to seal its own speedy
doom. This is to repeat the mistake and follow the failure of the
Christian system of saving souls for another life whilst allowing
them to be damned in this. At the same time, it would drag
Spiritualism into the bankrupt business of Historic Christianity and
bind up a third testament to save the other two, as a sort of
Trinity in Unity. But as a system of thought, of religion, or morals
and a mode of interpreting nature, Historic Christianity is moribund
and cannot be saved, or resuscitated by transfusion of new blood
into it; not if you bled Spiritualism to death in trying to give it
a little new life. They try in vain to make our phenomena guarantee
the miracles of mythology as spiritual realities. They try in vain
to tether the other world in this and make it draw for the
fraudulent old faith. They keep on jumping up and down to persuade
themselves and others that they are free. But it is only a question
of length of chain, for those who are still fettered fast at foot
upon the ancient standing-ground.
I have not answered the writer in the paper quoted by _Light_, and
approved by Dr. Wyld, for the reason that his acquaintance with my
data was too limited to make discussion profitable or useful. Those
data are already presented in accessible books and pamphlets, and
there is no need for me to repeat them in reply to him. Those who
undertake to write on so perplexing a subject ought to be able to
illuminate it and enlighten their opponents. The problems are not to
be solved by any amount of personal simplicity. I am always ready to
meet any competent and well-informed defender of the faith upon the
platform or in the press. I should prefer it to be a bishop, who is
also an Egyptologist. But beggars are not allowed to be choosers. I
am prepared at any time to demonstrate the entirely mythical and
mystical origin of the Christ, and the non-spiritual, non-historical
beginnings of the vast complex called Christianity.
GERALD MASSEY.
[Any “Bishop Egyptologist,” or even Assyriologist, of whom we have
heard there are not a few in England, is cordially invited to
defend his position in the pages of LUCIFER. The “Son of the
Morning” is the _Light-Bearer_, and welcomes light from every
quarter of the globe.—ED.]
------------------
[NOTE.—As _Lucifer_ cannot concur in the exclusively _exoteric_
view, taken by Mr. Massey, of this allegorical, though none the
less philosophical, scripture, the next number will contain an
article dealing with the _esoteric_ meaning of the New
Testament.—ED.]
TO THE AUTHOR OF “LIGHT ON THE PATH.”
There is a sentence in your “Comments” which has haunted me with a
sense of irritation: “To obtain knowledge by experiment is too
tedious a method for those who aspire to do real work,” &c. Have we
any knowledge, of whatever sort, that has been of use in the world,
which has been obtained otherwise than experimentally? By patient
and persistent toil of sifting and testing, we have obtained the
little knowledge that is of service to us. Is there such a thing as
“certain intuition”? Has intuitive knowledge, if such there be, been
accepted as positive knowledge until it has been submitted to the
test of experiment? Would it be right that it should be? Your
illustration of the “determined workman” brings the question down
(as I think the question should be brought) to the plane of
practice. Is there any workman who can know his tools until he has
tried them? Is not the history of knowledge the history of
intuitions put to the test of practice? Intuitions, or what we call
such, seem to me quite as apt and likely to deceive us as anything
in the world; we only know them for good when we have tried them.
INTERROGATOR.
---
It seems to me there is some confusion in this letter between
obtaining knowledge by experiment, and testing it by experiment.
Edison knew that his discoveries were only things to look for, and
he tested his knowledge by experiment. The actual work of great
inventors is the bringing of intuitive knowledge on to the plane of
practice by applying the test of experiment. But all inventors are
seers; and some of them having died without being able to put into
practice the powers which they knew existed in Nature were
considered madmen. Later on, other men are more fortunate, and
re-discover the laughed-at knowledge. This is an old and familiar
story, but we need constantly to be reminded of it. How often have
great musicians or great artists been regarded as “infant prodigies”
in their childhood? They have intuitive knowledge of that power of
which they are chosen interpreters, and experiment is only necessary
in order to find out how to give that which they know to others.
Intuitive knowledge in reference to the subjects with which I have
been dealing must indeed be tested by experiment; and it is the
whole purpose of “Light on the Path” itself, and the “Comments” to
urge men to test their knowledge in this way. But the vital
difference between this and material forms of knowledge is that for
all occult purposes a man must obtain his own knowledge before he
can use it. There are many subjects of time content to linger on
through æons of slow development, and pass the threshold of eternity
at last by sheer force of the great wheel of life with which they
move; possibly during their interminable noviciate, they may obtain
knowledge by experiment and with well-tested tools. Not so the
pioneer, the one who claims his divine inheritance now. He must work
as the great artists, the great inventors have done; obtain
knowledge by intuition, and have such sublime faith in his own
knowledge that his life is readily devoted to testing it.
But for this purpose the testing has to be actually done in the
astral life. In a new world, where the use of the senses is a pain,
how can the workman stay to test his tools? The old proverb about
the good workman who never quarrels with them, however bad they are,
though of course had he the choice he would use the best, applies
here.
As to whether intuitive knowledge exists or no, I can only ask how
came philosophies, metaphysics, mathematics into existence? All
these represent a portion of abstract truth.
Before I received this letter the “Comments” for this month were
written, in which, as it happens, I have spoken a great deal about
intuitive knowledge. Therefore, I will now only quote the definition
of a philosopher from Plato, which is given near the end of Book
V.,—
“I mean by philosopher, the man who is devoted to the acquisition of
knowledge, real knowledge, and not merely inquisitive. The more our
citizens approach this temperament, the better the state will be.
True knowledge in its perfection and its entirety, man cannot
attain. But he can attain to a kind of knowledge of realities, if he
has any knowledge at all, because he cannot know nonentities. Hence
his knowledge is half-way between real knowledge and ignorance, and
we must call it opinion.”
NOTE.—Several questions which have been received are held over to
be answered next month.
------------------
_To the Editors of_ LUCIFER.
In the interesting and lucid article on “Karma” in your number of
September 15th, everything seems to hinge on the theory of
re-incarnation. “Very well,” says the author of that paper, “let
us take the principle of re-incarnation for granted.” But is not
this a rather unphilosophical way of handling a subject of such
gravity? Take this or that principle for granted, and you may go
about to prove anything under the sun. It is the old weakness of
begging the question. Is it not this taking for granted what
cannot be proved, and is not attempted to be proved, that has led
astray speculators—both scientific and religious—everywhere and in
every age, and is it not upon similar assumptions that the whole
monstrous fabric of theology rests? Of course, in every kind of
speculation one is compelled to set out with an assumption of some
sort; but then the first thing the reader demands is, that the
grounds shall be shown upon which the assumption rests; the
assumption, whatever it be, must be made good before one can be
asked to accept that which is to be raised upon it. And here comes
in my question: What is the warrant or sanction for the principle
of re-incarnation? What is the principle grounded upon? Do we
undergo re-incarnation, and how do you know it?
Having set out with the assumption, the author does not return to it
again, and at the end of the article I am as uninstructed as at the
outset respecting the pivotal principle upon which all that follows
seems to turn.
INTERROGATOR.
------------------
The author of “Karma” will go into this question fully in a paper
devoted entirely to the subject of re-incarnation. The two subjects
are inextricably interwoven, but it was decided that to treat the
two at the same time would produce too great a confusion, and offer
too wide an area of speculation for the mind to grapple with.
Therefore this course was adopted of taking the principle of
re-incarnation for granted. It is possible that the second paper
should have come first, but the two theories stand side by side, not
one before the other, so that the question of precedence was a
difficult one. But it is necessary, in view of this blending of the
ideas, that the reader shall have the complete presentation of both
before him, and then draw his conclusions. Therefore indulgence is
asked until the papers dealing with each subject are completed. As
many readers may have felt the same difficulty as our correspondent,
we are glad to insert this letter and reply.—ED.
Reviews.
=THE KABBALAH UNVEILED.=
TRANSLATED BY S. L. MACGREGOR MATHERS.[28]
-----
Footnote 28:
George Redway, 15, York Street, Covent Garden.
-----
The author of this welcome volume has supplied the present
generation of students of theosophy and occultism with a text-book
which has been long wanted and waited for. The “Zohar” is the great
storehouse of the ancient Hebrew theosophy, supplemented by the
philosophical doctrines of the mediæval Jewish Rabbis. It consists
of several distinct yet allied tracts, each discussing some special
branch of the subject; each tract again consists of several
portions, a kernel of most ancient dogma, to which are added
comments and explanations, in some cases by several hands and at
very different epochs. There is sufficient proof that these kernels
of dogma are remnants of one of the oldest systems of philosophy
that have come down to us, and they show also intrinsic evidence
that they are associated at least with the return from the
Babylonish captivity. On the other hand, it is pretty certain that
the Zohar, in its present form, was put together and first printed
about 1558, at Mantua, and a little later in other editions at
Cremona and Lublin. This Mantuan edition was a revision of the
collection of tracts collected and edited in MS. form by Moses de
Leon, of Guadalaxara, in Spain, about 1300; even the most hostile
views of the antiquity of the Zohar grant this much, and although
direct historical evidence is not forthcoming of the several steps
in the course of transmission of these doctrines from ante-Roman
times, yet, as aforesaid, the internal evidence is ample to show the
essential origination of the specially Hebrew ideas found in the
Zohar from Rabbis, more or less tinged with a Babylonish cast, who
must have flourished antecedent to the building of the second
Temple. The tradition of the mediæval Rabbis definitely assigned the
authorship to Rabbi Schimeon ben Jochai, who lived in the reign of
the Roman Emperor Titus, A.D. 70-80; and it is the claim of
authorship made on his behalf that the modern critic is so fond of
contesting.
The “Zohar,” or “Splendour,” or “Book of Illumination,” and the
“Sepher Yetzirah” are almost the only extant books of the Kabbalah,
Qbalah or Cabbala. The “Kabbalah Denudata” of Knorr von Rosenroth,
is a Latin version of the former, with commentaries by himself and
by certain learned Rabbis. No French and no German translation of
the Zohar has ever been published, nor until the present time has
any English version been printed. Eliphaz Levi has, however,
paraphrased a few chapters of the “Book of Concealed Mystery,” and
these have been printed in the _Theosophist_.
Some parts of the Zohar are written in pure Hebrew, but a large
portion is in Aramaic Chaldee, and there are passages in other
dialects; this variation of language adds immensely to the
difficulties of an accurate translation.
Knorr von Rosenroth was a most able and compendious Hebrew savant,
and his translation of much of the Zohar into Latin is a work of
established reputation, and has been, indeed, almost the only means
by which the students of our era have been able to consult Hebraic
philosophy. The present revival of theosophical studies by the
English speaking races has created a demand for the Kabbalah in an
English dress, and hence the appearance of the present work is well
timed, and will form an epoch in the history of occultism; and much
good fruit will no doubt be borne by a more intimate acquaintance
with Jewish lore, which will tinge the present tendency to supremacy
of the Sanscrit and Hermetic forms of mysticism. There is much
reason to suppose that an attentive study of each of these forms of
knowledge may lead one to the Hidden Wisdom; but a skilful analogy,
and an investigation into the three forms of dogma on parallel lines
will give a breadth of grasp and a cosmopolitan view of the matter
which should lead to a happy solution of the great problems of life
in a speedy and satisfactory manner. The Kabbalah may, in concise
terms, be said to teach the ancient Rabbinical doctrines of the
nature and attributes of the Divinity, the cosmogony of our
universe, the creation of angels and the human soul, the destiny of
angels and men, the dogma of equilibrium, and the transcendental
symbolism of the Hebrew letters and numerals.
Mr. Mathers, who is a most patient and persevering student, if not
professor, of mystic lore, is at the same time a first-rate
classical scholar, and a skilful interpreter of the Hebrew tongue,
and his translation from the Latin, varied and improved by his own
study of the original Chaldee, has produced an English version of
the Kabbalah Denudata which is eloquent in its construction, true to
its text, and lucid in its abstruseness. For the matter is abstruse,
much of it, and some is practically incomprehensible to the
beginner, to the world in general for certain, and perhaps to every
one at the first glance. But it will be certainly perceived that
those very portions which seem most extravagant at a first reading
are just the passages from which later a light will arise and lead
one on to a firm grasp of the subject. To take up this volume and
read at odd moments is a useless and hopeless task; no progress will
be made, at any rate at first, except by thoroughly abstracting
one’s individuality from the things of common life; disappointment
can only accompany superficial reading.
Great credit is due to the enterprise of Mr. Redway in publishing
this volume, for which no very extensive sale could have been
anticipated; that he has already distributed a considerable number
is matter for congratulation to himself and to the public. It is
hoped that his success will induce him to publish other volumes of
antique lore, of which many yet remain more or less completely
ignored by the present generation.
The “Siphra Dtzenioutha,” the “Idra Rabba,” and the “Idra Zuta,”
included in this volume are doubtless three of the most valuable of
the tracts of the Zohar, yet there are others of equal interest. The
“Book of the Revolutions of Souls” is a most curious and mysterious
work, and the “Asch Metzareph” is a treatise on the relations
between Theosophy and the oldest alchemical ideas which are known to
exist; it is a work on the Asiatic plane, on the lowest of the four
kabbalistic worlds of Emanation.
Beyond the limits of the Zohar proper, the “Sepher Yetzirah,” is a
treatise which for interest and instruction cannot be surpassed.
Mr. Mathers supplies us with an introduction to the Qabalah, which
stamps him as a master of the science, and although he refers us on
some pages to Ginsburg (a recognised authority), yet his remarks and
explanation are more deep and thorough than those published in
Ginsburg’s little English pamphlet, and are more discursive and
complete. My remarks on the difficulty of our subject hardly render
it necessary for me to insist on the absolute necessity of a
painstaking study of this introduction, which will supply in a great
measure the want of a _de novo_ education in Hebrew, and Hebrew
modes of thought and expression.
Mr. Mathers justly insists on the literal rendering of the Hebrew
title by the spelling Qabalah, which is no doubt correct, but lays
him open to a charge of pedantry, which perhaps does not much affect
him, since it would only come from superficial and possibly scoffing
critics. The use of the letter Q without its usual English companion
the u is sanctioned and advised, in this connection, by the learned
Max Müller and other Orientalists of repute. To avoid the printing
of Hebrew letters, the publisher has adopted a scheme of printing
Hebrew words in English capital letters (in addition to the mode of
pronunciation), after a method given by the author in tabular form.
To the Hebrew scholar this gives an idea of barbarism, which is
painful to the eye and sadly mars the volume, whilst it only saves
the student the task of learning an alphabet of 22 letters. I differ
from the author in representing the Hebrew Teth by T, while
depicting the Tau by TH., the reverse would have been a closer
imitation of the sounds. The Introduction includes a learned
excursus upon the idea of “Negative Existence,” in which
considerable light is thrown on that difficult subject; skilful
definitions are added concerning the AIN, the AIN SOPH, and AIN SOPH
AUR, answering in English to Negativity, The Limitless, and
Limitless Light, the first essences of Deity. Several pages are
devoted to a clear description of the Ten Sephiroth, the Numerical
Conceptions of Godhead, and their explanatory titles; the Four
Worlds of Emanation, and the component elements of a Human Soul; the
Mysteries of the Hexagram as a type of Macroprosopus, the Most Holy
Ancient One, or God the Father—and the succeeding mystery of
Microprosopus, the Lesser Countenance, typified in the Pentagram and
corresponding to the Christian Personality of the “Son of God,” are
all explained at length. The series of references to the IHVH the
Tetragrammaton, the Concealed Name of unknown pronunciation, form a
valuable dissertation. The book is supplied with nine well executed
diagrams, explanatory of the Sephiroth, the sacred names, essences
of the soul, and a very perfect and complete scheme of the Sephiroth
in the four worlds of emanation associated with the Vision of
Ezekiel. Mr. Mathers desires to call special attention to the
differentiation of the Deity in the Emanations, into the female type
in addition to masculine characteristics: note the idealism of the
Superior HE, Binah, the Mother, and the Inferior HE, Malkuth, the
Bride of Microprosopus, the Kingdom of God (the Son of God and his
Bride the Church), note that Genesis i. 26, says “let _Us_ make man
in our image,” “male and female created he them;” the “_us_” is
“Elohim,” a noun in the plural.
The “Siphra Dtzenioutha,” or “Book of Concealed Mystery,” is the
most difficult of comprehension. Mr. Mathers adds a running
commentary of his own, which proves to be very valuable. It consists
of five chapters; in the first are found references to the Mystical
Equilibrium, the worlds of unbalanced force characterised as the
Edomite kings, the Vast Countenance, Theli the Dragon, the powers of
IHVH, and the essence of the female power—the Mother. The second
chapter mentions the Beard of Truth, and passes on to define
Microprosopus. The third chapter treats of the Beard of
Microprosopus in an allegorical manner, and of the formation of the
Supernal Man. An annotation follows concerning Prayer, and a curious
note on the word AMEN! as composed of IHVH, and ADNI Adonai or Lord.
Chapter IV. treats of the male and female essences, and has a
curious note on the Hebrew letter Hé, speaking of it as female, and
composed of D, Daleth, and I, Jod—a great mystery worthy of study.
Chapter V. speaks of the Supernal Eden, the Heavens, the Earth, the
Waters, the Giants-Nephilim in the earth, wars of the kings, the
tree of knowledge of good and evil, the serpent, and the houses of
judgment; so that this treatise is no less discursive than abstruse.
The “Idra Rabba,” or “Greater Holy Assembly,” consisted of ten
Rabbis, of whom Rabbi Schimeon was chief, and the book contains
their several speeches and comments upon the doctrines laid down by
Rabbi Schimeon, on a similar plan to the conversations narrated in
the Book of Job. Twenty-five chapters are occupied with an allegory
of the several parts of Macroprosopus, the type of God the Father;
the twenty-sixth concerns the Edomite kings, the vanished creations;
Chapters XXVII. to XLII. are an allegorical description of
Microprosopus, the Son Deity, the V or Vau of the Tetragrammaton;
Chapter XLIII. concerns the Judgments; XLIV., the Supernal Man; and
XLV. is a Conclusion, in narrative form, of the passing away of
three of the ten Rabbis, and the acknowledgment of R. Schimeon as
chief of them all.
Very much of this descriptive volume referring to Deity is not only
abstruse, but is, to the modern European, verbiage run wild; yet in
this characteristic it is truly Oriental and Hebrew; some passages
remind me very much of the “Song of Solomon,” there are the same
exuberant and flowery outbursts of poetic imagery.
The “Idra Zuta,” or “Lesser Holy Assembly,” is a similar treatise,
explanatory of the Holy powers of the Deity, ascribing honour and
power to Macroprosopus, Microprosopus, AIMA the God Mother, and the
Bride of God; with instructive allusions to the Prior Worlds of the
so-called Edomite Kings, and the sexual aspects of Godhead. The work
concludes with a narrative of the death of R. Schimeon and his
burial, the whole “Idra” being his last dying declaration of
doctrine.
It is noteworthy that the words of the “Smaragdime Tablet of
Hermes”—“that which is below is like that which is above” occur in
paragraph 388 of the Idra Rabba, and are thus introduced, “We have
learned through Barietha, the tradition given forth _without_ the
Holy City.” I note also that the Mischna is mentioned in the Idra
Zuta. Want of space compels me to omit all extracts from this
volume, which is a matter of regret, as many passages are very
eloquently written.
A flaw in this book is the construction of the Index, which should
have contained sub-headings, as well as main headings. Of what value
is the entry “Microprosopus,” followed by eleven lines each of
fourteen page-numbers? A score of references, sub-divided between
his characteristics, his relationships, and his titles would have
been of more practical use. With this exception, and when the
abomination of Hebrew in English letters has been tolerated, we must
acknowledge the production of a most valuable theosophical and
philosophical storehouse of ancient Hebrew doctrine, on which Mr.
MacGregor Mathers may be heartily congratulated.
W. WYNN WESTCOTT, M.B.
------------------
“AN ADVENTURE AMONG THE ROSICRUCIANS.”
BY A STUDENT OF OCCULTISM.[29]
-----
Footnote 29:
Copyrighted by Franz Hartmann, Boston Occult Publishing Co., 1887.
-----
A strange and original little story, charmingly fantastic, but full
of poetic feeling and, what is more, of deep philosophical and
occult truths, for those who can perceive the ground-work it is
built upon. A fresh Eclogue of Virgil in its first part, descriptive
of Alpine scenery in the Tyrol, where the author “dreamt” his
adventure, with “shining glaciers glistening like vast mirrors in
the light of the rising sun,” deep ravines with rushing streams
dancing between the cliffs, blue lakes slumbering among the meadows,
and daisy-sprinkled valleys resting in the shadow of old pine
forests.
Gradually as the hero of the “Adventure” ascended higher and higher,
he began losing the sense of the world of the real, to pass
unconsciously into the land of waking dreams.
“In these solitudes there is nothing to remind one of the
existence of man, except occasionally the sawed-off trunk of a
tree, showing the destructive influence of human activity. In some
old, rotten, and hollow trunks rain-water has collected, sparkling
in the sun like little mirrors, such as may be used by
water-nymphs, and around their edges mushrooms are growing, which
our imagination transforms into chairs, tables, and baldachinos
for elves and fairies.... No sound could now be heard, except
occasionally the note of a titmouse and the cry of a hawk who rose
in long-drawn spiral motion high up into the air....”
Throwing himself upon the moss, he begins watching the play of the
water until it becomes “alive with forms of the most singular
shape,” with super-mundane beings dancing in the spray, “shaking
their heads in the sunshine and throwing off showers of liquid
silver from their waving locks.”...
“Their laughter sounded like that of the Falls of _Minnehaha_, and
from the crevices of the rocks peeped the ugly faces of gnomes and
kobolds, watching slyly the fairies.”
Then the dreamer asks himself a variety of questions of the most
perplexing nature, except, perhaps, to the materialist, who cuts
every psychological problem as Alexander cleft the Gordian knot....
“What is the reason that we imagine such things?” he inquires.
“Why do we endow ‘dead’ things with human consciousness and with
sensation?... Is our consciousness merely a product of the organic
activity of our physical body, or is it a function of the
universal life ... within the body? Is our personal consciousness
dependent for its existence on the existence of the physical body,
and does it die with it; or is there a spiritual consciousness,
belonging to a higher, immortal, and invisible self of man,
temporarily connected with the organism, but which may exist
independently of the latter? If such is the case, if our physical
organism is merely an instrument through which our consciousness
acts, then this instrument is _not_ our real self. If this is
true, then our real self is there where our consciousness exists,
and may exist independently of the latter.... Can there be any
_dead_ matter in the Universe? Is not even a stone held together
by the ‘cohesion’ of its particles, and attracted to the earth by
‘gravitation’? But what else is this ‘cohesion’ and ‘gravitation’
but _energy_, and what is ‘energy’ but the _soul_, an interior
principle called _force_, which produces an outward manifestation
called _matter_?... All things possess life, all things possess
soul, and there may be soul-beings ... invisible to our physical
senses, but which may be perceived by our soul.” (p. 19.)
The arch-druid of modern Hylo-Idealism, Dr. Lewins, failing to
appear to rudely shake our philosopher out of his unscientific
thoughts, a dwarf appears in his stead. The creature, however, does
not warn the dreamer, as that _too_-learned _Idealist_ would. He
does not tell him that he transcends “the limits of the anatomy of
his conscious Ego,” since “_psychosis_ is now diagnosed by
_medico-psychological symptomatology as vesiculo-neurosis in
activity_,”[30] and—as quoth the raven—“merely this, and nothing
more.” But being a _cretin_, he laughingly invites him to his
“Master.”
-----
Footnote 30:
“What is Religion: A Vindication of Free Thought.” By C. N.,
annotated by Robert Lewins, M. D. See his Appendices, p. 35, _et
seq._
-----
The hero follows, and finds he is brought to a “theosophical
monastery,” in a hidden valley of the most gorgeous description.
Therein he meets, to his surprise, with adepts of both sexes; for,
as he learns later:—
“What has intelligence to do with the sex of the body? Where the
sexual instincts end, there ends the influence of the sex.”
Meanwhile, he is brought into the presence of a male adept of
majestic appearance, who welcomes and informs him that he is among
“The Brothers of the Golden and Rosy Cross.” He is invited to remain
with them for some time, and see how they live. His permanent
residence with them is, however, objected to. The reasons given for
it are as follow:—
“There are still too many of the lower and animal elements
adhering to your constitution.... They could not resist long the
destructive influence of the pure and spiritual air of this place;
and, as you have not yet a sufficient amount of truly spiritual
elements in your organism to render it firm and strong, you would,
by remaining here, soon become weak and waste away, like a person
in consumption; you would become miserable instead of being happy,
and you would die.”
Then follows a philosophical conversation on WILL, in which the
latter, in individual man, is said to become the stronger if it only
uses the universal Will-Power in Nature, _itself remaining passive
in the_ LAW. This sentence has to be well understood, lest it should
lead the reader into the error of accepting pure _mediumistic
passivity_ as the best thing for spiritual and occult development. A
phenomenon is produced on a passing cloud, into which apparent life
is infused by the Master’s hand, stretched towards it; this is again
explained by showing that LIFE is universal and identical with WILL.
Other phenomena still more wonderful follow; and they are all
explained as being produced through natural laws, in which science
will not believe. The thoughts of the student are read and answered
as though his mind were an opened book. A lovely garden, full of
exotic plants and luxurious palm-trees, into which he is taken,
striking him as something unnatural in the Tyrolean Alps; so much
luxury, moreover, seeming to him to disagree with the ascetic views
just expressed by the adept, he is told forthwith, in answer to his
unexpressed thoughts, that the garden had been erected to make his
visit an agreeable one; and that it was an _illusion_. “All these
trees and plants ... require no gardeners, ... they cost us nothing
but an effort of our imagination”—he learns.
“Surely,” he said, “this rose cannot be an illusion ... or an effect
of my imagination?”
“No,” answered the adept ... “but it is a product of the imagination
of Nature, whose processes can be guided by the will of the adept.
The whole world ... is nothing else but a world of the imagination
of the _Universal Mind_, which is the _Creator_ of forms....”
To exemplify the teaching, a Magnolia Tree in full blossom sixty
feet high, standing at a distance, is made to look less and less
dense. The green foliage fades into gray, becomes “more and more
shadowy and transparent,” until “it seemed to be merely the ghost of
a tree, and finally disappeared entirely from view.”
“Thus” continued the adept, “you see that tree stood in the sphere
of my mind as it stood in yours. We are all living within the
sphere of each other’s mind.... The Adept creates his own images;
the ordinary mortal lives in the products of the imagination of
others, or the imagination of nature. We live in the paradise of
our own soul ... but the spheres of our souls are not narrow. They
have expanded far beyond the limits of the visible bodies, and
will continue to expand until they become one with the universal
Soul....”
“The power of the imagination is yet too little known to mankind,
else they would better beware of what they think. If a man thinks
a good or an evil thought, that thought calls into existence a
corresponding form or power ... which may assume density and
become living ... and live long after the physical body of the man
who created it has died. It will accompany his soul after death,
because _the creations are attracted to their creator_.” (p. 83.)
Scattered hither and thither, through this little volume are pearls
of wisdom. For that which is rendered in the shape of dialogue and
monologue is the fruit gathered by the author during a long research
in old forgotten and mouldy, MSS. of the Rosicrucians, or mediæval
alchemists, and in the worm-eaten _infoglios_ of unrecognized, yet
great adepts of every age.
Thus when the author approaches the subject of theosophical retreats
or communities—a dream cherished by many a theosophist—he is
answered by the “Adept” that “the _true ascetic is he who lives in
the world, surrounded by its temptations_; he in whose soul the
animal elements are still active, craving for, the gratification of
their desires and possessing the means for such gratification, but
_who by the superior power of his will conquers his animal self_.
Having attained that state he may retire from the world.... He
expects no future reward in heaven; for what could heaven offer him
except happiness which he already possesses? He desires no other
good, but to create good for the world.”... Saith the Adept.
“If you could establish theosophical monasteries, where
intellectual and spiritual development would go hand-in-hand,
where a new science could be taught, based upon a true knowledge
of the fundamental laws of the universe, and when, at the same
time man would be taught how to obtain a mastery over himself, you
would confer the greatest possible benefit upon the world. Such a
convent would afford immense advantage for the advancement of
intellectual research.... These convents would become centres of
intelligence....”
Then, reading the student’s thoughts:
“You mistake,” he added; “it is not the want of money which
prevents us to execute the idea. It is the impossibility to find
the proper kind of people to inhabit the convent after it is
established. Indeed, we would be poor Alchemists if we could not
produce gold in any desirable quantity ... but gold is a curse to
mankind, and we do not wish to increase the curse.... Distribute
gold among men, and you will only create craving for more; give
them gold, and you will transform them into devils. No, it is not
gold that we need; it is men who thirst after wisdom. _There are
thousands who desire knowledge, but few who desire wisdom...._
Even many of your would-be Occultists ... have taken up their
investigations merely for the purpose of gratifying idle
curiosity, while others desire to pry into the secrets of nature,
to obtain knowledge which they desire to employ for the attainment
of selfish ends. Give us men or women who desire nothing else but
the truth, and we will take care of their needs....”
And then having given a startlingly true picture of modern
civilisation, and explained the occult side of certain things
pertaining to knowledge, the Adept led on the student to his
laboratory, where he left him for a few minutes alone. Then another
adept, looking like a monk, joined him, and drew his attention to
some powders, by the fumigations of which the Elementals, or
“Spirits of Nature” could be made to appear. This provoked the
student’s curiosity. Sure of his invulnerability in the matter of
tests and temptations, he begged to be allowed to see these
creatures....
Suddenly the room looked dim, and the walls of the laboratory
disappeared. He felt he was in the water, light as a feather,
dancing on the waves, with the full moon pouring torrents of light
upon the ocean, and the beautiful Isle of Ceylon appearing in the
distance. The melodious sound of female voices made him espy near to
where he was three beautiful female beings. The Queen of the
Undines, the most lovely of the three—for these were the longed-for
Elementals—entices the unwary student to her submarine palace. He
follows her, and, forgetting theosophical convents, Adepts and
Occultism, succumbs to the temptation....
* * * * * * * * * *
Was it but a dream? It would so appear. For he awakes on the mossy
plot where he had lain to rest in the morning, and from whence he
had followed the dwarf. But how comes it that he finds in his
button-hole the exotic lily given to him by the adept lady, and in
his pocket the piece of gold transmuted in his presence by the
“Master”? He rushes home, and finds on the table of his hotel-room a
promised work on “The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians,” and on
its fly-leaf a few words in pencil. They ran thus:—
“_Friend, I regret ... I cannot invite you to visit us again for the
present. He who desires to remain in the peaceful valley must know
how to resist all sensual attractions, even those of the Water
Queen. Study ... bring the circle into the square, mortify the
metals.... When you have succeeded we shall meet again.... I shall
be with you when you need me._”
The work ends with the quotation from Paul’s Second Epistle to the
Corinthians, where the man caught up into Paradise (whether in the
body or out of the body ... God knoweth) “_heard unspeakable words,
which it is not lawful for a man to utter_....”
The “adventure” is more than worth perusal.
------------------
TABULA BEMBINA SIVE MENSA ISIACA. THE ISIAC TABLET OF CARDINAL
BEMBO. ITS HISTORY AND OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE.
BY W. WYNN WESTCOTT, M.B. BATH. R. H. FRYAR, 1887.
This work is a monograph of 20 foolscap folio pages, on the
celebrated Isiac Tablet. It is well and clearly printed in
good-sized type on good paper, and has for frontispiece a
well-executed photogravure of the Tablet itself, from a drawing made
by the author some years previously. It is written in the clear
style which distinguishes Dr. Westcott’s writings, and in all
quotations chapter and verse are scrupulously given. Three centuries
ago this Tablet greatly exercised the minds of the learned, and
continued to do so till the researches of modern Egyptologists began
to throw some doubt upon its authenticity as a reliable specimen of
ancient Egyptian art; since which time the interest in it has
gradually declined. Undoubtedly occult, as its meaning and symbolism
alike are, we feel that this monograph will be of service to all
lovers and students of the mystical ideas of ancient Egypt. The
first thing which strikes the eye of even the most careless observer
is the careful and systematic arrangement of the figures and emblems
in triads, or groups of three, which system of classification
prevailed in the religious symbolism of the Egyptians. The Tablet,
again, is divided by transverse horizontal lines into three
principal portions, Upper, Lower, and Middle, the latter being
sub-divided by vertical lines into three parts, the centre of which
is occupied by a throned female figure, flanked on each side by a
triad, of which the central figure in each instance is seated. Thus
the Upper and Lower portions of the Tablet give each a Dodecad
sub-divided into Triads, while the central portion forms a Heptad.
This at once corresponds to the symbolism of the ספר יצירה, _Sepher
Yetzirah_, Chapter VI., § 3. “The Triad, the Unity which standeth
one and alone, the Heptad divided into Three as opposed to Three and
the Centre Mediating between them, the Twelve which stand in war ...
the Unity above the Triad, the Triad above the Heptad, the Heptad
above the Dodecad and they are all bound together each with each.”
Commencing with a description of the Tablet, Dr. Westcott gives as
much as is known of its history, quoting from Kircher, Keysler,
Murray, and others. It appears that it was first discovered in Rome,
at a spot where a Temple of Isis had once stood. After the sack of
Rome by the Constable De Bourbon, it fell into the hands of a smith,
who sold it to Cardinal Bembo for a large sum. At his death it came
into the possession of the Dukes of Mantua, at the taking of which
city in 1630, it passed into the hands of Cardinal Pava. It is now
in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities at Turin. The dimensions are 4
ft. 2 in., by 2 ft. 5½ in. Thus its experiences during the last few
centuries have been rather stormy.
After mentioning Æneas De Vico and Pignorius, Dr. Westcott gives us
an extensive digest of the views of Athanasius Kircher, from whose
plate in the “Œdipus Ægyptiacus” the photogravure at the
commencement is taken. Kircher undoubtedly more nearly grasped the
esoteric design of the tablet than any one except Eliphas Levi, and
his attempted explanation marks him alike as a profound scholar and
an advanced mystic, notwithstanding the great disadvantages with
which he had to contend in the utter ignorance of Egyptology as it
is now understood, which prevailed at the date at which he wrote.
Quotations and notes from Montfauçon, Shuckford, Warburton,
Jablonski, Caylus, Banier, Mackenzie, Kenealy, and Winckelman follow
the excerpts from Kircher, and we then come to the views of modern
Egyptologists on the subject, notably those of Professor Le Page
Renouf as expressed to Dr Westcott in person. The reasons they
assign for doubting the authenticity of the Tablet are briefly
these:—that they consider the execution of the work stamps it as a
Roman production; that the hieroglyphics will not read so as to make
sense; that the running pattern with the masks would never have been
employed by an Egyptian; and that some of the best known Egyptian
deities are conspicuous by their absence. In answer to these attacks
Dr. Westcott wisely remarks that “it is a gross absurdity to suppose
that any man capable of designing such a tablet, over which immense
energy, research, and knowledge must have been expended, to say
nothing of the skill displayed in its execution, should have wasted
his abilities in perpetrating a gigantic hoax; for that is, I
suppose, what some modern writers mean who call it a ‘forgery’; but
a _forgery_ is a _deceitful imitation_. How it can be called an
imitation considering that its special character is that of being
different to any other Stelé or Tablet known is not clear; and how
it can be a deceit is also incomprehensible, since it bears no name
or date purporting to refer it to a definite author or period.”
On page 16 Dr. Westcott observes that the Four Genii of the Dead are
conspicuous by their absence, but he seems to overlook their
representation in figure 41 of the Limbus, where the sepulchral
vases beneath the couch have, as usual, the heads of the Genii of
the Dead.
A quotation, together with a plate from Levi’s “Histoire de la
Magie,” follows this, together with a disquisition on the Taro,
which has so much exercised occult students of late. Altogether the
book is an extremely interesting production, and Dr. Westcott puts
forward his own views on the subject with much clearness.
------------------
EARTH’S EARLIEST AGES
AND THEIR CONNECTION WITH MODERN SPIRITUALISM AND THEOSOPHY.
BY G. H. PEMBER, M.A. (Hodder & Stoughton).
To meet with a book like this in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century is like meeting a Pterodactyl strolling along the Row in the
height of the season. But more careful perusal, while augmenting the
reader’s wonder, mingles with it a certain respect for the writer’s
courage and unflinching logic.
Granting his fundamental premiss—the verbal inspiration of the
Bible—and accepting his first principle of interpretation, his
argument is at least consistent, and is weakened by no half-hearted
pandering to the facts of experience or the discoveries of science.
To quote Mr. Pember’s primary canon, he assumes—
I. “That the first chapter of Genesis, equally with those which
follow it, is, in its primary meaning, neither vision nor
allegory, but plain history, and must, therefore, be accepted as a
literal statement of facts.”
On this basis he gives an interpretation of Genesis, the main idea
of which is the interposition of “The Interval” between the creation
and the “Six Days” described in the text. During this period the
earth was wholly given over to Satan and his host, and the “Six
Days” creation was, according to Mr. Pember, the restoration and
reformation of the world from this chaos of confusion.
But space forbids to follow the author into details, since one-half
of his volume is devoted to the subject indicated in its sub-title,
and this portion is of greater interest to readers of LUCIFER.
As an accurate and thorough student of the work of those he
condemns, Mr. Pember stands unrivalled. He has both read and
understood a very large part of the literature of Theosophy and
Spiritualism. His quotations are fair and well chosen, his comments
strictly moderate in tone and entirely free from any personal
animus. And these traits are the more surprising since the author
has certainly got the “Powers of the Air” very much on the brain. It
is hardly even a rhetorical expression to say that it is his firm
and unshakeable conviction, that all persons who do not hold the
same views of Biblical criticism and Scriptural exegesis as Mr.
Pember, are, to the extent of their difference from him, serving the
Powers of Evil, the Personal Devil, the Antichrist, whose coming he
expects in the very near future.
On this point only Mr. Pember does not seem to have the courage of
his opinions; perhaps he does not see, or seeing does not realise,
the inevitable conclusion to which his arguments point. But then he
may, after all, take refuge in the famous _credo quia absurdum_.
The author, moreover, is sure to meet with scant sympathy even from
the materialists to whom he is most nearly allied in thought. For he
accepts, _en bloc_, the phenomena and wonders of spiritualism as of
occultism, and never attempts even to question their reality.
Meanwhile, he believes in the resurrection of the _physical body_
after death, in a physical kingdom of Christ upon earth, and so on.
Indeed, his views are the most remarkable compound of pure
materialism and wholesale acceptance of the psychic and so-called
supernatural that have ever appeared in print.
To sum up, a few passages may be quoted to give an idea of the
spirit of Mr. Pember’s treatment of this part of the subject, which
at the same time will be the most telling criticism of his book to
the minds of those who have grasped the ideas of which he speaks.
“... the existence, in all times of the world’s history, of
persons with abnormal faculties, initiates of the great mysteries
and depositors of the secrets of antiquity, has been affirmed by a
testimony far too universal and persistent to admit of denial....
He who would be an adept must conform to the teaching of those
demons, predicted leaders of the last apostasy, who forbid to
marry, and command to abstain from meat.”
“We have never met with a single reported instance of a spirit
entering the lower spheres with the glad tidings, “Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” On the contrary, among
Spiritualists, as with Theosophists and Buddhists, sin can be
expiated only by personal suffering.... “Sin,” shrieks the
familiar of “M. A. Oxon,” “is remediable by repentance and
atonement and reparation personally wrought out in pain and shame,
not by coward cries for mercy, and by feigned assent to statements
which ought to create a shudder.”
Mr. Pember, therefore, believes in vicarious atonement in its
crudest form? He teaches that “repentance and faith” save man _from
the consequences_ of his actions!
After describing the “Perfect Way” as “an ecclesiastical compound of
Heathenism” (_with a capital H_), the author proceeds to expound the
doctrine of reincarnation as therein set forth. Nothing can be
fairer or more correct than this exposition, at the conclusion of
which we read:
“Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Mahommedans ... will become able
to unite in a universal belief that sin is expiated by
transmigrations and in the worship of ‘the Great Goddess’. The
conception of a second league of Babel has been formed in the
minds of Theosophists.”
And even then, would not such a league be better than the sectarian
wars, the religious persecutions, the tests and disabilities which
still disfigure _Christendom_ in the name of religion?
Further on the author refers to the occult axiom that “whereas God
is I AM, or positive being, the Devil is NOT, and remarks:
“There is little doubt that the culminations of the Mysteries was
the worship of Satan himself... It would appear, then, that from
remote ages, probably from the time when the Nephilim [the fallen
angels of Satan’s Host] were upon earth, there has existed a
league with the Prince of Darkness, a Society of men consciously
on the side of Satan, and against the Most High.
“The spells by which spirits may be summoned from the unseen are
now known to all; and those unearthly forms which in past times
were projected from the void only in the labyrinths, caverns, and
subterranean chambers of the initiated, are now manifesting
themselves in many a private drawing-room and parlour. Men have
become enamoured of demons, and ere long will receive the Prince
of the Demons as their God.”
Theosophy, says Mr. Pember, will become the creed of the
intellectual and the educated, while Spiritualism influences the
masses of mankind. And he traces the influences of Theosophy and
Buddhism in “Broad-Churchism, Universalism, Comtism, Secularism, and
Quietism.” Nay, even under the Temperance movement he spies the
lurking serpent of esoteric teaching and guidance, and he cites
letters from Christian friends complaining that these and other
philanthropic movements are being swamped, and their periodicals
occupied by Theosophists, who work on Buddhist principles.
In his concluding chapter, the author sums up a truly formidable
array of evidences to prove that “the advocates of modern thought
array themselves against every principle of the early revelations of
the Divine Will,” apparently since they deny and repudiate the
following “cosmic or universal laws”:—
I. The law of the Sabbath.
II. The headship of the man over the woman.
III. The institution of marriage [_i.e._, they practise _celibacy_].
IV. The law of substitution, that life must atone for life, and that
without shedding of blood there is no remission, as taught in
type by animal sacrifices. Latter-day philosophers affect the
utmost horror of such a salvation, and will have none of Christ.
V. The command to use the flesh of animals as food.
VI. The decree that “whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his
blood be shed.”
VII. The direction to multiply and replenish the earth.
The charge of disobedience to such laws as these every mystic will
joyfully admit, with the cry, “Happy will it be for all things
living when such laws shall no longer be obeyed by any living
creature.”
These laws, the disobedience to which Mr. Pember so much regrets in
the later schools, date from the dark past when man had to form his
physical existence and root it upon the earth. If they are some of
the early revelations of the “Divine Will,” that is no reason why
they should rule mankind when its condition is changed and it is
emerging from the darkness of Materialism, and losing, from its
natural growth towards that Divine will, the desire for physical
existence. The Mosaic laws were made by the Jehovah, the God of
anger and cruelty. In spite of the strange inconsistency by which
the followers of Jesus Christ, the teacher of a gentle and sublime
faith, read in their churches these Mosaic laws, yet they are empty
words from a past of bloodshed to the humane or religious man. The
occultist professes even more than religion—he dares to avow himself
a follower of the light, an aspirant towards knowledge, and one who
is determined to live the noblest life knowledge can indicate. What
to him are the laws of murder, of the shedding of blood, of marriage
and giving in marriage? It is not his aim to help people the earth,
for he desires to lift himself and others above the craving for
earth-life. He commits no murder, for all men are his brethren, and
he no longer recognises the brutal law of the criminal, by which,
when blood is shed, blood must be again shed to wash it away. He can
have no interest either in the straightforward laws of the past, or
the complicated modern law of the present—which permits of many
things the Jews would have been ashamed of. The only law he
recognises is that of charity and justice.
There is a charming page in the _Introduction_, a ring of genuine
sorrow for the failure of certain missionaries in their cowardly
attack upon the theosophical leaders, as refreshing as it is
ludicrous. The Jeremiad runs in this wise:—
“It would seem that the attack of the Madras Christian College
upon Madame Blavatsky has by no means checked the movement in
which she has been so conspicuous an actor, and, apparently, the
failure is nowhere more manifest than in Madras itself. It was
confidently predicted that the High Priestess of Theosophy and
Buddhism would not dare to show her face again in that city.
Nevertheless she did so, and ... received a warm welcome, not
merely from the members of the Theosophical societies, but also
from the members of the various colleges and from many other
persons. She was conducted in procession from the shore to the
Pancheappa Hall, and was there presented by the students with an
address of sympathy and admiration, to which, among other
signatures, were appended those of more than three hundred members
of the very Christian College whose professors had assailed her.”
And he adds, “Satan is now setting in motion intellectual forces
which will be more than a match for the missionaries, if they
persist in carrying on the warfare in the old way.”
Too much praise cannot be rendered to Mr. Pember for his fairness
and impersonality. He writes as becomes a scholar and a gentleman,
and though one may smile at his intellectual blindness and stand
amazed at the mental capacity which can digest the views which he
maintains, one cannot but respect his earnestness, his thoroughness,
and his mastery of the subject.
B. K.
------------------
ISAURE AND OTHER POEMS.
BY W. STEWART ROSS.
The poem which gives its name to this volume of ringing verse is, as
may easily be conjectured, the lament of a poet over his love torn
from him by inexorable death.
A true instinct has taught the author that it is such hours of agony
as this, such piercing of the heart, such fierce and burning
torture, which reveal to the noble soul capable of intense suffering
the inner truths and realities of life.
To quote:
“I stand on the cis-mortal,
And I gaze with ’wildered eye,
To the mists of the trans-mortal,
And the signs called Live and Die.
. . . . . . .
Let me dream in this cis-mortal,
And the noblest dream I can.
. . . . . . .
Let me dream far from the formulæ,
And I may dream more nigh
To the sable shore of mystery,
And the signs of Live and Die.”
Some passages in this opening poem are instinct with the breath of
mysticism, and rouse a keen desire that Mr. Stewart Ross had become
acquainted, in that period of his life when this book was written,
with the wider and grander view of life as a whole, of its purpose
and meaning, of its laws and its realities, which occultism affords
to a mind capable of grasping them.
Surely the man who could write:
“For death and life are really one.”
And again:
“For the mystic Part is gathered
Unto the mystic Whole.
And the vague lines of non-Being
Are scribbled o’er thy soul.”
must have the power to sense the keener air of the subtle life and
grasp its glorious promise.
What pilgrim of the path has not felt:
“Hard-paced the iron years have gone
Over my head since then;
I’ve haunted in a waking dream
The paths of living men;
But of this world my kingdom’s not,
Like him of Galilee,
For I grasp hands they cannot feel,
See forms they cannot see.”
In “Leonore: A Lay of Dipsomania,” one of the most terrible sides of
human life is depicted with a vividness which tortures the reader,
and flings a gloom on the inexorable sweep of life, fitly in keeping
with the vision pictured in “A Nightmare.” A mystic, struggling with
the negations of modern science, battling to assert the intuitive
knowledge of his true self against its captious intellectualisms,
speaks through this picture of desolation and decay, protesting
against the disappearance of all that is great and valuable in life
under the waves of oblivion.
But no man in whom the spark of true poetic inspiration burns can
ever in the depths of his own heart accept the lifeless, empty,
unreal phantom which materialism offers as the aim, the purpose, the
fulfilment of life. We hope, therefore, that Mr. Stewart Ross will
some day give us a volume of poetry in which his true power and
insight will find expression, and which will enroll his name on the
list of those who have given new life to men.
[Illustration: decorative separator]
One cannot fill a vacuum from within itself.—L.S.C.
Many a man will follow a misleader.—L.S.C.
It is not necessary for truth to put on boxing-gloves.—L.S.C.
You cannot build a temple of truth by hammering dead stones. Its
foundations must precipitate themselves like crystals from the
solution of life.—L.S.C.
When a certain point is reached pain becomes its own anodyne.—L.S.C.
Some pluck the fruits of the tree (of knowledge) to crown themselves
therewith, instead of plucking them to eat.—L.S.C.
=THEOSOPHICAL=
=AND MYSTIC PUBLICATIONS=
THE THEOSOPHIST; a magazine of Oriental Philosophy, Art, Literature,
and Occultism, conducted by H. P. Blavatsky, and H. S. Olcott,
Permanent President of the T. S. Vol. VIII., 1887. Madras, India. In
London, George Redway, 15, York Street, Covent Garden.
The September number contains several articles of great interest.
For lovers of the wonderful, as for the more scientifically inclined
students of the laws of psycho-physics, the account given by
Sreenath Chatterjee, of a self-levitating lama who stayed for some
days in his house, is both interesting and instructive. It is
endorsed by Colonel Olcott and another independent witness, and
bears evident marks of genuine and careful observation. Curious and
wonderful as such feats are, however, they have little to do with
Theosophy.
To many readers such articles as Mr. Khandalwala’s “The
Bhagavat-Gita and the Microcosmic Principles” will be far more
attractive. The questions propounded in this paper have a very
important bearing upon a question which has recently been a good
deal under discussion, and it is to be hoped that it will elicit
from Mr. Subba Row the further explanation of his views which is so
much needed.
Visconde Figanière continues his “Esoteric Studies” with some
abstruse but very interesting calculations as to the composition of
the alchemical elements during various cycles. A page of moral
maxims from the Mahabharata and a thoughtful paper on the “Kabbalah
and the Microcosm” contribute to make this number full of valuable
matter.
---
THE PATH; “a magazine devoted to the Brotherhood of Humanity,
Theosophy in America, and the Study of Occult Science, Philosophy,
and Aryan Literature.” Edited by W. Q. Judge, New York, P. O. Box
2,659, and in London from George Redway.
In the September issue, the opening paper is the fourth of “Jasper
Niemand’s” admirable “Letters on the True.” Its subject is the
“Mind” (_Manas_) or Heart in its relation to the Soul. Both analysis
and synthesis are employed by the writer, with the intuition of a
true mystic, and many suggestive gleams of light are thrown on an
exceedingly difficult subject in the course of a few pages.
The idea of re-incarnation is traced by Mr. Walker in the writings
of various poets: Mr. Johnston contributes an interesting paper on
“Gospels and Upanishads,” and “Rameses” gives us a charming allegory
under the archaic title of “Papyrus,” and the number concludes with
“Tea-Table Talk,” which is, as usual, quaint, yet instructive.
Finally, thanks are due to Mr. Judge for the kind and cordial
welcome he has extended to LUCIFER; the first number of which has,
it is to be hoped, fulfilled the flattering expectations he
expresses.
---
LE LOTUS: “Revue des Hautes Etudes Théosophiques. Tendant à
favoriser le rapprochement entre l’Orient et l’Occident.” Sous
l’inspiration de H. P. Blavatsky (nominally, but edited in reality,
by our able brother, F. K. Gaborian, F. T. S.). Georges Carré, 112
Boulevard St. Germain, Paris.
This journal—the French Theosophist—contains in its September number
an article by Madame Blavatsky on “Misconceptions,” in which various
doctrines and ideas erroneously connected with Theosophy are dealt
with. M. Barlet continues his series of articles on “Initiation,”
and the reprint of the Abbé de Villars’ clever and humorous “Comte
de Gabalis,” is continued. Some verses by Amaravella, and several
pages of sparkling “Notes,” conclude the table of contents.
LUCIFER owes thanks also to the _Lotus_ for inserting an admirably
translated extract from its prospectus.
---
L’AURORE: Revue mensuelle sous la direction de Lady Caithness,
Duchesse de Pomar, Georges Carré, 112 Boulevard St. Germain, Paris.
The articles in the September number are neither so numerous nor so
varied as those of the other Theosophical periodicals already
referred to. Lady Caithness advocates, in the current issue, the
theory that the English nation is descended from the lost ten tribes
of Israel. As the very existence of these ten tribes is more than
questionable, students must judge for themselves of the weight of
the arguments advanced; the subject being too extensive even for
comment here.
---
THE SPHINX: “A monthly journal devoted to proving historically and
experimentally the supersensuous conception of the world on a
monistic basis.” Edited by Hübbe Schleiden. Dr. J. U. Th. Griebens
Verlag, Leipzig.
The October number is a full and highly instructive one. Dr. Carl
du Prel’s handling of the “Demon of Socrates” contrasts
brilliantly with the lame and obscure treatment which the same
subject received a while ago at the hands of a body, which
professes to investigate matters pertaining to the soul and its
activity. Herr Niemann’s proof of the existence of an esoteric or
secret teaching in the Platonic dialogues is able and convincing;
Mr. Finch contributes a most interesting article on his
observations among the “Faith-Healers” in America, and Herr Carl
zu Leiningen pursues his able exposition of the Kabbalistic
doctrine of Souls.
---
Three new works on mystic subjects are shortly to appear from the
pen of Dr. Franz Hartmann, whose valuable book on Paracelsus is
certainly in the hands of many of our readers.
Of these the first, and probably the most important, is entitled:
“THE SECRET SYMBOLS OF THE ROSICRUCIANS,” and is to be published in
Boston, U.S.A., by the Occult Publishing Company. It will contain
numerous plates coloured by hand, giving accurate transcriptions of
symbols and figures which have hitherto lain buried in rare, and in
some cases, unattainable manuscripts. The value of the work as a
text-book for students will be much enhanced by the copious
vocabulary which Dr. Hartmann promises shall accompany it.
The other two will probably be issued by Mr. Redway; the one being
called: “IN THE PRONAOS OF THE TEMPLE OF THE R.C.,” and the other:
“THE LIFE OF JEHOSHUA, THE ADEPT OF NAZARETH: AN OCCULT STUDY.”
This is an attempt to dispel the mists which for many centuries have
been gathering around the person of the supposed founder of
Christianity, and which have prevented mankind from obtaining a
clear view of the “Redeemer.” It claims to give an approximately
correct account of his life, his initiation into the Egyptian
mysteries and of his ignominious death caused by an infuriated mob,
excited by the Pharisees of the temple, who were bound to destroy
his mortal form, because he had taught the religion of universal
fraternal love and freedom of thought in opposition to priestcraft
and superstition.
While the book deals to a certain extent with the external life of
Jehoshua, as far as its details have become known by historical
researches into sources not generally known, it especially deals
with his inner life—_i.e._ his method of thought.
The author says: “If we wish to give a correct picture of the
character of a person, we must try to describe his thoughts as well
as his acts, for the thought-life of a man constitutes his real
life, while his outward life is merely a pictorial representation, a
shadow of the actions that are taking place upon the interior stage
of his mind.”
“To describe this inner life, a dramatical representation of the
processes going on in the soul of man will be better adapted to
bring it to our understanding, than a merely verbal description of
character. This maxim seems to have influenced those who wrote the
accounts contained in the bible, and who describe interior processes
in allegorical pictures of events, which may or may not have taken
place on the outward plane. I have adhered to this plan in
describing the thought-life of Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, but I have
attempted to shape the allegories contained in this book in such a
manner that the intelligent reader may easily perceive their true
meaning, for I have made the forms sufficiently transparent, so that
the truths which they are intended to represent may be easily seen
through the external shell.”
“Nevertheless, these descriptions are not mere fancies, but they are
based upon historical facts, and upon information received from
sources whose nature will be plain to every occultist. The events
described have all actually taken place; but whether they have
wholly or in part taken place on the external or internal plane,
each intelligent reader is left to decide for himself.”
=CORRESPONDENCE=
INTERESTING TO ASTROLOGERS.
ASTROLOGICAL NOTES—No. 2.
_To the Editor of_ LUCIFER.
The ancients assigned to the planets certain signs and degrees, in
which they were essentially dignified, being there more powerful for
good, and less powerful for evil; these were called their House,
Exaltation, Triplicity, Term, and Face. Opposite to the first two
were the places where they were essentially debilitated, being there
less powerful for good and more powerful for evil; these were called
their Detriment and Fall. Whether the latter three dignities have
three corresponding debilities has not been stated.
To the seven known planets, the ancients apportioned the twelve
zodiacal signs as their respective houses or chief dignity, thus: ☉
ruled ♌, and ☽ ruled ♋, both by day and night; while the remaining
ten signs were divided between the remaining five planets, each
planet ruling two signs, one by day and the other by night. But when
♅ and ♆ were discovered, the question arose where to place them.
A. J. Pearce, the present editor of _Zadkiel’s Almanac_, has
suggested that, as they were more remote from ☉ than was ♄, they
should have the same houses and exaltations as ♄. Raphael dethrones
♄ from ♒, and proclaims that ♅ reigns in his stead. Both these
suggestions involve serious difficulties, nor do they settle the
question once and for all with regard to any planets which may yet
be discovered. It seems unlikely that planets of such diverse
natures as ♄, ♅, and ♆ (not to mention any still more distant
planets) should all bear equal rule in the same two signs, and to
depose ♄ from his throne, pre-supposes a grave error on the part of
the ancients, whose teaching on this point has been handed down with
complete unanimity from the dim past: necessitating, also, a further
process of dethronement, and a further ignoring of the teachings of
antiquity, as further planetary discoveries are made.
The first Raphael (the late R. C. Smith) rejected the ancient
nocturnal and diurnal division of the Houses and Triplicities, in
which he is followed by his successor. It appears to me that it is
here that the error, with its consequent difficulties, first arose;
and that by observing this distinction, ♅ and ♆ easily find their
homes, with room to spare for their yet undiscovered brethren.
It is obvious that Astrology can never become an even approximately
perfect science, unless we are able in our calculations to take
fully into account the influence of ♅ and ♆. With this end in view,
I have been endeavouring, in my leisure moments, to solve the
problem. To a certain extent I have been successful; and though I
have not yet been able to substantiate all my conclusions as fully
as I could wish, yet I deem it is the best interests of the Science
to make them now public, that their truth or falsity may be as
speedily as possible established by the investigations of
astrologers generally.
My conclusions are the following: that the ancient Diurnal and
Nocturnal divisions are quite correct, so that if a figure is drawn
for any time between sunrise and sunset, the planets which rule by
day the signs on the cusps of the houses of the significators must
be chiefly, and sometimes exclusively, considered; and _vice versâ_.
The Houses of the new planets are, I believe, these:
♒, which is the day-house of ♄, is the night-house of ♅.
♊, which is the day-house of ☿, is the night-house of ♆.
♍, which is the night-house of ☿, is the day-house of ♅.
♓, which is the night-house of ♃, is the day-house of ♆.
The first two I have verified by horary figures drawn for the time
of an event; the latter two I consider as highly probable, but have
not yet been able to thoroughly substantiate them.
There is an old tradition (_Esoteric Science in Human History_, p.
180) that there are 12 principal planets in our solar system; this
leaves 4 more to be discovered. It will be seen at a glance that
these 4 will fill up the vacant signs, two planets ruling each sign,
one by night and the other by day. The only alteration which will
then have to be made will be to consider ☉ to rule ♌ by day only,
and ☽ to rule ♋ by night only; this, however, will be only in
accordance with nature: moreover, the fact that the ancients
assigned only one house each to ☉ and ☽, and two to each of the
other planets, denotes some essential astrological difference
between them.
With regard to the other essential dignities, Raphael considers ♏ to
be the exaltation of ♅; I am inclined to believe ♒ to be the
exaltation of ♆. In the Triplicities there is a curious want of
harmony; each, according to the ancients, being ruled by two
planets, one by day and the other by night, except the watery
triplicity, which is ruled by ♂ only. There seems to be no reason
for this discrepancy, except the all-powerful one that there was no
other known planet to share his dominion. I have ascertained that ♆
has strong dignity in ♏, and conclude that he rules the watery
triplicity, probably by night. Furthermore, I believe ♅ rules the
airy triplicity. As for the Terms and Faces of the planets, they
also, like the Planetary Hours, require re-arrangement so as to
bring in ♅ and ♆ but in what way this is to be done, I have not yet
been able to discover.
I will take this opportunity of saying, in reply to inquiries, that
the best books for beginners are Raphael’s _Horary Astrology_ for
that branch of the Science; A. J. Pearce’s _Science of the Stars_
for Mundane and Atmospheric Astrology; A. J. Pearce’s _Text Book of
Astrology_ for Nativities, to be worked out by Primary Directions;
and Raphael’s _Guide to Astrology_ for the same, worked out by
Secondary Directions excited by Transits. Raphael’s works are
published by Foulsham and Co., 4, Pilgrim Street, E.C.; and Pearce’s
works may be procured from the author, 54, East Hill, Wandsworth,
S.W.
NEMO.
------------------
_To the Editors of_ LUCIFER.
For the purpose of correcting any prejudicial suspicion or erroneous
misrepresentation of myself, arising from the insertion of the note
at the end of the “Bath Occult Reprint Edition” of the “Divine
Pymander” or as associated with the Society of the “H. B. of L.,”
known to me only through the names of Peter Davidson and T. H.
Burgoyne, alias D’Alton, Dalton, &c., and whose secretary is
announced to be “A convicted felon, and the supposed adept to be a
Hindu of questionable antecedents,” I wish it to be understood I
have now no confidence, sympathy, or connection therewith, direct or
indirect, since or even prior to the date hereof, viz., May, 1886.
Yours truly,
ROBT. H. FRYAR.
8, Northumberland Place, Bath.
=FROM THE NOTE BOOK OF AN UNPOPULAR PHILOSOPHER=
THE ESOTERIC VALUE OF CERTAIN WORDS AND DEEDS IN SOCIAL LIFE.
_To Show Anger._—No “_cultured_” man or woman will ever show anger
in Society. To check and restrain every sign of annoyance shows good
manners, certainly, but also considerable achievement in hypocrisy
and dissimulation. There is an occult side to this rule of good
breeding expressed in an Eastern proverb: “Trust not the face which
never shows signs of anger, nor the dog that never barks.”
Cold-blooded animals are the most venomous.
_Non-resistance to Evil._—To brag of it is to invite all evil-doers
to sit upon you. To practice it openly is to lead people into the
temptation of regarding you as a coward. Not to resist the evil you
have never created nor merited, to eschew it yourself, and help
others quietly to get out of its way, is the only wise course open
to the lover of wisdom.
“_Love Thy Neighbour._”—When a parson has preached upon this
subject, his pious congregation accepts it as tacit permission to
slander and vilify their friends and acquaintances in neighbouring
pews.
_International Brotherhood._—When a Mussulman and a Christian swear
mutual friendship, and pledge themselves to be brothers, their two
formulas differ somewhat. The Moslem says: “Thy mother shall be my
mother, my father thy father, my sister thy hand maid, and thou
shalt be my brother.” To which the Christian answers: “Thy mother
and sister shall be my hand-maidens, thy wife shall be my wife, and
my wife shall be thy dear sister.”—_Amen._
_Brave as a Lion._—The highest compliment—in appearance—paid to
one’s courage; a comparison with a bad-smelling wild-beast—in
reality. The recognition, also, of the superiority of animal over
human bravery, considered as a virtue.
_A Sheep._—A weak, silly fellow, figuratively, an insulting,
contemptuous epithet among laymen; but one quite flattering among
churchmen, who apply it to “the people of God” and the members of
their congregations, comparing them to _sheep_ under the guidance of
the lamb.
_The Code of Honour._—In France—to seduce a wife and kill her
husband. There, offended honour can feel satisfied only with blood;
here, a wound inflicted upon the offender’s pocket suffices.
_The Duel as a Point of Honour._—The duel being an institution of
Christendom and civilization, neither the old Spartans, nor yet the
Greeks or Romans knew of it, as they were only uncivilized
heathens.—(_See Schopenhauer._)
_Forgive and Forget._—“We should freely forgive, but forget rarely,”
says Colton. “I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy;
but I will _remember_, and this I owe to myself.” This is real
practical wisdom. It stands between the ferocious “Eye for eye, and
tooth for tooth” of the Mosaic Law, and the command to turn the left
cheek to the enemy when he has smitten you on the right. Is not the
latter a direct encouraging of sin?
_Practical Wisdom._—On the tree of silence hangs the fruit of peace.
The secret thou wouldst not tell to thine enemy, tell it not to thy
friend.—(_Arabic._)
_Civilised Life._—Crowded, noisy and full of vital power, is modern
Society to the eye of matter; but there is no more still and silent,
empty and dreary desert than that same Society to the spiritual eye
of the Seer. Its right hand freely and lavishly bestows ephemeral
but costly pleasures, while the left grasps greedily the leavings
and often grudges the necessities of show. All our social life is
the result and consequence of that unseen, yet ever present autocrat
and despot, called _Selfishness_ and _Egotism_. The strongest will
becomes impotent before the voice and authority of _Self_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LUCIFER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOL. 1. LONDON, NOVEMBER 15TH, 1887. NO. 3.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“LET EVERY MAN PROVE HIS OWN WORK.”
Such is the title of a letter received by the Editors of LUCIFER. It
is of so serious a nature that it seems well to make it the subject
of this month’s editorial. Considering the truths uttered in its few
lines, its importance and the bearing it has upon the much obscured
subject of Theosophy, and its visible agent or vehicle—the Society
of that name—the letter is certainly worthy of the most considerate
answer.
“_Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum!_”
Justice will be done to both sides in the dispute; namely,
Theosophists and the members of the Theosophical Society[31] on the
one hand, and the followers of the _Divine Word_ (or Christos), and
the so-called Christians, on the other.
-----
Footnote 31:
Not all the members of the Theosophical Society are Theosophists;
nor are the members of the so-called Christian Churches all
Christians, by any means. True Theosophists, as true Christians,
are very, _very_ few; and there are practical Theosophists in the
fold of Christianity, as there are practical Christians in the
Theosophical Society, outside all ritualistic Christianity. “Not
every one that saith unto me ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the Kingdom
of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father.” (Matthew,
vii. 21.) “Believe not in Me, but in the truths I utter.”
(Buddha’s _Aphorisms_.)
-----
We reproduce the letter:
“_To the Editors of_ LUCIFER.
“What a grand chance is now open in this country, to the exponents
of a noble and advanced religion (if such this Theosophy be[32])
for proving its strength, righteousness and verity to the Western
world, by throwing a penetrating and illuminating ray of its
declared light upon the terribly harrowing and perplexing
practical problems of our age.
“Surely one of the purest and least self-incrusted duties of man,
is to alleviate the sufferings of his fellow man?
“From what I read, and from what I daily come into immediate
contact with, I can hardly think it would be possible to over-rate
in contemplation, the intense privation and agonizing suffering
that is—aye, say it—_at this moment_ being endured by a vast
proportion of our brothers and sisters, arising in a large measure
from their not absolutely having the means for procuring the _bare
necessaries of existence_?
“Surely a high and Heaven-born religion—a religion professing to
receive its advanced knowledge and Light from ‘those more learned
in the Science of Life,’ should be able to tell us something of
how to deal with such life, in its primitive condition of helpless
submission to the surrounding circumstances of—civilization!
“If one of our main duties is that of exercising disinterested
love towards the Brotherhood, surely ‘those more learned’ ones,
whether in the flesh, or out of it, can and will, if appealed to
by their votaries, aid them in discovering ways and means for such
an end, and in organising some great fraternal scheme for dealing
_rightly_ with questions which are so appalling in their
complexity, and which must and do press with such irresistible
force upon all those who are earnest in their endeavours to carry
out the will of Christ in a Christian Land?
“L. F. FF.
“October 25, 1887.”
-----
Footnote 32:
“This” Theosophy is not a religion, but rather _the_ RELIGION—if
one. So far, we prefer to call it a philosophy; one, moreover,
which contains every religion, as it is the essence and the
foundation of all. Rule III. of the Theos. Body says: “The Society
represents no particular religious creed, is entirely
_unsectarian_, and includes professors of all faiths.”
-----
This honest-spoken and sincere letter contains two statements; an
implied accusation against “Theosophy” (_i.e._ the Society of that
name), and a virtual admission that Christianity—or, again, rather
its ritualistic and dogmatic religions—deserve the same and even a
sterner rebuke. For if “Theosophy,” represented by its professors,
merits on external appearance the reproach that so far it has failed
to transfer divine wisdom from the region of the metaphysical into
that of practical work, “Christianity,” that is, merely professing
Christians, churchmen and laymen lie under a like accusation,
evidently. “Theosophy” has, certainly, failed to discover
_infallible_ ways and means of bringing all its votaries to exercise
“disinterested love” in their Brotherhood; it has not yet been able
to relieve suffering in mankind at large; but neither has
Christianity. And not even the writer of the above letter, nor any
one else, can show sufficient excuse for the Christians in this
respect. Thus the admission that “those who are earnest in their
endeavour to carry out the will of Christ in a Christian land” _need
the help of_ “‘those more learned,’ whether (pagan adepts) in flesh,
or (spirits?) out of it” is very suggestive, for it contains the
defence and the _raison d’être_ of the Theosophical Society. Tacit
though it is, once that it comes from the pen of a sincere
Christian, one who longs to learn some practical means to relieve
the sufferings of the starving multitudes—this admission becomes the
greatest and most complete justification for the existence of the
Theosophical Brotherhood; a full confession of the absolute
necessity for such a body independent of, and untrammelled by, any
enchaining dogmas, and it points out at the same time the signal
failure of Christianity to accomplish the desired results.
Truly said Coleridge that “good works may exist _without_ saving (?)
principles, therefore cannot contain in themselves the principles of
salvation; but saving principles never did, never can exist without
good works.” Theosophists admit the definition, and disagree with
the Christians only as to the nature of these “saving principles.”
The Church (or churches) maintain that the only saving principle is
belief in Jesus, or the carnalized Christ of the soul-killing dogma;
theosophy, undogmatic and unsectarian, answers, it is not so. The
only _saving_ principle dwells in man himself, and has never dwelt
outside of his immortal divine self; _i.e._ it is the true Christos,
as it is the true Buddha, the divine inward light which proceeds
from the eternal unmanifesting unknown ALL. And this light _can only
be made known by its works_—_faith_ in it having to remain ever
blind in all, save in the man himself who feels that light within
his soul.
Therefore, the tacit admission of the author of the above letter
covers another point of great importance. The writer seems to have
felt that which many, among those who strive to help the suffering,
have felt and expressed. The creeds of the churches fail to supply
the _intellectual_ light, and the true wisdom which are needed to
make the practical philanthropy carried out, by the true and earnest
followers of Christ, a _reality_. The “practical” people either go
on “doing good” unintelligently, and thus often do harm instead; or,
appalled by the awful problem before them, and failing to find in
their “churches” any clue, or a hope of solution, they retire from
the battlefield and let themselves be drifted blindly by the current
in which they happen to be born.
Of late it has become the fashion for friends, as well as for foes,
to reproach the Theosophical Society with doing no practical work,
but losing itself in the clouds of metaphysics. Metaphysicians, we
are told, by those who like to repeat stale arguments, have been
learning their lesson for the last few thousand years; and it is now
high time that they should begin to do some practical work. Agreed;
but considering that the Christian churches count nearly nineteen
centuries of existence, and that the Theosophical Society and
Brotherhood is a body hardly twelve years old; considering again
that the Christian churches roll in fabulous wealth, and number
their adherents by hundreds of millions, whereas the Theosophical
Brotherhood is but a few thousand strong, and that it has no fund,
or funds, at its disposal, but that 98 per cent. of its members are
as poor and as uninfluential as the aristocracy of the Christian
church is rich and powerful; taking all this into consideration,
there would be much to say if the theosophists would only choose to
press the matter upon the public notice. Meanwhile, as the bitterest
critics of the “leaders” of the Theosophical Society are by no means
only outsiders, but as there are members of that society who always
find a pretext to be dissatisfied, we ask: Can works of charity that
will be known among men be accomplished without money? Certainly
not. And yet, notwithstanding all this, none of its (European)
members, except a few devoted officers in charge of societies, will
do _practical_ work; but some of them, those especially who have
never lifted a finger to relieve suffering, and help their outside,
poorer brothers, are those who talk the most loudly, and are the
bitterest in their denunciations of the _unspirituality_ and the
unfitness of the “leaders of theosophy.” By this they remove
themselves into the outer ring of critics, like those spectators at
the play who laugh at an actor passably representing Hamlet, while
they themselves could not walk on to the stage with a letter on a
salver. While in India, comparatively poor theosophists have opened
gratuitous dispensaries for the sick, hospitals, schools, and
everything they could think of, asking no returns from the poor, as
the missionaries do, no abandonment of one’s forefathers’ religion,
as a heavy price for favours received, have the English
theosophists, as a rule, done a single thing for those suffering
multitudes, whose pitiful cry rings throughout the whole Heavens as
a protest against the actual state of things in Christendom?
We take this opportunity of saying, in reply to others as much as to
our correspondent, that, up till now, the energies of the Society
have been chiefly occupied in organising, extending, and solidifying
the Society itself, which work has taxed its time, energies, and
resources to such an extent as to leave it far less powerful for
practical charity than we would have wished. But, even so, compared
with the influence and the funds at the disposal of the Society, its
work in practical charity, if less widely known, will certainly bear
favourable comparison with that of professing Christians, with their
enormous resources in money, workers, and opportunities of all
kinds. It must not be forgotten that practical charity is not one of
the _declared_ objects of the Society. It goes without saying, and
needs no “declaration,” that every member of the Society must be
practically philanthropic if he be a theosophist at all; and our
declared work is, in reality, more important and more efficacious
than work in the every-day plane which bears more evident and
immediate fruit, for the direct effect of an appreciation of
theosophy is to make those charitable who were not so before.
Theosophy creates the charity which afterwards, and of its own
accord, makes itself manifest in works.
Theosophy is correctly—though in this particular case, it is rather
ironically—termed “a High, Heaven-born Religion.” It is argued that
since it professes to receive its advanced knowledge and light from
“those more learned in the Science of Life,” the latter ought and
_must_, if appealed to by their votaries (the theosophists), aid
them in discovering ways and means, in organising some great
fraternal scheme,” etc.
The scheme was planned, and the rules and laws to guide such a
practical brotherhood, have been given by those “more learned in the
Science of (practical, daily, _altruistic_) life;” aye, verily “more
learned” in it than any other men since the days of Gautama Buddha
and the Gnostic Essenes. The “scheme” dates back to the year when
the Theosophical Society was founded. Let anyone read its wise and
noble laws embodied to this day in the Statutes of the Fraternity,
and judge for himself whether, if carried out rigorously and applied
to practical life, the “scheme” would not have proved the most
beneficent to mankind in general, and especially to our poorer
brethren, of “the starving multitudes.” Theosophy teaches the spirit
of “non-separateness,” the evanescence and illusion of human creeds
and dogma, hence, inculcates _universal love and charity for all
mankind “without distinction of race, colour, caste or creed;”_ is
it not therefore the fittest to alleviate the sufferings of mankind?
No true theosophist would refuse admission into a hospital, or any
charitable establishment, to any man, woman or child, under the
pretext that he is _not_ a theosophist, as a Roman Catholic would
when dealing with a Protestant, and _vice versa_. No true
theosophist of the original rules would fail to put into practice
the parable of the “Good Samaritan,” or proffer help only to entice
the unwary who, he hopes, will become a pervert from his god and the
gods of his forefathers. None would slander his brother, none let a
needy man go unhelped, none offer fine talk instead of practical
love and charity.
Is it then the fault of Theosophy, any more than it is the fault of
the Christ-teachings, if the majority of the members of the
Theosophical Society, often changing their philosophical and
religious views upon entering our Body, have yet remained
practically the same as they were when professing _lip_
Christianity? Our laws and rules are the same as given to us from
the beginning; it is the general members of the Society who have
allowed them to become virtually _obsolete_. Those few who are ever
ready to sacrifice their time and labour to work for the poor, and
who do, unrecognised and unthanked for it, good work wherever they
can, are often too poor themselves to put their larger schemes of
charity into objective practical form, however willing they may be.
“The fault I find with the Theosophical Society,” said one of the
most eminent surgeons in London to one of the editors, quite
recently, “is that I cannot discover that any of its members really
lead the Christ-life.” This seemed a very serious accusation from a
man who is not only in the front rank of his profession, and valued
for his kindly nature, by his patients, and by society, and
well-known as a quiet doer of many good deeds. The only possible
answer to be made was that the Christ-life is undeniably the ideal
of every one worthy in any sense of the name of a Theosophist, and
that if it is not lived it is because there are none strong enough
to carry it out. Only a few days later the same complaint was put in
a more graphic form by a celebrated lady-artist.
“You Theosophists don’t do enough good for me,” she said pithily.
And in her case also there is the right to speak, given by the fact
that she leads two lives—one, a butterfly existence in society, and
the other a serious one, which makes little noise, but has much
purpose. Those who regard life as a great vocation, like the two
critics of the Theosophical movement whom we have just quoted, have
a right to demand of such a movement more than mere words. They
themselves endeavour very quietly to lead the “Christ-life,” and
they cannot understand a number of people uniting in the effort
towards this life without practical results being apparent. Another
critic of the same character who has the best possible right to
criticise, being a thoroughly practical philanthropist and
charitable to the last degree, has said of the Theosophists that
their much talking and writing seems to resolve itself into mere
intellectual luxury, productive of no direct good to the world.
The point of difference between the Theosophists (when we use this
term we mean, not members of the Society, but people who are really
using the organization as a method of learning more of the true
wisdom-religion which exists as a vital and eternal fact behind all
such efforts) and the practical philanthropists, religious or
secular, is a very serious one, and the answer, that probably none
of them are strong enough yet to lead the “Christ-life,” is only a
portion of the truth. The situation can be put very plainly, in so
many words. The religious philanthropist holds a position of his
own, which cannot in any way concern or affect the Theosophist. He
does not do good merely for the sake of doing good, but also as a
means towards his own salvation. This is the outcome of the selfish
and personal side of man’s nature, which has so coloured and
affected a grand religion that its devotees are little better than
the idol-worshippers who ask their deity of clay to bring them luck
in business, and the payment of debts. The religious philanthropist
who hopes to gain salvation by good works has simply, to quote a
well-worn yet ever fresh witticism, exchanged worldliness for
other-worldliness.
The secular philanthropist is really at heart a socialist, and
nothing else; he hopes to make men happy and good by bettering their
physical position. No serious student of human nature can believe in
this theory for a moment. There is no doubt that it is a very
agreeable one, because if it is accepted there is immediate,
straightforward work to undertake. “The poor ye have always with
you.” The causation which produced human nature itself produced
poverty, misery, pain, degradation, at the same time that it
produced wealth, and comfort, and joy and glory. Lifelong
philanthropists, who have started on their work with a joyous
youthful conviction that it is possible to “do good,” have, though
never relaxing the habit of charity, confessed to the present writer
that, as a matter of fact, misery cannot be relieved. It is a vital
element in human nature, and is as necessary to some lives as
pleasure is to others.
It is a strange thing to observe how practical philanthropists will
eventually, after long and bitter experience, arrive at a conclusion
which, to an occultist, is from the first a working hypothesis. This
is, that misery is not only endurable, but agreeable to many who
endure it. A noble woman, whose life has been given to the rescue of
the lowest class of wretched girls, those who seem to be driven to
vice by want, said, only a few days since, that with many of these
outcasts it is not possible to raise them to any apparently happier
lot. And this she distinctly stated (and she can speak with
authority, having spent her life literally among them, and studied
them thoroughly), is not so much from any love of vice, but from
love of that very state which the wealthy classes call misery. They
prefer the savage life of a bare-foot, half-clad creature, with no
roof at night and no food by day, to any comforts which can be
offered them. By comforts, we do not mean the workhouse or the
reformatory, but the comforts of a quiet home; and we can give
chapter and verse, so to speak, to show that this is the case, not
merely with the children of outcasts, who might be supposed to have
a savage heredity, but with the children of gentle, cultivated, and
Christian people.
Our great towns hide in their slums thousands of beings whose
history would form an inexplicable enigma, a perfectly baffling
moral picture, could they be written out clearly, so as to be
intelligible. But they are only known to the devoted workers among
the outcast classes, to whom they become a sad and terrible puzzle,
not to be solved, and therefore, better not discussed. Those who
have no clue to the science of life are compelled to dismiss such
difficulties in this manner, otherwise they would fall, crushed
beneath the thought of them. The social question as it is called,
the great deep waters of misery, the deadly apathy of those who have
power and possessions—these things are hardly to be faced by a
generous soul who has not reached to the great idea of evolution,
and who has not guessed at the marvellous mystery of human
development.
The Theosophist is placed in a different position from any of these
persons, because he has heard of the vast scope of life with which
all mystic and occult writers and teachers deal, and he has been
brought very near to the great mystery. Indeed, none, though they
may have enrolled themselves as Fellows of the Society, can be
called in any serious sense Theosophists, until they have begun to
consciously taste in their own persons, this same mystery; which is,
indeed, a law inexorable, by which man lifts himself by degrees from
the state of a beast to the glory of a God. The rapidity with which
this is done is different with every living soul; and the wretches
who hug the primitive task-master, _misery_, choose to go slowly
through a tread-mill course which may give them innumerable lives of
physical sensation—whether pleasant or painful, well-beloved because
tangible to the very lowest senses. The Theosophist who desires to
enter upon occultism takes some of Nature’s privileges into his own
hands by that very wish, and soon discovers that experiences come to
him with double-quick rapidity. His business is then to recognise
that he is under a—to him—new and swifter law of development, and to
snatch at the lessons that come to him.
But, in recognising this, he also makes another discovery. He sees
that it takes a very wise man to do good works without danger of
doing incalculable harm. A highly developed adept in life may grasp
the nettle, and by his great intuitive powers, know whom to relieve
from pain and whom to leave in the mire that is their best teacher.
The poor and wretched themselves will tell anyone who is able to win
their confidence what disastrous mistakes are made by those who come
from a different class and endeavour to help them. Kindness and
gentle treatment will sometimes bring out the worst qualities of a
man or woman who has led a fairly presentable life when kept down by
pain and despair. May the Master of Mercy forgive us for saying such
words of any human creatures, all of whom are a part of ourselves,
according to the law of human brotherhood which no disowning of it
can destroy. But the words are true. None of us know the darkness
which lurks in the depths of our own natures until some strange and
unfamiliar experience rouses the whole being into action. So with
these others who seem more miserable than ourselves.
As soon as he begins to understand what a friend and teacher pain
can be, the Theosophist stands appalled before the mysterious
problem of human life, and though he may long to do good works,
equally dreads to do them wrongly until he has himself acquired
greater power and knowledge. The ignorant doing of good works may be
vitally injurious, as all but those who are blind in their love of
benevolence are compelled to acknowledge. In this sense the answer
made as to lack of Christ-like lives among Theosophists, that there
are probably none strong enough to live such, is perfectly correct
and covers the whole question. For it is not the spirit of
self-sacrifice, or of devotion, or of desire to help that is
lacking, but the strength to acquire knowledge and power and
intuition, so that the deeds done shall really be worthy of the
“Buddha-Christ” spirit. Therefore it is that Theosophists cannot
pose as a body of philanthropists, though secretly they may
adventure on the path of good works. They profess to be a body of
learners merely, pledged to help each other and all the rest of
humanity, so far as in them lies, to a better understanding of the
mystery of life, and to a better knowledge of the peace which lies
beyond it.
But as it is an inexorable law, that the ground must be tilled if
the harvest is to be reaped, so Theosophists are obliged to work in
the world unceasingly, and very often in doing this to make serious
mistakes, as do all workers who are not embodied Redeemers. Their
efforts may not come under the title of good works, and they may be
condemned as a school of idle talkers, yet they are an outcome and
fruition of this particular moment of time, when the ideas which
they hold are greeted by the crowd with interest; and therefore
their work is good, as the lotus-flower is good when it opens in the
mid-day sun.
None know more keenly and definitely than they that good works are
necessary; only these cannot be rightly accomplished without
knowledge. Schemes for Universal Brotherhood, and the redemption of
mankind, might be given out plentifully by the great adepts of life,
and would be mere dead-letter utterances while individuals remain
ignorant, and unable to grasp the great meaning of their teachers.
To Theosophists we say, let us carry out the rules given us for our
society before we ask for any further schemes or laws. To the public
and our critics we say, try to understand the value of good works
before you demand them of others, or enter upon them rashly
yourselves. Yet it is an absolute fact that without good works the
spirit of brotherhood would die in the world; and this can never be.
Therefore is the double activity of learning and doing most
necessary; we have to do good, and we have to do it _rightly_, with
knowledge.
* * * * * * * *
It is well known that the first rule of the society is to carry out
the object of forming the nucleus of a universal brotherhood. The
practical working of this rule was explained by those who laid it
down, to the following effect:—
“HE WHO DOES NOT PRACTISE ALTRUISM; HE WHO IS NOT PREPARED TO SHARE
HIS LAST MORSEL WITH A WEAKER OR POORER THAN HIMSELF; HE WHO
NEGLECTS TO HELP HIS BROTHER MAN, OF WHATEVER RACE, NATION, OR
CREED, WHENEVER AND WHEREVER HE MEETS SUFFERING, AND WHO TURNS A
DEAF EAR TO THE CRY OF HUMAN MISERY; HE WHO HEARS AN INNOCENT PERSON
SLANDERED, WHETHER A BROTHER THEOSOPHIST OR NOT, AND DOES NOT
UNDERTAKE HIS DEFENCE AS HE WOULD UNDERTAKE HIS OWN—IS NO
THEOSOPHIST.”
[Illustration: decorative separator]
THE DEMAND OF THE NEOPHYTE.
[Continuation of COMMENTS ON LIGHT ON THE PATH: By the Author.]
“Before the voice can speak in the presence of the Masters.”
Speech is the power of communication; the moment of entrance into
active life is marked by its attainment.
And now, before I go any further, let me explain a little the way in
which the rules written down in “Light on the Path” are arranged.
The first seven of those which are numbered are sub-divisions of the
two first unnumbered rules, those with which I have dealt in the two
preceding papers. The numbered rules were simply an effort of mine
to make the unnumbered ones more intelligible. “Eight” to “fifteen”
of these numbered rules belong to this unnumbered rule which is now
my text.
As I have said, these rules are written for all disciples, but for
none else; they are not of interest to any other persons. Therefore
I trust no one else will trouble to read these papers any further.
The first two rules, which include the whole of that part of the
effort which necessitates the use of the surgeon’s knife, I will
enlarge upon further if I am asked to do so. But the disciple is
expected to deal with the snake, his lower self, unaided; to
suppress his human passions and emotions by the force of his own
will. He can only demand assistance of a master when this is
accomplished, or at all events, partially so. Otherwise the gates
and windows of his soul are blurred, and blinded, and darkened, and
no knowledge can come to him. I am not, in these papers, purposing
to tell a man how to deal with his own soul; I am simply giving, to
the disciple, knowledge. That I am not writing, even now, so that
all who run may read, is owing to the fact that super-nature
prevents this by its own immutable laws.
The four rules which I have written down for those in the West who
wish to study them, are as I have said, written in the ante-chamber
of every living Brotherhood; I may add more, in the ante-chamber of
every living or dead Brotherhood, or Order yet to be formed. When I
speak of a Brotherhood or an Order, I do not mean an arbitrary
constitution made by scholiasts and intellectualists; I mean an
actual fact in supernature, a stage of development towards the
absolute God or Good. During this development the disciple
encounters harmony, pure knowledge, pure truth, in different
degrees, and, as he enters these degrees, he finds himself becoming
part of what might be roughly described as a layer of human
consciousness. He encounters his equals, men of his own self-less
character, and with them his association becomes permanent and
indissoluble, because founded on a vital likeness of nature. To them
he becomes pledged by such vows as need no utterance or framework in
ordinary words. This is one aspect of what I mean by a Brotherhood.
If the first rules are conquered the disciple finds himself standing
at the threshold. Then if his will is sufficiently resolute his
power of speech comes; a two-fold power. For, as he advances now, he
finds himself entering into a state of blossoming, where every bud
that opens throws out its several rays or petals. If he is to
exercise his new gift, he must use it in its two-fold character. He
finds in himself the power to speak in the presence of the masters;
in other words, he has the right to demand contact with the divinest
element of that state of consciousness into which he has entered.
But he finds himself compelled, by the nature of his position, to
act in two ways at the same time. He cannot send his voice up to the
heights where sit the gods till he has penetrated to the deep places
where their light shines not at all. He has come within the grip of
an iron law. If he demands to become a neophyte, he at once becomes
a servant. Yet his service is sublime, if only from the character of
those who share it. For the masters are also servants; they serve
and claim their reward afterwards. Part of their service is to let
their knowledge touch him; his first act of service is to give some
of that knowledge to those who are not yet fit to stand where he
stands. This is no arbitrary decision, made by any master or teacher
or any such person, however divine. It is a law of that life which
the disciple has entered upon.
Therefore was it written in the inner doorway of the lodges of the
old Egyptian Brotherhood, “The labourer is worthy of his hire.”
“Ask and ye shall have,” sounds like something too easy and simple
to be credible. But the disciple cannot “ask” in the mystic sense in
which the word is used in this scripture until he has attained the
power of helping others.
Why is this? Has the statement too dogmatic a sound?
Is it too dogmatic to say that a man must have foothold before he
can spring? The position is the same. If help is given, if work is
done, then there is an actual claim—not what we call a personal
claim of payment, but the claim of co-nature. The divine give, they
demand that you also shall give before you can be of their kin.
This law is discovered as soon as the disciple endeavours to speak.
For speech is a gift which comes only to the disciple of power and
knowledge. The spiritualist enters the psychic-astral world, but he
does not find there any certain speech, unless he at once claims it
and continues to do so. If he is interested in “phenomena,” or the
mere circumstance and accident of astral life, then he enters no
direct ray of thought or purpose, he merely exists and amuses
himself in the astral life as he has existed and amused himself in
the physical life. Certainly there are one or two simple lessons
which the psychic-astral can teach him, just as there are simple
lessons which material and intellectual life teach him. And these
lessons have to be learned; the man who proposes to enter upon the
life of the disciple without having learned the early and simple
lessons must always suffer from his ignorance. They are vital, and
have to be studied in a vital manner; experienced through and
through, over and over again, so that each part of the nature has
been penetrated by them.
To return. In claiming the power of speech, as it is called, the
Neophyte cries out to the Great One who stands foremost in the ray
of knowledge on which he has entered, to give him guidance. When he
does this, his voice is hurled back by the power he has approached,
and echoes down to the deep recesses of human ignorance. In some
confused and blurred manner the news that there is knowledge and a
beneficent power which teaches is carried to as many men as will
listen to it. No disciple can cross the threshold without
communicating this news, and placing it on record in some fashion or
other.
He stands horror-struck at the imperfect and unprepared manner in
which he has done this; and then comes the desire to do it well, and
with the desire thus to help others comes the power. For it is a
pure desire, this which comes upon him; he can gain no credit, no
glory, no personal reward by fulfilling it. And therefore he obtains
the power to fulfil it.
The history of the whole past, so far as we can trace it, shows very
plainly that there is neither credit, glory, or reward to be gained
by this first task which is given to the Neophyte. Mystics have
always been sneered at, and seers disbelieved; those who have had
the added power of intellect have left for posterity their written
record, which to most men appears unmeaning and visionary, even when
the authors have the advantage of speaking from a far-off past. The
disciple who undertakes the task, secretly hoping for fame or
success, to appear as a teacher and apostle before the world, fails
even before his task is attempted, and his hidden hypocrisy poisons
his own soul, and the souls of those he touches. He is secretly
worshipping himself, and this idolatrous practice must bring its own
reward.
The disciple who has the power of entrance, and is strong enough to
pass each barrier, will, when the divine message comes to his
spirit, forget himself utterly in the new consciousness which falls
on him. If this lofty contact can really rouse him, he becomes as
one of the divine in his desire to give rather than to take, in his
wish to help rather than be helped, in his resolution to feed the
hungry rather than take manna from Heaven himself. His nature is
transformed, and the selfishness which prompts men’s actions in
ordinary life suddenly deserts him.
(_To be continued._)
THE ESOTERIC CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS.
“.... Tell us, when shall these things be? And what shall be the
sign _of thy presence_, and _of the consummation of the age_?”[33]
asked the Disciples of the MASTER, on the Mount of Olives.
-----
Footnote 33:
St. Matthew xxiv., 3, _et seq._ The sentences italicised are those
which stand corrected in the New Testament after the recent
revision in 1881 of the version of _1611_; which version is full
of errors, voluntary and involuntary. The word “presence,” for
“coming,” and “the consummation of the age,” now standing for “the
end of the world,” have altered, of late, the whole meaning, even
for the most sincere Christians, if we exempt the Adventists.
-----
The reply given by the “Man of Sorrow,” the _Chréstos_, on his
trial, but also on his way to triumph, as _Christos_, or Christ,[34]
is prophetic, and very suggestive. It is a warning indeed. The
answer must be quoted in full. Jesus ... said unto them:—
“Take heed that _no man_ lead you astray. For many shall come in
my name saying, I am the Christ; and shall lead many astray. And
ye shall hear of wars ... but the end is not yet. _For nation
shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there
shall be famines and earthquakes in divers places._ But all these
things are the beginning of travail.... Many false prophets shall
arise, and shall lead many, astray ... then shall the end come ...
when ye see the abomination of desolation which was spoken through
Daniel.... Then if any man shall say unto you, _Lo, here is the
Christ_, or There; believe him not.... If they shall say unto you,
Behold, he is in the wilderness, go not forth; behold, he is in
the inner chambers, believe them not. For as the lightning cometh
forth from the East, and is seen even in the West, so shall be the
_presence_ of the Son of Man,” etc., etc.
-----
Footnote 34:
He who will not ponder over and master the great difference
between the meaning of the two Greek words—χρηστος and χριστος
must remain blind for ever to the true esoteric meaning of the
Gospels; that is to say, to the living Spirit entombed in the
sterile dead-letter of the texts, the very Dead Sea fruit of
_lip_-Christianity.
-----
Two things become evident _to all_ in the above passages, now that
their false rendering is corrected in the revision text: (_a_) “the
coming of Christ,” means _the presence of_ CHRISTOS in a regenerated
world, and not at all the actual coming in body of “Christ” Jesus;
(_b_) this Christ is to be sought neither in the wilderness nor “in
the inner chambers,” nor in the sanctuary of any temple or church
built by man; for Christ—the true esoteric SAVIOUR—_is no man_, but
the DIVINE PRINCIPLE in every human being. He who strives to
resurrect the Spirit _crucified in him by his own terrestrial
passions_, and buried deep in the “sepulchre” of his sinful flesh;
he who has the strength to roll back _the stone of matter_ from the
door of his own _inner_ sanctuary, he _has the risen Christ in
him_.[35] The “Son of Man” is no child of the bond-woman—_flesh_,
but verily of the free-woman—_Spirit_,[36] the child of man’s own
deeds, and the fruit of his own spiritual labour.
-----
Footnote 35:
For ye are the temple (“sanctuary” in the _revised_ N. T.) of the
living God. (II. Cor. vi., 16.)
Footnote 36:
Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, was feminine with the Jews, as with
most ancient peoples, and it was so with the early Christians.
_Sophia_ of the Gnostics, and the third Sephiroth _Binah_
(the _female_ Jehovah of the Kabalists), are feminine
principles—“Divine Spirit,” or _Ruach_. “_Achath Ruach Elohim
Chiim._” “One is _She_, the Spirit of the Elohim of Life,” is said
in “Sepher Yezirah.”
-----
On the other hand, at no time since the Christian era, have the
precursor signs described in _Matthew_ applied so graphically and
forcibly to any epoch as they do to our own times. When has nation
arisen against nation more than at this time? When have
“famines”—another name for destitute pauperism, and the famished
multitudes of the proletariat—been more cruel, earthquakes more
frequent, or covered such an area simultaneously, as for the last
few years? Millenarians and Adventists of robust faith, may go on
saying that “the coming of (the carnalised) Christ” is near at hand,
and prepare themselves for “the end of the world.” Theosophists—at
any rate, some of them—who understand the hidden meaning of the
universally-expected Avatars, Messiahs, Sosioshes and Christs—know
that it is no “end of the world,” but “the consummation of the age,”
_i.e._, the close of a cycle, which is now fast approaching.[37] If
our readers have forgotten the concluding passages of the article,
“The Signs of the Times,” in LUCIFER for October last, let them read
them over, and they will plainly see the meaning of this particular
cycle.
-----
Footnote 37:
There are several remarkable cycles that come to a close at the
end of this century. First, the 5,000 years of the Kaliyug cycle;
again the Messianic cycle of the Samaritan (also Kabalistic) Jews
of the man connected with _Pisces_ (Ichthys or “Fish-man” _Dag_).
It is a cycle, historic and not very long, but very occult,
lasting about 2,155 solar years, but having a true significance
only when computed by lunar months. It occurred 2410 and 255 B.C.,
or when the equinox entered into the sign of the _Ram_, and again
into that of _Pisces_. When it enters, in a few years, the sign of
_Aquarius_, psychologists will have some extra work to do, and the
psychic idiosyncrasies of humanity will enter on a great change.
-----
Many and many a time the warning about the “false Christs” and
prophets who shall lead people astray has been interpreted by
charitable Christians, the worshippers of the dead-letter of their
scripture, as applying to mystics generally, and Theosophists most
especially. The recent work by Mr. Pember, “Earth’s Earliest
Ages,” is a proof of it. Nevertheless, it seems very evident that
the words in Matthew’s Gospel and others can hardly apply to
Theosophists. For these were never found saying that Christ is
“Here” or “There,” in wilderness or city, and least of all in the
“inner chamber” behind the altar of any modern church. Whether
Heathen or Christian by birth, they refuse to materialise and thus
degrade that which is the purest and grandest ideal—the symbol of
symbols—namely, the immortal Divine Spirit in man, whether it be
called Horus, Krishna, Buddha, or Christ. None of them has ever
yet said: “I am the Christ”; for those born in the West feel
themselves, so far, only _Chréstians_,[38] however much they may
strive to become _Christians_ in Spirit. It is to those, who in
their great conceit and pride refuse to win the right of such
appellation by first leading the life of _Chrestos_;[39] to those
who haughtily proclaim themselves _Christians_ (the glorified, the
anointed) by sole virtue of baptism when but a few days old—that
the above-quoted words of Jesus apply most forcibly. Can the
prophetic insight of him who uttered this remarkable warning be
doubted by any one who sees the numerous “false prophets” and
pseudo-apostles (_of Christ_), now roaming over the world? These
have split the one divine Truth into fragments, and broken, in the
camp of the Protestants alone, the rock of the Eternal Verity into
three hundred and fifty odd pieces, which now represent the bulk
of their Dissenting sects. Accepting the number in round figures
as 350, and admitting, for argument’s sake, that, at least, one of
these may have the approximate truth, still 349 _must be
necessarily false_.[40] Each of these claims to have Christ
exclusively in its “inner chamber,” and denies him to all others,
while, in truth, the great majority of their respective followers
daily put Christ to death on the cruciform tree of matter—the
“tree of infamy” of the old Romans—indeed!
-----
Footnote 38:
The earliest Christian author, Justin Martyr, calls, in his first
Apology, his co-religionists _Chrestians_, χρηστιανοι—not
Christians.
Footnote 39:
“Clemens Alexandrinus, in the second century, founds a serious
argument on this paranomasia (lib. iii., cap. xvii., p. 53 _et
circa_), that all who believed in _Chrest_ (_i.e._, “a good man”)
both are, and are called Chrestians, that is, good men,”
(Strommata, lib. ii. “Higgins’ _Anacalypsis_.”) And Lactantius
(lib. iv., cap. vii.) says that it is only through _ignorance_
that people call themselves Christians, instead of Chrestians:
“_qui proper ignorantium errorem cum immutata litera Chrestum
solent dicere_.”
Footnote 40:
In England alone, there are over 239 various sects. (See
Whitaker’s Almanac.) In 1883, there were 186 denominations only,
and now they steadily increase with every year, an additional 53
sects having sprung up in only four years!
-----
The worship of the dead-letter in the Bible is but one more form of
_idolatry_, nothing better. A fundamental dogma of faith cannot
exist under a double-faced Janus form. “Justification” _by Christ_
cannot be achieved at one’s choice and fancy, _either_ by “faith” or
by “works” and James, therefore (ii., 25), contradicting Paul (Heb.
xi., 31), and _vice versa_,[41] one of them must be wrong. Hence,
the Bible is _not_ the “Word of God” but contains at best the words
of fallible men and _imperfect_ teachers. Yet read _esoterically_,
it does contain, if not the _whole_ truth, still, “_nothing but the
truth_,” under whatever allegorical garb. Only: _Quot homines tot
sententiæ_.
-----
Footnote 41:
It is but fair to St. Paul to remark that this contradiction is
surely due to later tampering with his Epistles. Paul was a
Gnostic himself, _i.e._, A “Son of Wisdom,” and an Initiate into
the true _mysteries of Christos_, though he may have thundered (or
was made to appear to do so) against some Gnostic sects, of which,
in his day, there were many. But his Christos was not Jesus of
Nazareth, nor any living man, as shown so ably in Mr. Gerald
Massey’s lecture, “Paul, the Gnostic Opponent of Peter.” He was an
Initiate, a true “Master-Builder” or adept, as described in “Isis
Unveiled,” Vol II., pp. 90-91.
-----
The “Christ principle,” the awakened and glorified Spirit of Truth,
being universal and eternal, the true _Christos_ cannot be
monopolized by any one person, even though that person has chosen to
arrogate to himself the title of the “Vicar of Christ,” or of the
“Head” of that or another State-religion. The spirits of “Chrest”
and “Christ” cannot be confined to any creed or sect, only because
that sect chooses to exalt itself above the heads of all other
religions or sects. The name has been used in a manner so intolerant
and dogmatic, especially in our day, that Christianity is now the
religion of arrogance _par excellence_, a stepping-stone for
ambition, a sinecure for wealth, sham and power; a convenient screen
for hypocrisy. The noble epithet of old, the one that made Justin
Martyr say that “_from the mere name_, which is imputed to us as a
crime, _we are the most excellent_,”[42] is now degraded. The
missionary prides himself with the so-called _conversion_ of a
heathen, who makes of Christianity ever a _profession_, but rarely a
religion, a source of income from the missionary fund, and a
pretext, since the blood of Jesus has washed them all by
anticipation, for every petty crime, from drunkenness and lying up
to theft. That same missionary, however, would not hesitate to
publicly condemn the greatest saint to eternal perdition and hell
fires if that holy man has only neglected to pass through the
fruitless and meaningless form of baptism by water with
accompaniment of _lip_ prayers and vain ritualism.
-----
Footnote 42:
ὁσοντε ὲκ τοῦ κατηγορουμένου ἡμῶν ὀνομάτος χρησότατοι ὑπάρχομεν
(_First Apology_).
-----
We say “lip prayer” and “vain ritualism” knowingly. Few Christians
among the laymen are aware even of the true meaning of the word
_Christ_; and those of the clergy who happen to know it (for they
are brought up in the idea that to study such subjects is _sinful_)
keep the information secret from their parishioners. They demand
blind, implicit faith, and _forbid inquiry as the one unpardonable
sin_, though nothing of that which leads to the knowledge of the
truth can be aught else than holy. For what is “Divine Wisdom,” or
_Gnosis_, but the essential reality behind the evanescent
appearances of objects in nature—the very soul of the manifested
LOGOS? Why should men who strive to accomplish union with the one
eternal and absolute Deity shudder at the idea of prying into its
mysteries—however awful? Why, above all, should they use names and
words the very meaning of which is a sealed mystery to them—a mere
sound? Is it because an unscrupulous, power-seeking Establishment
called a Church has cried “wolf” at every such attempt, and,
denouncing it as “blasphemous,” has ever tried to kill the spirit of
inquiry? But Theosophy, the “divine Wisdom,” has never heeded that
cry, and has the courage of its opinions. The world of sceptics and
fanatics may call it, one—an empty “_ism_”—the other “Satanism”:
they can never crush it. Theosophists have been called Atheists,
haters of Christianity, the enemies of God and the gods. They are
none of these. Therefore, they have agreed this day to publish a
clear statement of their ideas, and a profession of their faith—with
regard to monotheism and Christianity, at any rate—and to place it
before the impartial reader to judge them and their detractors on
the merits of their respective faiths. No truth-loving mind would
object to such honest and sincere dealing, nor will it be dazzled by
any amount of new light thrown upon the subject, howsoever much
startled otherwise. On the contrary, such minds will thank LUCIFER,
perhaps, while those of whom it was said “_qui vult decipi
decipiatur_”—let them be deceived by all means!
The editors of this magazine propose to give a series of essays upon
the hidden meaning or esotericism of the “New Testament.” No more
than any other scripture of the great world-religions can the Bible
be excluded from that class of allegorical and symbolical writings
which have been, from the pre-historic ages, the receptacle of the
secret teachings of the Mysteries of Initiation, under a more or
less veiled form. The primitive writers of the _Logia_ (now the
Gospels) knew certainly _the_ truth, and the _whole_ truth; but
their successors had, as certainly, only dogma and form, which lead
to hierarchical power at heart, rather than the spirit of the
so-called Christ’s teachings. Hence the gradual perversion. As
Higgins truly said, in the Christologia of St. Paul and Justin
Martyr, we have the esoteric religion of the Vatican, a refined
Gnosticism for the cardinals, a more gross one for the people. It is
the latter, only still more materialized and disfigured, which has
reached us in our age.
The idea of writing this series was suggested to us by a certain
letter published in our October issue, under the heading of “Are the
Teachings ascribed to Jesus contradictory?” Nevertheless, this is no
attempt to contradict or weaken, in any one instance, that which is
said by Mr. Gerald Massey in his criticism. The contradictions
pointed out by the learned lecturer and author are too patent to be
explained away by any “Preacher” or Bible champion; for what he has
said—only in more terse and vigorous language—is what was said of
the descendant of Joseph Pandira (or Panthera) in “Isis Unveiled”
(vol. ii., p. 201), from the Talmudic _Sepher Toldos Jeshu_. His
belief with regard to the spurious character of Bible and New
Testament, _as now edited_, is therefore, also the belief of the
present writer. In view of the recent revision of the Bible, and its
many thousands of mistakes, mistranslations, and interpolations
(some confessed to, and others withheld), it would ill become an
opponent to take any one to task for refusing to believe in the
authorised texts.
But the editors would object to one short sentence in the criticism
under notice. Mr. Gerald Massey writes:—
“What is the use of taking your ‘Bible oath’ that the thing is true,
if the book you are sworn upon is a magazine of falsehoods already
exploded, or just going off?”
Surely it is not a symbologist of Mr. G. Massey’s powers and
learning who would call the “Book of the Dead,” or the Vedas, or any
other ancient Scripture, “a magazine of falsehoods.”[43] Why not
regard in the same light as all the others, the Old, and, _in a
still greater measure_, the _New_ Testament?
-----
Footnote 43:
The extraordinary amount of information collated by that able
Egyptologist shows that he has thoroughly mastered the secret of
the production of the _New Testament_. Mr. Massey knows the
difference between the spiritual, divine and purely metaphysical
Christos, and the made-up “lay figure” of the carnalized Jesus. He
knows also that the Christian canon, especially the _Gospels_,
_Acts_ and _Epistles_, are made up of fragments of gnostic wisdom,
the ground-work of which is _pre-Christian_ and built on the
MYSTERIES of Initiation. It is the mode of theological
presentation and the interpolated passages—such as in Mark xvi.
from verse 9 to the end—which make of the Gospels a “magazine of
(_wicked_) falsehoods,” and throw a slur on CHRISTOS. But the
Occultist who discerns between the two currents (the true gnostic
and the _pseudo_ Christian) knows that the passages free from
theological tampering belong to archaic wisdom, and so does Mr.
Gerald Massey, though his views differ from ours.
-----
All of these are “magazines of falsehoods,” if accepted in the
exoteric dead-letter interpretations of their ancient, and
especially their modern, theological glossarists. Each of these
records has served in its turn as a means for securing power and of
supporting the ambitious policy of an unscrupulous priesthood. All
have promoted superstition, all made of their gods bloodthirsty and
ever-damning Molochs and fiends, as all have made nations to serve
the latter more than the God of Truth. But while cunningly-devised
dogmas and intentional misinterpretations by scholiasts are beyond
any doubt, “falsehoods already exploded,” the texts themselves are
mines of universal truths. But for the world of the profane and
sinners, at any rate—they were and still are like the mysterious
characters traced by “the fingers of a man’s hand” on the wall of
the Palace of Belshazzar: _they need a Daniel to read and understand
them_.
Nevertheless, TRUTH has not allowed herself to remain without
witnesses. There are, besides great Initiates into scriptural
symbology, a number of quiet students of the mysteries of archaic
esotericism, of scholars proficient in Hebrew and other dead
tongues, who have devoted their lives to unriddle the speeches of
the Sphinx of the world-religions. And these students, though none
of them has yet mastered all the “seven keys” that open the great
problem, have discovered enough to be able to say: There _was_ a
universal mystery-language, in which all the World Scriptures were
written, from _Vedas_ to “Revelation,” from the “Book of the Dead”
to the _Acts_. One of the keys, at any rate—the numerical and
geometrical key[44] to the Mystery Speech is now rescued; an ancient
language, truly, which up to this time remained hidden, but the
evidences of which abundantly exist, as may be proven by undeniable
mathematical demonstrations. If, indeed, the Bible is forced on the
acceptance of the world in its dead-letter meaning, in the face of
the modern discoveries by Orientalists and the efforts of
independent students and kabalists, it is easy to prophesy that even
the present new generations of Europe and America will repudiate it,
as all the materialists and logicians have done. For, the more one
studies ancient religious texts, the more one finds that the
ground-work of the New Testament is the same as the ground-work of
the Vedas, of the Egyptian theogony, and the Mazdean allegories. The
atonements by blood—blood-covenants and blood-transferences from
gods to men, and by men, as sacrifices to the gods—are the first
key-note struck in every cosmogony and theogony; soul, life and
blood were synonymous words in every language, pre-eminently with
the Jews; and that blood-giving was life-giving. “Many a legend
among (geographically) alien nations ascribes soul and consciousness
in newly-created mankind to the blood of the god-creators. Berosus
records a Chaldean legend ascribing the creation of a new race of
mankind to the admixture of dust with the blood that flowed from the
severed head of the god Belus. “On this account it is that men are
rational and partake of divine knowledge,” explains Berosus.[45] And
Lenormant has shown (_Beginnings of History_, p. 52, note) that “the
Orphics ... said that the _immaterial part of man, his soul_ (his
life) sprang from the blood of Dionysius Zagreus, whom ... Titans
tore to pieces.” Blood “revivifies the dead”—_i.e._, interpreted
metaphysically, it gives _conscious_ life and a soul to the man of
matter or clay—such as the modern materialist is now. The mystic
meaning of the injunction, “Verily I say unto you, except _ye eat
the flesh_ of the Son of man and _drink his blood_, ye have not life
in yourselves,” &c., can never be understood or appreciated at its
true _occult_ value, except by those who hold some of the _seven
keys_, and yet care little for St Peter.[46] These words, whether
said by Jesus of Nazareth, or Jeshua Ben-Panthera, are the words of
an INITIATE. They have to be interpreted with the help of _three_
keys—one opening the _psychic_ door, the second that of physiology,
and the third that which unlocks the mystery of terrestrial being,
by unveiling the inseparable blending of theogony with anthropology.
It is for revealing a few of these truths, with the _sole view of
saving intellectual mankind from the insanities of materialism and
pessimism_, that mystics have often been denounced as the servants
of Antichrist, even by those Christians who are most worthy,
sincerely pious and respectable men.
-----
Footnote 44:
“The key to the recovery of the language, so far as the writer’s
efforts have been concerned, was found in the use, strange to say,
of the discovered integral ratio in numbers of diameter to
circumference of a circle,” by a geometrician. “This ratio is
6,561 for diameter and 20,612 for circumference.” (Cabalistic
MSS.) In one of the future numbers of “LUCIFER” more details will
be given, with the permission of the discoverer.—Ed.
Footnote 45:
Cory’s _Anc. Frag._, p. 59, f. So do Sanchoniaton and Hesiod, who
both ascribe the _vivifying_ of mankind to the spilt blood of the
gods. But blood and _soul_ are one (_nephesh_), and the blood of
the gods means here the informing soul.
Footnote 46:
The existence of these _seven_ keys is virtually admitted,
owing to deep research in the Egyptological lore, by Mr. G.
Massey again. While opposing the teachings of “Esoteric
Buddhism”—unfortunately misunderstood by him in almost every
respect—in his Lecture on “The Seven Souls of Man,” he writes
(p. 21):—
“This system of thought, this mode of representation, this
septenary of powers, in various aspects, had been established in
Egypt, at least, seven thousand years ago, as we learn from
certain allusions to Atum (the god ‘in whom the fatherhood was
individualised as the _begetter of an eternal soul_,’ the
_seventh_ principle of the Theosophists,) found in the
inscriptions lately discovered at Sakkarah. I say in various
aspects, _because the gnosis of the Mysteries was, at least,
sevenfold in its nature_—it was Elemental, Biological, Elementary
(human), Stellar, Lunar, Solar and Spiritual—and _nothing short of
a grasp of the whole system can possibly enable us to discriminate
the various parts, distinguish one from the other, and determinate
the which and the what, as we try to follow the symbolical Seven
through their several phases of character_.”
-----
The first key that one has to use to unravel the dark secrets
involved in the mystic name of Christ, is the key which unlocked the
door to the ancient mysteries of the primitive Aryans, Sabeans and
Egyptians. The Gnosis supplanted by the Christian scheme was
universal. It was the echo of the primordial wisdom-religion which
had once been the heirloom of the whole of mankind; and, therefore,
one may truly say that, in its purely metaphysical aspect, the
Spirit of Christ (the divine _logos_) was present in humanity from
the beginning of it. The author of the Clementine Homilies is right;
the mystery of Christos—now supposed to have been taught by Jesus of
Nazareth—“was identical” with that which _from the first_ had been
communicated “_to those who were worthy_,” as quoted in another
lecture.[47] We may learn from the Gospel _according_ to Luke, that
the “worthy” were those who had been initiated into the mysteries of
the Gnosis, and who were “accounted worthy” to attain that
“resurrection from the dead” _in this life_ ... “those who knew that
they could die no more, being equal to the angels as sons of God and
sons of the Resurrection.” In other words, they were the great
adepts _of whatever religion_; and the words apply to all those who,
without being Initiates, strive and succeed, through personal
efforts to _live the life_ and to attain the naturally ensuing
spiritual illumination in blending their personality—the (“Son”)
with (the “Father,”) their individual divine Spirit, _the God
within_ them. This “resurrection” can never be monopolized by the
Christians, but is the spiritual birth-right of every human being
endowed with soul and spirit, whatever his religion may be. Such
individual is a _Christ-man_. On the other hand, those who choose to
ignore the Christ (principle) within themselves, must die
_unregenerate heathens_—baptism, sacraments, lip-prayers, and belief
in dogmas notwithstanding.
In order to follow this explanation, the reader must bear in mind
the real archaic meaning of the paronomasia involved in the two
terms _Chréstos_ and _Christos_. The former means certainly more
than merely “a good,” an “excellent man,” while the latter was never
applied to any one living man, but to every Initiate at the moment
of _his second birth and resurrection_.[48] He who finds Christos
within himself and recognises the latter as his only “way,” becomes
a follower and an _Apostle of Christ_, though he may have never been
baptised, nor even have met a “Christian,” still less call himself
one.
H. P. B.
(_To be continued._)
-----
Footnote 47:
“Gnostic and Historic Christianity.”
Footnote 48:
“Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man _be born again_ he
cannot see the Kingdom of God.” (John iii. 4.) Here the birth
_from above_, the spiritual birth, is meant, achieved at the
supreme and last initiation.
-----
THE “SQUARE” IN THE HAND.
I am unable to say where or when the events related in the following
pages took place. Neither can I give any details concerning the
personal circumstances of the narrator. All I know is that she was a
young woman of French nationality, and that the “uncle” of whom she
speaks—her senior by some thirty years—was more distinguished as a
philosopher than as an enthusiast. Whether the conspiracy against
the reigning authorities in which our heroine and her friends were
implicated, happened to be of any historical importance or not, is
also more than I can say. As my object in reproducing the narrative
is merely to illustrate the curious operation through natural
channels of laws, which are usually regarded as “occult,” and the
activity of which on the material plane has given rise to the common
notion of “miracle,” I do not propose to trouble the reader or
myself with any preamble of merely local interest. So, without more
introduction, I leave the diary of the writer to recount the
adventure set down therein by her own hand.
. . . . . . . .
“I was concerned in a very prominent way in a political struggle for
liberty and the people’s rights. My part in this struggle was,
indeed, the leading one, but my uncle had been drawn into it at my
instance, and was implicated in a secondary manner only. The
government sought our arrest, and, for a time, we evaded all
attempts to take us, but at last we were surprised and driven under
escort in a private carriage to a military station, where we were to
be detained for examination. With us was arrested a man popularly
known as ‘Fou,’ a poor weakling whom I much pitied. When we arrived
at the station which was our destination, ‘Fou’ gave some trouble to
the officials. I think he fainted, but at all events his conveyance
from the carriage to the _caserne_ needed the conjoined efforts of
our escort, and some commotion was caused by his appearance among
the crowd assembled to see us. Clearly the crowd was sympathetic
with us and hostile to the military. I particularly noticed one
woman who pressed forward as ‘Fou’ was being carried into the
station, and who loudly called on all present to note his feeble
condition and the barbarity of arresting a witless creature such as
he. At that moment my uncle laid his hand on my arm and whispered:
‘Now is our time; the guards are all occupied with ‘Fou;’ we are
left alone for a minute; let us jump out of the carriage and run!’
As he said this he opened the carriage door on the side opposite to
the _caserne_ and alighted in the street. I instantly followed, and
the people favouring us, we pressed through them and fled at the top
of our speed down the road. As we ran I espied a pathway winding up
a hill-side away from the town, and cried: ‘Let us go up there; let
us get away from the streets!’ My uncle answered: ‘No, no; they
would see us there immediately at that height, the path is too
conspicuous. Our best safety is to lose ourselves in the town. We
may throw them off our track by winding in and out of the streets.’
Just then a little child, playing in the road, got in our way, and
nearly threw us down as we ran. We had to pause a moment to recover
ourselves. ‘That child may have cost us our lives,’ whispered my
uncle breathlessly. A second afterwards we reached the bottom of the
street which branched off right and left. I hesitated a moment; then
we both turned to the right. As we did so—in the twinkling of an
eye—we found ourselves in the midst of a group of soldiers coming
round the corner. I ran straight into the arms of one of them, who
the same instant knew me and seized me by throat and waist with a
grip of iron. This was a horrible moment! The iron grasp was sudden
and solid as the grip of a vice; the man’s arm held my waist like a
bar of steel. ‘I arrest you!’ he cried, and the soldiers immediately
closed round us. At once I realised the hopelessness of the
situation; the utter futility of resistance. ‘_Vous n’avez pas
besoin de me tenir ainsi_,’ I said to the officer; ‘_j’irai
tranquillement_.’ He loosened his hold and we were then marched off
to another military station, in a different part of the town from
that whence we had escaped. The man who had arrested me was a
sergeant or some officer in petty command. He took me alone with him
into the guard-room, and placed before me on a wooden table some
papers which he told me to fill in and sign. Then he sat down
opposite to me and I looked through the papers. They were forms,
with blanks left for descriptions specifying the name, occupation,
age, address and so forth of arrested persons. I signed these, and
pushing them across the table to the man, asked him what was to be
done with us. ‘You will be shot,’ he replied, quickly and
decisively. ‘Both of us?’ I asked. ‘Both,’ he replied. ‘But,’ said
I, ‘my companion has done nothing to deserve death. He was drawn
into this struggle entirely by me. Consider, too, his advanced age.
His hair is white; he stoops, and, had it not been for the
difficulty with which he moves his limbs, both of us would probably
be at this moment in a place of safety. What can you gain by
shooting an old man such as he?’ The officer was silent. He neither
favoured nor discouraged me by his manner. While I sat awaiting his
reply, I glanced at the hand with which I had just signed the
papers, and a sudden idea flashed into my mind. ‘At least,’ I said,
‘grant me one request. If my uncle _must_ die, _let me die first_.’
Now I made this request for the following reason. In my right hand,
the line of life broke abruptly halfway in its length; indicating a
sudden and violent death. But the point at which it broke was
terminated by a perfectly marked _square_, extraordinarily clear-cut
and distinct. Such a square, occurring at the end of a broken line
means _rescue_, _salvation_. I had long been aware of this strange
figuration in my hand, and had often wondered what it presaged. But
now, as once more I looked at it, it came upon me with sudden
conviction that in some way I was destined to be delivered from
death at the last moment, and I thought that if this be so it would
be horrible should my uncle have been killed first. If _I_ were to
be saved I should certainly save him also, for my pardon would
involve the pardon of both, or my rescue the rescue of both.
Therefore it was important to provide for his safety until after my
fate was decided. The officer seemed to take this last request into
more serious consideration than the first. He said shortly: ‘I may
be able to manage that for you,’ and then at once rose and took up
the papers I had signed. ‘When are we to be shot?’ I asked him.
‘To-morrow morning,’ he replied, as promptly as before. Then he went
out, turning the key of the guard-room upon me.
. . . . . . . .
“The dawn of the next day broke darkly. It was a terribly stormy
day; great black lurid thunderclouds lay piled along the horizon,
and came up slowly and awfully against the wind. I looked upon them
with terror; they seemed so near the earth, and so like living,
watching things. They hung out of the sky, extending long ghostly
arms downwards, and their gloom and density seemed supernatural. The
soldiers took us out, our hands bound behind us, into a quadrangle
at the back of their barracks. The scene is sharply impressed on my
mind. A palisade of two sides of a square, made of wooden planks,
ran round the quadrangle. Behind this palisade, and pressed up close
against it was a mob of men and women—the people of the town—come to
see the execution. But their faces were sympathetic; an unmistakable
look of mingled grief and rage, not unmixed with desperation—for
they were a down-trodden folk—shone in the hundreds of eyes turned
towards us. I was the only woman among the condemned. My uncle was
there, and poor ‘Fou,’ looking bewildered, and one or two other
prisoners. On the third and fourth sides of the quadrangle was a
high wall, and in a certain place was a niche partly enclosing the
trunk of a tree, cut off at the top. An iron ring was driven into
the trunk midway, evidently for the purpose of securing condemned
persons for execution. I guessed it would be used for that now. In
the centre of the square piece of ground stood a file of soldiers,
armed with carbines, and an officer with a drawn sabre. The palisade
was guarded by a row of soldiers somewhat sparsely distributed,
certainly not more than a dozen in all. A Catholic priest in black
cassock walked beside me, and as we were conducted into the
enclosure, he turned to me and offered religious consolation. I
declined his ministrations, but asked him anxiously if he knew which
of us was to die first. ‘_You_,’ he replied; ‘the officer in charge
of you said you wished it, and he has been able to accede to your
request.’ Even then I felt a singular joy at hearing this, though I
had no longer any expectation of release. Death was, I thought, far
too near at hand for that. Just then a soldier approached us, and
led me, bare-headed, to the tree trunk, where he placed me with my
back against it, and made fast my hands behind me with a rope to the
iron ring. No bandage was put over my eyes. I stood thus, facing the
file of soldiers in the middle of the quadrangle, and noticed that
the officer with the drawn sabre placed himself at the extremity of
the line, composed of six men. In that supreme moment I also noticed
that their uniform was bright with steel accoutrements. Their
helmets were of steel and their carbines, as they raised them and
pointed them at me, ready cocked, glittered in a fitful gleam of
sunlight with the same burnished metal. There was an instant’s
stillness and hush while the men took aim; then I saw the officer
raise his bared sabre as the signal to fire. It flashed in the air;
then, with a suddenness impossible to convey, the whole quadrangle
blazed with an awful light—a light so vivid, so intense, so
blinding, so indescribable that everything was blotted out and
devoured by it. It crossed my brain with instantaneous conviction
that this amazing glare was the physical effect of being shot, and
that the bullets had pierced my brain or heart, and caused this
frightful sense of all-pervading flame. Vaguely I remembered having
read or having been told that such was the result produced on the
nervous system of a victim to death from fire-arms. ‘It is over,’ I
said, ‘that was the bullets.’ But presently there forced itself on
my dazed senses a sound—a confusion of sounds—darkness succeeding
the white flash—then steadying itself into gloomy daylight; a
tumult; a heap of stricken, tumbled men lying stone-still before me;
a fearful horror upon every living face; and then ... it all burst
on me with distinct conviction. The storm which had been gathering
all the morning had culminated in its blackest and most electric
point immediately over-head. The file of soldiers appointed to shoot
me stood exactly under it. Sparkling with bright steel on head and
breast and carbines, they stood shoulder to shoulder, a complete
lightning conductor, and at the end of the chain they formed, their
officer, at the critical moment, raised his shining, naked blade
towards the sky. Instantaneously heaven opened, and the lightning
fell, attracted by the burnished steel. From blade to carbine, from
helmet to breastplate it ran, smiting every man dead as he stood.
They fell like a row of nine-pins, blackened in face and hand in an
instant—in the twinkling of an eye. _Dead._ The electric flame
licked the life out of seven men in that second; not one moved a
muscle or a finger again. Then followed a wild scene. The crowd,
stupefied for a minute by the thunderbolt and the horror of the
devastation it had wrought, recovered sense, and with a mighty shout
hurled itself against the palisade, burst it, leapt over it and
swarmed into the quadrangle, easily overpowering the unnerved
guards. I was surrounded, eager hands unbound mine, arms were thrown
about me; the people roared, and wept, and triumphed, and fell about
me on their knees praising Heaven. I think rain fell, my face was
wet with drops, and my hair—but I knew no more, for I swooned and
lay unconscious in the arms of the crowd. My rescue had indeed come,
and from the very Heavens!”
ANNA KINGSFORD, M.D.
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FREEDOM.
Know, striving soul, on truth intent,
That not with words by mortal sent—
Faint shimmerings of earthly light—
Shall ever-living truth be taught,
Or light to gild the path be bought,
That leads us upward from the night.
But govern mind with ordered will,
Subduing this with knowledge still,
Fanning the spark within that glows,
The essence of that power divine,
The pledge to man from mystic time,
The light from thrones above that flows.
Then may the spirit, bathed in light,
Soar upward from the realms of night,
No more a fettered earth-bound thing,
But freed from clay, and doubt, and slime,
Triumphant over death and time!
To the eternal ever cling!
P. H. D.
THE INVISIBLE WORLD.
In many of the tasks of life the first step costs the great effort,
and the investigation of truth in the higher regions of Nature
justifies the familiar maxim. The first step for the modern inquirer
is that which carries his consciousness across the threshold of
matter into the invisible world. Never mind for the moment whether
occult progress be attempted by a direct onslaught on the defences
of the invisible world, or by purely internal combats with the
desires of the lower self. The unseen must first become a reality
for anyone who seriously desires to enter into relations with it,
whether he sets his will to work to vanquish his own frailties, or
the forces of Nature on the astral plane. An internal struggle with
material desire undertaken for a spiritual purpose, just as much as
the other kind of contest, is a recognition of the superior realm;
and it is not a struggle of the kind we are contemplating at all, if
it is merely undertaken for a worldly purpose, as thrifty habits may
be cultivated, for instance, at the bidding of the grossest material
selfishness. But though a recognition of the invisible world must in
this way have been forced, at an early stage of his inquiry, on the
mind of everyone who becomes an earnest explorer of Nature’s higher
laws, its invisibility is a terrible barrier in the way of the
progress that would otherwise be made by the throngs of intelligent
materialists who people civilised countries at this epoch of our
history. From the point of view of conventional thinkers—of those
alike who sacrifice their Sunday mornings to provide for the
contingency that there may be something in religion after all, and
of those who are frankly incredulous of any Nature lying beyond the
reach of instrumental research—a tremendous revolution in all their
views of life is accomplished if they are somehow brought face to
face with the reality of super-material phenomena, if they ever
discover the invisible world and come to know it, or any part of it,
as an unequivocal fact.
Long experienced explorers of the unseen often forget how profoundly
clouded the whole region seems from the shore of materialistic
thought. Indeed, from the shore of other systems where habits of
metaphysical speculation would lead men to repudiate the charge of
materialism, the unseen appears to be equally impenetrable to all
human faculties. It is as though we lived beside an ocean always
shrouded from view by a belt of mist. A few persons are in the
constant habit of pushing out beyond in boats, but these, when they
come back, are told, “Nonsense! there is no ocean; you have been
dreaming!” For the vast majority, the mist is an infinite void. Only
by a minority have the few who have passed through it, been even
encountered. Will anyone who knows his generation pretend to say
that even among ordinary religious people the next world is a
certain fact in Nature, like the next street? How many are there who
do more than rest on the hypothesis that there may be somewhere a
heaven to “go to” when the dreadful moment comes at which mortal man
must perforce bid adieu to the warm precincts of the cheerful day.
“God forbid!” a bishop is said to have piously remarked when warned,
during danger at sea, that he would be in Heaven that night. The
next world of commonplace orthodoxy is but too often regarded as a
desperate resource for ruined men, whose fortune of life has been
wrung from them to the last drop. For those who are bankrupt of
breath, “let us trust” (as a frequent phrase expresses the idea)
that some compensation may be provided by Providence hereafter,
though it does all remain so hopelessly obscure.
“Ah, if you could only show me that there really is a life beyond
this—a perpetuation of this real individual Me after I am what my
friends will call dead—you would be giving me a blessing that no
words could over-estimate.” That is a passionate cry from many
hearts to those who talk of other lives for the soul—of spiritual
rewards, or the fruit of Karma in future states of existence.
It is a cry which few people indeed, even among those who have been
in contact with the invisible world, are in a position to satisfy.
Most of us are obliged to reply: “This satisfaction can only be
acquired by a resolute effort; it is impossible for us to bring you
proof of what we know, to save you trouble. If you would know
whether Africa exists, we cannot bring you Africa to prove it; we
can only give you directions how to get there if you are willing to
undertake the journey.” “But why,” we might ask, “cannot you believe
the testimony of those who have had proof of the sort you require.”
The answer always is in effect: “_C’est le premier pas qui coute_.
It would be worth worlds to know, but to believe without personal
knowledge—that would be an act of faith. I might as easily believe
at once in the Roman Catholic Church.”
There is a great difference, really, between the surrender of that
reason claimed by ecclesiastical tyranny and the faith required to
enable a seeker after truth to gain personal cognisance of the
invisible world. The priest and the occultist both claim faith from
the neophyte; but the first bids him develop this by strangling his
reason, the second by satisfying it. Sensible faith is that which
recognises the logic of facts appealing to human intelligence. It is
stupid to believe that which you have no reason for believing; it is
no less stupid to disbelieve that which there is reason to believe.
The majority of modern men and women, indeed—fed exclusively on the
husks of knowledge—are too profoundly ignorant of the records
accumulated by those who have penetrated the unseen to be called
stupid for undervaluing them. But on one or the other horn of the
dilemma they must take their place. They are unconscious of the
existence of the records left, or of the work done by students of
occultism in its various phases; or they must be held responsible
for defects of understanding. Does anyone say: “What are the records
you refer to?” The answer would be analogous to one that might be
given to a person brought up in American backwoods, on modern
practicalities exclusively, and who in mature life should hear
someone refer to classical literature as important. “What book do
you want me to read?” he might ask. What would an accomplished
University devotee of Greek poetry _think_ in reply, even if he
tried to disguise his answer in polite terms?
Any fairly considerable acquaintance with the literature of occult
research—including in that broad designation records of any
supermaterial phenomena—will put any man in a position in which he
must either believe in the existence of the invisible world, or
discover that he is an irrational being, whose “convictions” are
merely acts of submission to the decrees of the multitude. And
then, for most of those who perceive that they must believe, or
who find that they cannot continue to disbelieve, some personal
contact with some phases of the invisible world will probably
follow in the sequence of events; because, once _believing_—once
saturated with a complete conviction that there are other planes
of Nature—these will present themselves to the mind as so
interesting, that it becomes worth while to take trouble in order
to get the gratification of beholding their phenomena in some way
or other; and then success will sooner or later be attained. While
people merely think “there _may be_ an invisible world, let us try
if we can find it out,” they are easily baffled by failure. They
draw one or two covers “blank” and retire from the effort
declaring “there is nothing to be discovered; it is all a
delusion.” The man who has read and assimilated what he has read
is, as we have said above, saturated with a conviction on the
subject. His state of mind remains unaffected by personal failure;
and still impelled by the fascination of the idea, he will try
again and again till he succeeds. When anyone says, “I _wish_ I
could see something out of the common way, but I never have any
luck in such things,” the answer is: “Then you certainly do not
wish _much_.” Probably such people do not wish enough to take the
trouble merely to study. What they wish is that conclusive
phenomena demonstrating the existence of the invisible world
should always be on view at some London theatre, where inquirers
might go without liability to disappointment, when other
engagements permitted.
And yet, though it is so easy to blame and ridicule that attitude of
mind, no one who has the influence of the higher occultism in his
heart, and at the same time a capacity for sympathising with the
best attributes of modern culture, can be otherwise than
indefatigably anxious to waken up the present generation more fully
to an appreciation of the sublime knowledge accessible to those who
get across the outer barriers and come to realise the existence of
the world beyond, once for all. Occultists will often fail to
understand the situation aright. There are some who would do nothing
but draw from their own knowledge of the invisible world a store of
moral maxims, and serve these out to their brethren, fearing to
suggest further inquiries lest danger should be incurred, for, of
course, people are put in danger the higher they climb, falls being
then more disastrous. But maxims to have any value must be in
circuit with knowledge. “Be good!” is a sound maxim. “Be good
children!” is often an efficient exhortation, but it will not
survive the period when the persons addressed say “Why?” And all the
educated world is saying “Why?” now in regard to injunctions which
rest upon incredible assertions. Why is Society so tolerant of some
misdoing which the Church has always specially condemned, though it
lies outside the catalogue of offences like robbery and murder,
proscribed by common convenience? Because maxims which merely rest
upon religion have no longer any binding force; in other words,
because religion is the science, or the sum total of the sciences of
the invisible world, and men now claim to have cut and dried maxims
overhauled on principles to which this age of science has accustomed
them. It is quite possible to get this done. The fact that this _is_
a scientific age is a declaration, in other words, that a time has
come for putting a scientific complexion on religious thought; in
other words again, for beginning to lead the public, in flocks,
where hitherto rare pioneers only have penetrated in secret—across
the threshold unto the limitless realms of the invisible world. By
flocks we need not be supposed to mean crude masses of humanity
selected on no system, but large numbers compared to the rare
explorers of former times, considerable groups of the most
intelligent and advanced minds of the age. A man of the present day,
who has obtained the beautiful culture of modern civilisation, who
may be an accomplished classic, a finely-trained man of science, a
poet, an artist, and yet a person so ignorant or stupid (as to
certain facets of his mind) as not to know anything about the
invisible world, is a creature who provokes in the more enlightened
observer a feeling analogous to that with which one might look at a
lady of fashion, beautiful in the face, but whose winning draperies
you know to hide ugly deformities or repulsive disease. Or treating
the subject more abstractedly, this lovely culture of modern
civilisation is like the soulless statue—the Galatea without life.
Surely it is time that the gods informed the marble with the breath
of the spirit; and have they not shown themselves ready to do this
if the sculptor does but appeal to them?
The man who penetrates, or gets into relations of some sort or other
with the invisible world, will not necessarily be illuminated at
once with a flood of exhilarating knowledge. The new realm may open
out before the explorer in many different ways; and there is much
going astray amidst its innumerable mazes for new comers, as a rule.
But to discuss these perils in detail would be to attempt an essay
on all branches of occultism. For the present we are arguing merely
that to make no journeys there at all is to give up progress, to
move no longer with the onward stream of evolution, to fall out of
the line of march.
It is deplorable that men of intelligence, in the present day,
should neglect to pick up the threads which might guide them to
some knowledge of the invisible world, for two reasons, or rather,
the reasons why this is deplorable may be divided into two great
classes, those which have reference to knowledge, as such, and
those which have reference to the spiritual interests of mankind.
To people who appreciate spiritual interests, nothing else is
relatively worth a thought; but for men of modern civilisation at
large knowledge is worth everything for its own sake; it is the
end they are pursuing, and this being so, it is astounding that
they neglect the most subtle, fascinating and intricate phenomena
of all nature, those which have to do with supermaterial planes of
existence and natural force. And from that point of view, any
passage across the threshold of the invisible world will do as
well as any other. The tables that move without hands, the pencils
that write without fingers, are surely linked with mysteries of
Nature not yet understood, and, therefore, worth examination.
Investigations concerning them bring one face to face with the
forces of the invisible world.
Are we told that science cannot grasp these phenomena to investigate
them? The statement is not true. They cannot be grasped at any time
by anybody, but no more can the depths of stellar space be fathomed
by whoever chooses whenever it suits his leisure. Great telescopes
are scarce; nights perfectly fitted for observation must be waited
for with patience. But when they come, the men who have got the
telescopes take observations and make reports, and their records are
studied by other astronomers, and used as the foundation of
theories, as the raw material of current knowledge. If similar
methods were adopted with even the crudest spiritualistic, not to
speak of scientific, research in occult mystery, the world at large
would not be blundering about as it is, with absurd denials of facts
known to thousands. Clairvoyance again, by flights of perception
through the invisible world, bridges gulfs that are materially
impassable. But what does modern culture know of it? As a scientific
fact, it is enormously more certain than the existence, for example,
of the satellites of Mars; but who disputes the latter fact? They
have been seen, those satellites, if they are not seen easily or
often, and therefore their existence has been established. But five
newspapers out of six in the present day—barometers of prevailing
belief—would profess to disbelieve in clairvoyance if the subject
had to be mentioned; to _disbelieve_ in that which is an elementary
truth having to do with the most easily accessible region of
supermaterial knowledge!
To gain touch with this is _not_ to be put at once in possession of
that certainty concerning the survival after death of the real “Me”
in each case, which is the great point to be established for most
European doubters, but it is the first step. Students of the laws
which govern existence in the higher realms of Nature can gain no
hearing from those to whom that great point remains unsatisfied.
Once the higher realm is felt to be a reality, the possibility of
gaining a knowledge of the laws which prevail there presents itself
to the mind with an altogether new significance. And finally, closer
attention shows that this knowledge certainly has been gained; that
the path leading to spiritual wisdom is defined; that with some of
the powers which reign in the invisible world we may enter into more
or less definite relations beforehand here; that of all practical
pursuits which men of clear heads and resolute purpose can set
themselves to, during the space of incarnate earthly life,
immeasurably the most practical, in so far as it has to do with
objects which dwarf all others in their importance, are those which
have to do with the culture and development of that Higher Self
within them which has its natural home in the invisible world, and
is but a passing guest in the midst of material occupations. To use
and apply the knowledge of supermaterial laws which occult studies
disclose is a life’s task, but of that for the moment we need not
speak. It is with the heedless and frivolous generation at large
that we are concerned in this appeal—with those who waste great
gifts of intelligence and splendid energies and courage and
indomitable industry on transitory pursuits, on money-making (in
excess), on discovery and research that merely subserve passing
material wants, on the struggle for flattering distinctions which
cast a meteoric gleam on the brief journey to personal oblivion, on
the “solid realities” of the visible world, which, like the ice
drops of a hailstorm, are as hard as bullets one minute and
dissolved in new forms the next. It is all for want of taking the
first step that they are squandering their lives. Their immediate
predecessors _knew_ no more than they perhaps of the hidden
mysteries, but they were less critical of the distorted shape in
which pious tradition told them of the future and of the powers
above. The heirs of modern thought have grown in knowledge of
molecules and of the transmutation of energy but as they look back
upon the beliefs which contented their forefathers, they perceive
that their fuller science of the physical plane has entirely shut
out the wide, vague prospect that used to gleam on the earlier
horizon.
Rational human creatures cannot afford to leave that prospect in a
permanent eclipse. The neglect of all facts concerned with the
durabilities of existence; the concentration of effort and interest
on the hastily dissolving view of its physically manifested phases,
is the crying folly of the period. To spring at once into complete
conscious spiritual relationship with the higher planes of Nature is
not an easy achievement. The great Realities lie within a domain
which makes no direct appeal to the five senses of the earthly body,
and the only way of approaching their comprehension is to press on
through the darkness, beyond which other men before us declare that
they have reached illuminated altitudes.
But meanwhile, the torpor of the educated world at large in regard
to the promptings which ought now to stir its activity in this
direction is little less than idiotic. Idiotic relatively, that is
to say, to spiritual culture. There are men of illustrious fame in
the various provinces of intellectual culture, who are behaving
relatively to their own higher potentialities, as the luckless
victim of a shallow skull may behave towards the teachings of
science and art. But there is always one thing to be remembered
about them; they are curable. Their cure can be undertaken with sure
certainty of success at any moment, but for each sufferer from that
inner cataract which shuts out from his consciousness the prospect
of the invisible world, there is only one surgeon who can
successfully perform the necessary operation—the man himself. What
we can do who have accomplished the feat for ourselves, is to
encourage others—not to _go_, but to come and do likewise.
A. P. SINNETT.
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THE MYSTIC THOUGHT.
When will come rest? Is it alone the silent grave
That can bring true peace to the restless soul
That striving, yearns to reach some distant goal,
Toss’d like a boat on the crest of a mighty wave?
Is there oblivion in the cold, dark tomb
To dull the heart and kill the abject fear
Which loads the sense, when unknown dangers loom
From regions that our sense perceives not here?
When from the soul goes forth the mystic thought
That we have higher purpose than we know,
And each must reap the fruit he cares to sow,
Or learn the duties he himself has taught:
Can this be killed?—no, surely!—but that lamp can save
That burns within us here—and burns beyond the grave.
P. H. DALBIAC.
=THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT=:
_THE TRUE STORY OF A MAGICIAN_.
(_Continued._)
---------------------
BY MABEL COLLINS,
Author of “THE PRETTIEST WOMAN IN WARSAW,” &c., &c.,
And Scribe of “THE IDYLL OF THE WHITE LOTUS,” and “THROUGH THE GATES
OF GOLD.”
---------------------
CHAPTER V.
Adventure is said to be sweet to the young; if it was so to Hilary,
he must soon have found abundant pleasure in the possession of
enough sweets. For the next few days scarcely an hour passed without
an event large enough in his eyes to be an adventure.
He was ready at the hour Fleta had named; and had provided against
all probable contingencies by taking with him the smallest possible
amount of luggage. For aught he knew they might have to climb
mountains in the course of this journey. And moreover he knew
Fleta’s unprincess-like distaste for superfluities; he would not
have been surprised to see her start in her riding habit and take no
luggage at all. The difficulty he dreaded was his mother’s surprise
at this scant provision of his. But good luck—or was it something
else?—took her away. She was summoned to visit a sick friend at a
little distance out of the city, and said good-bye to Hilary before
her departure. So Hilary made his preparations without being
troubled by criticism.
At noon a lad presented himself at the door of the Estanol’s house,
with a note which he said he was to give into Hilary’s own hand.
Hilary immediately went to him and took it, as he guessed it was
from Fleta. A single line!—and no signature!—
“I am waiting for you outside the north gate.”
Hilary took his valise in his hand, afraid to hire a carriage lest
it should not please her that he brought any eyes to note their
meeting. He walked out of the city by the quietest side streets he
could select, hoping not to meet any of his friends. He met no one
he knew, and with a sigh of relief passed out through the gate and
walked on to the broad country road beyond it. Drawn up under some
trees was a handsome travelling carriage, with four horses and
postilions. Hilary was surprised. He had not expected so much
luxury. When he reached the carriage he was even more surprised.
Fleta was hardly dressed as for a journey; she wore a much richer
robe than usual, and her head and shoulders were covered with
beautiful black lace. She leaned back in a corner of the roomy
carriage, with a voluptuous dreamy expression on her face which was
new to Hilary. Opposite her sat Father Amyot. Hilary could not but
regard the priest with amazement. Was the town to lose its favourite
confessor? How then could all the gossips in it be prevented from
hearing of the Princess Fleta’s journey? But Hilary resolved not to
harass himself with conjecture. He entered the carriage and Fleta
motioned to him to seat himself at her side.
At her side! Yes, that was his place. And Father Amyot, the father
confessor, beloved and almost worshipped by the people, in whose
breast reposed the secrets and the sorrows of the city; Father
Amyot, who was the model of piety to all who knew him, sat opposite
in the carriage. Did he watch the lovers? Seemingly not. His eyes
were lowered and his gaze was apparently fixed on his clasped hands.
He sat there like a statue. Once or twice when Hilary glanced at his
face, he fancied he must be there unwillingly. Was it so? Was he
Fleta’s tool and servant held by her domineering temper to do her
bidding? Surely not. Father Amyot was too well known as a man of
power for the idea to be credible. Hilary checked himself for the
hundredth time in these hopeless speculations and determined to
enjoy the moment he was in possession of and not trouble about the
next one till it came; nor yet endeavour to read others’ hearts. And
so this young philosopher went open eyed, as he believed, to his
destruction.
The carriage rolled away at a great speed; it was drawn by four
beautiful Russian horses, and the postilions were Fleta’s own, and
accustomed to her likings. She was a most daring and intrepid rider
and nothing pleased her in the way of motion except great speed. She
was a lover of animals and her horses were the finest kept in the
city. It was strange to Hilary to try and realise her singular
independence of position, as to-day he felt impelled to. For himself
he was still to a great extent in leading strings; he had made no
position for himself, nor even planned any career; he was dependent
on his mother’s fortune, and consequently, to a certain extent,
could act only according to her approval. He was still so young that
all this seemed natural enough. But Fleta was younger than himself,
though it was difficult always to remember it, so dominant was her
temper. A glance at her fresh face still so soft in its outlines as
to have something childish about it when her expression permitted;
at her figure, so slender in spite of its stateliness, recalled the
fact that the Princess was indeed only a girl. Did the man who was
about to marry her suppose that his young Queen was a creature
unformed, fresh from the schoolroom, altogether malleable to his
hand?
During the whole of the afternoon they drove on with scarcely a
pause, and with very little conversation to pass the time. Yet for
Hilary it flew with swift wings. The mere sensation of his novel
position was enough for him as yet. To be beside Fleta and to watch
her mysterious face for so long together satisfied for the moment
his longing soul. Fleta herself seemed buried in profound thought.
She sat silent, her eyes on the country they passed through, but her
mind, as far as Hilary could judge, wandering in some remote region.
As for Father Amyot, his regard remained fixed upon a small crucifix
which he held hidden within his clasped hands, and now and then his
lips moved in prayer, while, on that austere face, no expression
seemed to have room but that of adoration or contemplation of the
divine.
At sundown they stopped at a very small way-side inn. Hilary could
not believe they were going to stay here, for it looked little more
than a place where men drink and horses are fed. Yet so it was. The
carriage was driven round to the side of the small house, the horses
taken out of it, and Fleta led the way in at a side door, followed
by her two companions.
Within they found a motherly, plain and kindly woman, who evidently
knew Fleta well; Hilary learned afterwards that this landlady had
been a kitchen maid in the royal household. And now he saw strange
things indeed. For this inn was in reality nothing but a drinking
shop for the drivers who passed along the road. It had no parlour,
nor any accommodation for travellers of a better sort. And Fleta
knew this, as was evident at once. She drew a hard chair forward,
close to the great fire which flamed up the wide open chimney, and
sat down seemingly quite at her ease.
“We must have some supper,” she said to the landlady. “Get us what
you can. Can you find room for these gentlemen to-night?”
The landlady came near to Fleta and spoke in a low voice; the
Princess laughed.
“There are no bedrooms in this house, it seems,” she said, aloud,
“in fact, it is not an hotel. Shall we drive on or shall we sit here
through the night?”
“The horses are tired,” said Father Amyot, speaking for the first
time since they had left the city.
“True,” said Fleta, absently—for already she appeared to be thinking
of something else. “I suppose, then, we must stay here.”
Hilary had never passed, nor ever contemplated passing, a night in
such rough fashion. He was fond of comfort, or rather of luxury. But
what could he do when his Princess, the greatest lady in the land,
set him the example. Any protest would have appeared effeminate, and
his pride held him silent. Still, when after a very indifferent
supper, they all returned to the hard wooden chairs beside the fire,
Hilary for the moment very sincerely wished himself at home in his
own comfortable rooms. As he wished this, suddenly he became aware
that Fleta’s dark eyes had turned upon him, and he would not look
up, for he believed she had read his thought. He wished he could
have hidden it from her, for he had no mind to be held as more
effeminate than herself.
There was a sort of second kitchen even rougher and more cheerless
than the one in which they sat; and there the postilions and other
men, the ordinary customers of the house, were crowded together,
drinking and talking and singing. Their presence was horrid to
Hilary, who was conscious of refined susceptibilities, but Fleta
seemed quite indifferent to the noise they made and the odour of
their coarse tobacco; or rather it might be that she was unaware of
anything outside her own thoughts. She sat, her chin on her hand,
looking into the fire; and so graceful and perfect was her attitude
that she had the air of being a masterpiece of art placed amid the
commonest surroundings. She looked more lovely than ever from the
contrast, but yet the incongruity was painful to Hilary.
The silence in the room in which they sat became the more marked
from contrast with the increasing noise in the crowded room without.
At last, however, the hour came for the house to be closed and the
landlady politely showed her customers the door; all except those
who were travellers on the road. These, including the postilions,
gathered into the chimney corner and became quiet, at last falling
sound asleep. To Hilary it seemed now that he was living through a
painful dream, and he longed for the awakening—willing to awake,
even if that meant that he would be at home and away from Fleta.
At last sleep came to him, and his head drooped forward; he sat
there, upright in the wooden chair, fast asleep. When he awoke it
was with a sense of pain in every limb, from the posture which he
had maintained; and he could scarcely refrain from crying out when
he attempted to move. But he instantly remembered that if the others
were sleeping he must not wake them. Then he quickly looked round.
Father Amyot sat near, looking just as he had looked since they
entered the house; he might have been a statue. Fleta’s chair was
empty.
Hilary roused himself, sat up and stared at her empty place; then
looked all round the kitchen. An idea occurred to him; possibly the
landlady had found some resting place for the young Princess. A
sense of oppression came over him; the kitchen seemed stifling. He
rose with difficulty and stretched himself, then found his way out
into the air. It was a glorious morning; the sun had just risen, the
world seemed like a beautiful woman seen in her sleep. How sharp the
sweet fresh air was! Hilary drew a deep breath of it. The country in
which this lonely little inn stood was exceedingly lovely, and at
this moment it wore its most fascinating appearance. A sense of
great delight came upon Hilary; the uneasiness of the past night was
at an end, and he was glad now and full of youth and strength. He
turned and walked away from the house, soon leaving the road and
plunging into the dewy grass. There was a stream in the valley, and
here he determined to bathe. He soon reached it, and in another
moment had hastily undressed, and was plunged in the ice-cold water.
An intoxicating sense of vigour came over him as he experienced the
keen contact. Never had he felt so full of life as now! It was not
possible to remain long in the water, it was so intensely cold; he
sprang out again and stood for a moment on the bank in the brilliant
morning sunshine, looking like a magnificent figure carved by the
god of the day, his flesh gleaming in the light. Slowly he began at
last to put on his dress, feeling as if in some way this meant a
partial return and submission to civilization. Something of the
savage which lay deep hidden in him had been roused and touched. A
fire burned that hitherto he had never felt, and which made him long
for pure freedom and uncriticised life. And this was Hilary Estanol!
It seemed incredible that a draught of fresh morning air, a plunge
into ice-cold water beneath the open sky, should have been enough to
unloose the savage in him, which was held fast beneath his
conventional and languid self, as it is in all of us, and all those
whom we meet in ordinary life. He moved hastily, striding on as
though he were hurrying to some end, but it was merely a new
pleasure in motion. There was a grove of old yew trees near the
stream; a grove which with the superstitious was held to be sacred.
That it should be revered was no wonder, so stately were the ancient
trees, so deep the shadow they cast. Hilary went towards this grove,
attracted by its splendid appearance; as he approached its margin a
dim sense of familiarity came over him. Never had he left the city
by this road, yet it seemed to him that he had entered the grove of
yews by the early morning light already many a time. We are all
accustomed to meet with this curious sensation; Hilary laughed at it
and put it away. What if he had visited this spot in a dream? Now it
was broad daylight, and he felt himself young and a giant. He
plunged into the deep shadow, pleased by the contrast it made to the
brilliant light without.
Suddenly his heart leaped within him and his brain reeled. For there
before him, stood Fleta; and the brilliant Princess looked like a
spirit of the night, so pale and grave and proud was her face and so
much a part did she seem of the deep shadow of the wood.
“Is it you?” she said with a smile, a smile of mystery and deep
unfathomable knowledge.
“Yes it is!” he answered, and felt, as he spoke, that he said
something in those words which he did not himself understand. They
stood side by side for a moment in silence; and then Hilary
remembered himself to be alone with this woman, alone with her in
the midst of the world. They were separated by the hour from other
men and women, for the world still lay asleep; they were separated
by the deep shadow of the wood from all moving life that answered to
the sun. They were alone—and overwhelmed by this sudden sense of
solitude Hilary spoke out his soul.
“Princess,” he said, “I am ready to be your blind servant, your dumb
slave, speaking and seeing only when you tell me. You know well why
I am willing to be the tool in your hands. It is because I love you.
But you must pay a price for your tool if you would have it! I
cannot only worship at your feet. Fleta, you must give yourself to
me, absolutely, utterly. Marry that man to whom you are betrothed if
you desire to be a queen, but to me you must give your love,
yourself. Ah! Fleta, you cannot refuse me!”
Fleta stood still a long moment, her eyes upon his face.
“No,” she said, “I cannot refuse you.”
And to Hilary, for an instant of horror, it seemed to him that in
her eyes was a glance of ineffable scorn. Yet there was love in the
smile on her lips and in the touch of her hand as she laid it in
his.
“The bond is made,” she said, “all that you can take of me is yours.
And I will pay you for your love with my love. Only do not forget
that you and I are different—that we are after all, two persons—that
we cannot love in exactly the same way. Do not forget this!”
Hilary knew not what to answer. As she spoke the last words he
recognised his princess, he saw the queen before him. What did she
mean? Well, he was so unhappy that his love had gone from him to a
lady of royal birth. It could not be undone, this folly. He must be
content to take that part which a subject may take in the life of a
queen, even though he be her lover. The thought brought a pang, a
swift stab to his heart and a sigh burst from his lips. Fleta put
her hand on his arm.
“Do not be sad so soon,” she said, “let us wait for trouble. Come,
let us go out into the sunshine.”
They went out, hand in hand; they wandered down beside the stream
and looked into the gleaming waters.
CHAPTER VI.
That day the journey began early, and was very protracted. Twice
during it they halted at little inns to rest the horses and to
obtain what food they could. By the evening they had entered upon
the most deserted region of the great forest which was one of the
prides of the country. The King’s hunting seat, where he now was,
stood in a part of this forest, but in quite another region, a long
distance from this wild place where Hilary and his companions now
were. Hilary had never been within the forest, as few from the city
ever penetrated it except as part of the King’s retinue, and then
they only saw such tracts of it as were preserved and in order. Of
this wilder region practically little was known, and the spirit of
adventure within Hilary made him rejoice to find that their journey
led them through this unpopulated district. His curiosity as to
their destination was not now very acute, for the experiences of the
passing moments were all sufficient. It is true that he was
conscious of the great gulf fixed between himself and Fleta. He knew
her to be his superior in every respect. He knew not only that he
must always be separated from her by their difference in station but
that he was more vitally separated from her by their difference in
thought—and that even now. But he was made happy by a look of love
that plunged deep from her eyes into his own now and again, and he
was thrilled to the heart when her hand touched his with a light and
delicate pressure that he alone could understand. Ah! that secret
understanding which separates lovers from all the rest of the world.
How sweet it is! How strange it is, too, for they are overpowered by
a mutual sense of sympathy which appears to be a supreme
intelligence, giving each the power to look into the other’s heart.
Dear moments are they when this is realised, when all life outside
the sacred circle in which the two dwell is obscure and dim, while
that within is rich, and strong, and sweet. Hilary lived supremely
content only in the consciousness of being near this woman whom he
loved; for now that he had actually asked her love, and been granted
it, nothing else existed for him save that sweet fact. He was
indifferent to the hardships, and, indeed, probable dangers, of the
journey they were upon, which might have made a more intrepid spirit
uneasy; for now he was content to suffer, or even to die, if all
conditions were shared with Fleta. All her life could not be shared
with him, but all his could be shared with her. When a man reaches
this point, and is content to face such a state of things between
himself and the woman he loves, he may be reckoned as being in love
indeed.
Quite late at night it was when this day’s journey ended, and the
splendid horses were really tired out. But a certain point evidently
had to be reached, and the postilions pushed on. Fleta at last
seemed to grow a little anxious, and several times rose in the
carriage to look on ahead; once or twice she inquired of the
postilions if they were certain of their way. They answered yes;
though how that could be was to Hilary a mystery, for they had been
for a long while travelling over mere grass tracts, of which there
were many, to his eyes undistinguishable one from the other. But the
postilions either had landmarks which he could not detect, or else
knew their way very well. At last they stopped; and in the dim light
Hilary saw that there was a gate at the side of the track, a gate
wide enough to drive through, but of the very simplest construction.
It might have defended merely a spot where young trees were planted,
or some kind of preserving done; and it was set in a fence of the
same character, almost entirely hidden by thick growth of wild
shrubs. The Princess Fleta produced from her dress a whistle on
which she sounded a clear ringing note, and then everybody sat still
and waited. It seemed to Hilary that it was quite a long while that
they waited; perhaps it was not really long, but the night was so
still, the silence so profound, the feeling of expectancy so strong.
He was, for the first time since they started, really very curious
as to what would happen next. What did happen at last was this.
There was a sound of laughter and footsteps, and presently two
figures appeared at the gate; one that of a tall man, the other that
of a young, slight girl. The gate was unlocked and thrown wide open,
and a moment later the young girl was in the carriage, embracing
Fleta with the greatest enthusiasm and delight. Hilary hardly knew
how everything happened, but presently the whole party was standing
together inside the gate, the carriage had driven in and was out of
sight. Then the tall man shut and locked the gate, after which he
turned back, and walked on ahead with the young girl at his side,
while Hilary followed with Fleta. The moon had risen now, and Hilary
could see her beautiful face plainly, wearing on it an unusually gay
and happy expression; her lips seemed to smile at her own thoughts.
The sweet gladness in her face made Hilary’s heart spring with joy.
It could not be rejoining her friends that made her so glad, for
they had gone on and left her alone with him.
“Fleta—my princess—no, my Fleta,” he said, “are you happy to be with
me? I think you are!”
“Yes, I am happy to be with you—but I am not Fleta.”
“Not Fleta!” echoed Hilary, in utter incredulity.
He stopped, and catching his companion’s hand, looked into her face.
She glanced up, and her eyes were full of shy coquetry and ready
gaiety.
“I might be her twin sister, might I not, if I am not Fleta herself?
Ah! no, Fleta’s fate is to live in a court—mine to live in a forest
Live!—no, it is not life!”
What was it in that voice that made his heart grow hot with passion?
Fiercely he exclaimed to himself that it _was_, it _must_, be
Fleta’s voice. No other woman could speak in such tones—no other
woman’s words give him such a sense of maddening joy.
“Oh! yes,” he said, “it is life—when one loves, one lives anywhere.”
“Yes, perhaps, when one loves!” was the answer.
“You told me this morning that you loved me, Fleta!” cried Hilary in
despair.
“Ah! but I am not Fleta,” was the mocking answer. It sounded like
mockery indeed as she spoke. And yet the voice was Fleta’s. There
was no doubt of that. He looked, he listened, he watched. The voice,
the face, the glorious eyes, were Fleta’s. It was Fleta who was
beside him, say she what she might.
They had been following the others all this while, and had now
reached a clearing in the wood, where was a garden full of sweet
flowers, as Hilary could tell at once by the rich scents that came
to him on the night air.
“I am glad we have reached the house,” said his companion, “for I am
very tired and hungry. Are not you? I wonder what we shall have for
supper. You know this is an enchanted place which we call the palace
of surprises. We never know what will happen next. That is why one
can enjoy a holiday here as one can enjoy it no where else. At home
there is a frightful monotony about the eating and drinking
Everything is perfect, of course, but it is always the same. Now
here one is fed like a Russian one day, and a Hungarian the next.
There is a perpetual novelty about the menus, and yet they are
always good. Is not that extraordinary. And oh! the wines, great
heavens! what a cellar our sainted father keeps. I can only bless,
with all my heart, the long dead founders of his order, who
instituted such a system.”
Hilary had regarded his companion with increasing amazement during
this speech. Certainly it was unlike Fleta. Was she acting for his
benefit? But at the words “sainted father” another idea thrust that
one out of his head. What had become of Father Amyot? He had not
seen him leave the carriage, or approach the house.
“Oh, your holy companion has gone to his brethren,” said the girl,
with a laugh. “They have a place of their own where they torture
themselves and mortify the flesh. But they entertain us well, and
that is what I care for. We will have a dance to-night. Oh! Hilary,
the music here! It is better than that of any band in the world!”
“If you are not, Fleta, how do you know my name?”
“Simple creature! What a question! Why, Fleta has told me all about
you. Did you never hear that the princess had a foster-sister, and
that none could ever tell which was which, so like were we—and are
we! Did you never hear that Fleta’s mother was blonde, and dull, and
plain, and that Fleta is like none of her own family? Oh, Hilary,
you, fresh from the city, you know nothing!”
A sudden remembrance crossed Hilary’s mind.
“I _have_ heard,” he said, “that no one could tell where Fleta had
drawn her beauty from. But I believe you draw it from your own
beautiful soul!”
“Ah, you still think me Fleta? I have had some happy hours in the
city before now when Fleta has let me play at being a princess. Ah,
but the men all thought the princess in a strange, charming,
delightful humour on these days. And when next they saw her, that
humour was gone, and they were afraid to speak to her. Come in. I am
starving!”
They had entered a wide, low doorway, and stood now within the great
hall. What a strange hall it was! The floor was covered with the
skins of animals, many of them very handsome skins; and great jars
held flowering plants, the scent from which made the air rich and
heavy. A wood fire burned on the wide hearth, and before it, still
in the dress she had travelled in, stood—Fleta.
Yes, Fleta.
The girl who stood at Hilary’s side laughed and clapped her hands as
he uttered a cry of amazement, even of horror.
“This is some of your magic, Fleta!” he exclaimed involuntarily.
The Princess turned at his words. She was looking singularly grave
and stern; her glance gave Hilary a sense of almost fear.
“No,” she answered in a low, quiet voice that had a tone, as Hilary
fancied, of pain, “it is not magic. It is all very natural. This is
Adine, my little sister; so like me that I do not know her from
myself.”
She drew Adine to her with a gesture which had a protecting
tenderness in it. This was the Princess who spoke, queen-like in her
kindness. Hilary stood, unable to speak, unable to think, unable to
understand. Before him stood two girls—each Fleta. Only by the
difference of expression could he detect any difference between
them. One threw him back the most coquettish and charming glance, as
she went towards her grave sister. He could feel keenly how vitally
different the two were. Yet they stood side by side, and though
Fleta said “my little sister” there was no outward difference
between them. Adine was as tall, as beautiful—and the same in
everything!
“Do not be startled,” said Fleta quietly, “you will soon grow used
to the likeness.”
“Though I doubt,” added Adine, with a wicked glance from her
brilliant eyes, “whether you will ever tell us apart except when we
are not together.”
“Come,” said Fleta, “let us go and wash the travel stains off. It is
just supper time.”
Fleta talked of travel stains, but as Hilary looked at her queenly
beauty, he thought she seemed as fresh as though she had but from
this moment come from the hands of her maid. However, the two went
away arm in arm, Adine turning at the door to have one last glance
of amusement at Hilary’s utterly perplexed face. He was left alone,
and he remained standing where he was, without power of thought or
motion.
Presently some one came and touched him on the shoulder; this was
necessary in order to attract his attention. It was the tall man who
had come to the gate to meet them. He was very handsome, and with
the most cheerful and good-natured expression; his blue eyes were
full of laughter.
“Come,” he said, “come and see your room. I am master of the
ceremonies here; apply to me for anything you want—even information!
I may, or may not give it, according to the decision of the powers
that be. Call me Mark. I have a much longer name, in fact,
half-a-dozen much longer ones, and a few titles to boot; but they
would not interest you, and in the midst of a forest where nobody
has any dignity, a name of one syllable is by far the best.” While
he talked on like this, apparently indifferent as to whether Hilary
listened or no, he led the way out of the hall and down a wide,
carpeted corridor. He opened the last door in this, and ushered
Hilary in.
(_To be continued._)
THE SCIENCE OF LIFE.
What is Life? Hundreds of the most philosophical minds, scores of
learned well-skilled physicians, have asked themselves the question,
but to little purpose. The veil thrown over primordial Kosmos and
the mysterious beginnings of life upon it, has never been withdrawn
to the satisfaction of earnest, honest science. The more the men of
official learning try to penetrate through its dark folds, the more
intense becomes that darkness, and the less they see, for they are
like the treasure-hunter, who went across the wide seas to look for
that which lay buried in his own garden.
What is then this Science? Is it biology, or the study of life in
its general aspect? No. Is it physiology, or the science of organic
function? Neither; for the former leaves the problem as much the
riddle of the Sphinx as ever; and the latter is the science of death
far more than that of life. Physiology is based upon the study of
the different organic functions and the organs necessary to the
manifestations of life, but that which science calls living matter,
is, in sober truth, _dead matter_. Every molecule of the living
organs contains the germ of death in itself, and begins dying as
soon as born, in order that its successor-molecule should live only
to die in its turn. An organ, a natural part of every living being,
is but the medium for some special function in life, and is a
combination of such molecules. The vital organ, the _whole_, puts
the mask of life on, and thus conceals the constant decay and death
of its parts. Thus, neither biology nor physiology are the science,
nor even branches of the _Science of Life_, but only that of the
_appearances_ of life. While true philosophy stands Œdipus-like
before the Sphinx of life, hardly daring to utter the paradox
contained in the answer to the riddle propounded, materialistic
science, as arrogant as ever, never doubting its own wisdom for one
moment, biologises itself and many others into the belief that it
has solved the awful problem of existence. In truth, however, has it
even so much as approached its threshold? It is not, surely, by
attempting to deceive itself and the unwary in saying that life is
but the result of molecular complexity, that it can ever hope to
promote the truth. Is vital force, indeed, only a “phantom,” as
Du-Bois Reymond calls it? For his taunt that “life,” as something
independent, is but the _asylum ignorantiæ_ of those who seek refuge
in abstractions, when direct explanation is impossible, applies with
far more force and justice to those materialists who would blind
people to the reality of facts, by substituting bombast and
jaw-breaking words in their place. Have any of the five divisions of
the functions of life, so pretentiously named—Archebiosis,
Biocrosis, Biodiæresis, Biocænosis and Bioparodosis[49], ever helped
a Huxley or a Hæckel to probe more fully the mystery of the
generations of the humblest ant—let alone of man? Most certainly
not. For life, and everything pertaining to it, belongs to the
lawful domain of the _metaphysician_ and psychologist, and physical
science has no claim upon it. “That which hath been, is that which
shall be; and that which hath been is named already—and it is known
that it is MAN”—is the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. But “man”
here, does not refer to _physical_ man—not in its esoteric meaning,
at any rate. Scalpels and microscopes may solve the mystery of the
material parts of _the shell of man_: they can never cut a window
into his soul to open the smallest vista on any of the wider
horizons of being.
-----
Footnote 49:
Or Life-origination, Life-fusion, Life-division, Life-renewal and
Life-transmission.
-----
It is those thinkers alone, who, following the Delphic injunction,
have cognized life in their _inner_ selves, those who have studied
it thoroughly in themselves, before attempting to trace and analyze
its reflection in their outer shells, who are the only ones rewarded
with some measure of success. Like the fire-philosophers of the
Middle Ages, they have skipped over the _appearances_ of light and
fire in the world of effects, and centred their whole attention upon
the producing arcane agencies. Thence, tracing these to the one
abstract cause, they have attempted to fathom the MYSTERY, each as
far as his intellectual capacities permitted him. Thus they have
ascertained that (1) the _seemingly_ living mechanism called
physical man, is but the fuel, the material, upon which life feeds,
in order to manifest itself; and (2) that thereby the inner man
receives as his wage and reward the possibility of accumulating
additional experiences of the terrestrial illusions called lives.
One of such philosophers is now undeniably the great Russian
novelist and reformer, Count Lef N. Tolstoi. How near his views are
to the esoteric and philosophical teachings of higher Theosophy,
will be found on the perusal of a few fragments from a lecture
delivered by him at Moscow before the local Psychological Society.
Discussing the problem of life, the Count asks his audience to
admit, for the sake of argument, _an impossibility_. Says the
lecturer:—
Let us grant for a moment that all that which modern science longs
to learn of life, it has learnt, and now knows; that the problem has
become as clear as day; that it is clear how organic matter has, by
simple adaptation, come to be originated from inorganic material;
that it is as clear how natural forces may be transformed into
feelings, will, thought, and that finally, all this is known, not
only to the city student, but to every village schoolboy, as well.
I am aware, then, that such and such thoughts and feelings originate
from such and such motions. Well, and what then? Can I, or cannot I,
produce and guide such motions, in order to excite within my brain
corresponding thoughts? The question—what are the thoughts and
feelings I ought to generate in myself and others, remains still,
not only unsolved, but even untouched.
Yet it is precisely this question which is the _one_ fundamental
question of the central idea of life.
Science has chosen as its object a few manifestations that accompany
life; and _mistaking_[50] the part for the whole, called these
manifestations the integral total of life....”
-----
Footnote 50:
“Mistaking” is an erroneous term to use. The men of science know
but too well that what they teach concerning life is a
materialistic fiction contradicted at every step by logic and
fact. In this particular question science is abused, and made to
serve personal hobbies and a determined policy of crushing in
humanity every spiritual aspiration and thought. “_Pretending_ to
mistake” would be more correct.—H. P. B.
-----
The question inseparable from the idea of life is not _whence_ life,
but _how one should live_ that life: and it is only by first
starting with this question that one can hope to approach some
solution in the problem of existence.
The answer to the query “How are we to live?” appears so simple to
man that he esteems it hardly worth his while to touch upon it.
... One must live the best way one can—that’s all. This seems at
first sight very simple and well known to all, but it is by far
neither as simple nor as well known as one may imagine....
The idea of life appears to man in the beginning as a most simple
and self-evident business. First of all, it seems to him that life
is in himself, in his own body. No sooner, however, does one
commence his search after that life, in any one given spot of the
said body, than one meets with difficulties. Life is not in the
hair, nor in the nails; neither is it in the foot nor the arm, which
may both be amputated; it is not in the blood, it is not in the
heart, and it is not in the brain. It is everywhere and it is
nowhere. It comes to this: life cannot be found in any of its
dwelling-places. Then man begins to look for life in Time; and that,
too, appears at first a very easy matter.... Yet again, no sooner
has he started on his chase than he perceives that here also the
business is more complicated than he had thought. Now, I have
_lived_ fifty-eight years, so says my baptismal church record. But I
know that out of these fifty-eight years I slept over twenty. How
then? have I lived all these years, or have I not? Deduct the months
of my gestation, and those I passed in the arms of my nurse, and
shall we call this life, also? Again, out of the remaining
thirty-eight years, I know that a good half of that time I slept
while moving about; and thus, I could no more say in this case,
whether I lived during that time or not. I may have lived a little,
and vegetated a little. Here again, one finds that in time, as in
the body, life is everywhere, yet nowhere. And now the question
naturally arises, whence, then, that life which I can trace to
nowhere? Now—will I learn.... But it so happens that in this
direction also, what seemed to me so easy at first, now seems
impossible. I must have been searching for something else, not for
my life, assuredly. Therefore, once we have to go in search of the
whereabouts of life—if search we have to—then it should be neither
in space nor in time, neither as cause nor effect, but as a
something which I cognize within myself as quite independent from
Space, time and causality.
That which remains to do now is to study _self_. But how do I
cognize life in myself?
This is how I cognize it. I know, to begin with, that I live; and
that I live wishing for myself everything that is good, wishing this
since I can remember myself, to this day, and from morn till night.
All that lives outside of myself is important in my eyes, but only
in so far as it co-operates with the creation of that which is
productive of _my_ welfare. The Universe is important in my sight
only because it can give _me_, pleasure.
Meanwhile, something else is bound up with this knowledge in me of
my existence. Inseparable from the life I feel, is another cognition
allied to it; namely, that besides myself, I am surrounded with a
whole world of living creatures, possessed, as I am myself, of the
same instinctive realization of their exclusive lives; that all
these creatures live for their own objects, which objects are
foreign to me; that those creatures do not know, nor do they care to
know, anything of my pretensions to an exclusive life, and that all
these creatures, in order to achieve success in their objects, are
ready to annihilate me at any moment. But this is not all. While
watching the destruction of creatures similar in all to myself, I
also know that for me too, for that precious ME in whom alone life
is represented, a very speedy and inevitable destruction is lying in
wait.
It is as if there were two “I’s” in man; it is as if they could
never live in peace together; it is as if they were eternally
struggling, and ever trying to expel each other.
One “I” says, “I alone am living as one should live, all the rest
only seems to live. Therefore, the whole _raison d’être_ for the
universe is in that _I_ may be made comfortable.”
The other “I” replies, “The universe is not for thee at all, but for
its own aims and purposes, and it cares little to know whether thou
art happy or unhappy.”
Life becomes a dreadful thing after this!
One “I” says, “I only want the gratification of all my wants and
desires, and that is why I need the universe.”
The other “I” replies, “All animal life lives only for the
gratification of its wants and desires. It is the wants and desires
of animals alone that are gratified at the expense and detriment of
other animals; hence the ceaseless struggle between the animal
species. Thou art an animal, and therefore thou hast to struggle.
Yet, however successful in thy struggle, the rest of the struggling
creatures must sooner or later crush thee.”
Still worse! life becomes still more dreadful....
But the most terrible of all, that which includes in itself the
whole of the foregoing, is that:—
One “I” says, “I want to live, to live for ever.”
And that the other “I” replies, “Thou shalt surely, perhaps in a few
minutes, die; as also shall die all those thou lovest, for thou and
they are destroying with every motion your lives, and thus
approaching ever nearer suffering, death, all that which thou so
hatest, and which thou fearest above anything else.”
This is the worst of all....
To change this condition is impossible.... One can avoid moving,
sleeping, eating, even breathing, but one cannot escape from
thinking. One thinks, and that thought, _my_ thought, is poisoning
every step in my life, as a personality.
No sooner has man commenced a conscious life than that consciousness
repeats to him incessantly without respite, over and over the same
thing again. “To live such life as you feel and see in your past,
the life lived by animals and many men too, lived in _that_ way,
which made you become what you are now—is no longer possible. Were
you to attempt doing so, you could never escape thereby the struggle
with all the world of creatures which live as you do—for their
personal objects; and then those creatures will inevitably destroy
you.”...
To change this situation is impossible. There remains but one thing
to do, and that is always done by him who, beginning to live,
transfers his objects in life outside of himself, and aims to reach
them.... But, however far he places them outside his personality, as
his mind gets clearer, none of these objects will satisfy him.
Bismarck, having united Germany, and now ruling Europe—if his reason
has only thrown any light upon the results of his activity—must
perceive, as much as his own cook does who prepares a dinner that
will be devoured in an hour’s time, the same unsolved contradiction
between the vanity and foolishness of all he has done, and the
eternity and reasonableness of that which exists for ever. If they
only think of it, each will see as clearly as the other; _firstly_,
that the preservation of the integrity of Prince Bismarck’s dinner,
as well as that of powerful Germany, is solely due: the preservation
of the former—to the police, and the preservation of the latter—to
the army; and that, so long only as both keep a good watch. Because
there are famished people who would willingly eat the dinner, and
nations which would fain be as powerful as Germany. Secondly, that
neither Prince Bismarck’s dinner, nor the might of the German
Empire, coincide with the aims and purposes of universal life, but
that they are in flagrant contradiction with them. And thirdly, that
as he who cooked the dinner, so also the might of Germany, will both
very soon die, and that so shall perish, and as soon, both the
dinner and Germany. That which shall survive alone is the Universe,
which will never give one thought to either dinner or Germany, least
of all to those who have cooked them.
As the intellectual condition of man increases, he comes to the idea
that no happiness connected with his personality is an achievement,
but only a necessity. Personality is only that incipient state from
which begins life, and the ultimate limit of life....
Where, then, does life begin, and where does it end, I may be asked?
Where ends the night, and where does day commence? Where, on the
shore, ends the domain of the sea, and where does the domain of land
begin?
There is day and there is night; there is land and there is sea;
there is life and there is _no_ life.
Our life, ever since we became conscious of it, is a pendulum-like
motion between two limits.
One limit is, an absolute unconcern for the life of the infinite
Universe an energy directed only toward the gratification of one’s
own personality.
The other limit is a complete renunciation of that personality, the
greatest concern with the life of the infinite Universe, in full
accord with it, the transfer of all our desires and good will from
one’s self, to that infinite Universe and all the creatures outside
of us.[51]
The nearer to the first limit, the less life and bliss, the closer
to the second, the more life and bliss. Therefore, man is ever
moving from one end to the other; _i.e._ he lives. THIS MOTION IS
LIFE ITSELF.
And when I speak of life, know that the idea of it is indissolubly
connected in my conceptions with that of _conscious_ life. No other
life is known to me except conscious life, nor can it be known to
anyone else.
We call life, the life of animals, organic life. But this is no life
at all, only a certain state or condition of life manifesting to us.
But what is this consciousness or mind, the exigencies of which
exclude personality and transfer the energy of man outside of him
and into that state which is conceived by us as the blissful state
of love?
What is conscious mind? Whatsoever we may be defining, we have to
define it with our conscious mind. Therefore, with what shall we
define mind?...
If we have to define all with our mind, it follows that conscious
mind cannot be defined. Yet all of us, we not only know it, but it
is the only thing which is given to us to know undeniably....
It is the same law as the law of life, of everything organic, animal
or vegetable, with that one difference that we _see_ the
consummation of an intelligent law in the life of a plant. But the
law of conscious mind, to which we are subjected as the tree, is
subjected to its law, we _see_ it not, but fulfil it....
-----
Footnote 51:
This is what the Theosophists call “living _the_ life”—in a
nut-shell.—H. P. B.
-----
We have settled that life is that which is not our life. It is
herein that lies hidden the root of error. Instead of studying that
life of which we are conscious within ourselves, absolutely and
exclusively—since we can know of nothing else—in order to study it,
we observe that which is devoid of the most important factor and
faculty of our life, namely, intelligent consciousness. By so doing,
we act as a man who attempts to study an object by its shadow or
reflection does.
If we know that substantial particles are subjected during their
transformations to the activity of the organism; we know it not
because we have observed or studied it, but simply because we
possess a certain familiar organism united to us, namely the
organism of our animal, which is but too well known to us as the
material of our life; _i.e._ that upon which we are called to work
and to rule by subjecting it to the law of reason.... No sooner has
man lost faith in life, no sooner has he transferred that life into
that which is no life, than he becomes wretched, and sees death....
A man who conceives life such as he finds it in his consciousness,
knows neither misery, nor death: for all the good in life for him is
in the subjection of his animal to the law of reason, to do which is
not only in his power, but takes place unavoidably in him. The death
of particles in the animal being, we know. The death of animals and
of man, as an animal, we know; but we know nought about the death of
conscious mind, nor can we know anything of it, _just because that
conscious mind is the very life itself_. And _Life can never be
Death_....
The animal lives an existence of bliss, neither seeing nor knowing
death, and dies without cognizing it. Why then should man have
received the gift of seeing and knowing it, and why should death be
so terrible to him that it actually tortures his soul, often forcing
him to kill himself out of sheer fear of death? Why should it be so?
Because the man who sees death is a sick man, one who has broken the
law of his life, and lives no longer a conscious existence. He has
become an animal himself, an animal which also has broken the law of
life.
The life of man is an aspiration to bliss, and that which he aspires
to is given to him. The light lit in the soul of man is bliss and
life, and that light can never be darkness, as there exists—verily
there exists for man—only this solitary light which burns within his
soul.
------------------
We have translated this rather lengthy fragment from the Report of
Count Tolstoi’s superb lecture, because it reads like the echo of
the finest teachings of the universal ethics of true theosophy. His
definition of life in its abstract sense, and of the life every
earnest theosophist ought to follow, each according to, and in the
measure of, his _natural_ capacities—is the summary and the Alpha
and the Omega of practical psychic, if not spiritual life. There are
sentences in the lecture which, to the average theosophist will seem
too hazy, and perhaps incomplete. Not one will he find, however,
which could be objected to by the most exacting, practical
occultist. It may be called a treatise on the Alchemy of Soul. For
that “solitary” light in man, which burns for ever, and can never be
darkness in its intrinsic nature, though the “animal” outside us may
remains blind to it—is that “Light” upon which the Neo Platonists of
the Alexandrian school, and after them the Rosecroix and especially
the Alchemists, have written volumes, though to the present day
their true meaning is a dark mystery to most men.
True, Count Tolstoi is neither an Alexandrian nor a modern
theosophist; still less is he a Rosecroix or an Alchemist. But that
which the latter have concealed under the peculiar phraseology of
the Fire-philosophers, purposely confusing cosmic transmutations
with Spiritual Alchemy, all that is transferred by the great Russian
thinker from the realm of the metaphysical unto the field of
practical life. That which Schelling would define as a realisation
of the identity of subject and object in the man’s inner Ego, that
which unites and blends the latter with the universal Soul—which is
but the identity of subject and object on a higher plane, or the
unknown Deity—all that Count Tolstoi has blended together without
quitting the terrestrial plane. He is one of those few _elect_ who
begin with intuition and end with _quasi_-omniscience. It is the
transmutations of the baser metals—the _animal mass_—into gold and
silver, or the philosopher’s stone, the development and
manifestation of man’s higher, SELF which the Count has achieved.
The _alcahest_ of the inferior Alchemist is the _All-geist_, the
all-pervading Divine Spirit of the higher Initiate; for Alchemy was,
and is, as very few know to this day, as much a spiritual philosophy
as it is a physical science. He who knows nought of one, will never
know much of the other. Aristotle told it in so many words to his
pupil, Alexander: “It is not a stone,” he said, of the philosopher’s
stone. “_It is in every man and in every place_, and at all seasons,
and is called the _end_ of all philosophers,” as the _Vedanta_ is
_the end_ of all philosophies.
To wind up this essay _on the Science of Life_, a few words may be
said of the eternal riddle propounded to mortals by the Sphinx. To
fail to solve the problem contained in it, was to be doomed to sure
death, as the Sphinx of life devoured the unintuitional, who would
live only in their “animal.” He who lives for Self, and only for
_Self_, will surely die, as the higher “I” tells the lower “animal”
in the Lecture. The riddle has seven keys to it, and the Count opens
the mystery with one of the highest. For, as the author on “Hermetic
Philosophy” beautifully expressed it: “The real mystery most
familiar and, at the same time, most unfamiliar to every man, _into
which he must be initiated or perish as an atheist, is himself_. For
him is the elixir of life, to quaff which, before the discovery of
the philosopher’s stone, is to drink the beverage of death, while it
confers on the adept and the _epopt_, the true immortality. He may
know truth as it really is—_Aletheia_, the breath of God, or Life,
the conscious mind in man.”
This is “the Alcahest which dissolves all things,” and Count Tolstoi
has well understood the riddle.
H. P. B.
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SIN AGAINST LIFE.
A newspaper paragraph lately declared that a certain American lady
of great wealth, residing in London, had conceived the strange
desire to possess a cloak made of the soft warm down on the breasts
of birds of Paradise. Five hundred breasts, it was said, were
required for this purpose, and two skilful marksmen, the story went
on to aver, had been sent to New Guinea to shoot the poor little
victims whose wholesale slaughter must be accomplished to gratify
this savage whim. We rejoice to observe that the whole statement has
been flatly contradicted by the _World_, apparently on the best
possible authority; but, however little the lady concerned may
deserve the reproach which the authors of the calumny endeavoured to
evoke against her, the feeling it may have excited is worth analysis
in a world where, if bird of Paradise cloaks are rare, most women
who dress luxuriously adorn themselves in one way or another at the
expense of the feathered kingdom. The principle involved in a bonnet
which is decorated with the plumage of a single bird, slaughtered
for its sake, is the same as that which would be more grotesquely
manifest in a garment that would require the slaughter of five
hundred. Too many rich people in this greedy age forget that the
grandest privilege of those who possess the means is that they have
the power of alleviating suffering. Too many, again, forget that the
sympathies of those who rule the animate world should extend beyond
the limits of their own kind; and thus we have the painful spectacle
of human “sport” associated in civilised countries still, with
pursuits which should no longer afford pleasure to men who have
emerged from the primitive life of hunters and fishers. But how is
it possible, let us consider, to stoop lowest from the proud estate
of humanity in search of ignoble gratification? It is bad to kill
any sentient creature for the sake of the savage pleasures of the
chase. It is bad, perhaps worse, to cause their destruction for the
sake of coldly profiting by their slaughter, and it is bad to
squander money in this hard world of want and wide-spread privation
on costly personal indulgence. But the acme of all that is
reprehensible in these various departments of ill-doing is surely
reached when women—who should, by virtue of their sex, be helping to
soften the ferocities of life—contrive to collect the cream of evil
from each of these varieties, and to sin against a whole catalogue
of human duties by cruel acquiescence in an unworthy fashion.
BROTHERHOOD.
The Theosophical Society has always placed in the forefront of its
programme, as its first and most important object, the formation of
the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood, without distinction of race,
creed, caste or sex. It would doubtless be incorrect to say that
this object of the Society has been entirely overlooked in the West,
but it is to be feared that not a few members of the Society have
accepted it as an amiable formula, to which no objection could be
raised, and have turned their attention almost exclusively to the
two remaining objects. And yet, without some attempt to understand
the true meaning of this Universal Brotherhood, it is idle to expect
that any great services can be rendered to the cause of Theosophy.
It may be useful to see whether any explanation can be given of the
reason for the neglect of this first object, and whether such light
may be thrown on its meaning, as may render the idea a living
reality to many who now but faintly grasp its significance.
In the first place it may be said, that in many enlightened Western
minds, there was already a familiarity with the idea thus
enunciated. Christianity has always taught the “theoretical”
equality in the sight of God, of all true believers, and politically
the dogma of “equal rights” is practically beyond the reach of
attack. The abolition of slavery, the extension of representative
government, the spread of education, and perhaps also, in some
degree, the influence of the scientific as opposed to the religious
theories of the origin and destiny of man, have all combined to
render this idea by no means difficult of apprehension, at least
intellectually. Further its acceptance in this sense has not
necessarily entailed any different view of the duties and
responsibilities of life. In the East it cannot be said that this is
the case. In India, the stringency of caste regulations causes class
distinctions to assume a very definite form, while religious
hatreds, if not more bitter than with us, enter more directly into
the life of the people, and interpose stronger barriers between man
and man than in Europe or America. Hence an Indian theosophist must,
before he can accept the first object, even in its outward form,
modify to some extent his intellectual conception of the relations
in which he stands to the rest of mankind, and he will in his life
give practical proof of the change. In his case the acceptance of
the outward form can only follow on the appreciation of the inner
meaning; that which results is that his theosophy is firmly founded
on the principle of the Universal Brotherhood.
On the other hand, in the West, a familiarity with the external side
seems, in many cases, to have prevented any attempt to go below the
surface, and to have caused men to be satisfied with vague
philanthropic sentimentality, effecting nothing, and leading
nowhere.
What then is this Universal Brotherhood, which is the main spring of
Theosophy? and what are its results?
_Socialism_ as preached in this 19th century it certainly is not.
Indeed, there would be little difficulty in shewing that modern
materialistic Socialism is directly at variance with all the
teachings of theosophy. Socialism advocates a direct interference
with the results of the law of _Karma_, and would attempt to alter
the dénouement of the parable of the talents, by giving to the man
who hid his talent in a napkin, a portion of the ten talents
acquired by the labour of his more industrious fellow.
Neither is it true that in practical benevolence is the whole idea
of universal brotherhood exemplified, though doubtless that
unselfish and unceasing work for the good of mankind, which is true
philanthropy must of necessity be one result of it. The
philanthropist may be, and no doubt often is, a true theosophist in
all but name, though there is still much of what may be called
unintelligent benevolence, the result of a mere emotional impulse;
and again there is much that is the result of very decided and very
narrow sectarian views, to which it would be absolutely impossible
to apply the epithet universal. The devotion and self-sacrifice
shown in many individual instances by Christian missionaries of
various denominations, may be taken as fairly exemplifying
philanthropy both of the unintelligent and the narrow type. They are
prepared to make any sacrifice for what they believe to be the
ultimate good of humanity, and in that sense are practising what
some others only preach, namely true unselfishness, but they are
often hampered by an intellectual inability to view both sides of
the question, and fail thereby to acquire that understanding of, and
sympathy with the difficulties and the wants of those whom they are
endeavouring to aid, which are necessary preliminaries to any work
of lasting usefulness. In a word, they too often fail to realise
that unity in mankind which truly underlies all individualism. But
having said so much, it must be added that an understanding of the
real meaning of “Brotherhood” must entail active benevolence, that
is to say work for others in some form or other, upon every one who
does not wilfully thrust aside the obligation.
Where then are we to look for the explanation, and how are we to
understand the spirit which must animate all true theosophists, if
they are to realise and follow out the first rule of the Society?
Not surely on the physical plane. Not by an attempt to force on the
intellect as a fact to be accepted, or more truly a pill to be
swallowed, a belief in similarities, equalities or identities, which
have no existence. Only a realisation of what truly constitutes man
can help us to form a conception of what brotherhood means.
Man is a complex organism as he exists on our earth to-day. He is
partly transitory, partly eternal; in one sense the creature of
circumstances, in another the creator of his own environment. But
the true man, the underlying individuality is a reflection of the
Divine. We are able to discern physical beauty, even when clad in
rags. Is it impossible that we should also recognise the beauty of
the soul, though it be for a time veiled beneath a gross material
body? The physical body is indeed nothing but the garment of the
ego, the true man; that momentarily suited to his needs and his
deserts, the livery of his servitude, which must be worn, in ever
changing forms, till the moment of his final emancipation. It is
then beyond the physical, beyond the intellectual man, that we must
look for that fraternity, arising out of unity and equality, which
cannot be found on the purely material plane of existence. The
divine soul of man, in which is posited his true individuality, is
the real man, the immortal ego, which, through the accumulated
experience of many earth lives is marching onward through the ages
to its goal, reunion with the Infinite. What matters then the
outward semblance, which our senses know as man? Our æsthetic
perception may shrink from the rags, the dirt, the ugliness which
belong to the physical environment. Our moral nature may revolt at
association with vice, with low selfish courses of life, but within
and behind all this we must endeavour to realise the continual
presence of the immortal ego, one with us, as with all humanity, as
sharing the divine nature, and ever struggling, as we are
struggling, on the upward path that leads to the realisation of the
Absolute. As Carlyle says in Sartor Resartus. “Mystical, more than
magical, is that communing of Soul with Soul, both looking
heavenward; here properly Soul first speaks with Soul; for only in
looking heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking
earthward does what we can call Union, Mutual Love, Society, begin
to be possible.”
It may be objected that in some cases it is impossible to recognise
even the glimmerings of those higher aspirations, which are the
tokens of the presence of the soul, the immortal ego. Such cases,
however, must be comparatively rare. Still there are beings—it is
almost impossible to call them human—who have so persistently
concentrated all their efforts on the gratification of their lower
consciousness, as to sever the frail link which binds them to their
higher selves. Then the true man is no longer present in the human
form, and brotherhood becomes an impossibility. But we may in truth
almost ignore the existence of this type of mankind, for even when
an intellectual materialism seems to be the sole ruling principle,
we dare not deny the presence of that capacity for higher things
which must exist in all who can still truly be called men.
Surely then it is in this view of our relations to our fellow men,
that we shall find that guiding influence which may enable us to
rise above the sordid considerations of our ordinary earthly
existence. It is no sectarian belief that is here advanced; it is
the essence of the teaching of Jesus, as it was of Gautama; nor is
it a mere formula, to be accepted as an article of faith, and then
laid on the shelf. Once understood, it must influence all who have
sufficient strength of purpose to fight their own lower selfish
personalities, and must lead them to the practical realisation of
their aspirations towards true unselfishness and active benevolence.
But there lurks a danger even in the use of the word unselfishness.
It has been the text of sermons from every pulpit in Christendom for
centuries, and with what small results? No doubt the duty nearest at
hand must not be neglected, and it is the duty of every one to do
what he can to render those about him happier. But many stop there
and consider that all their work consists in the practice of
self-abnegation in their own small circle. Does not the broader view
of human life here set forth suggest a new sphere of usefulness, and
therefore of duty? It is for every man to determine what he can do
for the good of humanity; all are not equally gifted, but all can do
something. Some theosophists appear to be satisfied with
intellectual study, or the development of their own spiritual
nature, and neither of these two courses is to be neglected; but
something more must be done. “It is more blessed to give than to
receive,” and the acquirement of knowledge brings with it the
obligation of spreading it. This is work from which none need
shrink, and all who truly desire to work for Theosophy, which is in
the highest sense “the religion of humanity,” will find the work
ready to their hand, and be able to assist in bringing the Light “to
them that sit in darkness.”
T. B. H.
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PYTHAGORIC SENTENCES OF DEMOPHILUS.
Esteem that to be eminently good, which, when communicated to
another, will be increased to yourself.
Be persuaded that those things are not your riches which you do not
possess in the penetralia of the reasoning power.
As many passions of the soul, so many fierce and savage despots.
No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself.
BLOOD-COVENANTING.[52]
-----
Footnote 52:
“The Blood-Covenant, a Primitive Rite, and its bearings on
Scripture.” By H. Clay Trumbull, D.D. London: Redway.
-----
Particular attention has been recently directed to this subject of
_Blood-Covenant_ by the experiences of explorers in Africa, who
appear to have discovered in that Dark Land some of the primitive
facts the gory ghost of which has long haunted our European mind in
the Eschatological phase.
Stanley, an especial sufferer from the practice, denounces the
blood-brotherhood as a _beastly cannibalistic ceremony_. “For the
fiftieth time my poor arm was scarified and my blood shed for the
cause of civilization.” As the writer of this book observes: “The
blood of a fair proportion of all the first families of equatorial
Africa now courses in Stanley’s veins; and if ever there was an
American citizen who could pre-eminently appropriate to himself the
national motto ‘_E pluribus unum_,’ Stanley is the man.”
In his book, Dr. Trumbull has collected a mass of data from a wide
range of sources to illustrate what he terms the “_Primitive rite of
covenanting by the inter-transfusion of blood_.”
Dr. Trumbull is anxious to make the efficacy of the rite depend upon
the recognition of a vivifying virtue in the blood itself, as the
essence of life. But such recognition appears to have been remote
enough from the Primitive thought. The Aborigines were not Jews or
Christians. They gave of their life without always thinking of the
exact equivalent or superior value received. They gave it as the
witness to the troth they plighted and the covenant which they
intended to keep. His theory of interpretation is that there was a
dominating and universal conviction that the “blood is the life;
that blood-transfer is soul-transfer, and that blood-sharing, human
or _divine_-human, secures an inter-union of natures; and that a
union of the human nature with the divine is the highest ultimate
attainment reached out after by the most primitive, as well as the
most enlightened, mind of humanity.”
His collection of facts may serve a most useful purpose as
eye-openers to other people (and for other facts to follow), just as
they appear to have been to himself. The book is interesting, if not
profound; and nothing that follows in this article is intended to
decry it, or to prevent the readers of LUCIFER from looking into it
if they do not feel too great a “scunner” at sight of the
gilded-gory illustration on the cover. But the work is written by
one who talks to us out of a window of Noah’s Ark, and who still
seems to think the Hebrew Bible is the rim of the universe. We value
and recommend the book solely for its facts, not for its theories,
nor for its bibliolatry.
In all studies of this kind which make use of the word “Primitive,”
it is the fundamental facts that we first need; and next a
first-hand acquaintanceship with all the facts, so that we may do
our own thinking for ourselves and strike our light within by which
we can read the facts without, as the primary and essential
procedure in the endeavour to attain the truth.
Also the facts may be genuine and honestly presented, yet the
interpretation may be according to an inadequate or a “bogus”
theory. The truth is that no bibliolator can be trusted to interpret
the past of our race now being unveiled by evolution. He is born and
begotten with the blinkers on. His mode of interpretation is to get
behind us, to lay the hands upon our eyes in front, and ask us to
listen whilst he gives us his views of the past! But the
non-evolutionist cannot interpret the past from lack of a true
standpoint with regard to the beginnings or rather the processes of
becoming. He can begin anywhere and at any time short of the
starting-point. There is nothing for it but to break away, and turn
round to see for ourselves whether the traditionary vision of the
Blinkerists be true or false. The facts alone are the final
determinatives of the Truth. But we must have the whole of them and
not a few, whether judiciously or Jesuitically selected to support a
Christian theory. Whereas, the object and aim of this work, the bias
of the writer, and the trend of his arguments, are all on the line
of showing or suggesting that the blood-covenant was the result of
some innate instinct or divine revelation which prefigured and
foreshadowed, and may be taken to indicate and authorize, the
Christian scheme of atonement, and the remission of sin by the
shedding of innocent blood. The writer asserts that this primitive
symbolism was “_made a reality in Jesus Christ_” in whom “_God was
to give of his blood in the blood of his Son for the revivifying of
the sons of Abraham in the Blood of the Eternal Covenant_.” But it
can be demonstrated that the covenant by blood did not commence
where Dr. Trumbull begins—with a religious yearning God-ward for the
establishing of a brotherhood between the human nature and the
Divine. The root-idea was not that of an “inter-union of the
spiritual natures by the inter-commingling of blood for the sake of
an inter-communion with deity.” That, at least, was by no means the
“_primitive_ rite,” which the blood-covenant is here called. The
many forms of the blood-covenant can only be unified at the root,
_i.e._, in the beginning, not at the end. They are not to be
understood apart from the primitive language of signs, as in Tattoo,
the very primitive biology of the early observers, and the most
primitive sociology of the Totemic times.
Time was, and may be still, when the blood-covenant would often
serve as the one protection against being killed and eaten. Even the
cannibals will not partake of their own Totemic brothers. Also the
covenant was extended to certain animals which were made of kin and
held to be sacred as brothers of the blood.
The Blood-covenant takes many forms besides that of the
blood-brotherhood, which are not to be explained by this writer’s
theory of exchange.
When the blood of an African woman accidentally spurted into the eye
of Dr. Livingstone, she claimed him for her blood relation, without
there being any exchange of blood for blood.
Dr. Trumbull claims the Egyptians as witnesses to the truth of his
interpretation. But so far from their highest conception of “a union
with the Divine nature” being an inter-flowing and interfusion of
blood, the soul of blood was the very lowest, that is the first, in
a series of seven souls!
Their highest type of the soul was the sun that vivified for ever
called Atmu, the Father Soul.[53] The bases of natural fact which
lie at the foundation of the Blood-covenant, preceded any and all
such ideas as those postulated by the writer as being extant from
the first, such as “a longing for oneness of life with God;” an
“out-reaching after inter-union and inter-communion with God.” There
was no conception of a one God extant in the category of human
consciousness when the rites of a blood-covenant were first founded.
There could be no atonement where there was no sense of sin or a
breaking of the law. All through, the writer is apt to confuse the
past with the present, and eager to read the present into the
past.[54]
-----
Footnote 53:
The Theosophists are reminded that the “seven souls” are what we
call the “seven principles” in man. “Blood” is the _principle_ of
the Body, the lowest in our septenary, as the highest is “Atma,”
which may well be symbolized by the Sun; Atma being the light and
life in man, as the physical sun is the light and life of our
solar system.—ED.
Footnote 54:
The arcane doctrine teaches that the “blood” rites are as old as
the Third-Root race, being established in their final form by the
Fourth Parent race in commemoration of the separation of
androgynous mankind, their forefathers, into males and females.
Mr. G. Massey is a strict scholar, who holds only to that which is
made evident to him, and ignores the Occultistic division of
mankind into Races, and the fact that we are in our Fifth-Root
race, and would, of course, refuse to carry mankind back into
_pre_-Tertiary times. Yet his researches and the fruit of his
life-labour, corroborate, by their numberless new facts revealed
by him, most wonderfully, the teachings of the “Secret Doctrines.”
(ED.)
-----
The real roots of matters like these are to be found only in certain
facts of nature which were self-revealing, and not in the sphere of
concepts and causation! And it is only when we can reach the natural
genesis of primitive customs and fetishtic beliefs, and trace their
lines of descent, that we can understand and interpret their meaning
in the latest symbolical and superstitious phase of religious rites.
Nothing can be more fatally false than to interpret the physics of
the past by means of modern metaphysic, with the view of proving
that certain extant doctrines of delusion are the lineal descendants
of an original Divine revelation, which has been bound up in two
Testaments for the favoured few.
The blood-covenant is undoubtedly a primitive rite; but the author
of this work does not penetrate to its most primitive or significant
phases. These are not to be read by the light of Hebrew revelation,
but by the light of nature if at all. Many primitive customs and
rites survived amongst the Semites, but they themselves were not
amongst the aboriginal races of the world. We have to get far beyond
their stage to understand the meaning of the myths, legends, rites,
and customs, that were preserved by them as sacred survivals from
the remoter past. The symbolical and superstitious phases of custom
cannot be directly explained on the spot where we may first meet
with them in going back. In becoming symbolical they had already
passed out of their primary phase, and only indirectly represent the
natural genesis of the truly primitive rite. I have spent the best
part of my life in tracking these rites and customs to their natural
origin, and in expounding the typology and symbols by which the
earliest meaning was expressed.
What then was the root-origin of a blood-covenant? The primary
perceptions of primitive or archaic men included the observation
that they came from the mother, and first found themselves at her
breast.
Next they saw that the child was fleshed by the mother, and formed
from her blood, the flow of which was arrested to be solidified, and
take form in their own persons. Thus the red amulet which was worn
by the Egyptian dead, was representative of the blood of Isis, who
came from herself, and made her own child without the fatherhood,
when men could only derive their blood and descent from the mother.
This amulet was put on by her, says Plutarch, when she found herself
_enceinte_ with Horus, her child, who was derived from the mother
alone, or was traced solely to the blood of Isis. Primitive men
could perceive that the children of one mother were of the same
blood. This, the first form of a blood-brotherhood, was the first to
be recognised as the natural fact. Uterine brothers were
blood-brothers. The next stage of the brotherhood was Totemic; and
the mode of extending the brotherhood to the children of several
mothers implies, as it necessitated, some form of symbolic rite
which represented them as brothers, or as typically becoming of the
one blood. Here we can track the very first step in sociology which
was made when the typical blood-brotherhood of the Totem was formed
in imitation of the natural brotherhood of the mother-blood. The
modes and forms of the Covenant can be identified by the Totemic
mysteries, some of which yet survive in the crudest condition. The
brotherhood was entered at the time of puberty; that is, at the time
of re-birth, when the boy was re-born as a man, and the child of the
mother attained the soul of the fatherhood, and was permitted to
join the ranks of the begetters. The mystery is one with that of
Horus, child of the mother alone, who comes to receive the soul of
the father in _Tattu_, the region of establishing the son as the
father, which is still extant in the mysteries, and the symbolism of
_Tattoo_.
This re-birth was enacted in various ways by typically re-entering
the womb. One of these was by burial in the earth, the tomb or place
of re-birth being the image of the maternal birth-place all the
world over. Thus when the Norsemen or other races prepared a hole
under the turf, and buried their cut and bleeding arms to let the
blood flow, and commingle in one as the token of a covenant, they
were returning typically to the condition of uterine twins, and the
act of burial for the purpose of a re-birth was a symbolical mode of
establishing the social brotherhood upon the original grounds of the
natural brotherhood of blood. Thus the blood-covenant did not
originate in the set transfusion or inter-fusion of blood. In the
Totemic mysteries the pubescent lad was admitted by the shedding of
his blood, with or without any interchange. The blood itself was the
symbol of brotherhood, and the shedding of it was the seal of a
covenant.
Nor was this merely because flesh was formed of blood, or the first
men were made of the mystical red soil, as with the _aarea_ of the
Tahitians, or the red earth of the Adamic man. Most of these
primitive rites, the Blood-Covenant included, had their
starting-point from the period of puberty. It was at this time the
lads who were not brothers uterine were made brothers of the Totem
at what was termed the festival of young-man-making. The proper
period for circumcision, or cutting and sealing, as still practised
by the oldest aborigines, is the time of puberty, the natural coming
of age. It is then they enter the Totemic Brotherhood. Now in
Egyptian, the word _khet_ or _khut_ = cut, means to cut and to seal.
_Khetem_ is to enclose, bind, seal, and is applied to sealing. The
same root passes into Assyrian and Hebrew as _Khatan_, _Katam_ or
_Chatan_, with the same meaning. In Arabic, _Khatana_ is to
circumcise. Cutting and sealing are identical as the mode of
entering into a Blood-Covenant. Circumcision was _one_ form of the
sealing, but there were various kinds of cuts employed, and
different parts of the body were scarified and tattooed. In the
primary phase, then, the blood-brotherhood was established by the
shedding of blood; the register was written in blood, and instead of
the covenant being witnessed by the seal of red wax, it was stamped
in blood.
The reason for phallic localization is to be sought in the fact that
the young men not only entered the Brotherhood by the baptism of
blood, they were also received into the higher ranks of the fathers,
and sworn in to live an orderly, legal and cleanly life, henceforth,
as the pro-creators and loyal preservers of the race.
But this was not the only clue directly derived from nature. There
is another reason why blood should have become the sacred sign of a
covenant. Amongst many primitive races blood, or the colour red, is
the symbol of _Tapu_, the sign of sanctity. The bones of the dead
were covered with red ochre as a means of protection by the most
widely scattered races in the world. The stamp of a red hand on the
building, or a crimson daub upon the gravestone will render them
sacred. The Kaffirs will wash their bodies with blood as a
protection against being wounded in battle. The colour of
robin-redbreast still renders him _tapu_ or sacred to English
children.
Blood having become a sign of that which is true and sacred, on
account of the Covenant, it is then made the symbol of all that is
sacred. It can be used for the purpose of anointing the living or
the dead, can be the seal of the marriage or other ceremonies and
rites of covenanting. It is the primæval token of _tapu_.
As I have elsewhere shown, blood was sworn by as the type of that
which was true, the primary one of the typical Two Truths of Egypt.
It was so in all the mysteries, and is so to-day, including the
mysteries of Masonry. I have suggested the derivation of the masonic
name from the Egyptian _Sen_ = son, for blood and brotherhood. The
working Mason in Egyptian is the _makh_ (_makht_) by name. _Makh_
means to work, inlay by rule and measure. We see that _makh_
modifies into _mâ_ for measure, and for that which is just and true.
_Mâ-sen_ = Mason, would denote the true brotherhood; and as _sen_ is
also blood, the true brotherhood as the blood-brotherhood would be
the masons in the mystical or occult sense. Red is the colour of
_Mâ_ or Truth personified, and _sen_ is blood. Blood is sworn by
because it is the colour of truth, or the true colour. Now in old
English the word _seng_ means both “blood” and “true.” Here, then,
we find the origin of the oath, which constitutes the supreme
expression in the vocabulary of our English roughs, when they use
the oath of the blood-covenant, and swear by the word “bloody!” When
they wax emphatic, everything they say becomes “bloody true.” This
is the exact equivalent of “seng it is” for “it is true.” According
to the primitive mysteries, this mode of swearing, or establishing
the covenant, was sacred whilst kept piously secret, and it becomes
impious when made public or profane. Such mysteries were very simply
natural at first, and it was this primitive simplicity and nearness
to nature which demanded the veil to protect them from the gaze of
the later consciousness. Time was when the English felon would carry
a red handkerchief with him to the scaffold, and hold it in his hand
as a signal that he had betrayed no secrets, but died “bloody true,”
or true blood.
These customs were symbolical, but there is a hint of the
blood-covenant beyond them—a hint received direct from Nature
herself—call it revelation if you please. In the first rude ethics
we find that the time for the sexes to come together was recognised
by the intimation of nature, made in her own sign-language at the
period of feminine pubescence. Nature gave the hint, and a covenant
was established. Henceforth, the child that could not enter that
covenant would be protected from brutal assault, and was allowed, or
rather compelled, to run about unclothed in token of her exemption.
It is here in the swearing-in and covenanting of the sexes at the
time of pubescence that we discover another real and most secret,
_i.e._, sacred root of the rite.
The self-revelation made by nature to primitive man was very
primitive in its kind. She not only demonstrated that the blood was
the life, or that the life passed away with the letting out of the
blood, but in another domain, which our author has not entered, she
showed that blood was, and how it was, the future life. Blood was
the primary witness to the future life which the child received from
the mother. It was the token of the time when the female could
become the bearer of that future life which took flesh and form in
her blood.
The blood-covenanting of the primitive races is still a part of the
most elaborate system of making presents, which are the express
witnesses of proffered troth and intended fealty. The most precious
or sacred things are parted from in proof. The best is given on
either side. And in the offering of blood, they were giving their
very life, that in which the best attains supremacy. But these
primitive rites can never be truly read except by those who are
deeply grounded in the fact, and well acquainted with the evidence,
that sign-language was primordial, that gestures preceded verbal
speech, and acting was an earlier mode of representing than talking.
Primitive men could only _do_ that which we can _say_. In Egyptian
that which is _said_ is _done_. And in these primitive customs and
religious rites we see the early races of men performing in
pantomime the early drama of dumb or inarticulate humanity. And it
seems as if this primitive language could produce an impression and
reach a reality that are unapproachable by means of words. The
significance of the teaching went all the deeper when it was incised
in the flesh and branded into the blood. For example, what a
terrific glimpse of reality is revealed by the fact that the
Malagasy make their sign of a blood-covenant by an incision in the
skin that covers the bosom, and this opening with its utterance of
blood is called _ambavfo_, the “mouth of the heart.” Thus the
covenant is made in the blood, which is the very life, uttering
itself with the mouth of the heart. In Egyptian the covenant, the
oath, and the life, have the same name of _Ankhu_; and the greatest
oath was to swear by the life or the blood of the Pharaoh. The
primitive mode was to slash the flesh and let the hot blood spout
and speak for itself with the “mouth of the heart,” the utterance of
the living letter and red seal of the wound, as true witness.
No verbal covenant or written record of the modern races has ever
had the full force and effect of these modes of covenanting amongst
the primitive people of the past. The moderns do not keep their word
with anything like the inviolable sanctity of the aborigines; when
once they are sworn to fealty, the covenant is almost never broken.
Few things in poetry are more pathetic than the story related of
Tolo, a chief of the Shastika Indians on the Pacific Coast. In the
year 1852 he entered into a tribal treaty with Colonel McKee and was
desirous of making a covenant for life in some way that could not
possibly be violated. Instead of exchanging blood he proposed a
transfer of their own two personal names. Henceforth he was to be
known as McKee, and the Colonel as Tolo. But the treaty was
discarded, the covenant was not kept by the American Government. In
reply, the Indian cast off the title of McKee and refused to resume
his own tarnished and degraded name of Tolo! He considered that his
very identity was lost by this mode of losing his good name! I doubt
whether 1,800 years of Christianity have evolved in the later races
of men a consciousness of truth, probity, and loyalty, so quick and
profound as that!
The writer of this book remains stone-blind to its own teachings
with regard to the doctrine of survivals, and of the past persisting
as a pattern for the present.
To quote his own words, he rejoices in the “_blessed benefits of the
covenant of blood_,” and is still a fervent supporter of the great
delusion inculcated by the gospel of ruddy gore.
The doctrine is fundamentally the same whether the Greek murderer
was cleansed from his guilt by the filthy purification of pig’s
blood or the modern sinner is supposed to be washed white in the
Blood of the Lamb.
As I had already written in my “Natural Genesis,” “the religious
ritual of the moderns is crowded like a kitchen-midden with the
refuse relics of customs that were natural once, and are now clung
to as if they were supernatural in their efficacy because their
origin has been unknown. Indeed, the current masquerade in these
appurtenances of the past is as sorry a sight to the archaic student
as are the straw crowns and faded finery of the kings and queens
whose domain is limited to the lunatic asylum.” Dr. Trumbull
endorses the doctrine that “_Mortals gave the blood of their
first-born sons in sacrifice to the Supreme Being, then the Supreme
Being gave the blood of his first-born male in sacrifice_” for men;
and there you have the covenant of blood in its final form!
It is true that first-born children were offered in sacrifice just
as the first take of fish was returned to the waters with a lively
sense of future favours from the Typhonian power thus propitiated,
but where is the sense of talking about the thought of an
intercommunion with the divine nature through a blood-union with God
as a concept in the mind of primitive man? It is true the recognized
nature-powers, or devils of physical force, were invoked with blood,
but what was the status of these powers when the beasts of blood
were their representatives on earth, and the blood, which is the
life, was given to the Serpent, for instance, as the likeness of
life itself because it sloughed its own skin and manifested the
enviable power of self-renewal? The profounder and more fundamental
our researches, the more clearly does it become apparent that we
have been victimised by the unsuspected survival of the past in the
present, and that the veriest leavings of primitive man have been
palmed off upon us by the ignorant as sacred mysteries and
revelations guaranteed to be original and divine. Continually we
find that our errors of belief are based upon very simple truths
that have been misunderstood through a misinterpretation of
primitive matters and modes of representation by means of modern
ignorance. The blood-covenant of the aboriginal races has
undoubtedly survived and culminated as Christian in the frightful
formula, “Without blood there is no remission of sin.” Not merely
the blood of beasts or human creatures this time, but the ruddy life
and ichor of a supposed Divine Being, who was made flesh on purpose
to pour out the blood for Almighty vengeance to lap in the person of
a gory ghost of God. One of the seven primal powers in Egypt was
represented by the hawk, because it drank blood. One of the Seven in
Akkad was the vampire. And this type of blood-drinking has been
divinised at last as the Christian God.
Pindar says: “It is impossible for me to call one of the blessed
gods a cannibal.” But the Christian scheme makes the Only God a
cannibal, who offers the flesh and blood of his own Son and Very
Self as sacrificial food made sacred for his followers. Such a god
is, in two senses, _chimerical_. How natural an accompaniment is the
picture of the Crucified Christ to the Zuni saying, “My Father, this
day shalt thou refresh thyself with blood!” Such a doctrine is but
an awful shadow of the primitive past—the shadow, so to say, of our
old earth in the very far-off past—that remains to eclipse the light
of Heaven to-day, and darken the souls of men in the present through
the survival of savage spiritualism in its final Christian phase,
where the extant doctrines are little more than an ignorant
perversion of the most primitive knowledge.
It is in this final and not in the primitive phase that we shall
identify the irrationality, the impiety, the disgusting grossness of
Mythology under the surface of theological varnish and veneer. The
only senselessness is in the survival of Myths without their sense.
Lastly, it is observable that in the genuine rite the
covenant-makers always bled _directly_ and suffered each for
themselves. Later on we find that other victims were substituted by
purchase, by fraud, or by force; hence the blood-covenant by proxy.
Now the Christian scheme is that which culminated in the
blood-covenant and atonement by proxy. “_His offspring for his life
he gave_,” is said of an Akkadian ruler who sacrificed his own son
as an expiatory offering to save himself from the consequences of
his own sin. And this doctrine of the despicable, this type of the
fatherhood, is elevated to the status of divinity by Dr. Trumbull.
To quote his own words, the inspired author of the narrative found
in the Hebrew Genesis shows “Abel lovingly and trustfully reaching
out toward God with _substitute_ blood!”
And there began for the Historic Christians that vast perversion of
a primitive custom which culminated at last in the Christian
doctrine of vicarious sacrifice, based upon the mythology of the Old
Testament being literalized in the New. Now we have the ludicrous
spectacle of salvation by means of a rite which has lost all the
manhood, all the morality, all the meaning, that was put into it by
the despised races of uncivilized men.
The eucharistic rite is incredibly primitive when really understood.
The bread and wine of the Christian sacrament still represent the
male spirit and the female source of life. The “Blood of Jesus,”
which was to be “drink indeed,” is identical with the “Blood of
Bacchus,” which preceded historic Christianity, and has been
substituted for the human or animal blood of the earlier mysteries.
Imbibing the blood of the Christ did not originate in any historic
or personal transaction. Also the blood of Christ, or Mithras, or
Horus, employed in drinking the covenant, was preceded by the blood
of Charis. In some of the Gnostic mysteries we have the proof that
the first form of the saving blood was feminine, not masculine at
all. Irenæus presents us with a picture of profound interest from
the anthropological point of view.
He tells us how Marcus performed the eucharistic rite with the blood
of Charis, instead of the blood of Christ. He handed cups to the
women and bade them consecrate these in his presence. Then, by the
use of magical incantation, “Charis was thought to drop her own
blood into the cup” thus consecrated. (B. I. 13, 2.)
There is but one known fact in natural phenomena which will fitly
account as _Vera Causa_ for a monthly Sacrament, celebrated every
twenty-eight days, or thirteen times to the year; which fact was
commemorated by the Blood-Covenant of Charis ( _Vide_ “Nat. Gen.” V.
ii. section 12, for proofs). This kind of blood-covenant can be
paralleled in the Yain or Yonian mysteries of India.
When rightly understood, the eucharist is a survival of the “beastly
cannibalistic ceremony,” whether considered as the blood of Charis
or the blood of Christ, or partaken of as the red Tent wine or the
“bloody wafer” of Rome.
We welcome Dr. Trumbull’s contribution on the subject, although he
has but “breathed a vein” of it, because these rites and customs
have to be unveiled, and when they are at last exposed in all the
simplicity of naked nature the erroneous ideas read into them, the
delusive inferences drawn from them, the false illusions painted
upon the veil that concealed the truth about them, will be doomed to
pass away. To explain the true is the only effectual mode of
exploding the false.
GERALD MASSEY.
=Correspondence.=
CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESSED TO THE AUTHOR OF “LIGHT ON THE PATH.”
I.
“What are the senses called astral, in reality? Are they not really
spiritual, seizing on the inner essence of things and interpreting
it. The ordinary psychic or clairvoyant surely does not use the
astral senses? Yet he sees things which we do not see. It would be
well to explain this.”
B. K.
_A._ The senses called astral in the comments on “Light on the Path”
are the senses which perceive the inner essence, certainly; which
are cognisant of the life underlying every form of matter. The
ordinary psychic or clairvoyant only perceives other forms of matter
than those we ordinarily see, and perceives them as a child
perceives the forms in this world at first, without understanding
their meaning. The astral senses carry beyond matter, and enlighten
man with regard to any form of life which especially interests him.
They show the poet painter, and composer the things they express to
other men, who regard these great ones as beings of another
order—beings with the gift of genius. So they are, and the vigour of
that genius carries them on into the inner life where meaning, and
harmony, and the indefinable all-desired are to be perceived.
Wordsworth saw it in nature, he recognised the “spirit in the
woods”—not the wood-nymphs but the divine spirit of peace which
teaches a lesson in life. Richard Jeffries saw it in nature, too, as
perhaps no other man ever has seen it; through the finite visible
world he perceived the infinite invisible one, and before he died he
had begun to know that the visible world does not exist. Turner,
perhaps, is the only parallel. By the invisible world I must repeat
again that I do not mean what the spiritualists call by that name—a
new world of other forms. I mean the formless world. It is the
farthest limit man’s _consciousness_ can reach to; and only the pure
and star-like soul can become even aware of its existence. It is not
man’s divine nature, but the man who enters it with any reverence
for the great miracle of life can only do so by the aid of his
divine nature, whether as a poet, a painter, or an occultist. The
soul which enters it without reverence is unable to endure its
extreme rarity of atmosphere and turns to the psychic-astral in
which to live; such men become madmen and suicides, more or less
pronounced, as men do who refuse to dwell in any form of physical
life but the grossest and simplest. There is some law of life which
impels men onward—call it evolution or developement or what you
will; and a man can no more go downwards without suffering than a
tree can be placed with its branches in the ground, instead of its
roots, without discomfort, and in the end, death.
I propose to use two phrases which have been suggested to me; the
psychic-astral and the divine-astral. This seems the only way to
make my meaning clear, for the word astral has two meanings, its own
proper derivative one, from the Sanskrit _stri_ to strew light, and
that given it by the use of all occultists. Paracelsus appropriated
the word for all things sidereal, subject to the moon and stars,
part and parcel of this material universe, even though formed as
Dryden says of “purest atoms of the air.” In this sense the
spiritualists and psychics have the right of custom to use it as
they do, to describe their world of finer forms. In this meaning an
astral shape is the form of the human soul, still in possession of
the passions which make it human; and the astral senses perceive not
the subtle and supreme glory which Shelley seized on in Prometheus,
but a region full of shapes and forms differing but little from
those we now wear, and still distinctly material.
The “astral man” in the “Comments on Light on the Path” should have
been written the divine-astral man, according to this evident
difference of meaning between the present writer and all other
writers on occultism.
II.
“Are not the _astral_ senses used by every great poet or inventor
though he does not see clairvoyantly at all? _i.e._ does not see
elementals, astral pictures, forms, &c.”
FAUST.
The answer to the former question seems to contain the answer to
this, which is clearly prompted by a conception of the word “astral”
in its divine sense.
III.
1. “There is a law of nature which insists that a man shall read
these mysteries for himself. Will all men seeking the occult path
read these mysteries alike, or will each man find the interpretation
peculiarly adapted to his own phrase of development. No two men read
the mysteries contained in the Bhagavat Gita quite alike, each gains
the glimpses of light which he is able to assimilate and no more.”
_A._ This seems to be rather a statement of a truth than a question
which can be answered in any way other than putting it into
different words, perhaps not so good.
2. “Is the outer world the reflection of the world within? like a
shadowed reproduction in clumsy form, the inner being reality?”
_A._ This is what should be. But materialists have brought their
sense of reality into the shadowed life.
3. “How is the intuition to be developed which enables one to grasp
swift knowledge?”
_A._ To me no way is known but that of living the life of a
disciple.
4. “Can the laws in super-nature only act on their own plane, or can
their reflection be brought down intact in their own purity to
govern physical life.”
_A._ Surely this must be so; yet rarely, for when it is accomplished
the man would be divine, a Buddha!
5. “To be incapable of tears”—does not that mean that the physical
emotions, being merged into the inner physical, that tears are
impossible as being an outward phase of the physical nature—whereas
the psychical emotions, to use a physical term are vibratory.
_A._ “The whole of ‘Light on the Path,’ is written in an astral
cipher” is stated at the outset of the “comments;” the word “tears”
does not refer to physical tears in any way.
It is the only word which will convey any idea whatever of the
moisture of life, that which bursts from the human soul in its
experience of sensation and emotion, and in the passion of its
hunger for them.
6. “How is one to take the snake of self in a steady grasp and
conquer it?”
W.
_A._ This is the great mystery which each man must solve for
himself.
IV.
WALLASEY, Oct. 1st
Referring to the comments on “Light on the Path,” in the first
number of LUCIFER, may I ask whether the full paradox “Before the
eyes can see they must be incapable of tears, and yet no eyes
incapable of tears can see,” _i.e._, see good or God, is not truer
and stronger than its part?
“Therefore the soul of the occultist must become stronger than joy
and greater than sorrow” I presume means that he must not _seek_ joy
or _fear_ sorrow, not that he may not enjoy nor sorrow?
The phrase by itself may read “Before the eyes can see they must be
incapable of tears,” tearless, dry, in fact dead! which is obviously
not the author’s intention in “Light on the Path.”
Yours truly,
A. E. I.
_A._ Once more I must refer to the preliminary statement in the
comments that “Light on the Path,” is written in an astral cipher,
and that tears do not mean the tears of the physical body, but the
rain drops that come from the passion-life of the human soul. These
being stayed for ever, the astral sight is no longer blinded or
blurred. Divine love and charity then find room, when personal
desire is gone. Joy and sorrow, _for oneself_, then drop naturally
into another place than that which they filled before.
V.
(1.) I desire very strongly to obtain conquest over “self;” would my
using the occult means for so doing, which apparently to me lie
without the _ordinary_ experience of Christians, necessitate my
sacrificing any iota of my belief in the _power of Christ_?
(2.) If I submit myself to the occult conditions under which the
four first rules in “Light on the Path” may be “engraved on my heart
and life;” will these conditions permit me to _pray throughout_ for
the Divine help and strength of the Eternal Christ, who has passed
the portal, opened the “way,” and whom I believe to be the “Master
of Masters,” the “Lord of Angels”?
(3.) Do the words—“the disciple” ... “must then so shut the gates of
his soul that _no comforter_ can enter there nor any enemy”—mean,
that we are wilfully to exclude ourselves from any desire for the
sympathy, strength, and support of the spirit of One who said “No
man cometh unto the Father but by Me,” and who drank the cup of
agony to the very dregs for love of the Brotherhood?
L. H. FF.
_A._ (1.) Not any iota of your belief in the power of the
Christ-spirit would or should be sacrificed; it would rather
increase, for that spirit is the same Divine overshadowing which has
inspired every Redeemer.
(2.) It matters very little by what name you call the Master of
Masters, so that you do appeal to “_Its_” power throughout.
(3.) Man can find no comforter save in the Divine Spirit within
himself. Does not the tale of the life of Jesus illustrate this,
looking at it from one point of view? In what dread isolation he
lived and died; His disciples, even those who were most beloved by
Him, could not reach His spirit in its sublime moments, or in the
hours of its keenest suffering. So with every one who raises himself
by effort above the common life of man, in however small a degree.
Solitude becomes a familiar state, for nothing personal, not even a
personal God, can comfort or cheer any longer.
VI.
“Is there any chance of self-deception? May one enter the path so
gradually as to be conscious of no radical change, representing a
change of life or stage of progression? How is it with one who has
never experienced a great and lasting sorrow, or an all-absorbing
joy, but who in the midst of both joy and sorrow strives to remember
others, and to feel that he hardly deserves the joy, and that his
sorrow is meagre in the presence of the great all-pain? How is such
a one to enter through the gates? By what sign shall he know them?”
Y. H.
_A._ It is difficult for such a one to know anything of what lies
beneath the surface of his nature until it has been probed by the
fiercer experiences of life. But, of course, the theory of
re-incarnation makes it possible that such experiences are left
behind in the past. The entrance to the gates is marked by one
immutable sign; the sense that personal joy or sorrow no longer
exist. The disciple lives for humanity, not for himself; works for
all creatures that suffer instead of knowing that he himself has
pain.
------------------
“ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”
“As the Editors of LUCIFER kindly invite questions concerning
Theosophy and kindred subjects, an honest enquirer into these
matters would welcome an answer to the following difficulty:
“In his book on ‘Esoteric Buddhism,’ Mr. Sinnett states that souls
or spirits pass the long interval between the one incarnation and
another in a sort of quiescent, and at least half-unconscious,
state, losing enough of their identity to preclude their carrying
any recollection of one incarnation on to the next. In his novel,
“Karma,” Mr. Sinnett represents one character, Mrs. Lakesby, gifted
with more than usual powers, as being very fond, when she has the
chance, of allowing her spirit to escape from the trammels of the
body and meeting the spirits of departed—that is, dead friends—“and
others” on the Astral plane where she holds agreeable converse with
them.
“How are these two statements reconcilable?
“October 22nd, 1887.
N. D.”
Mr. Sinnett would probably reply that the answer could only be given
fully by reprinting all that he has written in various published
works, on the conditions of existence in Kama-Loca, and Devachan,
and on the higher and lower aspects of _Self_. The normal course of
events will conduct a human being who quits the material body
through Kama-Loca to the Devachanic state, in which Mrs. Lakesby
would not be able to interview him. But while in Kama-Loca she might
at least imagine she did this, and, perhaps not too wisely, indulge
in the practice of so doing. If we remember rightly the Baron, in
“Karma,” who is represented as knowing a good deal more than Mrs.
Lakesby, gifted as she is, throws some discredit upon her view
concerning the Astral plane and its inhabitants. At the best when a
clairvoyant can gain touch with a soul in Kama-Loca, it is the lower
self remaining there, though it has left the body, that she deals
with. And though that lower self may be very recognisable for people
who have known it in the earthly manifestation, it will be _lower_
than the lower self of earth and not higher because ethereal. That
is to say on earth the living man is more or less under the guidance
of his higher self. But the higher has no longer any business to
transact with the lower self of Kama-Loca, and does not manifest
there at all.
Finally it must always be remembered that a romance, even though
written by an Occultist, is a romance still, designed to suggest
broad conceptions rather than to expound scientific and doctrinal
details.
------------------
“Being courteously invited to address any questions bearing on the
matter contained in LUCIFER to the Editors, Madame la Marechale
Canrobert would gladly know:—First, What is the distinction made
(page 11) between _the soul_ and the starry spirit? Is it that soul
which is again alluded to (page 91) as the animal soul, in
opposition to the Divine soul? Second, What are the external forms
of the individualised being spoken of also on page 91?”
_A._ The human soul, that which is subject to human passions, but
which can also yearn towards the nobility of the Divine soul, is
that which is spoken of on page 11. The starry spirit is the
Divine-astral. The animal soul is that which animates the mere
physical life, the unintelligent existence of the body. The
“external forms” referred to on page 91 are the successive human
shapes which the starry spirit inspires during its long pilgrimage.
M. C.
=Reviews.=
---
THE REAL HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS.[55]
-----
Footnote 55:
A. E. Waite. Published by G. Redway.
-----
Mr. Waite’s new book will be welcomed by that large class of readers
who regard occultism, alchemy, and all like studies with antagonism
and suspicion. Secret societies supposed to deal with such subjects
are, from their point of view, better exposed and ridiculed than
treated with respect or taken seriously. The author of the present
volume does not, however, cast disrespect on occult science, nor
does he discuss the Rosicrucians in a spirit of levity or disdain.
He recognises that there may be, and probably is, a grand spiritual
and moral philosophy in the higher aspects of true alchemy, but in
these pages he treats the subject of the society from the
historical, and not at all from the mystical side, and confines
himself to tracing its recorded history, its rise, fall, and _raison
d’etre_. The conscientious study of these records relating to the
Brotherhood has brought Mr. Waite to the conclusion that they do not
support the traditions which up to the present have surrounded the
society with a veil of unknown antiquity and have endowed its
members with a halo of marvellous wisdom. It is these conclusions
that will charm the incredulous, and may probably blind them to the
indications of an undercurrent of belief in the reality of occult
science, _per se_, which the author has evidently not desired to
suppress. To investigate and disentangle the network of facts,
theories, and traditions which must necessarily envelope a society
that up to the commencement of the seventeenth century had not been
heard of by the general public is no easy task, and Mr. Waite may be
congratulated upon the calm and judicial spirit with which he has
treated his subject, as well as upon the moderation with which he
advances his own views. To be able to gather from these open records
how far the members of such a society may have held in their keeping
some of the inner secrets of Nature is of course impossible to
ordinary humanity. The real character and aims of such an
association can be known only to passed Initiates. In his preface
Mr. Waite says: “I claim to have performed my task in a sympathetic
but impartial manner, purged from the bias of any theory, and above
all uncontaminated by the pretension to superior knowledge, which
claimants have never been able to substantiate.” This statement is
fully justified in the pages of the book under review. Its value
does not lie so much in any new presentation of the facts or
theories pertaining to the Rosicrucians, and which are so frequently
distorted by ignorant commentators, as in the compact and systematic
arrangement of some of the principal writings available. He has
brought together not only the leading works of the various writers
known, or supposed to be Rosicrucians, but he has also collected the
criticisms and conjectures on these current at the time of their
appearance in Germany, together with others of a much more recent
date. Consequently the reader has before him almost all the
information of this description he could require, and which he could
not obtain for himself except by the expenditure of time and trouble
that very few are either able or willing to give.
It is not surprising that Mr. Waite should have satisfied himself
that the Rosicrucians have no sort of claim to the reverence and
admiration in which scholars and mystics have held them up to the
present time. But these conclusions will form only one more of other
proofs to students of esotericism, that the task of writing a true
and real history of a secret occult society from its records, where
such exist, is an impossibility. For even when such societies left
reliable information of their pursuits, aspirations, and beliefs,
the language employed has always been of such a character as to
baffle entirely the ordinary exoteric reader, whether he were
historian, literateur, or scientist. Such literature can be
interesting only to the student on the track of esoteric knowledge,
or to one who has in a great measure acquired the meaning conveyed,
for himself in other ways. This method of giving to the world, as it
were, the proceeds, of life-long research in the realms of unseen
Nature, has been adopted by alchemists, magicians, priests, and
hierophants from all ages. None but those who were sufficiently
steadfast in the cause of truth could read and understand what was
thus written. The numerous and minute directions for the working of
spells and cures, etc., left by Paracelsus, and which are apparently
as straight forward and practicable as the receipts in a modern
cookery book, would turn out probably much less successful in the
hands of an amateur, no matter how highly educated on the physical
plane, than the more delicate dishes taken from such receipts
manipulated by an entirely inexperienced servant. For these
elaborate instructions are given in terms that appeal simply to the
material senses of those who are in search of power rather than of
wisdom, whereas the real effort to produce the result has to take
place on the Astral plane of nature. The spiritual or soul side of
man, must be awakened and utilised, before the Philosopher’s stone,
or the elixir of life, can be discovered.
The comprehension of the potentialities of the human body, their
nurture and eventual utilisation for purely unselfish ends and
spiritual, _i.e._, real wisdom, is, or ought to be, the work of all
secret occult societies. But to return to Mr. Waite’s book. The
popular notion that this Brotherhood is of great, almost incredible
antiquity, is utterly condemned by him. He fails to find any
documentary evidence to show that it existed before the early part
of the seventeenth century, and argues that the well-known antiquity
of the Rose and Cross in symbolism is no proof of the antiquity of a
society using them “at a period subsequent to the Renaissance.”
Granting that the device of the Rose and Cross, as emblems of a
particular order or brotherhood, does not guarantee its equal
antiquity with them, still it must be admitted that these symbols
bearing as they do a profoundly esoteric interpretation, and being
adopted by a society of a distinctly occult character, is an
argument in support of the theory that the founder or originator of
this order had some reason other than fancy for thus labelling his
fraternity. Elsewhere he says, “I have shown indisputably that there
was no novelty in the Rosicrucian pretensions, and no originality in
their views. They appear before us as Lutheran disciples of
Paracelsus.”
The author here seems to be not entirely logical in his deductions.
When he states that he has not met in his search with either
letters, records, or papers that mention or suggest the existence of
such a society before the seventeenth century, he is of course, as a
historian, safely ensconced from attack. In this capacity as an
impartial seeker after facts, it is outside the area of his work in
the absence of data to theorise on probabilities. When, however, in
dealing with the manifestoes of the seventeenth century, he finds
therein evidence that shows him the Brotherhood had no back history
or ancestry, his conclusions are open to criticism. The very fact of
the want of originality and novelty in the views, aims and
aspirations set forth in the “Fama,” and “Confessio” surely gives
strength to the theory that holds to the antiquity of the society,
rather than to its being the outcome of a spontaneous effort. All
true students of mysticism have good reason to believe, even when
they do not absolutely know, that the various schools of occultism
considered from their highest or most spiritual and abstract
teaching, lead to the same goal. They may be called by different
names, and their methods in minor details may not be the same, but
the wisdom _au fond_ is identical. Therefore when Mr. Waite casts
discredit upon the Rosicrucians for not advertising novelties in
their manifesto, in the mystical line of thought, he reminds us of a
man who in making up his mind on the value of a violin, decides that
it cannot be of great age, because it emits only the same set of
sounds that such musical instruments have been accustomed to give
forth from time immemorial.
As far as can be ascertained by studying the state of thought and
society at the period when the Rosicrucians were first heard of in
Europe, this particular order manifested itself as an antidote to
the general tendency towards the material side of alchemy, which
honey-combed the educated classes of Germany. Wonder-seekers then,
as now, did not apprehend that ethics, both social and spiritual,
are the fundamental basis of real wisdom, consequently the great cry
was for power, no matter of what description, for the accumulation
of wealth. The craving for arcane knowledge, so widely diffused, and
which alchemists were truly known to possess, had gradually
degenerated into a purely selfish desire for the secret of
transmuting metals. To supply this eager demand charlatans of every
description rushed to the front professing to teach all who joined
their standards, _i.e._, who could pay the necessary fee, how to
turn common metal into pure gold. The craze for this power was so
universal, the motive of it so unspiritual, that in order to stem
the tide of the folly, and to checkmate the impostors who were
bringing discredit on the _Sacred Art_, the “Fama” was issued by a
body of people who took as their symbols the Rose and Cross. From
this point of view the Rosicrucians historically come before the
world in the light of a group of Reformers.
Different people interpret in different ways the two manifestoes—the
“Fama” and “Confessio.” Mr. Waite appears to place great importance
on the adherence to Christian dogmas observable in the wording of
these papers. But in taking the documents literally, he seems to
overlook the necessity that all writers were under, in those
troubled times, of pandering to the narrow and prejudiced minds of
the leaders of the so called Christian Church, by apparently
adhering to the Ritual. Naturally, the author of the “Fama” worded
it in such a manner as to avoid persecution or suspicion of heresy.
Those to whom it was really addressed would not be misled by its
tone of orthodoxy, and the general public and the church would pass
it by as harmless. Moreover, as Mr. Waite remarks further on, “the
philosophical and scientific opinions and pretentions of the
Rosicrucian Society have more claim on our notice” than their
theology. Speaking again of the school of thought current at the
time this organization was floated, and which he tells us the
Rosicrucians followed, he says.... “Mystics in an age of scientific
and religious materialism, they were connected by an unbroken chain
with the theurgists of the first Christian centuries, they were
alchemists in the spiritual sense, and the professors of a Divine
Magic. Their disciples, the Rosicrucians, followed closely in their
footsteps, and the claims of the “Fama” and “Confessio” must be
reviewed in the light of the great elder claims of alchemy and
magic.” In spite of this, Mr. Waite judges the Society, it would
appear, by what he admits to be the minor and less important side of
its object, for he speaks of it eventually, as a body of
“pre-eminently learned men and a Christian Sect.” We will not stop
to consider the probability or possibility of a body of
“pre-eminently learned men,” being at the same time a “Christian
Sect.”
Having thus deprived the Rosicrucians of the dignity, reverence and
romance, that cling round great antiquity; having saddled them with
the tenets and dogmas of conventional mediæval christianity, Mr.
Waite next proceeds to demolish their emblems, or at all events, to
deny that they attached any esoteric interpretation to them. He says
... “The whole question of the Crucified Rose, in its connection
with the Society is one of pure conjecture, that no Rosicrucian
manifestoes, and no acknowledged Brother have ever given any
explanation concerning it, and that no presumption is afforded by
the fact of its adoption, for the antiquity of the Society, or for
its connection with Universal Symbolism.” Allowing for the necessity
in writing a history of a mystical society of taking the documents
as they stand, Mr. Waite rather ignores the fact that the evidence
for the statement above is of a negative character. That in their
manifestoes and records there appears no explanation of their
emblems, hardly justifies the conclusion that they were incapable of
giving any. It would indeed have been a new departure in the annals
of Secret Societies if the founders of this particular order had
left behind the explanation of their signs and symbols. The study
and interpretation of symbology forms a most important element in
the education of occult disciples, and therefore to assume that the
projectors of this organisation should be unaware of the mystic
reading of the Rose and Cross, is a hypothesis that no student of
mysticism could accept.
It is, on the whole, generally assumed by those who have taken any
pains to investigate the evidence, that Johann Valentin Andreas was
the author of the “Fama,” the _Confessio Fraternitatis_, and also of
the “Chymical Marriage” of Christian Rosencreutz, and to that extent
he must be looked upon exoterically as the founder of the
Rosicrucian Society, as first known to history. He was deeply versed
in mystic studies and alchemy, and had besides a widespread
reputation as a scholar and learned man. His “Chymical Marriage,” to
anyone with even a slight acquaintance with alchemical literature,
reveals him as one who had penetrated deeply into some of the
mysteries of nature. Consequently, he must have been well aware that
the Rose and Cross bore a profoundly occult signification.
Considering the man himself, the character of his studies, and his
well known devotion to alchemy and mysticism, it is certainly more
reasonable to suppose that he took those emblems (presuming he had
any choice in the matter) for his society, not as some suggest,
because they happened to form a part of his own armorial bearings,
or that the Rose and Cross on a Heart was used by Martin Luther, but
because he recognised their full value and importance as symbols of
cosmic evolution.
Mr. Waite seems, on the whole, to agree with the idea that Andreas
was the author of the “Fama” and “Confessio,” and regards the
“Chymical Marriage” as undoubtedly his production. He also allows
that the latter pamphlet can only have been the work of a man deeply
embued with alchemical speculations, a mystic and follower of
Paracelsus. How then can he ask us to believe that the Society
formed under such auspices was _au fond_, nothing but a Christian
sect based on the teachings of Martin Luther! To the public at large
these theories may perhaps appear sufficiently plausible in face of
the wording of those parts of the manifestoes that touch on
theology. To students of esotericism, however, such conclusions will
be absolutely unacceptable, and we can not allow to pass without
comment Mr. Waite’s hypothesis that the Rosicrucian Society, as it
first came before the world, was simply a society for the
propagation of the deteriorated Christianity of the middle ages. No
mystic, whether calling himself Rosicrucian, Cabbalist, Theosophist,
Christian, or Buddhist, would either, intellectually or spiritually,
accept the narrow dogmas and intolerant views of the Christian
church, even when to some extent cleansed of many of its grosser
abuses by the energy of Martin Luther’s Reform.
The two lines of thought are essentially different. In the case of
the Christian, no matter of what denomination, his thoughts are
bound down and paralysed within the rigid circle drawn by the
materialistic reading of Christ’s birth, life, and death. The true
occultist takes those episodes spiritually or allegorically, finding
their correspondences within himself as well as in the universe. To
say that a human being can at one and the same time be an occultist,
and a sectarian Christian, is as impossible as to speak of a
Christian Jew. A true Christian, _i.e._, one who understood and
followed absolutely the teachings of Jesus, would be also a true
Rosicrucian. Membership of particular churches or societies does not
unfortunately endow the individual immediately with the virtue,
knowledge or power, that is the theoretical goal of his initial
action. Such membership is, or may be a step in the direction of
Divine Wisdom, but one step does not carry him to the summit of the
path. Men do not become either Rosicrucians, Christians, or
Theosophists merely by joining the Societies working under those
particular names. But certain tendencies in their temperaments urge
them into the special Society where the mode of thought seems best
fitted to help them, to realise the magnitude and glory of the
possibilities inherent in their own souls.
Between the humanity of to-day, and the development of a sixth
sense, which will enable it to perceive what now is imperceptible,
there is but a thin veil of obstructing matter, metaphorically
speaking. This veil is even now being continually pierced by
psychics, first in one direction then in another, letting in through
these tiny openings glimpses of the invisible world around. In a
little while the veil will be worn away entirely, and the humanity
of that future time will doubtless wonder how the humanity of this
age, which we find so enlightened, could have been so unintuitive
and blind to the most important side of their natures. Until the
race however has by soul evolution attained to this sixth sense,
real histories of Mystical Societies can hardly be hoped for.
Members of such Societies, who by study and training have attained
some degree of knowledge _may_ not disclose the secrets, non-members
cannot get at them. The reading-classes of to-day may, after reading
Mr. Waite’s book, think they have learnt something of the body of
people called Rosicrucians, and until now supposed to have some
claim to arcane knowledge. The students of occultism will know that
the vital part of the subject is and must remain ever impregnable,
excepting from its esoteric side.
------------------
“NINETEENTH CENTURY SENSE.”
Sense! What is ”sense”? A word meaning either little or much; simple
and clear to the understanding, or various and carrying with it many
connotations. It is one or other according as we measure the depth,
the thoroughness, or the _reality_ of the knowledge acquired. From a
purely physical “sensation” we may trace the word through endless
shades of signification; through “good” sense, “sound” sense,
through the artistic and finer sensibilities, the “moral” sense,
till it loses itself in the vague hint of a dim, unformed
consciousness, pointing the way to the new world of the “inner
senses.”
All these meanings and more are connoted by the phrase “Nineteenth
Century Sense;” [56] for, by a daring metaphor, the tools which
modern science places at our disposal are considered as “senses,”
and even the faculty and power of analysis is sometimes included
under the word.
-----
Footnote 56:
NINETEENTH CENTURY SENSE: The Paradox of Spiritualism. By John
Darby. J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, and 10, Henrietta Street,
Covent Garden, London.
-----
Beginning with the simplest, the reader is led on to the most
astounding phenomena of modern spiritualism in the first
thirty-seven pages of this strange work. The author depicts in vivid
language his own experiences, and the triumphs of phenomena produced
by one of his personal friends, in a style which is often quaint and
striking, though at times the writer’s disregard of many of the
accepted rules of composition becomes—to say the least—irritating.
But the matter of his book earns forgiveness for the manner in which
it is formulated.
After carrying his reader to a pitch of interest and expectation as
to the phenomena he describes, Mr. Darby suddenly plunges him into
the frozen sea of scepticism by stating that all the phenomena
produced under what seemed the strictest test conditions, were
produced by conjuring and legerdemain, and by explaining the
physical causes of some of the visions he has so graphically
described. It will suffice to cite a single instance in
illustration. “The President of the American Branch of the Indian
Society of Theosophists (Professor Coues) ... spent an evening with
me some time back in conversation on the subject of psychical
phenomena. We parted at midnight. At seven o’clock the next morning
I suddenly awoke, beholding the astral of the professor standing at
my bed-side.”
This vision Mr. Darby explains by reference to the fact of the
persistence of retinal images and the super-excitability of the
nerves and brain. “Astral projections,” he concludes, “are of
precisely similar significance.” We would feel obliged to the
eminent American professor of physiology referred to if he would
give his written opinion on the question thus raised. For
Theosophists have heard of persons whose brains were in complete
repose and fully occupied otherwise who have also seen the astral
form of Professor Coues. How’s this?
He concludes, nevertheless, that materialistic agnosticism is the
only “creed”? Far from it. This portion of the book is purely
introductory; it forms the five door-steps leading to the Spiritus
Sanctus—the laboratory of the Divine Spirit.
From this black depth of doubt and confusion, the reader is lifted
suddenly into the clear ether, and his feet are placed on the
“Rosicrucian Way.”
Whether called “Rosicrucian,” or by whatever other name, the “Way”
is the “Way of Life,” the path which leads to freedom, to wisdom, to
true living. Whole pages might well be quoted; a few aphorisms must
suffice.
“A thing is to the sense that uses it what to the sense
It seems to be; it is never anything else.”
Many passages recall “Light on the Path,” though Mr. Darby probably
never saw that book; but life is one, and _true_ occultism is one.
Speaking of mankind as divided into two classes, _men_ in whom is
the Holy Ghost, the Divine Spirit or the _Logos_, he says:
“With people self-wise or over-sufficient, with the proud and the
uncharitable, with all who are _without understanding as to the
common good being the only good_, with him who fails to see that
gifts _are in men as almoners only_—with all these the Holy Ghost
is absent, otherwise so lacking in measure as to be incapable of
making itself felt.”
The italicised passages give the key-note of the true science and
art of living. To quote again:
“Settled into tranquillity by entirely satisfactory recognition of
noumenon through phenomenon an end is reached where instrument is
prepared and ready for use. Analysis has shown the Rosicrucian
what he is; more than this—what he can become as to his Ego. If
out of his understanding, he puts office [_the service of
others_.—ED.] before self, he learns directly of the God, as the
God comes to live in and to make use of him.”
“Proving to one’s self that one’s self is God”; and again, “God
... the One is in all; the All is in one.”
The next chapter contrasts strangely with the one just quoted
from—strangely, that is, to the outer sense. The one full of deep
philosophy, of questionings of God, the Self, the World, clothed in
the profound and significant paradoxes in which wisdom finds
expression; the other an idyll, a sketch of nature, deeply coloured
by the influence of Walt Whitman, whose _style_, perhaps, has had
too great an influence on Mr. Darby, who has caught its jerky and
unpleasant strings of detached sentences.
This is Chapter V.; Chapter VI. deals with Matter in its relation to
the Ego, the spirit of the treatment being indicated by the
following conclusion:
“That there shows itself, out of a process of exclusion, conducted
even only so far as the analysis of matter, a something which is
not matter. The analysis demonstrates the something to be of
individual signification; further, that it is to it what a flute
or other instrument is to harmony.”
The final words express a purely occult doctrine, which is worked
out at length in the succeeding chapter on the Ego.
This is the fundamental thought of the book, the last fifty pages of
which describe the author’s individual experiences in nascent
psychic development.
They are not of a very striking character, but exhibit with
sufficient clearness the early forms of this new growth.
Unfortunately, the author seems to have lacked the desire to pursue
the road thus opened to him, and the final pages of his work are but
a lame and halting conclusion to a remarkable production.
The book is well adapted for those who stand halting on the verge of
mysticism, while for the student who has advanced further, its pages
may serve as a means for helping others.
[Illustration: decorative separator]
The Editors of LUCIFER beg to acknowledge the following books, which
will be noticed in future numbers:—
From Messrs. Ward and Downey: “A Modern Magician,” by Fitzgerald
Molloy. “Twin Souls.”
From Messrs. David Nutt & Co.: “The Gnostics and their Remains,”
by C. H. King.
From the Authors: “Natural Genesis,” by Gerald Massey. “Sepher
Yezirah,” by Dr. Wynn Westcott. “Palingenesia,” by “Theosopho and
Ellora.” “Mohammed Benani,” by Ion Perdicaris. “Lays of Romance,”
by W. Stewart Ross.
From George Redway: “Posthumous Humanity,” translated by Col. H.
S. Olcott.
------------------
⁂ The Editors regret that the pressure on their space prevents their
noticing in detail the various Theosophical Magazines:—THE
THEOSOPHIST, THE PATH, LE LOTUS, and L’AURORE. A full summary of
their contents for November and December will appear next month. The
same remark applies to a letter on “Karma,” received from Mr.
Beatty, which will be published and fully answered next month.
=FROM THE NOTE BOOK OF AN UNPOPULAR PHILOSOPHER=
I am Sternly Rebuked for some remarks made in the last number. My
reflections with regard to the respective value of Mussulman and
Christian pledges exchanged, as also on the doubtful propriety of
zoological symbolism in the Churches—are pronounced wantonly wicked
and calculated to hurt the tender feelings of Christian readers—if
any. Protestant England—it is solemnly urged—is full of truly good
men and women, of sincere church-goers, who “walk in the ways of the
Lord.” No doubt there are such, and no doubt they do, or try to,
which is a step in advance of those who do not. But then none of the
“righteous” need recognize their faces in the mirror presented by
the “Unpopular Philosopher” only to the _unrighteous_. And again—-
“THE WAYS OF THE LORD....” The ways of _which_ Lord? Is the jealous
Lord of Moses meant, the God who thundered amidst the lightnings of
Sinai, or the meek “Lord” of the Mount of Olives and Calvary? Is it
the stern God that saith “_vengeance is mine_,” and who must be
“_worshipped in fear_,” or the “man-God” who commanded _to love
one’s neighbours as oneself_, _to forgive one’s enemies_ and _bless
those who revile us_? For the ways of the two Lords are wide apart,
and can never meet.
No one who has studied the Bible can deny for one single moment that
a large proportion (if _happily_ not all) of modern Christians walk
indeed “in the _ways_ of the Lord”—Number I. This one is the “Lord”
who _had respect unto Abel_, because the meat of his sacrifice smelt
sweet in his nostrils; the “Lord” who commanded the Israelites to
_spoil_ the Egyptians of their jewels of silver and gold;[57] also
to “_kill every male among the little ones_,” as “_every woman ...
but all the women children_ (virgins) _to keep alive for
themselves_” (Numb. XXXI., 17, _et seq._); and to commit other
actions too coarse to be repeated in any respectable publication.
-----
Footnote 57:
And no doubt also the Anglo-Indians to _spoil_ the King of Burmah
of his?
-----
Hence the modern warriors who achieve such feats (with the modern
improvement occasionally, of shooting their enemies out of the
mouths of big guns) walk, most undeniably, “in the ways” of the Lord
of the Jews, but _never in the ways_ of Christ. So does the modern
trader who keeps the Sabbath most rigorously, attending Divine
Service thrice on that day, after treating during the whole week his
hired clerks as the brood of Ham “who shall be their (Shem and
Japhet’s) servants.”
So does, likewise, he who helps himself, David-like, to a
Bath-Sheba, the wife of Uriah, without the least concern whether he
simply robs or kills the Hittite husband. For he has every right to
take for his sampler “a friend of God”—the _God_ of the old
covenant.
But will either of these pretend they walk in the ways of their Lord
of the _new_ Dispensation? Yet, he who raises his voice in a protest
against the “ways” of the Mosaic God, therefore, in favour of those
preached by the very _antithesis_ of Jehovah—the meek and gentle
“Man of Sorrow”—he is forthwith set up on the pillory and denounced
to public opprobrium as an _anti-Christian_ and an Atheist! This, in
the face of the words: “_Not every one that saith unto me Lord,
Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that doeth the
will of my Father which is in Heaven.... And every one that heareth
these words of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a
foolish man, which built his house upon the sand.... and great was
the fall thereof!_”
THE “WILL OF MY FATHER?” Is this “Father” identical with the God of
Mount Sinai and of the Commandments? Then what is the meaning of the
whole Chapter V. of Matthew, of the Sermon on the Mount, in which
every one of these Commandments is virtually criticised and
destroyed by the new amendments?
“_Ye have heard that it hath been said ‘An eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth’; but I say unto you that you resist not evil_,”
etc.
Glance at the big centres of our Christian civilisations. Look at
the jails, the court and the prison-houses, the tribunals, and the
police; see the distress, with starvation and prostitution as its
results. Look at the host of the men of law and of judges; and then
see how far the words of Christ, “Love your enemies, bless them that
curse you, Judge not that ye be not judged,” apply to the whole
structure of our modern civilised life, and how far we may be called
_Christians_.
How well the commandment—“_He that is without sin among you, let him
first cast a stone_”—is now obeyed, may be seen by following day
after day, the law reports for slander, calumny and defamation.
Obedience to the injunction, and warning against the sin of
offending children, “_these little ones_,” of whom is the Kingdom of
Heaven, is found in the brutal treatment of fatherless children on
the streets by the Christian police, of other children by their
parents, and finally, in the merciless flogging of wee bits of
culprits driven to crime by their own parents and starvation. And is
it those who denounce such an anti-Christian spirit in legislation,
the Pharisaical church and society, who shall be branded for
speaking the truth? The magistrate, who has sworn on the
Bible—contrary to Christ’s express injunction—to administer justice;
the pious defaulter, who swears falsely on it, but cannot be
convicted; the sanctimonious millionaire who fattens on the blood
and sweat of the poor; and the aristocratic “Jezebel” who casts mud
from her carriage wheels on her “fallen” sister, on the street, a
_victim perchance, of one of the men of her own high caste_—all
these call themselves Christians. The _anti-Christians_ are those
who dare to look behind that veil of respectability.
The best answer to such paradoxical denunciation may be found in one
of “Saladin’s” admirable editorials. The reader must turn to _The
Secular Review_ for October 22nd, 1887, and read some pertinent
reflections on “The Bitter Cry of Outcast London,” and the
“Child-thieves” flogging. Well may a “heathen Chinee” or a “mild
Hindu” shudder in horror at the picture in it of that “drawing of
blood” out of the baby-bodies of infant thieves. The process is
executed by a Christian policeman acting under the orders and in the
presence of a righteous Christian magistrate. Has either of the two
ever given a thought during the “child-torture” to the words of
their Christ: “_Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it
is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he
were cast into the sea_”?
Yes, they _are_ walking “in the ways of the God of Israel”! For, as
“_it repented the Lord that he had made man_” so wicked and so
imperfect, that “Lord” drowned and destroyed him “from the face of
the Earth,” without more ado. Verily so, “_both man and beast, and
the creeping thing and the fowls_,” though the latter had neither
sinned, nor were they “wicked.” And why shouldn’t the righteous men
on Earth do likewise? It repents the Christian citizens of pious
LUGDUNUM perchance also, that they create the starving little
wretches, the foundlings abandoned to vice from the day of their
birth? And the truly good Christian men, who would believe
themselves damned to hell-fire were they to miss their Sabbath
Service, forbidden by law to drown _their_ creatures, resort to the
next best thing they can; they “draw blood” from those little ones
whom their “Saviour” and Master took under his special protection.
May the shadow of “Saladin” never grow less, for the fearless honest
words of truth he writes:—
“And whose blood was in the veins of these two boys? Whose blood
reddened the twigs of the birch? Peradventure that of the
magistrate himself, or of the chaplain of the prison. For mystical
are the grinding of the wheels of the mill of misery. And God
looks on and tolerates. And I am accounted a heretic, and my
anti-Christian writings are produced against me in a Court of
Justice to prevent my getting justice, because I fail to see in
all this how Christianity “elevates” woman and casts a “halo of
sacred innocence round the tender years of the child.” So be it. I
have flung down my gage of battle, and the force of bigotry may
break me to death; but it shall never bend me to submission.
Unsalaried and ill-supported, I fight as stubbornly as if the
world flung at my feet its gold and laurels and huzzas; for the
weak need a champion and the wronged an avenger. It is necessary
that Sham find an opponent and Hypocrisy a foe: these they will
find in me, be the consequences what they may.
“SALADIN.”
This is the epitomized history of the “Unpopular Philosopher”; aye,
the story of all those who, in the words of “Lara,” know that
“Christianity will never save humanity, but humanity may save
Christianity,” _i.e._, the ideal spirit of the Christos-Buddha—of
THEOSOPHY.
LUCIFER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOL. I. LONDON, DECEMBER 15TH, 1887. NO. 4.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“LUCIFER” TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY,
GREETING!
MY LORD PRIMATE OF ALL ENGLAND,—
We make use of an open letter to your Grace as a vehicle to convey
to you, and through you, to the clergy, to their flocks, and to
Christians generally—who regard us as the enemies of Christ—a brief
statement of the position which Theosophy occupies in regard to
Christianity, as we believe that the time for making that statement
has arrived.
Your Grace is no doubt aware that Theosophy is not a religion, but a
philosophy at once religious and scientific; and that the chief
work, so far, of the Theosophical Society has been to revive in each
religion its own animating spirit, by encouraging and helping
enquiry into the true significance of its doctrines and observances.
Theosophists know that the deeper one penetrates into the meaning of
the dogmas and ceremonies of all religions, the greater becomes
their apparent underlying similarity, until finally a perception of
their fundamental unity is reached. This common ground is no other
than Theosophy—the Secret Doctrine of the ages; which, diluted and
disguised to suit the capacity of the multitude, and the
requirements of the time, has formed the living kernel of all
religions. The Theosophical Society has branches respectively
composed of Buddhists, Hindoos, Mahomedans, Parsees, Christians, and
Freethinkers, who work together as brethren on the common ground of
Theosophy; and it is precisely because Theosophy is not a religion,
nor can for the multitude supply the place of a religion, that the
success of the Society has been so great, not merely as regards its
growing membership and extending influence, but also in respect to
the performance of the work it has undertaken—the revival of
spirituality in religion, and the cultivation of the sentiment of
BROTHERHOOD among men.
We Theosophists believe that a religion is a natural incident in the
life of man in his present stage of development; and that although,
in rare cases, individuals may be born without the religious
sentiment, a community must have a religion, that is to say, _a
uniting bond_—under penalty of social decay and material
annihilation. We believe that no religious doctrine can be more than
an attempt to picture to our present limited understandings, in the
terms of our terrestrial experiences, great cosmical and spiritual
truths, which in our normal state of consciousness we vaguely
_sense_, rather than actually perceive and comprehend; and a
revelation, if it is to reveal anything, must necessarily conform to
the same earth-bound requirements of the human intellect. In our
estimation, therefore, no religion can be absolutely true, and none
can be absolutely false. A religion is true in proportion as it
supplies the spiritual, moral and intellectual needs of the time,
and helps the development of mankind in these respects. It is false
in proportion as it hinders that development, and offends the
spiritual, moral and intellectual portion of man’s nature. And the
transcendentally spiritual ideas of the ruling powers of the
Universe entertained by an Oriental sage would be as false a
religion for the African savage as the grovelling fetishism of the
latter would be for the sage, although both views must necessarily
be true in degree, for both represent the highest ideas attainable
by the respective individuals of the same cosmico-spiritual facts,
which can never be known in their reality by man while he remains
but man.
Theosophists, therefore, are respecters of all the religions, and
for the religious ethics of Jesus they have profound admiration. It
could not be otherwise, for these teachings which have come down to
us are the same as those of Theosophy. So far, therefore, as modern
Christianity makes good its claim to be the _practical_ religion
taught by Jesus, Theosophists are with it heart and hand. So far as
it goes contrary to those ethics, pure and simple, Theosophists are
its opponents. Any Christian can, if he will, compare the Sermon on
the Mount with the dogmas of his church, and the spirit that
breathes in it, with the principles that animate this Christian
civilisation and govern his own life; and then he will be able to
judge for himself how far the religion of Jesus enters into his
Christianity, and how far, therefore, he and Theosophists are
agreed. But professing Christians, especially the clergy, shrink
from making this comparison. Like merchants who fear to find
themselves bankrupt, they seem to dread the discovery of a
discrepancy in their accounts which could not be made good by
placing material assets as a set-off to spiritual liabilities. The
comparison between the teachings of Jesus and the doctrines of the
churches has, however, frequently been made—and often with great
learning and critical acumen—both by those who would abolish
Christianity and those who would reform it; and the aggregate result
of these comparisons, as your Grace must be well aware, goes to
prove that in almost every point the doctrines of the churches and
the practices of Christians are _in direct opposition to the
teachings of Jesus_.
We are accustomed to say to the Buddhist, the Mahomedan, the Hindoo,
or the Parsee: “The road to Theosophy lies, for you, through your
own religion.” We say this because those creeds possess a deeply
philosophical and esoteric meaning, explanatory of the allegories
under which they are presented to the people; but we cannot say the
same thing to Christians. The successors of the Apostles never
recorded the _secret doctrine_ of Jesus—the “mysteries of the
kingdom of Heaven”—which it was given to them (his apostles) alone
to know.[58] These have been suppressed, made away with, destroyed.
What have come down upon the stream of time are the maxims, the
parables, the allegories and the fables which Jesus expressly
intended for the spiritually deaf and blind to be revealed later to
the world, and which modern Christianity either takes all literally,
or interprets according to the fancies of the Fathers of the secular
church. In both cases they are like cut flowers: they are severed
from the plant on which they grew, and from the root whence that
plant drew its life. Were we, therefore, to encourage Christians, as
we do the votaries of other creeds, to study their own religion for
themselves, the consequence would be, not a knowledge of the meaning
of its mysteries, but either the revival of mediæval superstition
and intolerance, accompanied by a formidable outbreak of mere
lip-prayer and preaching—such as resulted in the formation of the
239 Protestant sects of England alone—or else a great increase of
scepticism, for Christianity has no esoteric foundation known to
those who profess it. For even you, my Lord Primate of England, must
be painfully aware that you know absolutely no more of those
“mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven” which Jesus taught his
disciples, than does the humblest and most illiterate member of your
church.
-----
Footnote 58:
S. Mark, iv. 11; Matthew, xiii. 11; Luke, viii. 10.
-----
It is easily understood, therefore, that Theosophists have nothing
to say against the policy of the Roman Catholic Church in
forbidding, or of the Protestant churches in discouraging, any such
private enquiry into the meaning of the “Christian” dogmas as would
correspond to the esoteric study of other religions. With their
present ideas and knowledge, professing Christians are not prepared
to undertake a critical examination of their faith, with a promise
of good results. Its inevitable effect would be to paralyze rather
than stimulate their dormant religious sentiments; for biblical
criticism and comparative mythology have proved conclusively—to
those, at least, who have no vested interests, spiritual or
temporal, in the maintenance of orthodoxy—that the Christian
religion, as it now exists, is composed of the husks of Judaism, the
shreds of paganism, and the ill-digested remains of gnosticism and
neo-platonism. This curious conglomerate which gradually formed
itself round the recorded sayings (λογια) of Jesus, has, after the
lapse of ages, now begun to disintegrate, and to crumble away from
the pure and precious gems of Theosophic truth which it has so long
overlain and hidden, but could neither disfigure nor destroy.
Theosophy not only rescues these precious gems from the fate that
threatens the rubbish in which they have been so long embedded, but
saves that rubbish itself from utter condemnation; for it shows that
the result of biblical criticism is far from being the ultimate
analysis of Christianity, as each of the pieces which compose the
curious mosaics of the Churches once belonged to a religion which
had an esoteric meaning. It is only when these pieces are restored
to the places they originally occupied that their hidden
significance can be perceived, and the real meaning of the dogmas of
Christianity understood. To do all this, however, requires a
knowledge of the Secret Doctrine as it exists in the esoteric
foundation of other religions; and this knowledge is not in the
hands of the Clergy, for the Church has hidden, and since lost, the
keys.
Your Grace will now understand why it is that the Theosophical
Society has taken for one of its three “objects” the study of those
Eastern religions and philosophies, which shed such a flood of light
upon the inner meaning of Christianity; and you will, we hope, also
perceive that in so doing, we are acting not as the enemies, but as
the friends of the religion taught by Jesus—of true Christianity, in
fact. For it is only through the study of those religions and
philosophies that Christians can ever arrive at an understanding of
their own beliefs, or see the hidden meaning of the parables and
allegories which the Nazarene told to the spiritual cripples of
Judea, and by taking which, either as matters of fact or as matters
of fancy, the Churches have brought the teachings themselves into
ridicule and contempt, and Christianity into serious danger of
complete collapse, undermined as it is by historical criticism and
mythological research, besides being broken by the sledge-hammer of
modern science.
Ought Theosophists themselves, then, to be regarded by Christians
as their enemies, because they believe that orthodox Christianity
is, on the whole, opposed to the religion of Jesus; and because
they have the courage to tell the Churches that they are traitors
to the MASTER they profess to revere and serve? Far from it,
indeed. Theosophists know that the same spirit that animated the
words of Jesus lies latent in the hearts of Christians, as it does
naturally in all men’s hearts. Their fundamental tenet is the
Brotherhood of Man, the ultimate realisation of which is alone
made possible by that which was known long before the days of
Jesus as “the Christ spirit.” This spirit is even now potentially
present in all men, and it will be developed into activity when
human beings are no longer prevented from understanding,
appreciating and sympathising with one another by the barriers of
strife and hatred erected by priests and princes. We know that
Christians in their lives frequently rise above the level of their
Christianity. All Churches contain many noble, self-sacrificing,
and virtuous men and women, eager to do good in their generation
according to their lights and opportunities, and full of
aspirations to higher things than those of earth—followers of
Jesus in spite of their Christianity. For such as these,
Theosophists feel the deepest sympathy; for only a Theosophist, or
else a person of your Grace’s delicate sensibility and great
theological learning, can justly appreciate the tremendous
difficulties with which the tender plant of natural piety has to
contend, as it forces its root into the uncongenial soil of our
Christian civilization, and tries to blossom in the cold and arid
atmosphere of theology. How hard, for instance, must it not be to
“love” such a God as that depicted in a well-known passage by
Herbert Spencer:
“The cruelty of a Fijian God, who, represented as devouring the
souls of the dead, may be supposed to inflict torture during the
process, is small, compared to the cruelty of a God who condemns
men to tortures which are eternal.... The visiting on Adam’s
descendants through hundreds of generations, of dreadful penalties
for a small transgression which they did not commit, the damning
of all men who do not avail themselves of an alleged mode of
obtaining forgiveness, which most men have never heard of, and the
effecting of reconciliation by sacrificing a son who was perfectly
innocent, to satisfy the assumed necessity for a propitiatory
victim, are modes of action which, ascribed to a human ruler,
would call forth expressions of abhorrence.”
(“_Religion: a Retrospect and a Prospect._”)
Your Grace will say, no doubt, that Jesus never taught the worship
of such a god as that. Even so say we Theosophists. Yet that is the
very god whose worship is officially conducted in Canterbury
Cathedral, by you, my Lord Primate of England; and your Grace will
surely agree with us that there must indeed be a divine spark of
religious intuition in the hearts of men, that enables them to
resist so well as they do, the deadly action of such poisonous
theology.
If your Grace, from your high pinnacle, will cast your eyes around,
you will behold a Christian civilisation in which a frantic and
merciless battle of man against man is not only the distinguishing
feature, but the acknowledged principle. It is an accepted
scientific and economic axiom to-day, that all progress is achieved
through the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest;
and the fittest to survive in this Christian civilization are not
those who are possessed of the qualities that are recognised by the
morality of every age to be the best—not the generous, the pious,
the noble-hearted, the forgiving, the humble, the truthful, the
honest, and the kind—but those who are strongest in selfishness, in
craft, in hypocrisy, in brute force, in false pretence, in
unscrupulousness, in cruelty, and in avarice. The spiritual and the
altruistic are “the weak,” whom the “laws” that govern the universe
give as food to the egoistic and material—“the strong.” That “might
is right” is the only legitimate conclusion, the last word of the
19th century ethics, for, as the world has become one huge
battlefield, on which “the fittest” descend like vultures to tear
out the eyes and the hearts of those who have fallen in the fight.
Does religion put a stop to the battle? Do the churches drive away
the vultures, or comfort the wounded and the dying? Religion does
not weigh a feather in the _world_ at large to-day, when worldly
advantage and selfish pleasures are put in the other scale; and the
churches are powerless to revivify the religious sentiment among
men, because their ideas, their knowledge, their methods, and their
arguments are those of the Dark Ages. My Lord Primate, your
Christianity is five hundred years behind the times.
So long as men disputed whether this god or that god was the true
one, or whether the soul went to this place or that one after death,
you, the clergy, understood the question, and had arguments at hand
to influence opinion—by syllogism or torture, as the case might
require; but now it is the existence of any such being as God, at
all, or of any kind of immortal spirit, that is questioned or
denied. Science invents new theories of the Universe which
contemptuously ignore the existence of any god; moralists establish
theories of ethics and social life in which the non-existence of a
future life is taken for granted; in physics, in psychology, in law,
in medicine, the one thing needful in order to entitle any teacher
to a hearing is that no reference whatever should be contained in
his ideas either to a Providence, or to a soul. The world is being
rapidly brought to the conviction that god is a mythical conception,
which has no foundation in fact, or place in Nature; and that the
immortal part of man is the silly dream of ignorant savages,
perpetuated by the lies and tricks of priests, who reap a harvest by
cultivating the fears of men that their mythical God will torture
their imaginary souls to all eternity, in a fabulous Hell. In the
face of all these things the clergy stand in this age dumb and
powerless. The only answer which the Church knew how to make to such
“objections” as these, were _the rack and the faggot_; and she
cannot use that system of logic _now_.
It is plain that if the God and the soul taught by the churches be
imaginary entities, then the Christian salvation and damnation are
mere delusions of the mind, produced by the hypnotic process of
assertion and suggestion on a magnificent scale, acting cumulatively
on generations of mild “hysteriacs.” What answer have you to such a
theory of the Christian religion, except a repetition of assertions
and suggestions? What ways have you of bringing men back to their
old beliefs but by reviving their old habits? “Build more churches,
say more prayers, establish more missions, and your faith in
damnation and salvation will be revived, and a renewed belief in God
and the soul will be the necessary result.” That is the policy of
the churches, and their only answer to agnosticism and materialism.
But your Grace must know that to meet the attacks of modern science
and criticism with such weapons as assertion and habit, is like
going forth against magazine guns, armed with boomerangs and leather
shields. While, however, the progress of ideas and the increase of
knowledge are undermining the popular theology, every discovery of
science, every new conception of European advanced thought, brings
the 19th century mind nearer to the ideas of the Divine and the
Spiritual, known to all esoteric religions and to Theosophy.
The Church claims that Christianity is the only true religion, and
this claim involves two distinct propositions, namely, that
Christianity is true religion, and that there is no true religion
except Christianity. It never seems to strike Christians that God
and Spirit could possibly exist in any other form than that under
which they are presented in the doctrines of their church. The
savage calls the missionary an Atheist, because he does not carry an
idol in his trunk; and the missionary, in his turn, calls everyone
an Atheist who does not carry about a fetish in his mind; and
neither savage nor Christian ever seem to suspect that there may be
a higher idea than their own of the great hidden power that governs
the Universe, to which the name of “God” is much more applicable. It
is doubtful whether the churches take more pains to prove
Christianity “true,” or to prove that any other kind of religion is
necessarily “false;” and the evil consequences of this, their
teaching, are terrible. When people discard dogma they fancy that
they have discarded the religious sentiment also, and they conclude
that religion is a superfluity in human life—a rendering to the
clouds of things that belong to earth, a waste of energy which could
be more profitably expended in the struggle for existence. The
materialism of this age is, therefore, the direct consequence of the
Christian doctrine that there is no ruling power in the Universe,
and no immortal Spirit in man except those made known in Christian
dogmas. The Atheist, my Lord Primate, is the bastard son of the
Church.
But this is not all. The churches have never taught men any other or
higher reason why they should be just and kind and true than the
hope of reward and the fear of punishment, and when they let go
their belief in Divine caprice and Divine injustice the foundations
of their morality are sapped. They have not even natural morality to
consciously fall back upon, for Christianity has taught them to
regard it as worthless on account of the natural depravity of man.
Therefore self-interest becomes the only motive for conduct, and the
fear of being found out, the only deterrent from vice. And so, with
regard to morality as well as to God and the soul, Christianity
pushes men off the path that leads to knowledge, and precipitates
them into the abyss of incredulity, pessimism and vice. The last
place where men would now look for help from the evils and miseries
of life is the Church, because they know that the building of
churches and the repeating of litanies influence neither the powers
of Nature nor the councils of nations; because they instinctively
feel that when the churches accepted the principle of expediency
they lost their power to move the hearts of men, and can now only
act on the external plane, as the supporters of the policeman and
the politician.
The function of religion is to comfort and encourage humanity in its
life-long struggle with sin and sorrow. This it can do only by
presenting mankind with noble ideals of a happier existence after
death, and of a worthier life on earth, to be won in both cases by
conscious effort. What the world now wants is a Church that will
tell it of Deity, or the immortal principle in man, which will be at
least on a level with the ideas and knowledge of the times. Dogmatic
Christianity is not suited for a world that reasons and thinks, and
only those who can throw themselves into a mediæval state of mind,
can appreciate a Church whose religious (as distinguished from its
social and political) function is to keep God in good humour while
the laity are doing what they believe he does not approve; to pray
for changes of weather; and occasionally, to thank the Almighty for
helping to slaughter the enemy. It is not “medicine men,” but
spiritual guides that the world looks for to-day—a “clergy” that
will give it ideals as suited to the intellect of this century, as
the Christian Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil, were to the ages
of dark ignorance and superstition. Do, or can, the Christian clergy
fulfil this requirement? The misery, the crime, the vice, the
selfishness, the brutality, the lack of self-respect and
self-control, that mark our modern civilization, unite their voices
in one tremendous cry, and answer—NO!
What is the meaning of the reaction against materialism, the signs
of which fill the air to-day? It means that the world has become
mortally sick of the dogmatism, the arrogance, the self-sufficiency,
and the spiritual blindness of modern science—of that same Modern
Science which men but yesterday hailed as their deliverer from
religious bigotry and Christian superstition, but which, like the
Devil of the monkish legends, requires, as the price of its
services, the sacrifice of man’s immortal soul. And meanwhile, what
are the Churches doing? The Churches are sleeping the sweet sleep of
endowments, of social and political influence, while the world, the
flesh, and the devil, are appropriating their watchwords,
their miracles, their arguments, and their blind faith. The
Spiritualists—oh! Churches of Christ—have stolen the fire from your
altars to illumine their séance rooms; the Salvationists have taken
your sacramental wine, and make themselves spiritually drunk in the
streets; the Infidel has stolen the weapons with which you
vanquished him once, and triumphantly tells you that “What you
advance, has been frequently said before.” Had ever clergy so
splendid an opportunity? The grapes in the vineyard are ripe,
needing only the right labourers to gather them. Were you to give to
the world some proof, on the level of the present intellectual
standard of probability, that Deity—the immortal Spirit in man—have
a real existence as facts in Nature, would not men hail you as their
saviour from pessimism and despair, from the maddening and
brutalizing thought that there is no other destiny for man but an
eternal blank, after a few short years of bitter toil and
sorrow?—aye; as their saviours from the panic-stricken fight for
material enjoyment and worldly advancement, which is the direct
consequence of believing this mortal life to be the be-all and
end-all of existence?
But the Churches have neither the knowledge nor the faith needed to
save the world, and perhaps your Church, my Lord Primate, least of
all, with the mill-stone of £8,000,000 a year hung round its neck.
In vain you try to lighten the ship by casting overboard the ballast
of doctrines which your forefathers deemed vital to Christianity.
What more can your Church do now, than run before the gale with bare
poles, while the clergy feebly endeavour to putty up the gaping
leaks with the “revised version,” and by their social and political
deadweight try to prevent the ship from capsizing, and its cargo of
dogmas and endowments from going to the bottom?
Who built Canterbury Cathedral, my Lord Primate? Who invented and
gave life to the great ecclesiastical organisation which makes an
Archbishop of Canterbury possible? Who laid the foundation of the
vast system of religious taxation which gives you £15,000 a year and
a palace? Who instituted the forms and ceremonies, the prayers and
litanies, which, slightly altered and stripped of art and ornament,
make the liturgy of the Church of England? Who wrested from the
people the proud titles of “reverend divine” and “Man of God” which
the clergy of your Church so confidently assume? Who, indeed, but
the Church of Rome! We speak in no spirit of enmity. Theosophy has
seen the rise and fall of many faiths, and will be present at the
birth and death of many more. We know that the lives of religions
are subject to law. Whether you inherited legitimately from the
Church of Rome, or obtained by violence, we leave you to settle with
your enemies and with your conscience; for our mental attitude
towards your Church is determined by its intrinsic worthiness. We
know that if it be unable to fulfil the true spiritual function of a
religion, it will surely be swept away, even though the fault lie
rather in its hereditary tendencies, or in its environments, than in
itself.
The Church of England, to use a homely simile, is like a train
running by the momentum it acquired before steam was shut off. When
it left the main track, it got upon a siding that leads nowhere. The
train has nearly come to a standstill, and many of the passengers
have left it for other conveyances. Those that remain are for the
most part aware that they have been depending all along upon what
little steam was left in the boiler when the fires of Rome were
withdrawn from under it. They suspect that they may be only playing
at train now; but the engineer keeps blowing his whistle and the
guard goes round to examine the tickets, and the breaksmen rattle
their breaks, and it is not such bad fun after all. For the
carriages are warm and comfortable and the day is cold, and so long
as they are tipped all the company’s servants are very obliging. But
those who know where they want to go, are not so contented.
For several centuries the Church of England has performed the
difficult feat of blowing hot and cold in two directions at
once—saying to the Roman Catholics “Reason!” and to the Sceptics
“Believe!” It was by adjusting the force of its two-faced blowing,
that it has managed to keep itself so long from falling off the
fence. But now the fence itself is giving way. Disendowment and
disestablishment are in the air. And what does your Church urge in
its own behalf? Its usefulness. It is _useful_ to have a number of
educated, moral, unworldly men, scattered all over the country, who
prevent the world from utterly forgetting the name of religion, and
who act as centres of benevolent work. But the question now is no
longer one of repeating prayers, and giving alms to the poor, as it
was five hundred years ago. The people have come of age, and have
taken their thinking and the direction of their social, private and
even spiritual affairs into their own hands, for they have found out
that their clergy know no more about “things of Heaven” than they do
themselves.
But the Church of England, it is said, has become so liberal that
all ought to support it. Truly, one can go to an excellent imitation
of the mass, or sit under a virtual Unitarian, and still be within
its fold. This beautiful tolerance, however, only means that the
Church has found it necessary to make itself an open common, where
every one can put up his own booth, and give his special performance
if he will only join in the defence of the endowments. Tolerance and
liberality are contrary to the laws of the existence of any church
that believes in divine damnation, and their appearance in the
Church of England is not a sign of renewed life, but of approaching
disintegration. No less deceptive is the energy evinced by the
Church in the building of churches. If this were a measure of
religion what a pious age this would be! Never was dogma so well
housed before, though human beings may have to sleep by thousands in
the streets, and to literally starve in the shadow of our majestic
cathedrals, built in the name of Him who had not where to lay His
head. But did Jesus tell you, your Grace, that religion lay not in
the hearts of men, but in temples made with hands? You cannot
convert your piety into stone and use it in your lives; and history
shows that petrifaction of the religious sentiment is as deadly a
disease as ossification of the heart. Were churches, however,
multiplied a hundred fold, and were every clergyman to become a
centre of philanthropy, it would only be substituting the work that
the poor require from their fellow men but not from their spiritual
teachers, for that which they ask and cannot obtain. It would but
bring into greater relief the spiritual barrenness of the doctrines
of the Church.
The time is approaching when the clergy will be called upon to
render an account of their stewardship. Are you prepared, my Lord
Primate, to explain to YOUR MASTER why you have given His children
stones, when they cried to you for bread? You smile in your fancied
security. The servants have kept high carnival so long in the inner
chambers of the Lord’s house, that they think He will surely never
return. But He told you He would come as a thief in the night; and
lo! He is coming already in the hearts of men. He is coming to take
possession of His Father’s kingdom there, where alone His kingdom
is. But you know Him not! Were the Churches themselves not carried
away in the flood of negation and materialism which has engulfed
Society, they would recognise the quickly growing germ of the
Christ-spirit in the hearts of thousands, whom they now brand as
infidels and madmen. They would recognise there the same spirit of
love, of self-sacrifice, of immense pity for the ignorance, the
folly, and the sufferings of the world, which appeared in its purity
in the heart of Jesus, as it had appeared in the hearts of other
Holy Reformers in other ages; and which is the light of all true
religion, and the lamp by which the Theosophists of all times have
endeavoured to guide their steps along the narrow path that leads to
salvation—the path which is trodden by every incarnation of CHRISTOS
or the SPIRIT OF TRUTH.
And now, my Lord Primate, we have very respectfully laid before you
the principal points of difference and disagreement between
Theosophy and the Christian Churches, and told you of the oneness of
Theosophy and the teachings of Jesus. You have heard our profession
of faith, and learned the grievances and plaints which we lay at the
door of dogmatic Christianity. We, a handful of humble individuals,
possessed of neither riches nor worldly influence, but strong in our
knowledge, have united in the hope of doing the work which you say
that your MASTER has allotted to you, but which is so sadly
neglected by that wealthy and domineering colossus—the Christian
Church. Will you call this presumption, we wonder? Will you, in this
land of free opinion, free speech, and free effort, venture to
accord us no other recognition than the usual _anathema_, which the
Church keeps in store for the reformer? Or may we hope that the
bitter lessons of experience, which that policy has afforded the
Churches in the past, will have altered the hearts and cleared the
understandings of her rulers; and that the coming year, 1888, will
witness the stretching out to us of the hand of Christians in
fellowship and goodwill? This would only be a just recognition that
the comparatively small body called the Theosophical Society is no
pioneer of the Anti-Christ, no brood of the Evil one, but the
practical helper, perchance the saviour, of Christianity, and that
it is only endeavouring to do the work that Jesus, like Buddha, and
the other “sons of God” who preceded him, has commanded all his
followers to undertake, but which the Churches, having become
dogmatic, are entirely unable to accomplish.
And now, if your Grace can prove that we do injustice to the Church
of which you are the Head, or to popular Theology, we promise to
acknowledge our error publicly. But—“SILENCE GIVES CONSENT.”
“EMERSON AND OCCULTISM.”
“’Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply,
And weave for God the garment thou seest Him by.”
—_Erd. Geist_, FAUST.
The sunset, to the boor a mere mass of evening vapours, presaging
rain for his fields or heat for his harvest, expands for the poet,
standing beside him and beholding the self-same firmament, into a
splendid picture, rich in crimson and purple, in golden light and
gleaming colour, mingled in harmonious purity.
Whence so great a difference?
The poet has finer eyes; and within the mere material forms
perceives a subtle essence, which flows everywhere through nature,
adding to all it touches a new wealth of joy and power. The poet’s
eyes have opened to a new reality; he no longer values things for
themselves; but in proportion as they contain this quality, they
become dear to him.
But beyond the poet, there is yet a third rank. The poet, it is
true, rejoices in nature, and perceives its beauty and symbolic
character. But he rests in the beauty of the symbol, and does not
pass to the reality symbolised. Rapt in adoration of the beauty of
the garment, he does not pierce through to Him who wears the
garment. This remains for the philosopher—the sage. Yet the boor has
his place in Nature. He has tilled and subdued the soil, has brought
its latent powers into action; in command of nature, he is far in
advance of the mere nomad savage, for whom nature is a maze of
uncertain and unconquered forces.
The savage, the boor, the poet; these types have their parallels in
mental life.
When the crude conceptions of nature, which mark dawning
civilisation, give place to those fair and truer, because more
harmonious, views which bear the name of Science; when the principle
of Continuity, the reign of Universal Law, have displaced the first
notions of Chance and Discord, the work of the physical scientist is
done; he must stand aside, and make way for the philosopher, the
transcendentalist. Modern Science has replaced the crudities of
mediæval theology by the idea of an orderly universe permeated by
Law, binding alike the galaxy and the atom, as the tillage of the
farmer has replaced the nomadism of the savage.
But within the world of the boor nestles the poet’s world, and
within the world of the physical scientist lies an ethereal,
spiritual universe, with its own powers, its own prophets. The great
trilogy of friends at the beginning of this century, who rose like
three mountain peaks above their contemporaries, Goethe, Carlyle,
and Emerson, were chosen by Destiny as prophets of this nature
within nature.
Their gleanings have been rich enough to tempt many to enter the
same field, though they have no more exhausted its wealth than Homer
and Shakespeare have exhausted poetry.
The new world they have explored, is the land of hope of the future,
for which we must leave the impoverished soil of theology, and the
arid deserts of materialism.
What these three masters taught, Occultism teaches; and we propose
to show them as great natural masters in the mystic knowledge.
To do this with any completeness in the space at our disposal is
necessarily impossible; for the present, we must content ourselves
with shewing from the writings of one of the masters, Emerson, that
he recognised some of the chief laws announced by Occultism.
The first truth to be insisted on, concerning this nature within
nature, the spiritual universe, is that it exists for its own ends,
and not as an adjunct to the material world; in other words, the end
of morals is to make archangels rather than good citizens.
Spirit is the reality; matter, the secondary; or, as Goethe says,
the _Garment_ of God.
No occultist could insist on the subordinate character of matter
more vehemently than Emerson—he writes:
“Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same.
Through the bruteness and toughness of matter, a subtle spirit
bends all things to its own will. The world proceeds from the same
spirit as the body of man. It is a _remoter and inferior
incarnation of God_, a projection of God into the unconscious.”
The Occultist sees in this world of spirit the home of that true joy
of which all earthly happiness is the shadow, and whispered
intimation. There all ideals find their realization, all highest
hopes their fulfilment; there flow abundant fountains of celestial
bliss, whose least presence makes earthly things radiant.
Of spirit, Emerson writes:
“But when following the invisible steps of thought, we come to
enquire, Whence is matter? and where to? Many truths arise to us
out of the recesses of consciousness. We learn that the highest is
present to the soul of man, that the dread universal essence which
is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power; but all in one, and
each entirely, is that for which all things exist, and that by
which they are; that spirit creates; that behind nature,
throughout nature spirit is present. As a plant upon the earth, so
a man rests upon the bosom of God; he is nourished by unfailing
fountains, and draws, at his need, inexhaustible power.”
But to obtain a footing in this world of essential being, is to be
emancipated from the domination of Time and Space, to enter a
universe where they do not exist; for Space and Time are no
realities, but, as Carlyle says, the “deepest of all _illusory
appearances_.” Emancipation from Space and Time; how much more this
implies than is at first sight apparent. The first fruit of this
freedom is a feeling of eternalness, the real basis of the doctrine
of immortality. It is an attainable reality, this sense of
eternalness; let the sceptic and materialist say what they will.
Of this truth, also, we may bring Emerson as witness. He writes:
“To truth, justice, love, the attributes of the soul, the idea of
_immutableness_ is essentially associated. In the flowing of love,
in the adoration of humility, there is no question of
continuance.”
Once recognise the truth that we can gain a footing in a world free
from the tyranny of time, that the soul exists in such a world, and
a new philosophy is at once required. Freedom from Time implies the
eternity of the soul, and the facts of life and death take a new
position and significance. If the soul be eternal, death must be an
illusion, a garment in which Nature wraps some hidden law.
In the following words of Emerson, on this subject:
“It is the secret of the world that _all things subsist and do not
die_, but only retire a little from sight, and afterwards return
again. Whatever does not concern us, is concealed from us. As soon
as a person is no longer related to our present well-being, he is
concealed or _dies_, as we say. When the man has exhausted for the
time the nourishment to be drawn from any one person or thing,
that object is withdrawn from his observation, and though still in
his immediate neighbourhood, he does not suspect its presence.
Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock
funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out
of the window, sound and well, in some new disguise. Jesus is not
dead; he is very well alive; nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor
Aristotle.”
we have an accurate exposition of the occult doctrine of
Reincarnation—the progressive discipline of the soul through
many lives—which has been parodied in the popular fable of
metemphsychosis.
The true occult doctrine does not picture a series of bodies in each
of which the soul makes a temporary sojourn. In this, as in all
else, it begins with spirit and then descends to matter. It depicts
that vital energy which we call a soul, alternately exuding from
itself and re-absorbing into its own nature an environment or
physical encasement, whose character varies with the increasing
stature of the soul. According to the teaching of occultism, the
successive formations of this objective shell—whose purpose is to
provide for the development of the animal nature—alternate with
periods of subjective life, which give expansion to the powers of
the soul.
As corollary to this doctrine, occultism postulates a second—that
the incidents of each objective environment or physical life—are not
fortuitous and isolated, but that they are bound to all that precede
and follow them, and moreover that “the future is not arbitrarily
formed by any separate acts of the present, but that the whole
future is in unbroken continuity with the present, as the present is
with the past.”
To the various developments of this law, eastern philosophy has
given the name of Karma; the west has as yet no name for it. But
though unnamed, its leading ideas have not been unperceived by those
western minds which have penetrated into the world of supernature.
Thus we find Emerson writing:
“Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue
rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. Crime
and punishment grow on one stem; punishment is a fruit that
unsuspected ripens within the flower of pleasure which concealed
it. You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. The thief steals
from himself; the swindler swindles himself. Everything in nature,
even motes and feathers, goes by law and not by luck. _What a man
sows, he reaps._”
The picture of an orderly universe, where matter is the garment of
spirit—spirit visualised—where souls march onward in orderly
procession to boundless perfection; where the life of each permeates
and flows through the life of all; where the wrong of each is turned
to the benefit of all by the firm hand of an invisible and ever
active law, incessantly disciplining and correcting, till the last
dross of self and sin is purged away, and instead of man there
remains God only, working through the powers that were man’s; such
is the conception Occultism holds.
“I know not,” says Emerson—
“I know not whether there be, as is alleged, in the upper region
of our atmosphere a permanent westerly current, which carries with
it all atoms which rise to that height, but I see that when souls
reach a certain clearness of perfection, they accept a knowledge
and motive above selfishness. A breath of Will blows eternally
through the universe of souls in the direction of the Right and
Necessary. It is the air which all intellects inhale and exhale,
and it is the wind which blows the world into order and orbit.
“Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity which rudely or
softly educates men to the perception that there are no
contingencies, that Law rules through existence, a Law which is
not intelligent but intelligence, not personal nor impersonal—it
disdains words, and passes understanding; it dissolves persons; it
vivifies nature, yet solicits the pure in heart to draw on its
all, its omnipotence.”
Discipline always and everywhere throughout the universe; to
discipline, development, all other facts are subordinate; for their
sake, all laws are enunciated, all spiritual facts are insisted on;
all truths which tend not to the melioration of human life—if any
such there be—are worthless. Discipline, development. What
development does Occultism predict for man? Man’s future destiny, in
the view of Occultism, is so stupendous, that we prefer merely to
erect a finger-post pointing out the direction of the path, using
the words of Emerson:
“The youth puts off the illusions of the child, the man puts off
the ignorance and tumultuous passions of the youth; proceeding
thence, puts off the egotism of manhood, and becomes at last a
public and universal soul. He is rising to greater height, but
also to realities; the outer relations and circumstances dying
out, he is entering deeper into God, God into him, until the last
garment of egotism falls, and he is with God, shares the will and
the immensity of the First Cause.”
From first to last, Occultism has preached no doctrine more
emphatically than the necessity of dependence on the intuitions, and
the reality of interior illumination. “Seek out the way by making
the profound obeisance of the soul to the dim star that burns
within; within you is the light of the world,” writes the Occultist.
And this doctrine is repeated again and again in the writings of the
philosopher we have been quoting from. He writes:
“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which
flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the
firmament of bards and sages. From within or from behind, a light
shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are
nothing, but that the light is all. The consciousness in each man
is a sliding scale, which identifies him now with the First Cause,
and now with the flesh of his body; life above life, in infinite
degrees. There is for each a Best Counsel, which enjoins the fit
word and the fit act for every moment. There is no bar or wall in
the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause,
begins. The walls are taken away, we lie open on one side to the
deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. The simplest
person who, in his integrity, worships God, becomes God; yet for
ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new
and unsearchable.”
The life of one is the life of all. The good of one re-acts on all.
The walls by which selfishness conceives itself enclosed and
isolated, are unreal, have no existence. Spirit is fluid and
all-pervading; its beneficent power flows unchecked from soul to
soul, energising, harmonising, purifying. To resist all discordant
tendencies which check this salutary flow, this all-permeating love,
is to come under the reign of Universal Brotherhood; and to the
honour of Occultism be it said, that Universal Brotherhood is
blazoned highest on its standard.
“Thus,” writes Emerson—
—“Are we put in training for a love which knows not sex nor
person, nor partiality, but which seeks virtue and wisdom
everywhere. One day all men will be lovers, and every calamity
will be dissolved in universal sunshine. An acceptance of the
sentiment of love throughout Christendom for a season would bring
the felon and the outcast to our side in tears, with the devotion
of his faculties to our service.”
But to the axiom “Kill out the sense of separateness” Occultism adds
another, “Yet stand alone.” Before the lesson of life can be learnt,
the soul must in some sort detach itself from its environment, and
view all things impersonally, in solitude and stillness. There is an
oracle in the lonely recess of the soul to which all things must be
brought for trial. Here all laws are tested, all appearances
weighed.
About this truth always hangs a certain solemnity, and Emerson has
given it a fitting expression in the following words:
“The soul gives itself alone, original, and pure, to the Lonely,
Original, and Pure, who, on that condition, gladly inhabits,
leads, and speaks through it. Then it is glad, young, and nimble.
Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the universal mind. I,
the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of the
great soul, and thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars, and
feel them to be the fair accidents and effects which change and
pass. More and more the surges of everlasting nature enter into
me, and I become public and human in my regards and actions. So I
come to live in thoughts, and act with energies, which are
immortal.”
The last words of this sentence lead us to the occult idea of
_Mahatma-hood_, which conceives a perfected soul as “living in
thoughts, and acting with energies which are immortal.”
The _Mahatma_ is a soul of higher rank in the realms of life,
conceived to drink in the wealth of spiritual power closer to the
fountain-head, and to distil its essence into the interior of
receptive souls.
In harmony with this idea, Emerson writes:
“Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to
affairs. All individual natures stand in a scale, according to the
purity of this element in them. The will of the pure runs down
from them into other natures, as water runs down from a higher
into a lower vessel; this natural force is no more to be withstood
than any other natural force. A healthy soul stands united with
the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the
pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object
betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun,
journeys towards that person.”
Occultism conceives the outer world and all its accidents to be so
many veils, shrouding the splendour of essential nature, and
tempering the fiery purity of spirit to the imperfect powers of the
understanding soul. This illusory power Occultism considers to be
the “active will of God,” a means to the ends of eternal spirit.
In the view of Occultism, life is a drama of thinly veiled souls; as
Shakespeare writes:
“We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep!”
We shall conclude with two passages from Emerson’s essays, on the
subject of illusions:
“Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you
could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with
hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and
comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and
downs of fate; and meantime it is only puss and her tail. How long
before our masquerade will end its noise of tambourines, laughter,
and shouting, and we shall find it was a solitary performance?”
We must supplement this rather playful passage with one in a higher
strain:
“There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is
system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.
The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament; there is he
alone with them alone, they pouring on him benedictions and gifts,
and beckoning him up to their thrones. On an instant, and
incessantly, fall snowstorms and illusions. He fancies himself in
a vast crowd which sways this way and that, and whose movement and
doings he must obey: he fancies himself poor, orphaned,
insignificant. The mad crowd drives hither and thither, now
furiously commanding this thing to be done, now that. What is he
that he should resist their will, and think or act for himself?
Every moment new changes and new showers of deceptions to baffle
and distract him. And when, by-and-bye, for an instant, the air
clears, and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still
sitting around him on their thrones—they alone with him alone.”
CHARLES JOHNSTON, F.T.S.
=THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT=:
_THE TRUE STORY OF A MAGICIAN_.
(_Continued._)
---------------------
BY MABEL COLLINS,
Scribe of “THE IDYLL OF THE WHITE LOTUS,” and “THROUGH THE GATES OF
GOLD.”
[_Some of the readers of_ LUCIFER _have taken great exception to
the love passages between Fleta and Hilary, saying that they are
not up to the standard of Theosophic thought, and are out of place
in the magazine. The author can only beg that time may be given
for the story to develope. None of us that is born dies without
experiencing human passion; it is the base on which an edifice
must rise at last, after many incarnations have purified it; “it
is the blossom which has in it the fruit.” Hilary is still only a
man, he has not yet learned to the full the lesson of human life
and human passion. Fleta promises him all that he can take and
that plainly is only what she can give—the deep love of the
disciple. But she cannot instantly free his eyes from the
illusions caused by his own passionate heart; till he has suffered
and conquered, he cannot recognise her for what she is, the
pledged servant of a great master, of necessity more white-souled
than any nun need be._
_Another strange criticism is made, condemning portions of the
story as though expressive of the author’s feelings and
sentiments; whereas they are simply descriptive of the states
through which Hilary is passing. They no more express the author’s
feelings than do those later parts which refer to the ordeals of
Fleta, the accepted disciple, express the author’s feelings. The
two characters of the struggling aspirant and the advanced
disciple, are studies from life. The stumbling-block of human
passion which stands in Hilary’s way, is the same which lost
Zanoni his high estate; in the coming chapters of “The Blossom and
the Fruit,” we shall see Fleta flung back from the high estate she
aims at, by this same stumbling-block, in an idealised and subtle
form. She has not yet learned the bitter truth that the Occultist
must stand absolutely alone, without even companionship of
thought, or sympathy of feeling, at the times of the Initiations
and the trials which precede them._—M. C.]
---------------------
CHAPTER VI.—(_Continued._)
Hilary found himself in a room which no longer permitted him to
regret his own rooms at home, for it was more luxurious. A great
bath stood ready filled with perfumed water, and he hastened to
bathe himself therein, with a sort of idea that he was perhaps
suffering from hallucinations, some of which he might wash away. His
scanty luggage had been brought into the room, and when the bath was
over Hilary got out a velvet suit which he thought would do well for
evening-dress in this palace of surprises. He was but just ready
when a knock came at his door, and without further ceremony, Mark
opened it and looked in.
“Come,” he said, “we don’t wait for anybody here. The cook won’t
stand it. He is a very holy father indeed, and nobody dare say him
nay, unless it were the Princess herself. She always does as she
likes. Are you ready?”
“Quite,” replied Hilary.
Opening out of the entrance was a great oak door, double, and very
richly carved. This had been shut when Hilary passed through before;
now it stood open, and Mark led the way through it. They entered an
immense room, of which the floor was polished so that it shone like
a mirror. Two figures were standing in the midst of this room,
dressed alike in clouds of white lace; they were the two Fletas, as
to Hilary’s eyes they still seemed.
His heart was torn as he gazed on them, waiting for a glance of
love, a gleam of love-light, to tell him which was his own, his
Fleta, his princess, the Fleta whom he served. There was none; they
had been talking together very earnestly and both looked sad and a
little weary.
As Hilary’s eyes wandered from one face to the other his mind grew
confused. And then suddenly a flash of bewitchingly beautiful
laughter came on one of the faces; and immediately he decided that
must be Adine. And yet, had he not seen just such laughter flash
across Fleta’s face? But all this passed in a moment, and no more
time was given him for thought. A table stood at one end of the
hall, set as a king’s table might be; covered with the finest linen,
edged with deep lace, and with gold dishes of fruit upon it; it was
decorated with lovely flowers. Hilary opened his eyes a little even
in the midst of his other much greater perplexities, to see this
luxury here in the midst of the forest. And was it prepared in
honour of Fleta, who ate a crust of dry bread in an ale-house with
perfect cheerfulness, or rather, indifference? Fleta took her place
at the end of the table; at least, one sister did so, and the other
took her place beside Hilary—he could not yet determine which was
which, and his whole soul was absorbed in the attempted solution of
that problem. Mark sat at the other end of the table, evidently
prepared to do such labours of carving as might be necessary. Two
places were set at the other side of the table, but no one came to
fill them. A very elaborate dinner was served, and a very good one;
and Hilary thought he was satisfied now that it was Adine who sat
next him, for she showed herself an unmistakable little gourmand. He
had just come to this conclusion when his attention was distracted
by the great doors being thrown open again for two persons to enter.
Everyone rose, even Fleta, who advanced with a smile to meet these
new comers. Hilary rose also and turned from the table. Two men
stood there; one a man but little older than himself, and of
extremely fine appearance. Little more than a boy, yet he had a
dignity which made him something much more, and Hilary felt
immediately a kind of jealousy, undefined, vague, but still
jealousy. For Fleta had put both her hands into those of this
handsome young man and greeted him with great warmth. At his side
stood a small shrivelled old man, in the same dress that Father
Amyot always wore. This circumstance again made Hilary wonder what
had become of Father Amyot; but he concluded Adine’s account had
been the correct one.
There was something familiar in the face of the young man, so Hilary
thought; while he was thinking this, Fleta turned and introduced
them to each other.
He was the young king to whom Fleta was betrothed.
This is a history of those things which lie behind the scenes, not a
history of that which is known to all the world. We will give this
young King the name of Alan. Let those who like fix upon his kingdom
and assign to him his true name.
He sat down opposite Hilary; and the old priest took his place
beside him. Hilary returned to his chair, feeling that all strength,
and hope, and power, and life had gone from him. By a fierce and
terrible revulsion of his whole nature and all his recent feelings,
he returned to his cynical estimate of mankind and most of all of
Fleta. She had brought him to this place simply to taunt and harass
him and show him his madness and folly in aspiring to her love in
the face of such a rival. It cut Hilary’s heart like a knife to find
the young King so magnificent a creature. And Fleta, why had she
come here to meet him? Why had she brought her unhappy lover with
her? Hilary tore himself with doubts, and fears, and questions; and
sat silent, not even noticing the plates that were placed before him
and taken away untouched. The others talked and laughed gaily, Alan
being apparently possessed of a hundred things to say. Hilary did
not hear what they were, but it annoyed him to find his rival
speaking so much in that rich, musical voice of his, while he
himself sat dumb, silenced by a bitter pain that tore his heart.
“You are sad,” said a soft voice at his side, “it is hard, if you
love Fleta, to see her monopolised by some one else. How often have
I had to suffer it? Well, it must be so, I suppose. Why am I sorry
for you. I wonder? For if Alan were not here you would monopolise
Fleta, and have no eyes for anyone else. Ah me!”
The sigh was very tender, the voice very low and soft; and that
voice was Fleta’s voice, those lovely eyes uplifted to his were
Fleta’s eyes. Yes, it was so! He thought as he looked back. Did he
not know Fleta well enough by now?
“Ah, you are playing with me,” he exclaimed eagerly, “it is Fleta
now, not Adine! Is it not so? Oh, my love, my love, be honest and
tell me!”
He spoke like this under cover of the others’ voices, but Fleta
looked round alarmed.
“Hush!” she said, “take care. Your life would be lost if you
revealed our secret here. After dinner is over, come with me.”
This appointment made Hilary happy again; his heart leaped up, his
pulses throbbed; all the world changed. He found some fruit was
before him, he began to eat it, and to drink the wine in his glass.
Fleta was watching him.
“You have just begun to dine!” said Fleta with a soft laugh. “Well,
never mind; you are young and strong. Do you think you could live
through a great many hardships?”
Hilary made the lover’s answer, which is so evident that it need not
be recorded. He did not know how he said it, but he desired to tell
her that for her he would endure anything. She laughed again.
“It may be so!” she said thoughtfully; and then he caught her eyes
fixed upon him with a searching glance that for an instant seemed to
turn the blood cold in his veins. His terrible thoughts and doubts
of her returned again the more fiercely for their momentary
repulsion. He emptied his glass, but eat nothing more, and was very
glad when they all rose from the table together, a few moments
later. He followed the figure of the girl who had sat next him since
Alan’s entrance, believing that Fleta had then changed her place.
She went across the great room and led the way into a greenhouse
which opened out of it. A very wonderful greenhouse it was, full of
the strangest plants. They were extremely beautiful, and yet in some
way they inspired in him a great repugnance. They were of many
colours, and the blossoms were variously shaped, but evidently they
were all of one species.
“These are very precious,” said Fleta, looking at the flowers near
her tenderly. “I obtain a rare and valuable substance from them. You
have seen me use it,” she added, after a moment’s pause. Hilary
longed to leave the greenhouse and sit elsewhere; but that was so
evidently not Fleta’s wish that he could not suggest it. There were
seats here and there among the flowers, and she placed herself upon
one of them, motioning Hilary to sit beside her.
“Now,” she said, “I am going to tell you a great many things which
you have earned the right to know. To begin with, you are now in a
monastery, belonging to the most rigid of the religious orders.”
“Are you a Catholic?” asked Hilary suddenly. And then laughed at
himself for such a question. How could Fleta be catalogued like
this? He knew her to be a creature whose thought could not be
limited.
“No,” she answered simply. “I am not a Catholic. But I belong to
this order. I fear such an answer will be so unintelligible as to be
like an impertinence. Forgive me, Hilary.”
Ah, what a tone she spoke in, gentle, sweet—the voice of the woman
he loved. Hilary lost all control over himself. He sprang to his
feet and stood before her.
“I do not want to know your religion,” he exclaimed passionately, “I
do not want to know where we are, or why we are here. I ask you only
this—Are you indeed my love given to me, as you said this
morning?—or is your love given to the king, and are you only
laughing at me. It is enough to make me think so, to bring me here
to meet him! Oh, it is a cruel insult, a cruel mockery! For, Fleta,
you have made me love you with all my heart and soul. My whole life
is yours. Be honest and tell me the truth.”
“You have a powerful rival,” said Fleta deliberately. “Is he not
handsome, courtly, all that a king should be? And I am pledged to
him. Yes, Hilary, I am pledged to him. Would you have the woman you
love live a lie for your sake, and hourly betray the man she
marries?”
“I would have her give me her love,” said Hilary despairingly, “at
all costs, at all hazards. Oh, Fleta, do not keep me in agony. You
said this morning that you loved me, that you would give yourself to
me. Are you going to take those words back?”
“No,” said Fleta, “I am not. For I do love you, Hilary. Did I not
see you first in my sleep? Did I not dream of you? Did I not come to
your house in search of you? Unwomanly, was it not? No one but Fleta
would have done it. And Fleta would only have done it for love. You
do not know what she risked—what she risks now—for you! Oh, Hilary,
if you could guess what I have at stake. Never mind. None can know
my own danger but myself.”
“Escape from it!” said Hilary in a sort of madness. A passionate
desire to help her came over him and swept all reasonable thoughts
away. “You are so powerful, so free, there is no need for you to
encounter danger. Does it lie in these people, in this strange
place? Come back then to the city, to your home. What is there to
induce you to run risks, you that have all that the world can offer?
Is there anything you need that you cannot have?”
“Yes,” said Fleta, “there is. I need something which no power of
royalty can give me. I need something which I may have to sacrifice
my life to obtain. Yet I am ready to sacrifice it—oh, how ready!
What is my life to me! What is my life to me! Nothing!”
She had risen and was impatiently walking to and fro, moving her
hands with a strange eager gesture as she did so; and her eyes were
all aflame. This was the woman he loved. This, who said her life was
nothing to her. Hilary forgot all else that was strange in her words
and manner in the thought of this. Could she then return his
love—no, it was impossible, if she meant these strange and terrible
words that she uttered!
“Ah, this it is that keeps me back,” she said, before he had time to
speak. Her voice had altered, and her face had grown pale, so pale
that he forgot everything else in watching her.
“This it is that keeps me from my strength, this longing for it!”
And with a heavy sigh she moved back to her seat and fell into it
with a weariness he had never seen in her before. Her head drooped
on her breast, she fell into profound thought. Presently she spoke
again, disjointedly, and in such words as seemed unintelligible.
“I have always been too impatient, too eager,” she said sadly, “I
have always tried to take what I longed for without waiting to earn
it. So it was long ago, Hilary, when you and I stood beneath those
blossoming trees, long ages ago. I broke the peace that kept us
strong and simple. I caused the torment of pain and peril to arise
in our lives. We have to live it out—alas, Hilary, we have to live
it out!—and live beyond it. How long will it take us—how long will
it take!”
There was a despair, an agony in her voice and manner, that were so
new, he was bewildered, he hardly recognised her. Her moods changed
so strangely that he could not follow them, for he had not the key;
he could not read her thought. He sat dumb, looking in her sad drawn
face.
“My love, my love,” he murmured at last, hardly knowing that he
spoke, hardly knowing what his thought was that he spoke, only full
of longing. “Would that I could help you! Would that I understood
you!”
“Do you indeed wish to?” asked Fleta, her voice melting into a sort
of tender eagerness.
“Do you not know it?” exclaimed Hilary. “My soul is burning to meet
yours and to recognise it, to stand with you and help you. Why are
you so far off, so like a star, so removed and unintelligible to me,
who love you so! Oh, help me to change this, to come nearer to you!”
Fleta rose slowly, her eyes fixed upon his face.
“Come,” she said. And she held out her hand to him. He put his into
it, and together, hand in hand, they left the conservatory. They did
not enter the great dining hall, where now there was music and
dancing as Hilary could see and hear. They left the house of the
strange flowers by a different doorway, which admitted them to a
long dim corridor. Fleta opened the door by a key that was attached
to a chain hanging from her waist; and she closed it behind her.
Hilary asked no questions, for she seemed buried in thought so
profound that he did not care to rouse her.
At the end of the corridor was a small and very low doorway. Fleta
stooped and knocked, and without waiting for any answer pushed the
door open.
“May I come in, Master?” she said.
“Come, child,” was the answer, in a very gentle voice.
“I am bringing some one with me.”
“Come,” was repeated.
They entered. The room was small, and was dimly lit by a shaded
lamp. Beside the table, on which this stood, sat a man, reading. He
put a large book which he had been holding, on to the table, and
turned towards his visitors. Hilary saw before him the handsomest
man he had ever seen in his life. He was still young, though Hilary
felt himself to be a boy beside him; he rose from his chair and
stood before them very tall and very slight, and yet there was that
in his build which suggested great strength. He looked attentively
at Hilary for a moment, and then turned to Fleta.
“Leave him here.” Fleta bowed and immediately went out of the room
without another word. Hilary gazed upon her in amazement. Was this
the proud, imperious princess who yielded such instant and ready
obedience? It seemed incredible. But he forgot the extraordinary
sight immediately afterwards in the interest excited by his new
companion, who at once addressed him:
“The Princess has often spoken to me of you,” he said, “and I know
she has much wished that this moment should arrive. She will be
satisfied if she thinks you appreciate with your inner senses the
step you are about to take if you accord with her wishes. But I
think it right you should know it in every aspect as far as that is
possible. If you really desire to know Fleta, to approach her, to
understand her, you must give up all that men ordinarily value in
the world.”
“I have it not to surrender,” said Hilary rather bitterly, “my life
is nothing splendid.”
“No, but you are only at the beginning of it. To you the future is
full of promise. If you desire to be the Princess Fleta’s companion,
your life is no longer your own.”
“No—it is hers—and it is hers now!”
“Not so. It is not hers now, nor will it be hers then. Not even your
love does she claim for her own. She has nothing.”
“I don’t understand,” said Hilary simply. “She is the Princess of
this country; she will soon be the Queen of another. She has all
that the world has to give a woman.”
“Do you not know the woman you love better than to suppose that she
cares for her position in the world?” demanded this man whom Fleta
called her master. “At a word from me, at any hour, at any time she
will leave her throne and never return to it. That she will do this
certainly some day I know very well; and her sister will take her
place, the world being no wiser than it now is. Fleta looks forward
to this change eagerly.”
“Well, perhaps,” admitted Hilary.
“Neither has she your love nor your life as her own. In loving her
you love the Great Order to which she belongs, and she will gladly
give your love to its right owner. She has done this already in
bringing you to me.”
Hilary started to his feet, stung beyond endurance.
“This is mere nonsense, mere insult,” he said angrily, “Fleta has
accepted my love with her own lips.”
“That is so,” was the answer, “and she is betrothed to King Alan.”
“I know that,” said Hilary in a low voice.
“And what did you hold Fleta to be then? A mere pleasure seeker,
playing with life like the rest, devoid of honour and principle? Was
this your estimate of the woman you loved? What else indeed could it
be, when you said, let her give her hand to King Alan while you know
her love is yours! And you could love such a woman! Hilary Estanol,
you have been reared in a different school than this. Does not your
own conscience shame you?”
Hilary stood silent. Every word struck home. He knew not what to
say. He had been wilfully blinding himself; the bandages were rudely
drawn aside. After a long pause he spoke, hesitatingly:
“The Princess cannot be judged as other women would be; she is
unlike all others.”
“Not so, if she is what you seem to think her; then she is just like
the rest, one of the common herd.”
“How can you speak of her in that way?”
“How can you think of her as you do, dishonouring her by your
thoughts?”
The two stood opposite each other now, and their eyes met. A strange
light seemed to struggle into Hilary’s soul as these bitter words
rang sharply on his ear. Dishonouring her? Was it possible? He
staggered back and leaned against the wall, still gazing on the
magnificent face before him.
“Who are you?” he said at last.
“I am Father Ivan, the superior of the order to which the Princess
Fleta belongs,” was the reply. But another voice spoke when his
ceased, and Hilary saw that Fleta had entered, and was standing
behind him.
“And he is the master of knowledge, the master in life, the master
in thought, of whom the Princess Fleta is but a poor and impatient
disciple. Master, forgive me! I cannot endure to hear you speak as
if you were a monk, the mere tool of a religion, the mere professor
of a miserable creed.”
She sank on her knees before Father Ivan, in an attitude strangely
full of humility. The priest bent down and lifted her to her feet.
They stood a moment in silence, side by side, Fleta’s eyes upon his
face devouring his expression with a passionate and adoring
eagerness. How splendid they looked! Suddenly Hilary saw it, and a
wild, fierce, all-devouring flame of jealousy awoke in his heart—a
jealousy such as King Alan, no, nor a hundred King Alans, could not
have roused in him.
For he saw that this Ivan, who wore a priest’s dress, yet was
evidently no priest, who spoke as if this world had no longer any
meaning for him, yet who was magnificent in his personal presence
and power—he saw that this man was Fleta’s equal. And more, he saw
that Fleta’s whole face melted and softened, and grew strangely
sweet, as she looked on him. Never had Hilary seen it like that.
Never had Hilary dreamed it could look like that. Stumbling like a
blind man he felt for the door, which he knew was near, and escaped
from the room—how he knew not. Hurriedly he went on, through places
he did not see, and at last found himself in the open air. He went
with great strides away through the tall ferns and undergrowth until
he found himself in so quiet a spot that it appeared as if he were
alone in the great forest. Then he flung himself upon the ground and
yielded to an agony of despair which blotted out sky and trees and
everything from his gaze, like a great cloud covering the earth.
(_To be continued._)
[Illustration: decorative separator]
TWILIGHT.
I sit alone in the twilight,
Dreaming—but not as of old;
Blind to the flickering fire-light,
Mystic visions my spirit enfold.
What means this struggle within me,
This new hope of a far-off goal?
This fighting against superstition,
That would fetter my awakening soul?
Why cannot I pray as I once did,
For self before all the world?
Whence came the flash of lightning
That self from its pedestal hurled?
But what if I’m struggling blindly,
What if this new hope is vain,
Can I go back to my old faith?
A voice whispers—“Never again.”
So I will press forward—believing
Hands unseen will guide to the goal,
And tho’ dim yet the light on my pathway,
Nirväna breathes peace to my soul.
_K. D. K._
THE SPIRIT OF HEALING.
It is somewhat difficult to say what real or theosophical work is
when exactly defined, and, in consequence, it becomes very easy to
speak of an effort as untheosophical—that is not sufficiently
unselfish in motive. The fact is that the word Theosophy has such a
very wide meaning, embracing, as it does, the true spirit of all
creeds and religions, and confining itself to none in particular,
that no work done in the spirit of truth and wisdom is really
untheosophical. Hence, unless the speaker is possessed of more
knowledge than ordinary men concerning the causes which underlie our
actions, the application of the word untheosophical is incorrect. In
fact, if it is once granted that it is possible to work from an
impersonal standpoint in favour of a particular creed or religion,
that work becomes theosophical in character. Thus it is only work
(in the widest sense of the word and on all planes) from the
personal standpoint, and which, therefore, militates against
Universal Brotherhood, which can really be described as
untheosophical. But this by no means presupposes that work which has
outwardly the appearance of theosophical genuineness is not really
selfish. It is, of course, the old story of the wolf in sheep’s
clothing. We do but need one example—the truly-called _profession_
of Medicine. We constantly hear of the wonderful self-sacrifice of
medical men; of men who die at their posts rather than desert a
possible case in times of epidemic and cholera; of men who suck
tracheotomy tubes with almost certain death by diphtheria staring
them in the face; finally we hear, though but seldom, of the honest,
earnest devotion of a lifetime in places and districts where the
fees are so small that it is barely possible for the doctor to live
on his earnings. These are the heroes of the profession. Their work,
for the most part, consists of an unselfish devotion to the
alleviation of suffering, culminating in a final sacrifice of their
personal selves—for death is nothing less than this. But we must
turn to the less favourable side of the picture—the struggle not for
a living, but for wealth, and work, fired by ambition and the search
for fame. Of course, apart from the personal, selfish element in it,
the ambitious struggle in other professions than those of the Church
or Medicine is of no great or unnatural harm; but in these two cases
it is more than harmful, it is a degrading betrayal of trust. It is
Simonism with a vengeance; yes, kind friends, it approaches very
nearly to the case of Judas, who held the bag, and betrayed his
Master with a kiss. It may be asked why this sweeping denunciation
is made of the two noblest professions; of those two which,
considered from the ethical standpoint, consist of devotion to the
service of man? The reason is not very far to seek. The power which
true healers possess—healers alike of body and soul, is not one
which can be sold for money or bartered for wealth and fame. At
least, if the possibility does exist, it bears a suspicious
resemblance to the old idea of selling one’s soul to the devil in
exchange for power and prosperity. It may be replied to this that
there is no harm in bartering knowledge of drugs, of pathology,
diagnosis of disease, surgical skill, etc.—in short, all the
knowledge acquired by education—for money. I answer No! for it is
material given for material, and nothing more. But these are not the
sole properties of the true healer, and those who do not possess
these other properties I speak of are not healers, and while they
may _profess_ medicine[59] and may be _in_ it, are yet not _of_ it.
-----
Footnote 59:
So medicine is, in the Shakespearian use of the word, and also
from its Greek derivation, not to give drugs, but to cure or heal.
-----
As regards the Church and its professors of religion, the case is
even worse; they have no material products of education to barter,
and for the most part are contented with telling their flock to “do
as I bid you, and not as I do.” But among them there are noble
examples of unswerving unselfishness and devotion, although for the
most part those who enter the Church are too young to understand
fully the nature of their high calling. Unfortunately the call in
too many cases is not a call to minister and heal souls, but to make
a living and heal the souls in the process. But again, it may be
asked, what are these wonderful powers which constitute the true
healer, and which are not to be bought or sold? The first one which
occurs naturally to the mind is the power of sympathy. The old joke
in _Punch_ about “the good bedside manner” has a considerable
substratum of truth when divested of its unpleasing folly. The
substratum of that manner is that which is given by sympathy; and
this is one of the first elements which constitute the power of
healing. It gives the power of suffering with the patient and
therefore of understanding what the sufferer is enduring. It is
beyond diagnosis, although it assists it by being much surer—at
least, as to the reality of the suffering. But this power of
sympathy only expresses a part of the meaning of the power to heal.
Sympathy tends to annihilate the personal distinctions between the
healer and the sufferer; it tends to exalt the consciousness of the
healer not only to know the remedy for the disease, but to be
himself the power of cure, and also it is a vast occult power in
virtue of which all the “elder brethren” of the Universal
Brotherhood live their lives; in virtue of which the world’s great
enlighteners have not only lived their lives but _lived their
death_, in order that they might benefit the sufferers who despised
and rejected them. But this power of sympathy and the kindred powers
which constitute the true healer, are really secret powers and
secret remedies. Therefore they are openly tabooed by the medical
profession, although the said professors cannot avoid using them.
But secret remedies are to some degree justly avoided. For it is but
natural to regard secret remedies with suspicion. At best their use
seems like working in the dark and blindly, and, consequently, any
results obtained must be empirical. Again, the medical profession
seems to plume and feather itself upon possessing a slight leaven of
its ideal condition, and, by constituting itself into a kind of
trades’ union, declines as a body to have anything to do with any
remedy of which the composition is not made fully known. This, at
least, is the more charitable view, for, on the other hand, the
doctors know only too well how eagerly the public rushes after any
new “quack” medicine, and seeks to cure itself without calling in
their aid. The doctors reply to this that they will have nothing to
do with a medicine whose composition is a secret, and which is
therefore devoted, to a great extent, to replenishing the purse of
its discoverer, and not to the cure of diseases from a love of man
and a hatred of suffering. This is a very high-sounding idea, and a
noble one, when it is not what the Americans would call only
“high-falutin.” But even when a remedy is made public property, it
is not necessarily _pro bono publico_; in fact, as a rule, it serves
only the good of the dispensing chemist. He sees the prescription
and notes it, the public does not; and, as a rule, the chemist
obtains the drugs cheaply, and compounds them at the same rate as
this medicine was originally sold under the patent of its
discoverer. Still, with all the dislike of the profession for secret
remedies, there is no doubt at all that in the case of the heads of
the profession some of the best results are obtained by the use of
prescriptions, which practically constitute a secret formula. The
especial combination which the particular man has discovered to be
of use is his property, and his only until he writes a book, for the
various chemists who make it up, and the various patients who drink
it, are not to the full aware of its value and use. The difference
between this and quack medicine lies merely in the peculiar names
and large advertisements, but very often these are balanced by the
fame of the particular surgeon or physician. But, in all honour to
physicians and surgeons, who do in many cases have and show a
large-hearted sympathy for suffering, it must be remembered that
many of the greatest and busiest of them give hours of their
valuable time to those who are too poor to pay in any other form
than that of grateful thanks. There are, again, others who disregard
all the rules which govern trades’ union society, and boldly take
their stand upon Christ’s dictum, that “the Sabbath was made for man
and not man for the Sabbath.” In other words, they say that any
medicine which they personally find valuable in the alleviation of
pain and disease must be used even at the risk of themselves being
called “unprofessional.” Again, others will use these so-called
secret remedies, and say nothing about it, preferring to pin their
faith to the wittily termed eleventh commandment, “Thou shalt not be
found out.” At this point it is possible to draw a parallel between
the use of the terms “untheosophical” and “unprofessional.” It would
seem that both are used in very much the same trades’ union sense.
In the case of the word “unprofessional,” it is to be regretted that
it is due very largely to a lack of charity and of the spirit of
enquiry. In the case of the word “untheosophical” it is often used
in consequence of a lack of charity, and further in the spirit of
scandal and gossip. Unless a man or woman is a theosophist pure and
simple, who carries out in their _entirety_, the objects of the
Theosophical Society, the use of the word untheosophical betrays
_them_ to be untheosophical and to fail in carrying out those
objects which they have promised to further to the best of their
power.
In the light of the foregoing it is now possible to examine the
manner in which Count Mattei’s remedies have been received. The
Count himself is a member of a noble family of Bologna, he has
travelled much, but returned there in 1847, and took part in the
movement which led to the liberation of Italy. In early life he much
wished to study medicine, but was prevented from doing so by his
father’s wish. Still his desire for knowledge was not quenched, and
he attempted to follow the bent of his own mind. He rightly
concluded that the instincts of the lower animals would lead them to
search for herbs and plants which would cure their ailments, and
that careful observation of these instincts might disclose medicines
of the greatest value to human sufferers. Thus he adopted the habit
of taking walks in the company of a number of dogs which were
suffering from various diseases, and carefully watched their
proceedings. Gradually the new pharmacopœia assumed shape, and the
instinct of the dogs showed that particular diseases were met by
particular remedies. These observations were made more than sixty
years ago, and were not forgotten amid the occupations of a busy
life. Indeed, when those occupations became less, Count Mattei
returned with ardour to his earlier studies. He became a deputy in
the Roman Parliament, but retired into private life after finding
that his political views were not those of the men by whom he was
surrounded. After this retirement the Count devoted himself to the
study of medicine, in order that he might fit himself to apply
certain principles which he believed he had discovered to be
valuable for sick and suffering humanity. By his own account and the
testimony of his patients he was not deceived, and the present
remedies which bear his name are the result of twenty-five years’
unceasing labour and experiment. He rapidly acquired an enormous
practice, and during the early years of it his advice and his
medicines were entirely gratis. But an unfortunate combination of
circumstances, as well as the expense entailed by the preparation of
the remedies, rendered it necessary for the Count to demand some
small remuneration for his services. Then he learned that his bounty
was abused, and that certain doctors, who had asked and obtained the
remedies from him, departed from Bologna and retailed the remedies
at extravagantly exorbitant prices. To such an extent was this
carried that there exist authentic cases where a thaler was demanded
for a single globule, and for the globules (20-30) necessary to give
a bath, 1,000 francs were asked in New York. Some idea of the
extortion may be given when Count Mattei refers to the thaler price
as being 1,350 times the price at Bologna. This would be enough to
justify any amount of secrecy on Count Mattei’s part, more
especially as that secrecy entirely prevents the adulteration of the
medicines which would inevitably follow, were they to become
commercial property.
We have only too familiar an example in the ranks of the medical
profession. Many of his confrères have been appealed to for the
support of a physician, named Warburg. At this date it seems hardly
possible to believe that this gentleman was the happy discoverer of
Warburg’s Fever Tincture. Perhaps in this country the value of the
compound was not so highly appreciated as in India. But it is
impossible to open any treatise on either surgery or medicine which
is about twenty years old and not find the use of Warburg’s tincture
specially urged in all cases of high fever, and especially in cases
of malarial fever and pyæmia. The compound had an enormous sale, and
yielded a very substantial income to its discoverer, but as soon as
he yielded to the pressure of professional opinion, and consented to
publish his formula so that it might obtain an extended use, he
obtained the reward of such philanthropy. Every chemist now prepares
the prescription and sells it at very nearly the original price, and
what is more, never refunds a fraction of a farthing in the shape of
a royalty to the discoverer. Consequently, we have before us the
edifying spectacle of the learned discoverer compelled to exist on
the charity of his professional confrères. Count Mattei has, at all
events, protected himself against this, for although he states that
in the event of his death he has provided against the loss of his
secret to the world, and intends to leave it carefully as a legacy
to suffering humanity, there is not the slightest doubt that he
alone is the possessor of his own secret. That it is possible to
obtain wealth from using this system is very evident. Certain among
the chief of his followers are in the habit of visiting London at
intervals, and the number of those who consult them is really
wonderful. I am assured by an eye-witness that the crowd is far
beyond that which besieges the door of the most fashionable
physician of the day. When one reads the literature of the subject,
one becomes more and more astonished at its simplicity. All diseases
resolve themselves into three main forms, and constitutions vary
accordingly. There are sanguine and lymphatic constitutions, and the
various combinations of these two; there are also febrile
disturbances and diseases of the liver and spleen. Consequently
there are three chief medicines, which are used in an extraordinary
state of dilution. It is no use, here at least, to discuss the value
of these infinitesimal doses, so that may be left for future
discussion. To a professional mind the most extraordinary claim on
Count Mattei’s part will be that of curing cancer by internal and
external medicines, and wholly without the use of the knife. He
claims positively to cure every case in which the cancer has not
ulcerated, and to cure a large proportion even of those which have
already done so. Even of those which have been neglected, and have
remained long in the ulcerated state, he claims to restore a certain
proportion (though not a large one) to health. Of course, to any man
who has seen the difficulty which attends the early diagnosis of
cancer, these claims are very high-sounding indeed—almost to
absurdity. The difficulties which attend diagnosis, even almost to
the time when the knife _has been_ used, and the tissue submitted to
the microscope, are very great. But in Count Mattei’s second
division there is no such difficulty. It is then possible by certain
indications, as well as by the use of the microscope, to be sure of
the nature of the disease. Here Mattei steps in and claims that, by
the use of one of his medicines, which exerts an _electric_
influence on cancer, and by one of what he terms his vegetable
electricities, he can restore the sufferer to health. Surely
_conservative_ surgery, if it be worthy of the name, will
investigate such a claim. Of the vegetable electricities there is no
doubt whatever. Cases of neuralgia and sciatica and articular
rheumatic pain have been seen to yield to them as to magic;
consequently, even in the last stages of cancer, when there is no
refuge save the grave left to the sufferer, I have reason to believe
Count Mattei, to some extent, when he claims to enable the said
sufferer to sink gently away in full consciousness, and without the
use of morphia.
To those who know anything of the occult uses and powers of plants,
the fact that Count Mattei gathers his herbs at particular phases of
the moon, will convey a good deal of meaning. Further, they will
feel an additional assurance as to their value, and will no longer
wonder, on one side at least, that Count Mattei chooses to keep his
secret. It would seem probable to some extent that Count Mattei is
one of the “elder brethren” of the race, although how far he is
consciously so may be a matter for speculation, which could only be
set at rest by Mattei himself and his compeers and superiors. What
is definitely certain is that his system of medicine in its
theories, if not in its practice, is a distinct step in advance in
the healing art. Mattei is one of those pioneers of advance who
spend the greater part of their lives in introducing for public use
a secret of which they have become possessed. Mr. Keeley, of
Philadelphia,[60] appears to be another of those pioneers who are in
advance of their times. But Mr. Keeley, in his work, resembles Friar
Bacon, who blessed (?) the world with gunpowder. No doubt
civilization has been enormously extended by its aid; but however
much use it may have been to man in adapting the face of nature to
his service, it has at any rate subserved the gratification of his
passions. Count Mattei appears to have none of these “defects of his
qualities,” and to have endeavoured to bless the world without
giving to it attendant curses. Still it is always possible that when
his secret shall become known it will draw attention to plants which
have just as destructive and poisonous an influence as the plants
and herbs he uses have of healing power. At all events, at present
his secret is of use to the world, and so far as may be seen he
makes a just and “brotherly” use of it. Has enough been said above
to show that the fact that his medicines are “secret” compounds
should be no barrier to their use? What is still more important is
that true theosophists should recognise that Count Mattei has done
what they endeavour to do, and devoted his life to Real Work.
A. I. R.
-----
Footnote 60:
The discoverer of the new power now known as the Keeley-motor and
inter-etheric force.
-----
------------------------------------
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY’S CONVENTION OF 1887.
-------
Safely returned from my long tour of ten months, my first duty upon
reaching home is to remind the Branches that the time approaches for
the Annual Meeting of the Convention of the General Council—27th to
30th of December. It appears that the attendance this year will be
much larger than ever before; some thinking that we shall register
between 200 and 300 Delegates: besides the old, there will be some
twenty new Branches entitled to representation and votes. The yearly
extension of our Society is thus steadily augmenting the strength of
the General Council, and the importance of its Annual Convention. As
the Society settles gradually upon its constitutional basis, the
volume of committee and parliamentary work lessens and more time
becomes available for theosophical lectures, the formation of
friendships, and the cultivation of a good mutual understanding as
to the work before us.
The Adyar Library, to which considerable gifts of old MSS. and books
have been made since last December, is already being put to use. The
Dwaita Catechism was issued at the last Convention, and at this
year’s the Vishistadvaita and Advaita Catechisms will be ready; as
will also a compilation of Buddhistic Morals from the sacred
literature of Ceylon. It is hoped that members of our many Branches
will kindly bring forward as many ancient works upon every
Department of Aryan knowledge as they can procure for this best of
national monuments, the Adyar Library.
Every effort will be made to promote the comfort of Delegates, as
heretofore. Lectures are being arranged for, but learned Mofussil
members who are willing to read discourses upon special topics
interesting to Delegates, are requested to at once correspond with
the Secretary, and if the MSS. are ready, to send them in for
approval.
* * * * * * * * *
In conclusion let me assure our colleagues of all races, creeds and
colors, that a hearty and brotherly welcome awaits them at their
Theosophical home at Adyar.
Adyar, 17th October, 1887. H. S. OLCOTT, P.T.S.
A REMARKABLE CHRISTMAS EVE.
It was a dark and solitary path, a narrow, hardly perceptible,
footway in a dense forest, hemmed in by two walls of impenetrable
thorns and wild creepers, covering, as with a net-work, the trunks
of the tall, bare, moss-covered trees. The path led through the
woods down to a deep valley in which a few country-houses were
nestled. Night was fast approaching, and the hurricane, that blew
across the country, boded evil to many a traveller, by land and sea.
The wind, which had hitherto been only moaning through the trees, in
low sad tones reminding one of a funereal dirge, was now beginning
to roar with fury, filling the forest as with the howling of a
hundred hungry wolves. Very soon a drizzling, ice-cold rain veiled
the whole forest in a damp shroud of fog.
One solitary traveller was wearily wending his way along this
deserted path. The hour was late, and the darkening shadows were
creeping on steadily, making the gloom in the thicket still more
depressing. The young man looked worn and tired, as he again and
again brushed aside the entangled briars which impeded his progress
forward. He was well-dressed, and wore a marine officer’s cap. But
his coat was now in rags, torn by the hard, frozen, cruel thorns,
and his hands were bleeding in the struggle he had had with the
briars for a whole long night and a day since he had lost his way in
the huge forest. Panting, he stopped at last; and, as he heaved a
deep sigh, he fell down half-insensible at the foot of an old shaggy
oak. Then, half-opening his weary eyes, he murmured in despair, as
he placed his hand on his heart:—“I wonder how long _this_ will yet
beat.... I feel as if it were gradually stopping.”
He closed his eyes once more, and very soon the feeble palpitations
he was watching within himself, turned his half-paralysed thought
into a new groove of ideas. Now the hardly audible beatings of his
heart seemed to transform themselves into the ticking of an old
clock quite near to him. He imagined the old Nüremberg timepiece in
his mother’s room. He was dripping wet, chilled to the marrow of his
bones, and was fast losing consciousness. But, forgetting for one
moment his situation, and where he was, he caught himself
soliloquising as was his custom, when alone.
“This clock,” he thought, “has to be wound up ... else it will stop.
So shall this heart. A man has to eat and drink to renew the fuel
which feeds life, the clock too ... no; the clock is different to
man. Let it rest for a week, for two, three months, even for a
year.... Still, if wound up again, it will tick on as merrily as
ever. But once the supply of the body is stopped—well, what then?
Shall the working power cease for ever, or the ticking of the heart
be resumed as that of the clock? No, no!... You may feed the dead
body of man as much as you please! it shall awaken to life no
more.... A queer problem to solve,—What becomes of that something
which made the body move? The food is not the cause, is it?... No;
the food is only the fuel.... There must be some inward fire ever
burning, as long as it is supplied.... But when the supply of the
fuel ceases? Ah!... that is it ... where does it go?... Does
anything really die?... What form shall _my_ inner fire take?...
Shall it return to _its_ primordial light ... and be no more?... Oh,
how I suffer!... No, no; I must not allow this, _my_ fire, to go
out. No, not before I see once more my loved ones ... my mother and
Alice....”
Arising with great effort he pursued his way with tottering steps,
feeling his way in the darkness. But instantly a wild gust of wind,
tearing along the narrow pathway, caused the great trees to sway and
rock as if in very agony. Catching in its icy clasp the weakened
form of the young man, the hurricane nearly upset him. Being already
wet through and through with rain and cold, he shivered and groaned
aloud, as he felt a sharp pain penetrating his limbs from the brain
downwards. One more short struggle and he heavily fell on the cold
hard ground. Clasping his hands over his brow, he could only whisper
again: “Mother, I can do no more.... Farewell, mother, for ever!
Alice—fare thee well!”...
His strength was gone. For over thirty hours he had tasted no food.
He had travelled night and day in the hope of being with his family
on Christmas Eve, that blessed day of joy and peace. Never yet had
he spent a Christmas Eve away from home; but that year had been an
unusually unfortunate one for him. His vessel had been wrecked and
he had lost all. It was only by the greatest of chances that he had
been enabled to find his way back to his country, in time to take
the train that brought him from a large seaport to the small town
some twenty miles’ distance from his home. Once there, he had to
travel that distance by coach. But just as he was preparing to start
on his last journey, he met a poor sailor, a companion of his
shipwreck. With tears in his eyes the man told him that having lost
all, he had no more money left to take him to his wife and children,
who were yet two days’ journey by rail from where he was; and that
thus, he could not be with them to make merry Christmas together. So
the good-hearted young officer, thinking he could easily walk the
short distance that separated him from home, had emptied his purse
into the sailor’s hands and started on his way on foot, hoping to
arrive on that same evening.
He set out early in the morning and bethought himself of a short cut
through the vast forests of his native place. But on that afternoon
he hurt his foot badly, and being able to move only at a very slow
pace, the night had overtaken him in the forest in which he had
finally lost his way during that terrible night. He had wandered
since the morning during the whole long day, until pain, exhaustion,
and the hurricane had overpowered him. And now, he was lying
helpless on the bare frozen ground, and would surely die before the
dawn.
How long he lay there he never remembered; but, when he came back to
himself, he thought he could move, and resolved to make a last
supreme effort after the short rest. The wind had suddenly fallen.
He felt warmer and calmer now, as he sat leaning against a tree. Old
habit brought him back to his previous train of thought.
“Never, mother dear, never,” he addressed her in thought, “never
have I spent a Christmas away from your dear selves.... Never, since
my boyhood, when father died twelve years ago! I made a vow then
that, come what would, I should spend each Christmas Eve at home;
and now, though life seems slowly ebbing out of my body, I want to
keep my promise. They must be waiting for me even now, they, and
Alice, my sweet fair cousin, who tells me she never loved but me!
Reginald and Lionel, my brothers, who are earnestly waiting for me;
my shy pretty May, and little Fanny.... They are all longing to see
me, my dear ones, all expecting their old brother Hugo to return and
decorate their Christmas-tree.... Oh, mother, mother, see you I
must! I will be with you on this Christmas Eve, come what may!”
This passionate longing appeal seemed to give him a ten-fold
strength. He made a desperate effort to rise from his place, and
found he could do so quite easily. Then, overcome with joy, he flew
rather than walked through the dense black forest. He must have
surely mistaken the distance, as a minute later he found himself in
the brushwood, and saw the well-known valley so familiar to him, and
even discerned in the bright moonlight the home that contained all
his dear ones. He ran still faster, more and more rapidly, and even
forgot in his excitement to wonder whence he had found the power of
using his lame foot so easily.... At last he reached the lawn, and
approached the cosy old house, all wrapped in its snowy winter
garments, and sparkling in moonlight like a palace of King Frost.
From a large bay-window poured out torrents of light, and as he drew
still nearer, trying to see through it, he caught a glimpse of the
loved faces, which he stopped to look at, before knocking at the
door....
“Oh, my mother! I see her there,” he exclaimed. “There she is,
seated in her arm-chair, with her knitting by her side, her
beautiful silvery hair as soft and glossy as ever under her
snow-white cap. I see her kind eyes and placid features still
unmarked by the furrows of age.... She looks troubled.... She
listens to the fierce gusts of wind which cause the windows to shake
and rattle. How that wind _does_ try to get into the house, and,
finding itself no welcome guest, hark, how it rolls away.... How
strange!... I _hear_, but I do _not feel_ the wind.... Oh!...
Kneeling at my mother’s feet, there’s Alice. Her arms are clasped
around mother’s knees; her golden curls fall on her back....
But—but, why are her large violet eyes filled with tears as she
looks with up-turned face into mother’s sad eyes?... Hush! What is
she saying?... I hear it, even through that wall....
“‘Don’t be uneasy, mother, dear, Hugo will come back. You know he
told us so in his last letter. He said that after their shipwreck he
was kindly cared for by those who saved the crew. He wrote also that
he had borrowed money for the journey, and that he would be with us
at the latest on Christmas Eve!... Bad roads and the stormy night
will have detained him.... The coach, you say? Well, and though the
coach has long since passed by, he may have taken a carriage. He
will soon be here, mother.’
“Ah, dear Alice, I see—she looks at her finger, with its little ruby
ring I placed on it. She puts it to her lips, and I hear her
murmuring my name....
* * * * * * * *
(From Hugo’s diary, where he recorded that night’s experience.)
... I rushed into the house at that appeal, and, as I now remember,
without knocking at the door, as if I had passed through the stone
walls. I tried to speak, but no sound appeared to reach their ears.
Nor did anyone seem to see or greet me.... I drew Alice by the arm,
but she never turned round, only continued to murmur sweet words of
consolation into my mother’s ear. Good God, what agony! Why do they
not hear, or even see me.... Am I really here? I look round the
room. The old home is just as I had left it nine months since. There
is my father’s picture hanging over the mantel-piece, looking at me
with his kind smile; the old piano open, with my favourite song on
it.... The cat sleeping as usual, on the hearthrug, and purring, as
she stretches out her lazy paws. Albums on the table, my photograph,
with its bright and happy look! How different to my present self!
Here am I, standing in an agony of doubt, before my loved ones,
seeing them, feeling them, touching them ... and yet unseen by them,
unnoticed, as one who is not there.... Not even my shadow on the
wall over their own. But who then, am I?... Why have they grown so
blind to my presence? Why do their hearts and senses remain so
dense? I try again and again. I call them piteously by their names,
but they heed me not. My heart, my love, all is here, but my
physical body seems far away. Yes, it is far, far away, and now I
see it, as it lies cold and lifeless in that forest, where I must
have left it. It is surely for _me_, not for that body, that they
care! And is it because I am no longer clothed with flesh that I
must be as only a breath, an empty naught, to them?...
Full of despair, I turned away, and passing through the folding
doors, arrived in the adjoining room, where my young brothers and
sisters were busily occupied decorating the Christmas tree. There it
stands, the old friend of my youth. I see it, and even discern its
resinous perfume.... Towering up towards the ceiling, its lower
branches are bending to the ground, laden with golden fruits, with
toys and wax tapers. My brothers and sisters are gathered around it.
But Reginald looks grave. I see him turning to May, and hear him
saying:
“Are you not anxious about Hugo? I wonder what can have become of
him!”
“I did not like to tell mother,” May replies with a little shiver,
“but I had a dreadful dream last night. I saw Hugo white and cold.
He looked sorrowfully at me, but when he tried to speak he could
not. His look haunts me still!” she softly sobbed, with tears
rolling down her cheeks.
But now little Fanny gives a scream of delight. The child has
discovered among the Christmas presents a real pipe, a pipe with
silver bells.
“Oh, _this_ shall be for Hugo, and then he will have music whenever
he smokes!” exclaims the little one, merrily laughing, and holding
out the toy in the direction where I am standing.
For a moment I hope she sees me. I try to take the pipe, but my hand
cannot clasp it, and the toy seems to slip away from me as if it
were a shadow.... I try to speak again, but it is of no use ... they
see me not, neither do they hear me!...
Grieved beyond words, I left them, and returning into the next room,
went up straight to Alice, who was still at mother’s side, murmuring
to her loving words. I spoke again, I entreated, I besought them to
look at me, and my suffering was so great that I felt that death
would be preferable to this!
Then came a last and supreme effort. Concentrating all my will, I
bent over Alice, and gasped out with my whole soul:
“If ever you loved me, Alice, know and hear me now!” I exclaimed, as
I pressed my lips to hers.
She gave a shudder, a start, and then, opening her eyes wider and
wider, she shrieked in terror:
“Hugo! Hugo! Mother, do you see? Hugo is here!”
She tried to clasp me in her arms, but her hands met together, and
only joined as if in prayer.
“Hugo, Hugo, stay, why can I not touch you? Mother, look! look! Here
is Hugo!”
She was growing wilder and more excited with every moment.
My mother looked faint and frightened, as she said:
“Alice, what is the matter, child? What do you see? Hugo is not
here!”
The children, hearing Alice’s cry, flew into the room, all eager
with expectation.
“Where is Hugo? Where is he?” they prattled.
I felt that I was invisible to all but Alice. She was the only one
to see me. Therefore, realizing that the body had to be saved from
its danger in the woods without loss of time, I drew her after
myself with all my will. I slowly moved towards the door, never
taking my look off her eyes. She followed me, as one in a state of
somnambulism.
My mother looked stunned and bewildered.
Rising with difficulty from her place, she would have made for the
door also, but sank back into her arm-chair powerless and covered
her face with her hands.
“Boys, follow Alice,” said May. “Wait ... the carriage is there
ready to go after the doctor’s children. Take it. Call the gardener
and John to go with you. I will stay with mother.” And whispering to
Reginald, she added, “Tell John to take rugs and blankets ... but I
am afraid poor Hugo is dead!”
She then turned to mother, who had fainted. I would see no more, but
_willing_ Alice to follow me, I left the house.
She came slowly after me, her face all white, her large eyes full of
a look of terror, but also of resolution in them. On she would have
gone on foot, in the drizzling rain, her golden hair all flying
about her head, had she been allowed to do so by my brothers and
servants. The strange cortege was ushered into the open carriage,
the coachman being ordered to follow her directions. On it went, as
speedily as the horse could go. I found myself floating now before
them, and, to my own amazement, sliding backwards, with my face
turned towards Alice, strongly willing that she should not lose
sight of me. Two hours afterwards, the carriage entered the
brushwood, and they were obliged to alight.
The night was now very dark and stormy, and notwithstanding the
lanterns, the group made way with great difficulty into the thicket.
The wind had begun to blow and howl with the same fury as when I had
left the wood, and seemed to have caught them all in its chilly
embrace. The boys and servants panted and shivered, but Alice heeded
nothing. What cared _she_ for that! The only thought of my beloved
was I, Hugo.... On, on we went, her tender feet wounded with the
brambles, and the wet sprays of branches brushing against her white
face. On, on she ran, till, with a sudden and loud cry of joy and
terror mixed, she fell down....
At the same instant _I_ collapsed, and _fell also on the ground, as
it seemed to me_; and then all became a blank.... As I learned
later, at that moment the boys drew near, and lowering their
lanterns found Alice with her arms clasped around a form, and when
the lanterns were placed close to it they saw before them the body
of their brother Hugo, a corpse!
“Sure enough he is dead, the poor young master!” cried John, our old
servant, who was close behind.
“No, no!” Alice answered. “No, he is not dead.... His body is cold,
but his heart still beats. Let us carry him home.... Quick, quick!”
Lifting up the body gently and placing it in the carriage they
covered it with rugs and shawls, and drove at a furious speed back
to our home. It was near midnight when the carriage stopped at the
gate.
“Reginald, run on quickly and give the good news to mother!” cried
Alice. “Tell May to have hot bottles and blankets ready, on the sofa
in the drawing-room. It is warm there near the fire.... Tell them
all that Hugo lives, for I _know_ he does,” she went on repeating.
More lights were brought out, and the servants carried carefully
their burden into the house, where they placed it on the sofa, hot
flannels and restoratives being immediately applied. Noiselessly and
breathlessly went on the work of love around the apparently dead
body, and was at last rewarded. A sigh was heard, a deeper _breath_
was drawn, and then the eyes slowly opened and _I_ looked round in
vague surprise at all those loved and anxious faces crowding eagerly
around me.
“Don’t speak yet, Hugo,” whispered Alice anxiously. “Don’t, till you
feel stronger.”
But I could not control my impatience.
“How am I here?” I asked. “Ah, I remember. I lost my way in the old
forest.... Ah, yes; I recollect now all.... The cold biting wind, my
lame foot, after I stumbled and fell, knocking my head against a
stone, and all became a blank to me!”
“Hush, Hugo, hush my boy,” said my mother wiping tears of joy from
her still pale and suffering face. “You will tell us all that
presently.... Now rest.”
But I could not refrain from speaking, as thoughts crowded into my
head, and recollections came vividly back. “No, no, I am better,” I
went on. “I am strong again, and I must let you know all that I
dreamed. I was here, and I saw you all.... Oh, the torture I
suffered when you knew me not!... Mother, darling, did you not see
me, your son? But she, my Alice, saw and followed me, and it is she
who saved me from death! Ah, yes! I remember now, you found my body,
and then all was darkness again. Kiss me, mother! Kiss me all, let
me feel that I am really with you in body, and am no longer an
invisible shadow.... Mother I kept my promise; I am here on
Christmas Eve! Light the tree, my little Fan, and give me the pipe
with the bells I saw you holding, and heard you say it was for old
brother Hugo.”
The child ran into the other room and returned with the pipe I had
seen her playing with a few hours before. This was the greatest and
final proof for me, as for my family. The event was no vision then,
no hallucination, but true to its merest details! As my mother often
said afterwards, referring to that wonderful night, it was a weird
and strange experience, but one which had happened to others before,
and will go on happening from time to time. Of late years, when I
had been happily married to my Alice (who will not let me travel far
away without her, any longer) I have dived a good deal into such
psychic mysteries, and I think I can explain my experience. I think
that by privation, cold, and mental agony, I had been thrown into
such abnormal conditions, that my astral body, as it is now
generally called, my “conscious self,” was able to escape from the
physical tenement and take itself to the home I so passionately
desired to reach. All my thoughts, and longings being intensely
directed towards it, I found myself there where I wished to be, in
spirit. Then the agony of mind from the consciousness that I was
invisible to all, added to the fear of death unless I could impress
them with my presence, became finally productive of the supreme
effort of will, the success of which alone could save me. This
joined to Alice’s sensitiveness and her love for me, enabled her to
sense my presence, and even to see my form, whereas others saw
nothing. Man is a wonderful and marvellous enigma; but it is one
which has to, and _will_, be completely unriddled some day, the
scepticism of the age notwithstanding.
Such is the simple story told to the writer by an old naval officer,
about the most “memorable Christmas Eve” that came within his own
experience.
CONSTANCE WACHTMEISTER.
[Illustration: decorative separator]
A HALF CONVERT.
Buddha! my earthly memory is so dimmed
By this poor passing life which travels a hem
Across my soul, and thought I cannot stem
Pours like a flood to wash all traces limned
Of former selves, that I shall ne’er recall
The steps I came, nor know the fleshly tents
In which I sojourned;—yet the fraying rents
Of time-worn garments I have seen, and all
The dust upon my feet, and I the sin
Of tiger and of cobra passions striven
To crush. These were strait gates, and through them driven
My chariot wheels, so prithee set me free
From other births, lest I seek Peter’s key,
O! Sakya Muni, let me trembling in.
MARY N. GALE.
THEOSOPHY AND MODERN SOCIALISM.
BY A SOCIALIST STUDENT OF THEOSOPHY.
The writer of the article on “Brotherhood” in your last issue has
given an erroneous impression of Socialism, which, as a student of
Theosophy (I do not know if I can yet call myself a disciple), who
has been, in a large measure, drawn to this great study _through
Socialism_, I may, perhaps, be allowed to correct. Indeed, I should
feel that I was shirking a task clearly indicated to me at the
present moment, were I to leave such errors, so far as all readers
of LUCIFER are concerned, uncorrected.
“T.B.H.,” the writer of the article in question—an interesting and,
I believe, useful article in many respects—has, I venture to
conjecture, confused the general system or class of systems known as
Socialism, with certain methods of propagating its principles. Let
me commence by quoting the paragraph in his article to which I take
exception. He says (LUCIFER No. 3, p. 213):—
(1). “Socialism, as preached in this nineteenth century, it
[the Universal Brotherhood, which is the mainspring of
Theosophy.—J.B.B.] certainly is not. (2). Indeed, there would
be little difficulty in showing that modern materialistic
Socialism is directly at variance with all the teachings of
Theosophy. (3). Socialism advocates a direct interference with
the results of the law of _Karma_, and would attempt to alter
the dénouement of the parable of the talents by giving to the
man, who hid his talent in a napkin, a portion of the ten
talents acquired by the labour of his more industrious
fellow.”
I will first take the three statements contained in this paragraph
separately, and, for convenience’s sake, in inverted order. The
allegation against Socialism contained in the third is the most
specific, and that which, in the eyes of Theosophists, must appear
the most serious. This statement, namely, that “Socialism advocates
a direct interference with the results of the law of Karma, and
would attempt &c.,” constitutes, in fact, the only definite premise
in his argument. Of course, if Socialists do advocate, consciously
or unconsciously, anything of the sort, they advocate a physical and
psychical impossibility, and their movement is fore-doomed to
failure. More than this, if they do so _consciously_, they are
sinning against the light, and are impious as well as childish in
their efforts. Of such, clearly, the Universal Brotherhood is not.
But neither Socialists nor Socialism, “as preached in this
nineteenth century,” do anything of the kind. By “Materialistic”
Socialism, I presume “T.B.H.” implies (if he has really _studied_
Socialism at all, which I venture to doubt) so much of it as can be
urged upon purely worldly grounds, such as the better feeding,
housing, &c., of those who do the active work of society, technical
instruction, such general education as fits a man for the domestic
and secular duties of life, and the reorganisation of society with
these objects upon a “co-operative” basis,[61] in which public
salaried officers, elected by their fellows, will take the place of
capitalists and landlords, and in which the production and
distribution of wealth will be more systematically regulated. This
system, of course, takes no account of the law of Karma.
-----
Footnote 61:
Co-operative, that is to say, in the sense that the various
sections and individual members of society shall _willingly_
co-operate, being fully conscious of their interdependance.
ST. GEORGE LANE FOX.
-----
In a rough sort of way, however, all Socialists recognise the law,
so far as its effects are visible in this world on the physical,
intellectual, and moral planes. The fact that “the evil that men
do,” and classes and nations of men also, “lives after them,” none
are more ready to own and act upon. The action and reaction of
individual _will_ and individual and social _circumstance_, both
upon each other and upon individual and social _conditions_, forms
part of the foundations of Socialism. _Quâ_ Socialists we do not, of
course, take any more account of the law of Karma than do
non-Socialist Christians and Agnostics, but I maintain there is
nothing whatever in Socialism repugnant to a belief in this law. If
anything, it is the other way. All Socialists, whether they call
themselves Collectionists or Anarchists, Christian Socialists,[62]
Communists, or purely economic Socialists, are anxious to give freer
play to human abilities and social impulses, by creating leisure and
educational opportunities for all. We may thus, if it is permitted
to me to speculate while criticising, become the instruments of a
greater equalisation, distribution, and acceleration of Karmic
growth, “good” or “evil,” upon and among individual souls, during
their incarnation on this planet. This would come to pass by the
transferring of a great deal of the responsibility for Karmic
results which now lies with each individual in his personal
capacity, upon the collective entities composed of individuals
acting in public capacities; _e.g._, as nations, provinces,
communes, or trade corporations.
-----
Footnote 62:
Socialists who consider their Christianity to supply them with
sufficient motives for their Socialism. They do not strictly form
a sect either of Socialists or of Christians.
-----
It is surely true, even now, to speak of a collective, _e.g._, a
national or municipal Karma, as we do of a national conscience. We
speak of reward or retribution to nations and cities as if they had
distinct personalities—are these mere “figures of speech”? But what
is more important is that Socialists may prepare the way for a
revelation of the noble truths of Theosophy to the multitude; they
may help to raise the intellectual and instinctive moral standard of
the whole community to such an extent that all will, in the next
generation following after the Social Revolution,[63] be amenable to
those truths. In this way Socialism would not, indeed, interfere
with the results of the law of Karma, but would, as the precursor of
Theosophy, be the indirect means of enabling multitudes to rise and
free themselves from its bonds.
-----
Footnote 63:
This word, of course, is employed in the general sense, without
any reference to the physical character which the revolution may
assume. It may be attended with violence, or it may be as peaceful
as, for instance, the religious revolution accomplished by
Constantine in the fourth century. All I am postulating is a more
or less sudden transformation of the existing social order,
effected by one of those impulses with which evolution seems to
complete its periods, and of which Theosophy may some day afford
the explanation.
-----
As to the parable of the talents, well, Socialists would be only too
glad to see its moral better enforced in this and other “civilised”
countries. To them it seems impossible that it could be _less_
enforced or taken to heart than it is now. They see that under the
present system of Society—that vast engine of usury by which whole
classes are held in economic servitude to other classes—many are
encouraged to live in sloth and hide their talents, even if they put
them to no worse uses than that. This could hardly happen under a
_régime_ of economic Socialism (such a _régime_, for instance, as
Laurence Grönlund contemplates in his “Co-operative Commonwealth”);
for these able-bodied or talented citizens who declined to work
would simply be left to starve or sponge upon their relatives. Under
a purely communist _régime_,[64] no doubt there would be a few who
would shirk their proper share in the social work, but at least none
would be brought up from infancy, as now, to “eat the bread of
idleness.”
-----
Footnote 64:
The only kind to which T. B. H.’s remarks are in any way
applicable.
-----
Finally on this point, if to advocate such changes as Socialists
advocate, the substitution of social co-operation for competition;
of production with a view to use, for production with view to
profit; of peace between nations, classes, and individuals, for war;
of harmonious organisation to the advantage of all, for _laissez
faire_, and chaos for the advantage (or supposed advantage) of a
few. If I say, to advocate such changes be to advocate interference
with the results of the law of Karma, so is every proposal for the
amelioration of the physical or intellectual welfare of our fellows.
And if participation in this and other movements, which may with
equal justice be called “materialistic,” be prohibited to
Theosophists, they may as well, for all good their Universal
Brotherhood will do to the mass of those at present outside it, stay
at home and content themselves with communing with the select few
who alone will ever be in a position to appreciate them. If, for one
reason or other, they do not care to co-operate with Socialists, let
them, at least, recognise that the latter are preparing their way
for them, doing the dirty (?) and laborious work, without which
Theosophy can never descend from the serene heights in which it now
dwells, to replenish, spiritually, this sadly benighted world. For,
apart from a healthier physical and psychical atmosphere than
“civilised” life engenders in either rich or poor (collective Karmic
effects), a fair amount of leisure and freedom from sordid care are
indispensable in most human beings for the higher development of the
perceptive or gnostic faculties. At present this minimum of
leisure and economic independence is probably unattainable by
nineteen-twentieths of the population. Yet this self-same society,
with its scientific learning and experience, its machinery, and its
business organisation, contains within it all the germs of such a
reconstruction of the physical environment as shall very shortly
place the means of spiritual and psychical regeneration within the
reach of all.
“T. B. H.’s” second statement is that “Indeed there would be very
little difficulty in showing that modern materialistic Socialism is
directly at variance with all the teachings of Theosophy.” Such an
expression as “materialistic Socialism” is, as I have already
hinted, erroneous. _All_ Socialism is materialistic in the sense
that it concerns itself primarily with the material or physical
conditions of mankind. So do chemistry and mechanics, pure or
applied; so, in ordinary politics, do Liberalism and Conservatism.
_No_ Socialism is materialistic in the sense that it is based upon
any materialistic, as distinct from spiritualistic or pantheistic
conceptions of the universe. It has hardly any more to do with such
questions than have cotton-spinning or boot-making. I do not,
however, pretend to mistake “T. B. H’s” meaning. Taking Socialism in
its essentially economic aspect (which I admit is the foremost for
the present, and must remain so until it has been disposed of), he
asserts that “there would be very little difficulty in proving &c.”
This is a mere general charge against it, although, I think, a less
plausible, and therefore—from the point of view of harmony between
Socialists and Theosophists—a less serious one, than the particular
charge which follows it, and with which I have already endeavoured
to deal. For my own enlightenment, I should be glad to have some
samples, taken at random, of his skill in showing this variance; but
I doubt if such a demonstration could effect any good. Meanwhile it
is impossible to _answer_ the charge on account of its vague, albeit
sweeping and all-comprehensive character. “All the teachings of
Theosophy” are quite too much for a student like myself to attempt
to compare with Economic Socialism, as a system; nor do I think one
with ten times the learning and discernment that I can claim, would
readily attempt it. I merely record, therefore, my sincere
conviction that on this general point “T. B. H.” is also mistaken,
and that it is not Socialism, economic, or otherwise, which he has
really been scrutinising and balancing, but the sayings or doings of
some particular “Socialist,” whom he has seen or read of.
Individual Socialists have, of course, many faults which cannot
fairly be charged to the social and economic tenets they profess.
Thus one besetting fault of militant advocates of the cause is the
use of violent language against individual capitalists, police
officials and landlords. It, is so easy, even for men of a calibre
superior to the average, to be drawn on from righteous indignation
at a corrupt system, to abuse of the creatures and instruments
thereof—or even, on occasion, to personal violence against them.
Every good cause has its Peters, no less than its Judases. Socialism
unfortunately has a rich crop of the former. Another still worse
fault on the part of certain agitators, but one which might easily
be predicted from the character of the struggle and the condition of
the classes who must form the backbone of the Socialist Party, is
the frequent appeal to lower motives, such as revenge and love of
luxury.
But such faults, although by all human prevision necessary
incidents in the movement, are by no means inherent in Socialism.
Even the purely “materialistic” socialism of Karl Marx, to which
“T. B. H.” seems (although I think not with any clear picture of
it in his mind) to refer, aims simply at securing the decencies
and ordinary comforts of life to all, as a recompense for more
evenly distributed social labour. The very conditions of life
under a co-operative commonwealth such as Hyndman, Grönlund, and
other followers of the late Karl Marx’s economic ideal, have in
view—above all the obligation (virtual, at any rate) under which
every able-bodied member of the community would find himself or
herself, to do a few hours of useful work of one kind or another
every day, and the elimination of the commercial and speculative
element, with the wretched insecurity and dangerous temptations
which it involves,—would preclude inordinate luxury. A healthy
simplicity of life would become, first, “fashionable,” then
usual.[65] Communism, of course, goes further than economic
socialism, as it implies not only the claim of the individual upon
the community for the means of _labour_ and the enjoyment of its
fruits or their equivalent, but his claim for _subsistence_,
irrespective of the amount and social value of the labour which he
is able to perform. It would abolish, therefore, not only
individual property in the means of production, but in the
products themselves. The practicability of Communism, the motto of
which is, “From each according to his abilities, to each according
to his needs,” obviously depends upon the prevalence of more
generous motives, of a higher sense of duty both to work and to
give—a more perfect development, in fact, of the sense of human
solidarity. It is for this very reason more commendable than mere
economic socialism, as an ideal, to the attention of Theosophists;
although its application, on the national or universal scale,
cannot yet be said to have entered “the sphere of practical
politics.”
-----
Footnote 65:
I do not, of course, mean to predict that “sin” (or its
Theosophical equivalent) would die out. It is, after all, a
relative matter to the capacities and potentialities of the
individual and his surroundings. Under Socialism, sensuality,
social or plutocratic pride, and other sins fostered by the
present order, would simply give way to ambition (to obtain
popular distinction, _e.g._, as an artist or inventor) and perhaps
to magic and other at present unfashionable vices.
-----
Communism, which may be either Collectivist or Anarchist, leads me
to add a few words about Anarchism. I refer, of course, to the
social ideal philosophically denoted by this name, and not to the
means advocated by some of its supporters for putting an end to the
present society. Anarchism involves Communism, as well as extreme
decentralisation; more than this, it involves the abolition of all
permanent machinery of law and order, such as “the State” is
supposed to provide, and the abolition of physical force as a method
of suasion, even for criminals and lunatics. As a protest against
political domination of all kinds, and an antidote to the excessive
centralisation advocated by some state-Socialists, Anarchism may be
of some use, but it is obviously further even than Communism (of the
Collectivist variety) from becoming a school of “practical”
politics. It could only become so after society at large, all the
world over, had grown sufficiently homogeneous and _solidaire_ for
its members to co-operate spontaneously and automatically for all
necessary purposes, grouping themselves into large or small
organizations (limbs and organs) as required, and forming a complete
_body-social_, or Mesocosm, if I may be allowed to coin a word for
the purpose.
The erroneous conceptions of Socialism which I believe “T. B. H.” to
have formed, do not necessarily invalidate the first statement in
the paragraph of his article upon which I have been commenting, to
wit, that the Universal Brotherhood which he has in view (and which,
I understand from him, forms the first part of the programme of the
Theosophical Society) is not “Socialism as preached in this 19th
century,”—or at any other time, past or future, for that matter.
Still, I am inclined to hope that a more intimate study of Socialism
will lead him to see that, whether identical or not, they are at any
rate not antagonistic. My own belief is that Theosophy and
“materialistic” Socialism will be found to be working along
different planes in the same direction.
Any Universal Brotherhood of Theosophists must be based upon
Socialist principles, _inter alia_: its foundations may extend
further and deeper than those of Socialism, but cannot be less
extensive. Greed and War (political or industrial) Social Caste and
Privilege, Political Domination of Man over Man, are as out of place
in a true Brotherhood as wolves in a flock of sheep. Yet the
exclusion of these anti-social demons and the enthronement in their
place of Universal Love and Peace, if effected by such a
Brotherhood, would simply leave Socialists nothing to do but to
organize the material framework of their co-operative commonwealths.
To preach economic or “materialistic” Socialism to a world already
converted to the highest and completest form of Socialism, would be
to advocate the plating of gold with tin or copper.
Modern Socialism, if the noble aspirations of some of its apostles
may be taken as an earnest of its future, is already developing
(incidentally, of course, to its main economic and ethical
doctrines) strong æsthetic and spiritual tendencies. No reader of
William Morris or Edward Carpenter, to speak of English Socialists
only, will fail to notice this. At present the mass of Socialists
content themselves with basing their social and economic faith upon
the ethical principles of Justice, Freedom and Brotherhood. But the
highest, because most mystical of these principles, that of
Brotherhood, or better, Human Solidarity—the ancient conception of
“Charity”—forms the unconscious link between modern Socialism on the
one hand, and Esoteric Buddhism, Esoteric Christianity, and
Theosophy generally, on the other. I say _unconscious_ link, but I
mean to imply that it may soon be rendered conscious and visible. As
the various “orthodox” varieties, first of Christianity, then of
Mohammedanism, perish with the destruction or collapse of the Social
systems that have grown up along with them, this simple religion of
Human Solidarity will take possession of the deserted shrines of
Christ and Allah, and will begin to seek out its own fount of
inspiration. Then will be the time for the Universal Brotherhood of
Theosophists to step into the breach.
J. BRAILSFORD BRIGHT (_M.A. Oxon._).
THE GREAT QUEST.
“In many mortal forms I rashly sought
The shadow of that idol of my thought.”
—_Shelley._
“Après l’amour éteint si je vécus encore
C’est pour la vérité, soif aussi qui dévore!”
—_Lamartine._
The loss of youth and love is the perpetual wail of the poets. A
never-changing spring-time of life, where the sweet dreams of youth
would be realised in the fruition of reciprocal love, such would be
a heaven to them, and such _is_ a heaven while it lasts. If we add
to this the refined æsthetic taste that can delicately balance and
appreciate to a nicety every joy of the senses, and the
highly-developed intellect which can roam at will over the
accumulated store of past ages of culture, what would there be left
for poets to dream of? With heart, senses and mind worthily
employed, and with the well-balanced nature that knows moderation
alone can give continued bliss, could not man rest satisfied at
last? What more could he desire?
It is useless to deny that life has very sweet gifts to give, though
the number is limited of those who are capable of receiving them in
their fulness. But even while these gifts are being enjoyed, it is
felt that the horizon is bounded. With what questioning
uncertainty—albeit with fascination—does youth open its eyes upon
the glamour of the dazzling world! The love of the Springtide, even
in fruition, is continually building fairy bowers in the future—it
never for long rests content in the present, while to the intellect
the bounded scope of utmost learning is a still more definite goad
towards a knowledge that shall transcend all past experience.
And even were man content to continue to drink of the one cup of
bliss, he is never allowed to do so. The lessons of life, the great
teacher, are continually being altered, and the tempest of the heart
takes the place of the calm that was never expected to end.
If, then, we must look in vain to find permanent bliss in any of
these things—if, beyond the highest intellectual culture of an
intellectual age there gleams the vision of a higher knowledge—if
behind the artistic refinement of this, as of all past flowers of
civilization, the fount of all sweetness lies hid—if even the
heart-binding communion of earthly love is but a faint reflex of the
deep peace realized by him who has torn aside the veil that hides
the Eternal, surely all man’s energies should be devoted to the
quest which will yield him such results.
The whole philosophy of life may be summed up in the Four great
Truths that Buddha taught, and no more convincing description of
them can be read than that given in the lovely lines of the eighth
book of the “Light of Asia.”
He who has once been deeply imbued with these great truths—who has
realised the transitory nature of all earthly bliss, and the pains
and sorrows that more than counterbalance the joys of life—will
never in his truest moments desire to be again blessed, either in
the present or in any future incarnation, with an uniformly happy
life, for there is no such soporific for the soul as the feeling of
satisfaction, as there is no such powerful goad as the feeling of
dissatisfaction. He is bound to pass through periods of joy, but
they will be looked forward to with fear and doubting, for then it
is that the sense-world again fastens its fangs on the soul, to be
followed by the pain of another struggle for freedom.
When first setting out on the great quest, it seems as if many
lifetimes would fail to appease the dominant passion of the soul,
but nature works quickly in the hottest climates, and from the very
intensity of the desire may spring the strength and will to conquer
it. Though it is probably the same key-note that is struck
throughout, the dominant desire will appear to take a different tone
through the ascending scale of life. It is a speculation, but one
which would seem to receive endorsement from the analogies of
nature; for as the human embryo in its antenatal development,
exhibits in rapid succession, but with longer pauses as it
approaches the period of birth, the characteristics of the lower
races of animal life from which man has evolved, so does the human
soul realise in its passage through life the dominant desires and
attractions which have affected it through countless past
incarnations. The lower desires which in past lives may have been
more or less completely conquered, will be experienced in rapid
succession and left behind without much difficulty, till the great
struggle of the life is reached, from which man must come out more
or less victorious if he is to continue the progress at all.
If right intention were the only thing needed, if it were a
guarantee against being led astray, or if straying did not
necessitate retardation on the road, there would be no such supreme
necessity that belief should be in accordance with facts; but even
in worldly affairs we see every day that purity of intention is no
guard against the failures that come from lack of knowledge. In the
great spiritual science therefore, which deals with the problem of
life as a whole—not the mere fragment which this earthly existence
represents—it will be seen how vitally necessary it is that facts
should be conceived correctly.
To us whose eyes are blinded to the heights above, by the mists of
our own desires, the only rays of light which can illumine the
darkness of our journey on the great quest, are the words (whether
or not in the form of recognised revelation) left by the masters who
have preceded us on the road, and the counsel of our comrades who
are bound for the same goal. But words are capable of many
interpretations, and the opinions of our comrades are coloured by
their own personality—the ultimate touch-stone of truth must
therefore be looked for in the disciple’s own breast.
Having stated the necessity for correct belief, let us now consider
the question of the great achievement—the annihilation of Karma—the
attainment of Nirvana. It must be acknowledged as a logical
proposition that Karma can never annihilate Karma, _i.e._, that no
thoughts words, or acts of the man in his present state of
consciousness, can, ever free him from the circle of re-births. This
view would seem to necessitate some power external to the man to
free him—a power which has touch of him, and which would have to be
allied to him.
Now the teachings which have been put before the world in “Light on
the Path” state the other side of the question. “Each man is to
himself absolutely the _way_, the _truth_, and the _life_.” And
again, “For within you is the light of the world, the only light
that can be shed on the Path. If you are unable to perceive it
within you, it is useless to look for it elsewhere.” It would seem
that the solution of this great paradox must be sought for in the
constitution of man, as described in theosophic writings. Indeed, it
is the scientific statement of deep spiritual truths which gives to
the Theosophic teachings their remarkable value, and which seems
likely to carry conviction of their truth to the Western peoples,
who have for too long been accustomed to the mere emotional
sentimentality of the orthodox religions, and to the pessimistic
negation of science.
The higher principles, as they have been called, in the constitution
of man, particularly the divine Atma, through which he is allied to
the all-pervading Deity, must ever remain deep mysteries. But at
least they are cognisable by the intellect, as providing logical
stepping-stones for spanning the great gulf between Humanity and
Divinity,—the Power—the correct cognition of which provides the very
link between both systems of thought—which is at the same time
external to man, and has touch of him by its own divine light which
enlightens him, and which is also the very man himself—his highest
and truest Self.
For most of us it is the “God hidden in the Sanctuary,” of whose
very existence we are unaware, is known under the name of Iswara or
the Logos—the primal ray from the Great Unknown. It is the Chrestos
of the Christians, but, save, perhaps, to a few mystics in the Roman
or Greek churches, it has been degraded past recognition by their
materialistic anthropomorphism. A help to its better understanding
may be obtained by a reference to Sanscrit philosophy, which
describes man’s nature as consisting of the three _gunas_ or
qualities—Satwa, goodness, Rajas, passion and Tamas, darkness, or
delusion—and the nature of most men is made up almost entirely of
the two last named—while the Logos is pure Satwa.
The vexed question, therefore, as to whether man is freed by his own
dominant will, or by the power of the Logos, will be seen to be very
much a distinction without a difference. For the attainment of final
liberation the God within and the God without must co-operate.
Desire being, as Buddha taught, the great obstacle in the way, its
conquest by the dominant will is the thing that has to be done, but
the Divine will cannot arise in its power, till the conviction of
the Supreme desirability of attaining the eternal condition is
rendered permanent; and it is this that necessitates the goad which
the Logos is continually applying by its light on the soul.
We are now face to face with a very difficult problem—it is, in fact
the gulf which separates the Occultist from the Religionist, and it
is here that it is so necessary to get hold of the correct idea.
“Strong limbs may dare the rugged road which storms,
Soaring and perilous, the mountain’s breast;
The weak must wind from slower ledge to ledge,
With many a place of rest.”
The short cut to perfection referred to in the first two lines has
been called in Theosophic writings “the perilous ladder which leads
to the path of life.” To have faced the fearful abyss of darkness of
the first trial, without starting back in terror at the apparent
annihilation which the casting aside of the sense-life implies, and
out of the still more awful silence of the second trial; to have had
the strength to evoke the greater Self—the God that has hitherto
been hidden in the sanctuary—such is the language used with
reference to the very first—nay, the preliminary—steps on this path,
while the further steps are represented by the ascending scale of
the occult Hierarchy, where the neophyte or chela, through a series
of trials and initiations, may attain the highest Adeptship, and the
man may gradually leave behind him his human desires and
limitations, and realise instead the attributes of Deity.
PILGRIM.
(_To be continued._)
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“_GOD SPEAKS FOR LAW AND ORDER._”
INTRODUCTION.
The readers of the curious article which follows are requested to
remember that the writers of signed papers in LUCIFER, and not the
editors, are responsible for their contents. Captain Serjeant’s
views excite much interest among a large number of earnest people,
who use Biblical forms and phraseology to picture to themselves the
hidden things of nature and of spirit—things which we, the editors,
and also the large majority of Theosophists, believe to be more
clearly conveyed under the symbolism of the ancient Wisdom-Religion
of the East, and better expressed in its terminology. The article is
an attempt to explain the significance of a very curious cloud
formation observed by many persons in Scotland, on the 16th of
September last, a sketch of which appeared in the _St. Stephens
Review_ on the 24th of the same month. In the centre of the sketch
appears a side view of the British Lion rampant, with his paw on the
head of a bearded man, who bears a considerable likeness to Mr.
Parnell; to the right of the Lion is an excellent likeness of Her
Majesty, crowned, as in the Jubilee coinage, and smiling very
naturally; and to the left of the picture is an Irish harp. The
appearance, by the testimony of many witnesses, must have been
remarkably perfect and striking. Cloud-forms of a similar kind have
been recorded many times in history, and they are usually connected
in the public mind with some important political event. The Cross of
Constantine will, no doubt, recur to the readers’ mind, but the
sword and reversed crescent, which everyone saw in the sky when the
Turks were driven out of Vienna, may be less generally known; as
also the reversed thistles, with the outline of a Scotchman, armed
with claymore and targe, and falling backward, which was observed in
the clouds by the King and Court at Windsor on the night before the
battle of Culloden.
The question of what interpretation is to be put upon remarkable
cloud appearances, is of little interest to anyone who believes that
such phenomena are merely accidental arrangements of the watery
vapours of the atmosphere driven by currents of air. Apart, however,
from the obvious consideration that this way of regarding the
phenomenon only raises the further question of what causes the
currents of air to run in these particular ways, it may be safely
said that the chances are millions of millions of millions to one,
against the appearance in the clouds of any such perfect and
complete picture of well-known persons and emblems, as were seen in
Scotland on the 16th of September. Of course it may be argued, on
the other hand, that the clouds are for ever forming and re-forming
in millions of millions of millions different ways, and that the
mathematical chances are that one of these ways will occasionally
represent an earth scene. But even if the infinite number of
continual permutations and transformations of cloud substance be
held to account for the occasional appearance of some graphic
picture of human things, it does not in any way explain why these
rare pictures, when they do occur, should be perfect and appropriate
symbols; neither does it account for their appearance at the
particular moment when the extraordinary events, to which they are
appropriate, are occurring, or about to occur.
The phenomenon of vapours and fumes taking the shape of persons and
things, is one of the oldest and best accredited facts in magic, and
these cloud appearances, if they be viewed as having any
significance, are merely instances of a similar action on a large
scale produced by some conscious or unconscious force in nature.
If it be allowed, however, that the occasional assumption by vapours
of the shapes and likenesses of terrestrial things is not a
“fortuitous concourse of atoms,” but occurs in accordance with some
obscure law of Nature that in itself is the result of the mutual
interaction and interdependence of everything in the Universe, the
important question still remains—whether these appearances, when
they do occur, are “intended” as warnings or omens? Should the lion,
the harp, her Majesty, and Mr. Parnell, of the Scottish
cloud-picture, be taken as having any more significance in the
affairs of the nation, or of the world at large, than chemical
phenomena can be supposed to presage disturbances or rejoicings in
the world of nature? To answer this question would involve
considerations which only an advanced Occultist would be able to
comprehend; so we shall merely say, that although there are natural
symbols which carry in them a definite meaning for those who can
read that secret language, still symbols are generally significant
in proportion as people themselves put a significance into them.
A triangle or a cube is nothing but a triangle or a cube to a yokel,
but to an Occultist they contain the philosophy of the Universe.
Even so, Captain Serjeant, “the New Dispensationist,” and
Theosophist, can put the meaning he likes into this or any other
symbolical representation. We do not quite agree with either his
methods or his results in the case before us, but the conclusions he
draws are the same that are now being reached by many minds pursuing
very different paths; and these conclusions may be summed up by
saying that great changes are approaching, both in the temporal and
in the spiritual life of humanity, and that these changes will
eventuate in better things and nobler ideas.
---
AN INTERPRETATION OF THE VISION, BY SERJEANT.
(The New Dispensationist.)
Thus may be interpreted the symbolical appearance represented and
described in the _St. Stephen’s Review_ of 24th September 1887. The
lion[66] of the house of Judah[67] arises with Victoria[68] the
female principle of the victor[69] of this world of ignorance,
error, sin, crime and misery. The lion represents that wisdom which
is the only true and lasting power on earth. He shall crush out the
anarchy and confusion now so manifest in _the world_ which is the
state of ignorance existing on this earth. Without a miracle shall
all this be accomplished?
-----
Footnote 66:
It is somewhat difficult to follow the argument of this passage,
unless the meaning of the words is explained. The Lion of the
House of Judah is equivalent to “the Lord” and to “the Victor”
mentioned below. In the writer’s phraseology “Victor is the symbol
of the Trinity of Wisdom, Love, Truth.” Now the Lion is symbolical
of Wisdom; but, as it is impossible to sever one element of the
Trinity from another, it is necessary to remember that whenever
the word wisdom is used it carries with it the other two as well.
The above sentence would then seem to mean the conjunction of the
male and female principles to effect the purpose of the
manifestation of the Trinity above mentioned; by which
manifestation all ignorance is dispelled. [ED.]
Footnote 67:
Judah means _praised_; the true idea being _the Lord be praised_.
Too much attention cannot be paid to the meanings of the words
used in the sacred writings of all nations and peoples.
Footnote 68:
_i.e._ the Queen, on whose lands _the Sun never sets_; it must be
remembered that—“neither is the woman without the man, nor the man
without the woman in the Lord.”—(1 Corinthians xi, 11.)
Footnote 69:
“And no man can say _Jesus is Lord_ (_i.e._ Victor), but in the
Holy Spirit.”—(1 Corinthians xii., 3, Revised Version.) It is
especially necessary to remember that whenever allusion is made to
Victoria, it is not Her Most Gracious Majesty who is meant but the
unseen Victoria whose outward manifestation the Queen is alleged
to be. It is as though the Queen is the mouth-piece of the
intelligence behind, as the Foreign Secretary may be the
mouth-piece of the Foreign policy of the Government. The language
used is purely symbolical and by using words as symbols an
esoteric meaning is attached to the most commonplace events in
life. It is a truly occult argument, but one which matter-of-fact
people will regard as nonsensical. [ED.]
-----
As insidious doubt has crept into the hearts of the children of men,
so shall insidious truth creep in to dispel all doubt; ignorance
developed into wisdom shall be the destruction of the world.[70]
Ignorance is the former or lower expression of knowledge, and
knowledge is the former or lower expression of wisdom—ignorance[71]
is the cross—wisdom is the crown. Ignorance regarded in a true light
is really an incentive to knowledge, for no man would try to attain
to knowledge were he not ignorant. And no man would strive to attain
to wisdom, did he not possess the knowledge which ever silently
proclaims to him its crowning happiness. Wisdom is not only the
celestial crown which every embodied soul is ultimately destined to
possess, but it is also that particular state of Heaven called the
“New Jerusalem” which shall descend from the Spirit (_i.e._ God, see
John iv., 24.) to earth in these latter days (see Revelation xxi.)
-----
Footnote 70:
According to the explanations of the writer (_v. supra_), _The
World_ signifies a state of ignorance and darkness. Taken in this
sense the above sentence becomes a truism. [ED.]
Footnote 71:
Ignorance is the equivalent of the Body, which is the Cross. By
this light the Wisdom means the life of the Spirit. [ED.]
-----
Man was created[72] an ignorant being for a great purpose, which he
will ultimately realise and know. Were there no ignorance, there
could be no error, without error there could be no sin. Were there
no ignorance, no sin, there could be no crime, no unhappiness, no
misery existing on the earth. When, therefore, general ignorance
shall succumb to the disintegrating power of universal intelligence
so rapidly developing in these latter days[73] (see Daniel xii., 4),
and which is the quickening of the Spirit of God in man; then the
very conditions responsible for evolving error, sin, crime,
unhappiness, and misery will be entirely done away with, and thus
the consummation of the age—or, as the old translation of the Bible
has it, the end of the world—will be brought about as a necessary
consequence of purification by the Fire of the Spirit, _Truth_,
which is the Divine Son of the Supreme Spirit, or God. “When He, the
Spirit of Truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the Truth”;
then shall the princes of the House of David[74] arise from amongst
the people to rule the nations in equity and justice, in prosperity
and peace, and the reign of the One Almighty Spirit of Wisdom, Love,
and Truth shall begin on earth—for the Lion (or wisdom) shall lie
down with the Lamb (or innocence), and a little child (or truth, see
Rev. xii., the coming man-child) shall lead them.
-----
Footnote 72:
To say that Man was created ignorant for a great purpose would
argue the idea of a creator, according to orthodox ideas. But the
writer is known to repudiate this idea entirely. It is difficult,
therefore, to see what he means, unless it is that the man of
flesh was ushered into existence by an evolution which he has not
yet completed—ignorant, to acquire knowledge gradually. [ED.]
Footnote 73:
This is a _very_ optimistic view of the case, and we can only hope
to see it realised. The article “Signs of the Times” agrees with
the views of the writer of this article. There is a development
going on, but the forces against which it has to contend are too
dense for an early realisation of this dreamlike Golden Age. It is
too good to be true; but that it is possible to help it is also
true. The Kingdom of Heaven may be taken by violence, and an
entrance effected in an instant, but the process of attaining the
position whence the attack may be delivered, is one extending over
years. No student of occultism needs to be told this. [ED.]
Footnote 74:
David means _beloved_; he was the first King of Israel, chosen of
the Spirit. Israel means _one who strives with God_—_i.e._ one who
strives against ignorance in order that he may be blessed together
with his posterity. It was a name given to Jacob when he wrestled
with the Angel (Genesis xxxii., 28), and applies _to all_ who
contend on the side of the Deity.
-----
The soul-stirring and elevating harp of the sweet and trusting
daughters of Judah[75] is hushed—no crown surmounts it; and angels
weep and mourn over the discord now prevailing in the world. Where
are the harmonious chords which, through their inherent, soft,
loving and sympathetic notes once rendered powerless that enemy of
man—the serpent? Lost, through the ignorance and sin of the puny
earth-worms of this world! Yet Ireland, in common with the whole
earth, shall be freed ere long from the yoke of ignorance which is
so sorely oppressing all God’s creatures, for the crowned female
head symbolically represents the “Sign in Heaven” _which has
appeared_, of the Victoria or the woman[76] clothed with the Sun,
the Divine Mother from whom will proceed the Child of Wisdom, Love
and Truth, who shall rule all nations with a rod of iron,[77] and
who shall be caught up unto God and unto His Throne.[78]
-----
Footnote 75:
In the writer’s phraseology, Judah is the equivalent of Erin in
this case. It becomes exceedingly difficult to follow his meaning,
for as everything is the equivalent of everything else, we are
landed in a hopeless maze of paradox. On the principle that there
is no truth without a paradox, there must be a great truth in this
article (as there is), but its disentanglement is a matter of much
labour and thought. The line of argument is the Judah meaning “be
praised”—certain people who praised or followed the Lord (or
Wisdom) were “oppressed and laid aside _their harps_.” There are
people unjustly oppressed in Ireland, not by the outer troubles,
but by the causes of the undoubted misery which prevails there.
Consequently, the daughters of Judah and Erin are equivalent terms
and interchangeable as symbols. The fact is that the author uses a
peculiar cryptogram, as he himself states. [ED.]
Footnote 76:
See “The Mother, the woman clothed with the Sun,” Vols. I. and
II.; and also the celebrated picture of “The Woman clothed with
the Sun,” by Carl Müller.
Footnote 77:
_i.e._, The Sceptre that endureth.
Footnote 78:
_Revelation_, xii.
-----
The following quotation from one of the replies to two leading
articles, which appeared in the _Manchester Courier_ of May 4th and
13th, may also tend to throw some light on the vision of the crowned
female head: “The present year heralds the jubilee of Her Majesty
Queen Victoria, on whose glorious Empire the sun never sets. It
shall also proclaim the jubilee of another Queen Victoria, well
known to the ancients as the Bride of God who awaits the arrival of
the Bridegroom. This Queen is She of Sheba[79]—the female principle
of the one who is the Victor[80] of this world of ignorance and
darkness, sin and crime; and He is the Solomon,[81] or Man of Light,
Truth and Life Eternal. On her glorious empire the golden rays of
Love and Peace shall shine forth from the Living Sun which nevermore
shall set. She is the woman clothed with the Sun, and from her will
proceed the promised man-child who shall rule all nations with a rod
of iron, and shall be caught up unto God and unto His Throne. Were
the English nation but to realise the mighty import of the grand and
everlasting truths which I now proclaim, it would, to a man, support
us in that work in which we, the New Dispensationists, daily and
hourly labour in the interests of a suffering humanity now being
slowly ground to powder in the stern mill of social ignorance and
degradation. The time has come for the promise to be made known of
the fulfilment of the “Saving health of all nations”; the prophecies
of the ancients relating to the ultimatum of the written Word of
Truth clearly point to the present age; and the Eternal Fiat has
gone forth from the Universal King: “Write, for these words are
faithful and true”—“Behold, I make all things new.” (Revelation xxi,
5.)
-----
Footnote 79:
The Queen of the South or Zenith (_i.e._ the most supreme point of
the Heavens) who shall rise in judgment with this generation (see
Matthew xii, 42), She’ba represents two Hebrew words (_Shebhā_ and
_Shebhȧ_). The first of these is an obscure term, compared by
Gesenius with the Ethiopic for “man”; the second signifies an oath
or covenant.
Footnote 80:
_i.e._, The Christ, the Messiah.
Footnote 81:
_i.e._, The man of “Sol” or the Sun. Hence, Christians worship on
Sunday instead of on the Sabbath or on Saturday, as the Jews
worship.
-----
It is fashionable in the world to covertly sneer at the things of
the Spirit, and to regard the Living God in Heaven as a Being either
unable or unwilling to manifest His Almighty Power and Presence to
the world in this orthodox nineteenth century. To all who may be
inclined to ignorantly hold what I have here written to be the
outcome of a disordered imagination I would say, in the words of
Paul, an apostle: “not of men, neither by men.”—“We speak wisdom
among the full-grown, yet a wisdom, not of this world, nor of the
rulers of this world, _which are coming to nought_: but we speak
God’s wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden,
which God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory, _which none
of the Rulers of this world knoweth_.”[82] “Now the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are
foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them because they are
spiritually examined. But he that is spiritual examineth all things
and is himself examined of no man.” (See 1 Corinthians, ii.)
-----
Footnote 82:
_i.e._, Theosophy, or the hidden outcome of the hidden wisdom of
the ages.
-----
The year 1887 heralds the spiritual activity which will eventually
culminate in the glorious consummation of the age.
W. ELDON SERJEANT.
AN INFANT GENIUS.
The idea of re-incarnation, that is to say of a succession of
earth-lives passed through by each individual monad, seems so new
and so daring to the Western World, that we are always being asked,
“Where are your proofs? Are we to take such a startling hypothesis
as this simply on your _ipse dixit_, or on the authority of some
ancient Oriental book or ‘problematical’ Mahatma?”
To such a question the reply cannot be given in two or three words;
for, while maintaining that there is at least as much reliance to be
placed upon the Sacred Books of the East as on those of any other
religion, and while holding firm to the belief that there _are_
beings of a higher order of intelligence living upon this earth, and
mixing even in its great life-currents, we cannot expect that merely
because we say “Man does not leave this earth for good and all at
Death,” we therefore shall gain credence. Before the world of
Science our position would have to be that of a Young with his
undulatory hypothesis of light, or a Dalton with his atomic theory.
We cannot bring proof positive to those who desire an Euclidic
demonstration; we can only offer to them a hypothesis, and bid them
treat it calmly and dispassionately, not flying straightway into a
fury of abuse at our great impudence in daring to suggest a heresy,
but weighing it with care, and trying whether or no it will explain
some of the dark riddles of existence.
To ourselves, merely as a working hypothesis, the doctrine of
reincarnation seems to throw so much long-sought-for light upon the
bewildering enigmas of life, and the strange vagaries of a fickle
fortune, that we could not, even if we would, lay aside so fluent an
interpreter of the utterances of the Sphinx—Existence. The seeming
injustices in the lot of man fall into line as units of the great
battalion of cause and effect; “What a man sows that must he also
reap.” How else account for all the misery that cries aloud on every
hand, the starving multitudes, the good man persecuted, the
charlatan triumphant? In the small purview of a life summed up in
three-score years and ten, where is the indication of a Divine
intelligence that metes to each his due?
But if this brief existence be not the only one that man incarnate
must pass through, if it be, as we are assured, but one short link
in a chain that spans a fathomless expanse of myriad years, then
does the eternity of justice proclaim itself, handed on from birth
to birth in the dark fuel of the torch of life.
Our purpose now, however, is not to strive to catalogue the
countless instances where destiny appears to cry aloud, into the
deaf ears of man, that life is fraught with dire responsibility for
future life, but to point to a case where she, in kindlier mood, has
shown the gracious aspect of her face.
For the last few months London has been taken by storm by the
marvellous musical talent of a child whose life, in this incarnation
at least, is barely ten years old. We allude, of course, to Josef
Hofmann. None of our readers who have heard this boy but must have
wondered whence this phenomenal skill could have been derived. Other
children have come before the public, and roused its listlessness a
little with exhibitions of infantile precocity. But this young Josef
has taken at once front rank among the stars of the musical world,
and won a place only to be compared to that of the fairy-child
Mozart.
Whence comes this breadth of feeling, this grasp of musical
expression? It is certain that it comes not from his teacher; for
his father alone has filled that capacity, and it does not show
itself in _his_ performance; and again, the only unsatisfactory part
of the boy’s playing is clearly the result of mannerisms such as the
second-rate conductor of a provincial orchestra would, without fail,
extol and inculcate. No; it is clear that the swing of rhythm, the
determination of attack, the delicacy of sentiment, must come from a
man’s heart beating within that boyish frame, and a man’s mind
shining through that childish head. Could one forget the name of the
performer for one instant, and shut from one’s eyes his physical
presence, it were a _man_ that was revealing to us the secrets of
the notes. The rife experience of years must needs precede such
rendering of musical thought; an experience earned in many a fight
with varying fortune, in sympathy with many a tale of woe, in
rejoicing over many a glimpse of Love and Brotherhood.
Yet ten short years are all his tale! What magician could crowd into
that tiny space the parti-coloured pictures of a fevered life of
energy? No, it must be that the child has lived upon this earth
before, has borne his lance in the thickest of the fray, has
achieved distinction in some great branch of art and garnered up a
store of thought and feeling, into the inheritance of which his
heir, himself, has entered. He may squander it again; alas, so many
have before; but there it is, for him to use aright or wrongly, and
serious is the charge imposed upon his guardians that they shall lay
the lesson to heart that to whom much is given, from him shall much
be expected. But with that aspect of the case it is not for us here
to deal. We have only adduced this boy’s genius as one of the
indications that life is in its succession a far more complex
problem than the materialists or the orthodox religionists would
lead us to believe. There are countless other suggestive little
facts of early talent that must have come within the circle of the
daily life of each of us; but without the thread of Karma whereon to
string them, we pass them by; and it is only when some remarkable
phenomenon, such as that of Josef Hofmann, bursts upon the world,
that men fall to wondering. Yet it is by the accumulation of small
details that a philosopher like Darwin worked out his scheme of
natural evolution; and it is by the testing of such a theory as that
of re-incarnation by many a little hitherto unexplained incident
that we shall find its worth. Nor is it merely as a curious prying
into mysteries that we should regard such research; for, once let a
man convince himself that though “Art is long,” yet Life, in its
recurrence, is longer, he will find in the thought that he is really
laying up treasure in heaven (the _lives_ to come), encouragement,
despite all temporary failure, to do whatsoever his hand findeth to
do with all his might.
W. ASHTON ELLIS.
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FEAR.
Why fearest thou the darksome shades
That creep across the path of life?
Why tremble at the thought of strife
That oftentimes the soul invades?
Why sicken at the thought of ills?
The horrors that invade thy dreams,
The shadowland of forms, that seems
Dark terror to the soul it fills?
Why weary of the onward way,
Or dread the roughness of the road?
Why fear to struggle ’gainst the load,
The heavy burthen of life’s clay?
Hast thou not seen?—when gone the night
And stilled the dropping of the shower,
The weary drooping wayside flower
Drink in new life from sunbeams bright.
Hast thou not loved, at dawn, to feast,
The longing of thy mortal eyes
With vivid colours of the skies,
Burst free from floodgates of the East?
And hast thou never tried, in thought,
To gain a clearer, truer view?
A mystic glimpse, a vision new,
That shows the darkness as it ought?
A phantom of material fear
Unworthy of a moment’s dread;
For darkness would itself be dead,
Unless its mother light were near!
Then learn to grasp the purer light,
And learn to know the holier creed—
The brighter glow—the greater need,
The nearer day—the murkier night.
P. H. D.
THE ESOTERIC CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS.
(_Continued._)
II.
The word Chréstos existed ages before Christianity was heard of. It
is found used, from the fifth century B.C., by Herodotus, by
Æschylus and other classical Greek writers, the meaning of it being
applied to both things and persons.
Thus in Æschylus (Cho. 901) we read of Μαντεύματα πυθόχρηστα
(_pythochrésta_) the “oracles delivered by a Pythian God”
(_Greek-Eng. Lex._) through a pythoness; and _Pythochréstos_ is the
nominative singular of an adjective derived from _chrao_ χράω
(Eurip. _Ion_, 1, 218). The later meanings coined freely from this
primitive application, are numerous and varied. Pagan classics
expressed more than one idea by the verb χράομαι “consulting an
oracle”; for it also means “fated,” _doomed_ by an oracle, in the
sense of a _sacrificial victim to its decree_, or—“to the WORD”; as
_chrésterion_ is not only “the seat of an oracle” but also “an
offering to, or for, the oracle.”[83] _Chrestés_ χρήστης is one who
expounds or explains oracles, “a _prophet_, a _soothsayer_;”[84] and
_chrésterios_ χρηστὴριος is one who belongs to, or is in the service
of, an oracle, a god, or a “Master”;[85] this Canon Farrar’s efforts
notwithstanding.[86]
-----
Footnote 83:
The word χρεών is explained by Herodotus (7. 11. 7.) as that which
an oracle declares, and τὸ χρεών is given by Plutarch (Nic. 14.)
as “fate,” “necessity.” _Vide_ Herod, 7. 215; 5. 108; and
Sophocles, Phil. 437.
Footnote 84:
See Liddell and Scott’s Greek-Engl. Lex.
Footnote 85:
Hence of a _Guru_, “a teacher,” and _chela_, a “disciple,” in
their mutual relations.
Footnote 86:
In his recent work—“The Early Days of Christianity,” Canon Farrar
remarks:—“Some have supposed a pleasant play of words founded on
it, as ... between _Chréstos_ (‘sweet’ Ps. xxx., iv., 8) and
Christos (Christ)” (I. p. 158, _foot-note_). But there is nothing
to suppose, since it began by a “play of words,” indeed. The name
_Christus_ was _not_ “distorted into Chrestus,” as the learned
author would make his readers believe (p. 19), but it was the
adjective and noun _Chréstos_ which became distorted into
_Christus_, and applied to Jesus. In a foot-note on the word
“Chrestian,” occurring in the First Epistle of Peter (chap. iv.,
16), in which in the _revised_ later MSS. the word was changed
into _Christian_, Canon Farrar remarks again, “Perhaps we should
read the ignorant heathen distortion, _Chréstian_.” Most decidedly
we should; for the eloquent writer should remember his Master’s
command to render unto Cæsar that which is Cæsar’s. His dislike
notwithstanding, Mr. Farrar is obliged to admit that the name
_Christian_ was first INVENTED, by the sneering, mocking
Antiochians, as early as A.D. 44, but had not come into general
use before the persecution by Nero. “Tacitus,” he says, “uses the
word Christians with something of apology. It is well known that
in the N. T. it only occurs three times, and always involves a
hostile sense (_Acts_ xi. 26, xxvi. 28, as it does in iv. 16).” It
was not Claudius alone who looked with alarm and suspicion on the
Christians, so nicknamed in derision for their carnalizing a
subjective principle or attribute, but all the pagan nations. For
Tacitus, speaking of those whom the masses called “Christians,”
describes them as a set of men _detested for their enormities_ and
crimes. No wonder, for history repeats itself. There are, no
doubt, thousands of noble, sincere, and virtuous _Christian-born_
men and women now. But we have only to look at the viciousness of
Christian “heathen” converts; at the _morality_ of those
proselytes in India, whom the missionaries themselves decline to
take into their service, to draw a parallel between the converts
of 1,800 years ago, and the modern heathens “touched _by grace_.”
-----
All this is evidence that the terms Christ and Christians, spelt
originally _Chrést_ and _Chréstians_ χρηστιανοὶ[87] were
directly borrowed from the Temple terminology of the Pagans, and
meant the same thing. The God of the Jews was now substituted
for the Oracle and the other gods; the generic designation
“Chréstos” became a noun applied to one special personage; and
new terms such as _Chréstianoï_ and _Chréstodoulos_ “a follower
or servant of Chrestos”—were coined out of the old material.
This is shown by Philo Judæus, a monotheist, assuredly, using
already the same term for monotheistic purposes. For he speaks
of θεόχρηστος (_théochréstos_) “God-declared,” or one who is
declared by god, and of λόγια θεόχρηστα (_logia théochrésta_)
“sayings delivered by God”—which proves that he wrote at a time
(between the first century B.C., and the first A.D.) when
neither Christians nor Chrestians were yet known under these
names, but still called themselves the Nazarenes. The notable
difference between the two words χράω—“consulting or obtaining
response from a god or oracle” (χρεω being the Ionic earlier
form of it), and χριω (_chrio_) “to rub, to anoint” (from which
the name Christos), have not prevented the ecclesiastical
adoption and coinage from Philo’s expression θεόχρηστος of that
other term θεόχριστος “anointed by God.” Thus the quiet
substitution of the letter ι for η for dogmatic purposes, was
achieved in the easiest way, as we now see.
-----
Footnote 87:
Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Lactantius, Clemens Alexandrinus, and
others spelt it in this way.
-----
The secular meaning of _Chréstos_ runs throughout the classical
Greek literature _pari passu_ with that given to it in the
mysteries. Demosthenes’ saying ω χρηστέ (330, 27), means by it
simply “you nice fellow”; Plato (in Phaed. 264 B) has χρηστός ει ὅτι
ἣγεῖ—“you are an excellent fellow to think....” But in the esoteric
phraseology of the temples “chrestos,”[88] a word which, like the
participle _chréstheis_, is formed under the same rule, and conveys
the same sense—from the verb χράομαι(“to consult a god”)—answers to
what we would call an adept, also a high _chela_, a disciple. It is
in this sense that it is used by Euripides (Ion. 1320) and by
Æschylus (1 C). This qualification was applied to those whom the
god, oracle, or any superior had proclaimed this, that, or anything
else. An instance may be given in this case.
-----
Footnote 88:
_Vide_ Liddell and Scott’s Greek and English Lexicon. _Chréstos_
is really one who is continually warned, advised, guided, whether
by oracle or prophet. Mr. G. Massey is not correct in saying that
“... The Gnostic form of the name Chrest, or Chrestos, denotes the
_Good God_, not a human original,” for it denoted the latter,
_i.e._, a good, holy man; but he is quite right when he adds that
“_Chrestianus_ signifies ... ‘Sweetness and Light.’” “The
_Chrestoi_, as the _Good People_, were pre-extant. Numerous Greek
inscriptions show that the departed, the hero, the saintly
one—that is, the ‘Good’—was styled _Chrestos_, or the Christ; and
from this meaning of the ‘Good’ does Justin, the primal apologist,
derive the Christian name. This identifies it with the Gnostic
source, and with the ‘Good God’ who revealed himself according to
Marcion—that is, the Un-Nefer or Good-opener of the Egyptian
theology.”—(_Agnostic Annual._)
-----
The words χρῆσεν οικιστῆρα used by Pindar (p. 4-10) mean “the oracle
_proclaimed_ him the coloniser.” In this case the genius of the
Greek language permits that the man so proclaimed should be called
χρήστος (_Chréstos_). Hence this term was applied to every Disciple
recognised by a Master, as also to every good man. Now, the Greek
language affords strange etymologies. Christian theology has chosen
and decreed that the name Christos should be taken as derived from
χρίΩ, χρίσω (Chriso), “anointed with scented unguents or oil.” But
this word has several significances. It is used by Homer, certainly,
as applied to the rubbing with oil of the body after bathing (_Il._
23, 186; also in _Od._ 4, 252) as other ancient writers do. Yet the
word χρίστης (_Christes_) means rather a _white-washer_, while the
word Chrestes (χρήστης) means priest and prophet, a term far more
applicable to Jesus, than that of the “Anointed,” since, as Nork
shows on the authority of the Gospels, he never was anointed, either
as king or priest. In short, there is a deep mystery underlying all
this scheme, which, as I maintain, only a thorough knowledge of the
Pagan mysteries is capable of unveiling.[89] It is not what the
early Fathers, who had an object to achieve, may affirm or deny,
that is the important point, but rather what is now the evidence for
the real significance given to the two terms _Chréstos_ and
_Christos_ by the ancients in the pre-Christian ages. For the latter
had no object to achieve, therefore nothing to conceal or disfigure,
and their evidence is naturally the more reliable of the two. This
evidence can be obtained by first studying the meaning given to
these words by the classics, and then their correct significance
searched for in mystic symbology.
-----
Footnote 89:
Again I must bring forward what Mr. G. Massey says (whom I quote
repeatedly because he has studied this subject so thoroughly and
so conscientiously).
“My contention, or rather explanation,” he says, “is that the
author of the Christian name is the Mummy-Christ of Egypt, called
the _Karest_, which was a type of the immortal spirit in man, the
Christ within (as Paul has it), the divine offspring incarnated,
the Logos, the Word of Truth, the _Makheru_ of Egypt. It did not
originate as a mere type! The preserved mummy was the _dead body
of any one_ that was _Karest_, or mummified, to be kept by the
living; and, through constant repetition, this became a type of
the resurrection from (not of!) the dead.” See the explanation of
this further on.
-----
Now _Chrestos_, as already said, is a term applied in various
senses. It qualifies both Deity and Man. It is used in the former
sense in the Gospels, and in Luke (vi., 35), where it means “kind,”
and “merciful.” “χρηστός ἑστιν επι τους,” in 1 Peter (ii, 3), where
it is said, “Kind is the Lord,” χρηστός ὁ κύριος. On the other hand,
it is explained by Clemens Alexandrinus as simply meaning a good
man; _i.e._ “All who believe in _Chrést_ (a good man) both _are_,
and _are called Chréstians_, that is good men.” (Strom. lib. ii.)
The reticence of Clemens, whose Christianity, as King truly remarks
in his “_Gnostics_,” was no more than a graft upon the congenial
stock of his original Platonism, is quite natural. He was an
Initiate, a new Platonist, before he became a Christian, which fact,
however much he may have fallen off from his earlier views, could
not exonerate him from his pledge of secrecy. And as a Theosophist
and a _Gnostic_, one who _knew_, Clemens must have known that
_Christos_ was “the WAY,” while _Chréstos_ was the lonely traveller
journeying on to reach the ultimate goal through that “Path,” which
goal was _Christos_, the glorified Spirit of “TRUTH,” the reunion
with which makes the soul (the Son) ONE with the (Father) Spirit.
That Paul knew it, is certain, for his own expressions prove it. For
what do the words πάλιν ὠδίνω, ἅχρις οὕ μορφωθῆ χριστὸς ἐνὺμῖν, or,
as given in the authorised translations, “I am again in travail
until _Christ be formed in you_” mean, but what we give in its
esoteric rendering, _i.e._ “until you find _the_ Christos within
yourselves as your only ‘way.’” (_vide_ Galatians iv., 19 and 20.)
Thus Jesus, whether of Nazareth or Lüd,[90] was a Chréstos, as
undeniably as that he never was entitled to the appellation of
_Christos_, during his life-time and before his last trial. It may
have been as Higgins thinks, who surmises that the first name of
Jesus was, perhaps, χρεισος the second χρησος, and the third χρισος.
“The word χρεισος was in use before the H (cap. _eta_) was in the
language.” But Taylor (in his answer to Pye Smith, p. 113) is quoted
saying “The complimentary epithet Chrest ... signified nothing more
than a good man.”
-----
Footnote 90:
Or Lydda. Reference is made here to the Rabbinical tradition in
the Babylonian Gemara, called _Sepher Toledoth Jeshu_, about Jesus
being the son of one named Pandira, and having lived a century
earlier than the era called Christian, namely, during the reign of
the Jewish king Alexander Jannæus and his wife Salome, who reigned
from the year 106 to 79 B.C. Accused by the Jews of having learned
the magic art in Egypt, and of having stolen from the Holy of
Holies the Incommunicable Name, Jehoshua (Jesus) was put to death
by the Sanhedrin at Lud. He was stoned and then crucified on a
tree, on the eve of Passover. The narrative is ascribed to the
Talmudistic authors of “Sota” and “Sanhedrin,” p. 19, Book of
Zechiel. See “Isis Unveiled,” II. 201; Arnobius; Elephas Levi’s
“_Science des Esprits_,” and “The Historical Jesus and Mythical
Christ,” a lecture by G. Massey.
-----
Here again a number of ancient writers may be brought forward to
testify that _Christos_ (or _Chreistos_, rather) was, along with
χρησος = Hrésos, an adjective applied to Gentiles before the
Christian era. In _Philopatris_ it is said ει τυχοι χρηστος και εν
εθνεσιν, _i.e._ “if chrestos chance to be even among the Gentiles,”
etc.
Tertullian denounces in the 3rd chapter of his _Apologia_ the word
“_Christianus_” as derived by “crafty interpretation;”[91] Dr.
Jones, on the other hand, letting out the information, corroborated
by good sources, that _Hrésos_ χρησός was the name given to Christ
by the Gnostics, and even by unbelievers,” assures us that the real
name ought to be χρισος or Chrisos—thus repeating and supporting the
original “pious fraud” of the early Fathers, a fraud which led to
the carnalizing of the whole Christian system.[92] But I propose to
show as much of the real meaning of all these terms as lies within
my humble powers and knowledge. Christos, or the “Christ-condition,”
was ever the synonym of the “Mahatmic-condition,” _i.e._, the union
of the man with the divine principle in him. As Paul says (Ephes.
iii. 17) “κατοικησαι τον χριστον δια της πιστεως εν ταις καρδιαις
ὑμωι.” “That you may find Christos in your _inner_ man through
_knowledge_” not faith, as translated; for _Pistis_ is “knowledge,”
as will be shown further on.
-----
Footnote 91:
“Christianus quantum interpretatione de unctione deducitas. Sed ut
cum perferam Chrestianus pronunciatus a vobis (nam nec nominis
certa est notitia penes vos) de suavitate vel benignitate
compositum est.” Canon Farrar makes a great effort to show such
_lapsus calami_ by various Fathers as the results of disgust and
fear. “There can be little doubt,” he says (in _The Early Days of
Christianity_) “that the ... name Christian ... was a nick-name
due to the wit of the Antiochians.... It is clear that the sacred
writers avoided the name (Christians) because it was employed by
their enemies (Tac. Ann. xv. 44). It only became familiar when the
virtues of Christians had shed lustre upon it....” This is a very
lame excuse, and a poor explanation to give for so eminent a
thinker as Canon Farrar. As to the “virtues of Christians” ever
shedding _lustre_ upon the name, let us hope that the writer had
in his mind’s eye neither Bishop Cyril, of Alexandria, nor
Eusebius, nor the Emperor Constantine, of murderous fame, nor yet
the Popes Borgia and the Holy Inquisition.
Footnote 92:
Quoted by G. Higgins. (See Vol. I., pp. 569-573.)
-----
There is still another and far more weighty proof that the name
_Christos_ is pre-Christian. The evidence for it is found in the
prophecy of the Erythrean Sybil. We read in it ἹΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΕΙΣΤΟΣΘΕΟΝ
ὙΙΟΣ ΣΩΤΗΡ ΣΤΑΥΡΟΣ. Read esoterically, this string of meaningless
detached nouns, which has no sense to the profane, contains a real
prophecy—only not referring to Jesus—and a verse from the mystic
catechism of the Initiate. The prophecy relates to the coming down
upon the Earth of the Spirit of Truth (Christos), after which
advent—that has once more nought to do with Jesus—will begin the
Golden Age; the verse refers to the necessity before reaching that
blessed condition of inner (or subjective) theophany and
theopneusty, to pass through the crucifixion of flesh or matter.
Read exoterically, the words “_Iesous Chreistos theou yios soter
stauros_,” meaning literally “Iesus, Christos, God, Son, Saviour,
Cross,” are most excellent handles to hang a Christian prophecy on,
but they are _pagan_, not Christian.
If called upon to explain the names IESOUS CHREISTOS, the answer is:
study mythology, the so-called “fictions” of the ancients, and they
will give you the key. Ponder over Apollo, the solar god, and the
“Healer,” and the allegory about his son Janus (or Ion), his priest
at Delphos, through whom alone could prayers reach the immortal
gods, and his other son Asclepios, called the _Soter_, or Saviour.
Here is a leaflet from esoteric history written in symbolical
phraseology by the old Grecian poets.
The city of Chrisa[93] (now spelt Crisa), was built in memory of
Kreusa (or Creusa), daughter of King Erechtheus and mother of Janus
(or Ion) by Apollo, in memory of the danger which Janus escaped.[94]
We learn that Janus, abandoned by his mother in a grotto “to hide
the shame of the virgin who bore a son,” was found by Hermes, who
brought the infant to Delphi, nurtured him by his father’s sanctuary
and oracle, where, under the name of Chresis (χρησις) Janus became
first a _Chrestis_ (a priest, soothsayer, or Initiate), and then
very nearly a _Chresterion_, “a sacrificial victim,”[95] ready to be
poisoned by his own mother, who knew him not, and who, in her
jealousy, mistook him, on the hazy intimation of the oracle, for a
son of her husband. He pursued her to the very altar with the
intention of killing her—when she was saved through the pythoness,
who divulged to both the secret of their relationship. In memory of
this narrow escape, Creusa, the mother, built the city of Chrisa, or
Krisa. Such is the allegory, and it symbolizes simply the trials of
Initiation.[96]
-----
Footnote 93:
In the days of Homer, we find this city, once celebrated for its
mysteries, the chief seat of Initiation, and the name of
_Chrestos_ used as a title during the mysteries. It is mentioned
in the _Iliad_, ii., 520 as “Chrisa” (χρῖσα). Dr. Clarke suspected
its ruins under the present site of _Krestona_, a small town, or
village rather, in Phocis, near the Crissæan Bay. (See E. D.
Clarke, 4th ed. Vol. viii. p. 239, “Delphi.”)
Footnote 94:
The root of χρητός (_Chretos_) and χρηστος (_Chrestos_) is one and
the same; χράω which means “consulting the oracle,” in one sense,
but in another one “consecrated,” _set apart_, belonging to some
temple, or oracle, or devoted to oracular services. On the other
hand, the word χρε (χρεω) means “obligation,” a “bond, duty,” or
one who is under the obligation of pledges, or vows taken.
Footnote 95:
The adjective χρηστὸς was also used as an adjective before proper
names as a compliment, as in Plat. Theact. p. 166A, “Ὁυτος ὁ
Σωκράτης ὁ χρηστός;” (here Socrates is the _Chréstos_), and also
as a surname, as shown by Plutarch (V. Phocion), who wonders how
such a rough and dull fellow as Phocion could be surnamed
_Chréstos_.
Footnote 96:
There are strange features, quite suggestive, for an Occultist, in
the myth (if one) of Janus. Some make of him the personification
of _Kosmos_, others, of _Cælus_ (heaven), hence he is “two-faced”
because of his two characters of spirit and matter; and he is not
only “Janus _Bifrons_” (two-faced), but also _Quadrifrons_—the
perfect square, the emblem of the Kabbalistic Deity. His temples
were built with _four_ equal sides, with a door and _three_
windows on each side. Mythologists explain it as an emblem of the
_four_ seasons of the year, and _three_ months in each season, and
in all of the twelve months of the year. During the mysteries of
Initiation, however, he became the Day-Sun and the Night-Sun.
Hence he is often represented with the number 300 in one hand, and
in the other 65, or the number of days of the Solar year. Now
_Chanoch_ (Kanoch and _Enosh_ in the Bible) is, as may be shown on
Kabalistic authority, whether son of Cain, son of Seth, or the son
of Methuselah, one and the same personage. As _Chanoch_ (according
to Fuerst), he is the _Initiator_, _Instructor_—of the
astronomical circle and solar year,” as son of Methuselah, who is
said to have lived 365 years and been taken to heaven alive, as
the representative of the Sun (or god). (See Book of Enoch.) This
patriarch has many features in common with Janus, who,
exoterically, is Ion but IAO cabalistically, or Jehovah, the “Lord
God of Generations,” the mysterious Yodh, or ONE (a phallic
number). For Janus or Ion is also _Consivius, a conserendo_,
because he presided over generations. He is shown giving
hospitality to Saturn (_Chronos_ “time”), and is the _Initiator_
of the year, or time divided into 365.
-----
Finding then that Janus, the solar God, and son of Apollo, the Sun,
means the “Initiator” and the “Opener of the Gate of Light,” or
secret wisdom of the mysteries; that he is born from Krisa
(esoterically _Chris_), and that he was a _Chrestos_ through whom
spoke the God; that he was finally Ion, the father of the Ionians,
and, some say, an _aspect_ of Asclepios, another son of Apollo, it
is easy to get hold of the thread of Ariadne in this labyrinth of
allegories. It is not the place here to prove side issues in
mythology, however. It suffices to show the connection between the
mythical characters of hoary antiquity and the later fables that
marked the beginning of our era of civilization. Asclepios
(Esculapius) was the divine physician, the “Healer,” the “Saviour,”
Σωτηρ as he was called, a title also given to Janus of Delphi; and
IASO, the daughter of Asclepios was the goddess of healing, under
whose patronage were all the candidates for initiation in her
father’s temple, the novices or _chrestoi_, called “the sons of
Iaso.” (_Vide_ for name, “Plutus,” by Aristoph. 701).
Now, if we remember, firstly, that the names of IESUS in their
different forms, such as Iasius, Iasion, Jason and Iasus, were very
common in ancient Greece, especially among the descendants of Jasius
(the Jasides), as also the number of the “sons of Iaso,” the
_Mystoï_ and future Epoptai (Initiates), why should not the
enigmatical words in the Sibylline Book be read in their legitimate
light, one that had nought to do with a Christian prophecy? The
secret doctrine teaches that the first two words ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΕΙΣΤΟΣ
mean simply “son of Iaso, a Chrestos,” or servant of the oracular
God. Indeed IASO (Ιασω) _is in the Ionic dialect IESO_ (Ἱησὼ), and
the expression Ιησους (_Iesous_)—in its archaic form, ΙΗΣΟΥΣ—simply
means “the son of Iaso or _Ieso_, the healer,” _i.e._ ο Ιησοῦς
(υῖος). No objection, assuredly, can be taken to such rendering, or
to the name being written _Ieso_ instead of _Iaso_, since the first
form is _attic_, therefore incorrect, for the name is _Ionic_.
“Ieso” from which “O’ Iesous” (son of Ieso)—_i.e._ a genitive, not a
nominative—_is Ionic and cannot_ be anything else, if the age of the
Sibylline book is taken into consideration. Nor could the Sibyl of
Erythrea have spelt it originally otherwise, as Erythrea, her very
residence, was a town in Ionia (from Ion or Janus) opposite Chios;
and that the _Ionic_ preceded the _attic_ form.
Leaving aside in this case the mystical signification of the now
famous Sibylline sentence, and giving its literal interpretation
only, on the authority of all that has been said, the hitherto
mysterious words would stand; “Son of IASO, CHRESTOS (the priest or
servant) (of the) SON of (the) GOD (Apollo) the SAVIOUR from the
CROSS”—(of flesh or matter).[97] Truly, Christianity can never hope
to be understood until every trace of dogmatism is swept away from
it, and the dead letter sacrificed to the eternal Spirit of Truth,
which is Horus, which is Crishna, which is Buddha, as much as it is
the Gnostic Christos and the true Christ of Paul.
In the _Travels_ of Dr. Clarke, the author describes a heathen
monument found by him.
-----
Footnote 97:
_Stauros_ became the cross, the instrument of crucifixion, far
later, when it began to be represented as a Christian symbol and
with the Greek letter T, the Tau. (Luc. Jud. Voc.) Its primitive
meaning was phallic, a symbol for the male and female elements;
the great serpent of temptation, the body which had to be killed
or subdued by the dragon of wisdom, the seven-vowelled solar
chnouphis or Spirit of Christos of the Gnostics, or, again, Apollo
killing Python.
-----
“Within the sanctuary, behind the altar, we saw the fragments of a
_marble cathedra_, upon the back of which we found the following
inscription, exactly as it is here written, no part of it having
been injured or obliterated, affording perhaps the only instance
known of a sepulchral inscription upon a monument of this
remarkable form.”
The inscription ran thus: ΧΡΗΣΤΟΣ ΠΡΩΤΟΥ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΣ ΛΑΡΙΣΣΑΙΟΣ
ΠΕΛΑΣΓΙΟΤΗΣ ΕΤΩΝ ΙΗ or, “Chrestos, the first, a Thessalonian from
Larissa, Pelasgiot 18 years old Hero,” Chrestos the _first_
(_protoo_), why? Read literally the inscription has little sense;
interpreted esoterically, it is pregnant with meaning. As Dr. Clarke
shows, the word Chrestos is found on the epitaphs of almost all the
ancient Larissians; but it is preceded always by a proper name. Had
the adjective Chrestos stood after a name, it would only mean “a
good man,” a posthumous compliment paid to the defunct, the same
being often found on our own modern tumular epitaphs. But the word
Chrestos, standing alone and the other word, “protoo,” following it,
gives it quite another meaning, especially when the deceased is
specified as a “hero.” To the mind of an Occultist, the defunct was
a neophyte, who had died in his 18th year _of neophytism_,[98] and
stood in the first or highest class of discipleship, having passed
his preliminary trials as a “hero;” but had died before the last
mystery, which would have made of him a “Christos,” an _anointed_,
one with the spirit of Christos or Truth in him. He had not reached
the end of the “Way,” though he had heroically conquered the horrors
of the preliminary theurgic trials.
-----
Footnote 98:
Even to this day in India, the candidate loses his name and, as
also in Masonry, his age (monks and nuns also changing their
Christian names at their taking the order or veil), and begins
counting his years from the day he is accepted a chela and enters
upon the cycle of initiations. Thus Saul was “a child of one
year,” when he began to reign, though a grown-up adult. See 1
Samuel ch. xiii. 1, and Hebrew scrolls, about his initiation by
Samuel.
-----
We are quite warranted in reading it in this manner, after learning
the place where Dr. Clarke discovered the tablet, which was, as
Godfrey Higgins remarks, there, where “I should expect to find it,
at Delphi, in the temple of the God IE.,” who, with the Christians
became Jah, or Jehovah, one with Christ Jesus. It was at the foot of
Parnassus, in a gymnasium, “adjoining the Castalian fountain, which
flowed by the ruins of Crisa, probably the town called Crestona,”
etc. And again. “In the first part of its course from the
(Castalian) fountain, it (the river) separates the remains of the
gymnasium ... from the valley of Castro,” as it probably did from
the old city of Delphi—the seat of the great oracle of Apollo, of
the town of Krisa (or Kreusa) the great centre of initiations and of
the _Chrestoi_ of the decrees of the oracles, where the candidates
for the last _labour_ were anointed with sacred oils[99] before
being plunged into their last trance of forty-nine hours’ duration
(as to this day, in the East), from which they arose as glorified
adepts or _Christoi_.”
“In the Clementine Recognitions it is announced that the father
anointed his son with ‘oil that was taken from the wood of the
Tree of Life, and from this anointing he is called the Christ:’
whence the Christian name. This again is Egyptian. Horus was the
anointed son of the father. The mode of anointing him from the
Tree of Life, portrayed on the monuments, is very primitive
indeed; and the Horus of Egypt was continued in the Gnostic
Christ, who is reproduced upon the Gnostic stones as the
intermediate link betwixt the _Karest_ and the Christ, also as
the Horus of both sexes.” (“_The name and nature of the
Christ._”—GERALD MASSEY.)
-----
Footnote 99:
Demosthenes, “De Corona,” 313, declares that the candidates for
initiation into the Greek mysteries were anointed with oil. So
they are now in India, even in the initiation into the _Yogi_
mysteries—various ointments or unguents being used.
-----
Mr. G. Massey connects the Greek Christos or Christ with the
Egyptian _Karest_, the “mummy type of immortality,” and proves it
very thoroughly. He begins by saying that in Egyptian the “Word of
Truth” is _Ma-Kheru_, and that it is the title of Horus. Thus, as he
shows, Horus preceded Christ as the Messenger of the Word of Truth,
the Logos or the manifestor of the divine nature in humanity. In the
same paper he writes as follows:
The Gnosis had three phases—astronomical, spiritual, and
doctrinal, and all three can be identified with the Christ of
Egypt. In the astronomical phase the constellation Orion is called
the _Sahu_ or _mummy_. The soul of Horus was represented as rising
from the dead and ascending to heaven in the stars of Orion. The
mummy-image was the preserved one, the saved, therefore a portrait
of the Saviour, as a type of immortality. This was the figure of a
dead man, which, as Plutarch and Herodotus tell us, was carried
round at an Egyptian banquet, when the guests were invited to look
on it and eat and drink and be happy, because, when they died,
they would become what the image symbolised—that is, they also
would be immortal! This type of immortality was called the
_Karest_, or _Karust_, and it _was_ the Egyptian Christ. To
_Kares_ means to embalm, anoint, to make the Mummy as a type of
the eternal; and, when made, it was called the _Karest_; so that
this is not merely a matter of name for name, the _Karest_ for the
_Christ_.
This image of the _Karest_ was bound up in a woof without a seam,
the proper vesture of the Christ! No matter what the length of the
bandage might be, and some of the mummy-swathes have been unwound
that were 1,000 yards in length, the woof was from beginning to
end without a seam.... Now, this seamless robe of the Egyptian
_Karest_ is a very tell-tale type of the mystical Christ, who
becomes historic in the Gospels as the wearer of a coat or chiton,
made without a seam, which neither the Greek nor the Hebrew fully
explains, but which is explained by the Egyptian _Ketu_ for the
woof, and by the seamless robe or swathing without seam that was
made for eternal wear, and worn by the Mummy-Christ, the image of
immortality in the tombs of Egypt.
Further, Jesus is put to death in accordance with the instructions
given for making the _Karest_. Not a bone must be broken. The true
_Karest_ must be perfect in every member. “This is he who comes
out sound; whom men know not is his name.”
In the Gospels Jesus rises again with every member sound, like the
perfectly-preserved _Karest_, to demonstrate the physical
resurrection of the mummy. But, in the Egyptian original, the
mummy transforms. The deceased says: “I am spiritualised. I am
become a soul. I rise as a God.” This transformation into the
spiritual image, the _Ka_, has been omitted in the Gospel.
This spelling of the name as Chrest or Chrést in Latin is
supremely important, because it enables me to prove the identity
with the Egyptian _Karest_ or _Karust_, the name of the Christ as
the embalmed mummy, which was the image of the resurrection in
Egyptian tombs, the type of immortality, the likeness of the
Horus, who rose again and made the pathway out of the sepulchre
for those who were his disciples or followers. _Moreover, this
type of the Karest or Mummy-Christ is reproduced in the Catacombs
of Rome._ No representation of the supposed historic resurrection
of Jesus has been found on any of the early Christian monuments.
But, instead of the missing fact, we find the scene of Lazarus
being raised from the dead. This is depicted over and over again
as the typical resurrection where there is no real one! The scene
is not exactly in accordance with the rising from the grave in the
Gospel. It is purely Egyptian, and Lazarus is an Egyptian mummy!
Thus Lazarus, in each representation, _is_ the mummy-type of the
resurrection; Lazarus _is_ the Karest, who was the Egyptian
Christ, and who is reproduced by Gnostic art in the Catacombs of
Rome as a form of the Gnostic Christ, who _was not and could not
become an historical character_.
Further, as the thing is Egyptian, it is probable that the name is
derived from Egyptian. If so, Laz (equal to Ras) means to be
raised up, while _aru is_ the mummy by name. With the Greek
terminal _s_ this becomes Lazarus. In the course of humanising the
mythos the typical representation of the resurrection found in the
tombs of Rome and Egypt would become the story of Lazarus being
raised from the dead. This Karast type of the Christ in the
Catacombs is not limited to Lazarus.
By means of the _Karest_ type the Christ and the Christians can
both be traced in the ancient tombs of Egypt. The mummy was made
in this likeness of the Christ. It was the Christ by name,
identical with the _Chrestoi_ of the Greek Inscriptions. Thus the
honoured dead, who rose again as the followers of Horus-Makheru,
the Word of Truth, are found to be the Christians οι χρηστοι, on
the Egyptian monuments. _Ma-Kheru_ is the term that is always
applied to the faithful ones who win the crown of life and wear it
at the festival which is designated ‘Come thou to me’—an
invitation by Horus the Justifier to those who are the ‘Blessed
ones of his father, Osiris’—they who, having made the Word of
Truth the law of their lives, were the Justified—οι χρηστοι, the
Christians, on earth.
In a fifth century representation of the Madonna and child from
the cemetery of St. Valentinus, the new-born babe lying in a box
or crib _is_ also the _Karest_, or mummy-type, further identified
as the divine babe of the solar mythos by the disk of the sun and
the cross of the equinox at the back of the infant’s head. Thus
the child-Christ of the historic faith is born, and visibly begins
in the _Karest_ image of the dead Christ, which was the mummy-type
of the resurrection in Egypt for thousands of years before the
Christian era. This doubles the proof that the Christ of the
Christian Catacombs was a survival of the _Karest_ of Egypt.
Moreover, as Didron shows, there was a portrait of the Christ who
had his body _painted red_![100] It was a popular tradition that
the Christ _was_ of a red complexion. This, too, may be explained
as a survival of the Mummy-Christ. It was an aboriginal mode of
rendering things _tapu_ by colouring them red. The dead corpse was
coated with red ochre—a very primitive mode of making the mummy,
or the anointed one. Thus the God Ptah tells Rameses II. that he
has “_re-fashioned his flesh in vermilion_.” This anointing with
red ochre is called _Kura_ by the Maori, who likewise made the
Karest or Christ.
We see the mummy-image continued on another line of descent when
we learn that among other pernicious heresies and deadly sins with
which the Knights Templars were charged, was the impious custom of
adoring a Mummy that had red eyes. Their Idol, called Baphomet, is
also thought to have been a mummy.... The Mummy was the earliest
human image of the Christ.
I do not doubt that the ancient Roman festivals called the
_Charistia_ were connected in their origin with the _Karest_ and
the _Eucharist_ as a celebration in honour of the manes of their
departed kith and kin, for whose sakes they became reconciled at
the friendly gathering once a year.... It is here, then, we have
to seek the essential connection between the Egyptian Christ, the
Christians, and the Roman Catacombs. These Christian Mysteries,
ignorantly explained to be inexplicable, can be explained by
Gnosticism and Mythology, but in no other way. It is not that they
are insoluble by human reason, as their incompetent, howsoever
highly paid, expounders now-a-days pretend. That is but the
puerile apology of the unqualified for their own helpless
ignorance—they who have never been in possession of the gnosis or
science of the Mysteries by which alone these things can be
explained in accordance with their natural genesis. In Egypt only
can we read the matter to the root, or identify the origin of the
Christ by nature and by name, to find at last that the Christ was
the Mummy-type, and that our Christology is mummified
mythology.—(_Agnostic Annual._)
-----
Footnote 100:
_Because he is cabalistically the new Adam, the “celestial man,”
and Adam was made of red earth._
-----
The above is an explanation on purely scientific evidence, but,
perhaps, a little too _materialistic_, just because of that
science, notwithstanding that the author is a well-known
Spiritualist. Occultism pure and simple finds the same mystic
elements in the Christian as in other faiths, though it rejects as
emphatically its dogmatic and _historic_ character. It is a fact
that in the terms Ιησοῦς ὁ χριστος (See _Acts_ v. 42, ix. 14; 1
Corinth. iii. 17, etc.), the article ὁ designating “Christos,”
proves it simply a surname, like that of Phocion, who is referred
to as Φωκίων ὁ χρηστός (Plut. v.). Still, the personage (Jesus) so
addressed—whenever he lived—was a great Initiate and a “Son of
God.”
For, we say it again, the surname Christos is based on, and the
story of the Crucifixion derived from, events that preceded it.
Everywhere, in India as in Egypt, in Chaldea as in Greece, all these
legends were built upon one and the same primitive type; the
voluntary sacrifice of the _logoï_—the _rays_ of the one LOGOS, the
direct manifested emanation from the One ever-concealed Infinite and
Unknown—whose _rays_ incarnated in mankind. They consented to _fall
into matter_, and are, therefore, called the “Fallen Ones.” This is
one of those great mysteries which can hardly be touched upon in a
magazine article, but shall be noticed in a separate work of mine,
_The Secret Doctrine_, very fully.
Having said so much, a few more facts may be added to the etymology
of the two terms. Χριστος being the verbal adjective in Greek of
χρίω “to be rubbed on,” _as ointment_ or salve, and the word being
finally brought to mean “the Anointed One,” in Christian theology;
and _Kri_, in Sanskrit, the first syllable in the name of Krishna,
meaning “to pour out, or rub over, to cover with,”[101] among many
other things, this may lead one as easily to make of Krishna, “the
anointed one.” Christian philologists try to limit the meaning of
Krishna’s name to its derivation from _Krish_, “black”; but if the
analogy and comparison of the Sanskrit with the Greek roots
contained in the names of Chrestos, Christos, and _Ch_rishna, are
analyzed more carefully, it will be found that they are all of the
same origin.[102]
-----
Footnote 101:
Hence the memorialising of the doctrine during the MYSTERIES. The
pure monad, the “god” incarnating and becoming _Chrestos_, or man,
on his trial of life, a series of those trials led him to the
_crucifixion of flesh_, and finally into the Christos condition.
Footnote 102:
On the best authority the derivation of the Greek _Christos_
is shown from the Sanskrit root _ghársh_ = “rub”; thus:
_ghársh-ā-mi-to_, “to rub,” and ghársh-tá-s “flayed, sore.”
Moreover, Krish, which means in one sense to plough and make
furrows, means also to cause pain, “to torture to torment,”
and ghrsh-tā-s “rubbing”—all these terms relating to Chrestos
and Christos conditions. One has _to die in Chrestos_, _i.e._,
kill one’s personality and its passions, to blot out every
idea of separateness from one’s “Father,” the Divine Spirit in
man; to become one with the eternal and absolute _Life_ and
_Light_ (SAT) before one can reach the glorious state of
_Christos_, the regenerated man, the man in spiritual freedom.
-----
“In Bockh’s ‘Christian Inscriptions,’ numbering 1,287, there is no
single instance of an earlier date than the third century, wherein
the name is not written _Chrest_ or _Chreist_.” (_The Name and
Nature of the Christ_, by G. Massey, “The Agnostic Annual.”)
Yet none of these names can be unriddled, as some Orientalists
imagine, merely with the help of astronomy and the knowledge of
zodiacal signs in conjunction with phallic symbols. Because, while
the sidereal symbols of the mystic characters or personifications in
Puranâs or Bible, fulfil astronomical functions, their spiritual
anti-types rule invisibly, but very effectively, the world. They
exist as abstractions on the higher plane, as manifested ideas on
the astral, and become males, females and androgyne powers on this
lower plane of ours. _Scorpio_, as _Chrestos-Meshiac_, and Leo, as
_Christos-Messiah_ antedated by far the Christian era in the trials
and triumphs of Initiation during the Mysteries, Scorpio standing as
symbol for the latter, Leo for the glorified triumph of the “sun” of
truth. The mystic philosophy of the allegory is well understood by
the author of the “Source of Measures”; who writes: “One (Chrestos)
causing himself to go down into the pit (of Scorpio, or incarnation
in the womb) for the salvation of the world; this was the Sun, shorn
of his _golden rays_, and _crowned with blackened_[103] _ones_
(symbolizing this loss) as the thorns; _the other_ was the
triumphant _Messiah_, mounted up to the _summit of the arch of
heaven_, personated as the _Lion of the tribe of Judah_. In both
instances he had the Cross; once in humiliation (as the son of
copulation), and once holding it in his control, as the law of
creation, he being Jehovah”—in the scheme of the authors of dogmatic
Christianity. For, as the same author shows further, John, Jesus and
even Apollonius of Tyana were but epitomizers of the history of the
Sun “under differences of aspect or condition.”[104] The
explanation, he says, “is simple enough, when it is considered that
the names _Jesus_, Hebrew יש and Apollonius, or Apollo, are alike
names of the _Sun in the heavens_, and, necessarily, the history of
the one, as to his travels through _the signs_, with the
personifications of his sufferings, triumphs and miracles, could be
but the _history of the other_, where there was a wide-spread,
common method of describing those travels by personification.” The
fact that the Secular Church was founded by Constantine, and that it
was a part of his decree “that the venerable day of the _Sun_ should
be the day set apart for the worship of Jesus Christ as _Sun_-day,”
shows that they knew well in that “Secular Church” “that the
allegory rested upon an astronomical basis,” as the author affirms.
Yet, again, the circumstance that both Purânas and Bible are full of
solar and astronomical allegories, does not militate against that
other fact that all such scriptures in addition to these two are
_closed_ books to the scholars “having authority.”(!) Nor does it
affect that other truth, that all those systems are _not the work of
mortal man_, nor are they his invention in their origin and basis.
-----
Footnote 103:
The Orientalists and Theologians are invited to read over and
study the allegory of Viswakarman, the “Omnificent,” the Vedic
God, the architect of the world, who sacrificed himself _to
himself_ or the world, after having offered up all worlds, _which
are himself_, in a “Sarva Madha” (general sacrifice)—and ponder
over it. In the Purânic allegory, his daughter _Yoga-siddha_
“Spiritual consciousness,” the wife of _Surya_, the Sun, complains
to him of the too great effulgence of her husband; and Viswakarmâ,
in his character of _Takshaka_, “wood cutter and carpenter,”
placing the Sun upon his lathe cuts away a part of his brightness.
Surya looks, after this, crowned with dark thorns instead of rays,
and becomes Vikarttana (“shorn of his rays”). All these names are
terms which were used by the candidates when going through the
trials of Initiation. The Hierophant-Initiator personated
Viswakarman; the father, and the general _artificer_ of the gods
(the adepts on earth), and the candidate-Surya, the Sun, who had
to kill all his fiery passions and wear the crown of thorns _while
crucifying his body_ before he could rise and be re-born into a
new life as the glorified “Light of the World”—Christos. No
Orientalist seems to have ever perceived the suggestive analogy,
let alone to apply it!
Footnote 104:
The author of the “Source of Measures” thinks that this “serves to
explain why it has been that the _Life of Apollonius of Tyana, by
Philostratus_ has been so carefully kept back from translation and
popular reading.” Those who have studied it in the original have
been forced to the comment that either the “_Life of Apollonius_
has been taken from the New Testament, or that New Testament
narratives have been taken from the _Life of Apollonius_, because
of the manifest sameness of the _means of construction_ of the
narrative.” (p. 260).
-----
Thus “Christos,” under whatever name, means more than _Karest_, a
mummy, or even the “anointed” and the _elect_ of theology. Both of
the latter apply to _Chréstos_, the man of sorrow and tribulation,
in his physical, mental, and psychic conditions, and both relate to
the Hebrew _Mashiac_ (from whence Messiah) condition, as the word is
etymologised[105] by Fuerst, and the author of “The Source of
Measures,” p. 255. Christos is the crown of glory of the suffering
Chréstos of the mysteries, as of the candidate to the final UNION,
of whatever race and creed. To the true follower of the SPIRIT OF
TRUTH, it matters little, therefore, whether Jesus, as man and
Chrestos, lived during the era called Christian, or before, or never
lived at all. The Adepts, who lived and died for humanity, have
existed in many and all the ages, and many were the good and holy
men in antiquity who bore the surname or title of Chrestos before
Jesus of Nazareth, otherwise Jesus (or Jehoshua) Ben Pandira was
born.[106] Therefore, one may be permitted to conclude, with good
reason, that Jesus, or Jehoshua, was like Socrates, like Phocian,
like Theodorus, and so many others surnamed _Chréstos_, _i.e._, the
“good, the excellent,” the gentle, and the holy Initiate, who showed
the “way” to the Christos condition, and thus became himself “the
Way” in the hearts of his enthusiastic admirers. The Christians, as
all the “Hero-worshippers” have tried to throw into the background
all the other Chréstoï, who have appeared to them as rivals of
_their_ Man-God. But if the voice of the MYSTERIES has become silent
for many ages in the West, if Eleusis, Memphis, Antium, Delphi, and
Crèsa have long ago been made the tombs of a Science once as
colossal in the West as it is yet in the East, there are successors
now being prepared for them. We are in 1887 and the nineteenth
century is close to its death. The twentieth century has strange
developments in store for humanity, and may even be the last of its
name.
H. P. B.
-----
Footnote 105:
The word שיה _shiac_, is in Hebrew the same word as a verbal,
signifying _to go down into the pit_. As a noun, _place of thorns,
pit_. The _hifil_ participle of this word is [Hebrew] or Messiach,
or the Greek _Messias_, _Christ_, and means “he who causes to go
down into the pit” (or hell, in dogmatism). In esoteric
philosophy, this going down _into the pit_ has the most mysterious
significance. The Spirit “Christos” or rather the “Logos” (_read_
Logoï), is said to “go down into the pit,” when it incarnates in
flesh, _is born as a man_. After having robbed the _Elohim_ (or
gods) of their secret, the _pro-creating_ “fire of life,” the
Angels of Light are shown cast down into the pit or abyss of
matter, called _Hell_, or the bottomless pit, by the kind
theologians. This, in Cosmogony and Anthropology. During the
Mysteries, however, it is the _Chréstos_, _neophyte_, (as man),
etc., who had to descend into the crypts of Initiation and trials;
and finally, during the “Sleep of Siloam” or the final _trance_
condition, during the hours of which the new Initiate has the last
and final mysteries of being divulged to him. Hades, Schéol, or
Patala, are all one. The same takes place in the East now, as took
place 2,000 years ago in the West, during the MYSTERIES.
Footnote 106:
Several classics bear testimony to this fact. Lucian, c. 16, says
Φωκίων ὁ χρηστὸς, and Φωκίων ὁ ἐπὶκλην (“λεγόμενος,” surnamed
“χρηστος.”) In Phædr. p. 226 E, it is written, “you mean Theodorus
the Chrestos.” “Τὸν χρηστὸν λεγεις Θεὸδωρον”. Plutarch shows the
same; and Χρηστος—Chrestus, is the proper name (see the word in
_Thesaur._ Steph.) of an orator and disciple of Herodes Atticus.
-----
(_To be continued._)
[Illustration: decorative separator]
SIMILITUDES OF DEMOPHILUS.
It is the business of a musician to harmonize every instrument, but
of a well educated man to adapt himself harmoniously to every
fortune.
It is necessary that a well educated man should depart from life
elegantly, as from a banquet.
------------------------------------
GOLDEN SENTENCES OF DEMOCRITUS.
It is beautiful to impede an unjust man; but if this be not
possible, it is beautiful not to act in conjunction with him.
Sin should be abstained from, not through fear, but, for the sake of
the becoming.
Many who have not learnt to argue rationally, still live according
to reason.
Vehement desires about any one thing render the soul blind with
respect to other things.
The equal is beautiful in everything, but excess and defect to me do
not appear to be so.
It is the property of a divine intellect to be always intently
thinking about the beautiful.
=Correspondence.=
A LAW OF LIFE: KARMA.
[The following letter has been received by the editors, in criticism
on Mr. Keightley’s article on “Karma”; and as it raises many rather
important points, an attempt has been made to answer them. Mr.
Beatty’s letter is somewhat difficult to deal with, for though it
asks many questions, they are so inextricably mingled with its
author’s thoughts that it would be unfair to disentangle them from
the context. It is a pity that Mr. Beatty, in his haste to
criticize, did not wait for the conclusion of the article, as he
might have saved himself some trouble. If his real desire is to
learn, it would be well that he should approach the endeavour in a
less flippant spirit and evolve the critic out of the criticaster.
In many of his arguments he has, so to say, “given himself away,”
but, in the interests of space and of the readers of LUCIFER, only
those questions and arguments which bear directly on the points at
issue have been selected for answer. The point which Mr. Beatty does
“not care to discuss,” and which refers to the mystery of Godliness,
has been omitted. Perhaps, if Mr. Beatty continues to read, mark,
learn, _and inwardly digest_, he may in some _future incarnation_
solve the mystery.]
In an article in LUCIFER, under the above heading, Mr. Keightley
declares it to be “very difficult, if not well-nigh impossible,” to
understand Karma, and I grant him that his essay is a practical
demonstration of his allegation. The difficulty (1.) does not,
however, hinder him from attempting to define the refractory term.
“Karma,” he says, “is the working of the great law which governs
reincarnation,” or “a manifestation of the One, Universal, Divine
Principle in the phenomenal world,” or again, “the great law of
harmony which governs the universe.” Now, waiving altogether the
question of reincarnations, I shall proceed to examine whether Mr.
Keightley makes good his contention that “harmony,” in his sense of
the word, “governs the Universe.” He says, “the man who denies the
existence of harmony in the universe has transgressed the law and is
experiencing punishment. He does this unconsciously to himself,
because the law of harmony forms an unconscious impulse to its
readjustment when it has been broken.” Here there are several things
to be considered. In the first place, it may be asked: (2.) Does a
man, by merely denying the existence of a law of Nature or the
universe, transgress that law? I think not.[107] Secondly. Can a law
of the universe be “broken”? Here again I must reply in the
negative; for who is going to contend that the law of gravitation
has ever been “broken,”[108] has ever ceased to act, has ever
required “re-adjustment”? A man can break no law of Nature in the
sense of bringing that law into abeyance. If then, a law of harmony
governs the universe there can be no such thing as discord. (3.) Yet
Mr. Keightley admits that there _is_ discord, that the law of
harmony has been “broken” and needs “readjustment” This is a
surrendering of his position and a patent admission that harmony is
not constant or universal. He then proceeds to draw an illustration
from music. “In musical chords, the composing notes, if taken by
twos and threes, will be found in discord, but, when taken together,
produce a harmony.” This is a particularly unfortunate subject of
illustration. For does it not show that discord is an element in the
universe as well as harmony? Why are discords introduced into music?
Simply to make the harmony more effective. The reason for this,
however, does not lie in any so-called universal law of harmony, but
rather in the constitution of animate existences. Fundamentally,
sensation is the consciousness of difference. Where the difference
is great the feeling is great. If we wish to have the keenest
sensation of sweetness we must first taste something bitter. Thus it
is that occasional discords heighten harmony. But are the discords
any less real on that account? Certainly not; for there can no more
be harmony without discord, than there can be an up without a down.
This, moreover, is only another illustration of the fact that human
knowledge is merely relative. Must we, however, admit that the
universal law may be harmony while our experience tells us that
there are discords without number? Unless ignorance be considered as
superior to positive knowledge, I see no room for the admission. If
a man’s house tumbles about his ears, does it become any less a fact
by trying to persuade himself and his neighbours that it is still
standing? This seems to be the method of Mr. Keightley. He has,
however, yet another argument “The universe ... is essentially an
evidence of harmony; otherwise it could not exist, for it would fall
to pieces.” This is a palpable begging of the question, and,
besides, very absurd. The universe is a harmony, because a universe
must be a harmony! “Otherwise it could not exist.” Now how does our
harmonist know whether it could exist or not? Of what other universe
has he experience or knowledge? “It would fall to pieces.” Where, I
wonder, would it fall to? Perhaps it is even now fast falling to
pieces, and who can tell us differently? As far as ordinary people
can judge, it seems, as regards the parts we are acquainted with, to
be falling into more or less concrete masses, but not many sane
people believe it can fall into nothingness. After all this vain
contention for universal harmony we find Mr. Keightley settling down
like ordinary mortals to the conviction that the world is far from
harmonious or perfect. One unfortunate individual who cannot be
persuaded that all is harmony, is told that “he is incapable of
understanding it because his attention is solely devoted to that
which produces discord.” How comes it that the universe does not
fall to pieces as a result of this discord? Surely we are in a
precarious condition, if every obstinate fool who persists in crying
out when he has been hurt, endangers the stability of the universe.
Did ever anyone meet with a universe where there is less evidence of
harmony? One brute force ever in conflict with another. Infernal
forces piling up mountain on the top of mountain; supernal forces
blasting, rending, excoriating and tumbling these mountains down
again into the valleys; the oak struggling against the inwarping
ivy, the fawn attempting vainly to escape from the claws of the
tiger, the child agonising while parasites eat slowly and
mercilessly into its lungs, liver, or brain; the strong everywhere
victorious over the weak; each sect and each party exerting itself
ferociously to scoop out the viscera of its rival. Such is the
world, such all records declare it to have been, and such it gives
ample promise of continuing. But if the world is not really so, and
on the contrary is one immensity of joyous harmony, who can tell us
why the evidence is so deceptive? Here again, Mr. Keightley
introduces to us a most remarkable statement. “The one Divine
principle is divided by man’s actions into two opposing forces of
good and evil, and man’s progress depends on the exertion of his
will to preserve harmony and prevent deviation to one side or the
other.” Give us by all means in preference to this for common sense,
for rationality and for every other quality that makes it
digestible, the childish story of Eve, the apple and the fall.
-----
Footnote 107:
Mr. Keightley’s meaning (and it is difficult for the words to bear
any other interpretation) was that the denial of harmony is
evidence that, at some previous time, the man who denies has set
himself in opposition to the law, in virtue of those very desires
and instincts of his animal personality to which Mr. Beatty
alludes later on. In this sense, Mr. Beatty is right in saying
that a law of the universe cannot be broken; but its limits may be
transgressed, and consequently an attempt made by man to make
himself into a small, but rival universe. It is the old story of
the china pot and the iron kettle, and the fact that china gets
the worst of it is conclusive that the china is struggling
_against_ Nature.
Footnote 108:
Will Mr. Beatty explain the phenomenon of a comet flirting its
tail round the sun in defiance of the “_law_ of gravitation”?
-----
Beyond doubt, Mr. Keightley has a profound faith in man as a power
in the universe and an instrument for evil. By a most singular
process of metaphysical alchemy man decomposes the “Divine
principle” into “two opposing forces of good and evil.” It seems
from this revised version of an old story that man introduced evil
into the universe. Why is man so important that a universe should be
polluted for his sake? Surely man did not make himself, and whatever
powers were in him for evil or for good must have been potential in
that from which he sprang. Man can create nothing, neither evil nor
good, neither a tendency to do right nor an inclination to do wrong.
“Man’s will” is always a tremendous force for good or evil in the
hands of theologians and metaphysicians. Did man make his own
“will?” If not, how can he be responsible for what he does?
Everybody knows that man can act according to his likes or dislikes.
But does anybody imagine that he can make his own likes or dislikes?
(4.) He can do as he wishes, but he wishes according to his nature,
and this he cannot transcend, consequently he is not responsible to
the Author of his nature for what his nature inclines him to do. But
what are we to understand by the rest of the sentence? Man’s will is
“to preserve harmony and prevent deviation to one side or the
other.” First the will brings about evil in the “Divine principle,”
destroying harmony, then it is to reproduce harmony and at the same
time to maintain a balance between good and evil, and “prevent
deviation to the one side or the other.” This to Mahatmas and
possessors of the “sixth sense” may seem plain logic, but it far
surpasses my comprehension.[109] I am, perhaps, as averse to “the
pernicious doctrine of reward and punishment after death, in heaven
or in hell” as Mr. Keightley can be, but I can by no means deduce
from it the results which to him appear so inevitable. “Nothing,” he
says, “could have been found more calculated to circumscribe the
view of life as a whole, and concentrate man’s attention on
temporary matters.... He either rejected the idea of soul as
altogether worthless, or else he transferred his interest to the
soul’s welfare in heaven—in either case concentrating his attention
on what is inevitably transient.” How the idea of never-ending
existence in heaven or in hell can have the effect of circumscribing
“the view of life as a whole,” and of concentrating “man’s attention
on temporary matters,” is to me an insolvable puzzle. That it should
have quite the opposite effect, does not seem to require proof. Why,
in the name of mystery, should he “reject the idea of soul as
worthless,” and how can transferring “his interest to the soul’s
welfare in heaven” be called a concentrating of “his attention on
what is inevitably transient?” Truly this Karma is a bewildering
subject![110]
-----
Footnote 109:
Very little doubt that it does. Mankind is only very gradually
developing its fifth sense on the intellectual plane. Intuition
might have carried our critic over the difficulty, but in some
parts of his criticism he seems hardly to have begun to evolute
the intellectual sense.
Footnote 110:
“This Karma,” as Mr. Beatty expresses it, would not be quite so
bewildering a subject if critics would bear in mind the context
and not fall foul of a detached expression—not even a sentence.
The “interest of the soul’s welfare in heaven” is concentrated by
John Smith on John Smith as John Smith in heaven, and in order
that the said John Smith may go on enjoying the things he loved on
earth. As his earth life has ended, John Smith has changed and is
“transient.” If he were not transient a very natural inference
would follow, that progress, evolution, &c., on whatever plane of
being does not prevail.
-----
Do plants and animals come under the law of Karma? is the next
question discussed by Mr. Keightley. An extract from the
_Theosophist_ seems to discountenance such a thing. But are its
arguments really conclusive against it? I do not think so. It says,
“A piece of iron is attracted to a magnet without having any desire
in the matter.” Now, in the first place, this is pure assumption,
and has its origin in vainglorious human egotism.[111] It is evident
that from objective data alone we cannot decide what is the
subjective state of the molecules of the attracted iron. In the
second place, we are only acquainted with the iron as a cause
producing changes in us. No matter how we interpret these changes,
they cannot even tell us the real nature of iron, merely considered
objectively. Again the extract proceeds: “An animal usually follows
the instincts of its nature without any merit or demerit for so
doing; a child or an idiot may smilingly kick over a lamp, which may
set a whole city on fire.... A person can only be held responsible
according to his ability to perceive justice, and to distinguish
between good and evil.” According to this doctrine, man is not an
“animal,” and does not follow his instincts. To those who are
acquainted, even slightly, with the method and regularity of Nature,
this contention will appear, on the face of it, untenable. For why
should there be an exception in the case of man?[112] Has man
instincts, desires, and inclinations, or has he not? If he has, why
should he have them if he is not to follow them? And if in any case
he does not follow them, is it not with him as with the “animals”?
Is it not because he is deterred by influences from without, or
hereditary influences from within? And of all these instincts,
desires and influences, how is he to know which to obey, to know
which is of Divine sanction? He has conscience, of course, but
conscience is a very variable quantity, and indeed, it might not be
too much to say that there is hardly a crime in the world that has
not, at one time or another, been commended by conscience.
Conscience is only one phase of the man’s mental activity, and was
no more created by him than was his power of vision. We talk of
“children and idiots,” and their being irresponsible, but are not
untamed savages also irresponsible? And if we admit that there may
be beings as much higher than we, as we are higher than children,
idiots, and savages, will they not, with reason and justice, regard
us as irresponsible? The truth is, there never was a greater chimera
conjured up by unreasoning fancy than that one of man’s
responsibility to a Supreme Power. Man is responsible only to man,
and man’s conduct is without merit except from a human view-point.
We are good or bad by reason of all the forces that act on and
through us.
My object in writing what I have written is to show to Theosophists
the dense darkness in which I wander. Will some God-illumined mind
not take pity upon, and draw me up from the labyrinthian gloom,
where illusions mislead me at every step? My “sixth sense” seems
wholly dormant, and Nirvana, that haven of rest, seems distant, by
many a weary league of rocky path and burning desert. Pity me.
Adyar, 17th October, 1887. H. S. OLCOTT, P.T.S.
-----
Footnote 111:
Mr. Beatty hardly maintains his position of consistent materialism
here; and it is at least as vainglorious to deny as to assert.
Footnote 112:
Man has the “animal” in him of course, but he has also the power
of judgment or discrimination. Mr. Beatty’s wish to be
critically pessimistic seems here to run away with his power of
discrimination.
-----
(1.) The difficulty experienced in fathoming the mysteries of Karmic
Law arises from the conditions of our present intellectual
environment and general evolutionary status. It has been, also,
frequently stated that a _complete_ comprehension of its workings is
reserved for the Initiate who has transcended the domain of
terrestrial activity—viz., the necessity for soul-evolution through
successive births. But, passing over this consideration, it is
evident that, in the process of bringing down fragments of the
Divine Truth on to the plane of mere intellectual interpretation, an
inevitable distortion must ensue. The rays of spiritual light will
be split up and refracted as they pass through the prism of the
brain. Mr. Beatty will recognise this fact more clearly owing to his
belief “that _human_ knowledge is _merely relative_.” Surely, when
that most familiar fact of our experience, the “perception of
matter,” is, metaphysically speaking, an illusion, the relativity of
_mental_ conceptions of spiritual truths would appear to be a
necessity. According to Huxley, Spencer, Du Bois Reymond, and all
leading thinkers, we know nothing of things as they are even on this
plane, which to the materialist is “All in all.” The essence of the
thing “perceived” escapes us; all we really grasp is its
presentation in consciousness. It is, therefore, clear that in
interpreting realities on the superphysical plane, we cannot advance
beyond word-symbols and adumbrations. The intuition of the
individual must effect the rest.
Such considerations, however, in no way militate against the
successful defence of Esoteric philosophy on purely intellectual
lines. Translated into terms of human thought, its metaphysics must
be shown to blend intimately with the _facts_ of science and
psychology, and its ability to solve the enigmas of life
demonstrated. “Philosophy is chaos,” remarks the author of “Absolute
Relativism,” referring to modern thought. If we are to avoid the
spectacle of a future “moral chaos,” also, as the fruit of the
materialistic Upas tree, some fresh impulse must be infused into the
dry bones of Western metaphysics—some _raison d’être_ assigned to
life, and an ideal worthy of man’s noblest efforts presented to the
multitude of _laissez-faire_ pessimists. Such is an aspect of the
work now before us.
(2.) A man may certainly injure himself[113] by shutting his eyes to
a spiritual interpretation of the Universe and its workings. The
only acquisition he can carry with him after physical death is the
_aroma_ of the vast aggregate of mental states generated in one
incarnation. The _personality_ or brain-consciousness of the
physical man is, after all, a mere feeler projected into this
objective plane to harvest experience for its individual Self. It
does not at all follow that any experience may be acquired which the
Monad is enabled to assimilate. Abstract thinking, religious
aspirations, scientific lore; poetry, the nobler emotions, and all
such efflorescences of human consciousness, furnish the “material”
which go to build up the _transcendental individuality_ of the Ego
progressing towards the Nirvana. The materialist presents a frequent
instance of soul-death—so far as the fruitage of the personality is
concerned. His knowledge may be enormous, but being unspiritualised,
a mere creature of the physical brain, it cannot blossom into
luxuriance in the Devachanic interim between successive births.
Consequently, as the True Self—the “transcendental subject” of the
neo-Kantian German school—only assimilates experience suitable to
its own exalted nature, it becomes evident that, ideals apart, the
philosophy of a man is of very great importance. At the same time,
it need not be said that sectarian “religion” is almost more
pernicious than materialism, inasmuch as it combines the two factors
of crass ignorance and spiritual torpor.
Footnote 113:
No law of Nature can be set aside, but a man _transgresses_ a law
of his [mental] being when he deliberately places himself under
the sway of certain “evil” forces. The gist of Mr. Beatty’s
criticism is not quite evident here.
-----
(3.) Harmony _is_ essentially the law of the Universe. The
contrasted aspects of Nature come into being subsequently to the
differentiation of matter from its several _protyles_ in the
commencement of a cycle of becoming, or Manwantara, and can have no
reality except in the experience of conscious Egos.[114] For beneath
the surface of the great ocean of cosmic illusion—beneath the clash
of apparently clashing forces—lies the Eternal Harmony. The
semblance of discord is but a ripple on the stream of Maya, or
illusion. One aspect of esoteric solution of apparent evils is dealt
with in the last issue of LUCIFER (_vide_ art., “Origin of Evil”).
But Mr. Beatty will not find himself in a position to accept its
validity so long as he continues to “waive the question of
reincarnation,” the acceptance of that doctrine lying at the root of
the real explanation.
-----
Footnote 114:
The _phenomenal_ contrast is not denied, but it is representative
of no fundamental want of harmony. In the same way the contrast of
Subject and Object is essential to our present finite
consciousness, although it has no basis of reality beyond the
limits of conditional being. Moreover, even in this phenomenal
Universe, equilibrium (harmony) is most certainly maintained by
the very conflict of the contrasted forces alluded to.
-----
The Universe must, at bottom, be a Harmony. Why?[115] The
equilibrating action of the forces around us is a sufficient proof
of the fact; the apparent discord existing, as argued by Spinoza,
solely in the sensations of conscious beings. The matter in reality
involves the re-opening of the much debated question as to whether
an optimistic or pessimistic pantheism is the creed of the true
philosopher. Can we with von Hartmann postulate the strange
contradiction of an absolutely wise (though from our standpoint
unconscious) cause behind phenomena confronted with a “worthless
universe?” Obviously not. Moreover, as pantheists necessarily regard
the individual mind as only a rushlight compared with the blazing
sun of the Universal Mind, its source, how is a final conclusion as
to the “unfathomable folly” of manifested being possible? On the
other hand, a non-recognition of the Maya of appearances is a tacit
impeachment of the wisdom of the Absolute. The pantheist—and
pantheism alone accounts for consciousness itself—is, at least,
logically driven into the admission that the “nature of things” is
sound and that, probably, apparent flaws in the mechanicism of the
Universe would, if viewed from a wider standpoint than the human,
altogether vanish.
-----
Footnote 115:
Mr. Beatty asks how the Universe would come to a stand-still, if
the law of Harmony was suspended. Now suppose, for instance, the
law of “gravity” was not _counterbalanced_ by the action of other
“forces,” what would happen? Science assures us that everything
would have long before gravitated to a common centre, and a
universal dead-lock have ensued! _Vice versa_, if “gravity” were
to lapse. _Verb. Sap._
-----
If, however, the Spinozistic axiom that evil _exists only in us_, is
true—and it is not for a relativist of our critic’s type to deny the
fact—pessimism is rooted in the recognition of the equilibrating
action of the law of Karma. The examples cited by Mr. Beatty of
brute forces “one in conflict with another;” of the sufferings of
animals in the struggle for existence; and more especially of human
suffering in no way controvert the views of the “Harmonists.” The
first group is representative of those forces which balance one
another by oscillating about a common centre of equilibrium,
producing harmony by conflict, just as in the case of the so-called
centripetal and centrifugal forces, which regulate the earth’s
orbital journey. The second group is, undoubtedly, characterised by
the infliction of much incidental pain. But in all instances where
Nature immolates the individual organism on the altar of natural
selection, she does it for the benefit of the species or the
“survival of the fittest”—the individuals borne down by violence in
the struggle, reaping, one and all, the results of a compensatory
Karma. In the domain of _human_ suffering, moral debasement, etc.,
an entirely new factor supervenes—the equilibrating influence of a
_positive_ Karma, which in biblical language demands “an eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
(4). “Why,” asks our critic, “is man so important that the Universe
was polluted for his sake?” In the first place, Humanity is, by no
means, unimportant; the panorama of evolution only existing in order
to evolve the Ego from the animal stage up to that of a conscious
God. The designation of nature as divided into “good” and “evil”
principles, has been taken by Mr. Beatty in its absolute, as opposed
to its relative, aspect. Man pollutes only himself and his fellows
by “sin”; nature remaining constant _per se_. “How can he be
responsible for what he does?” he continues. He is only so within
certain wide limits defined by his previous Karma—the tendencies
moral, mental and spiritual, generated in previous lives,
continually driving him on to certain lines of action. The “Free
Will absolute” of the theologians is as unpsychological and
worthless a concept as it is possible to formulate. Not so the
doctrine that the Ego is able to _mould_ its tendencies of thought
and emotion within “constitutional limits.” It was the recognition
of this fact which led John Stuart Mill to take up a midway position
between the equally absurd extremes of Free Will and Necessarianism.
The same conviction led the prophet of Materialism, Dr. Louis
Büchner, to contradict his whole system by admitting human liberty
within a certain area mapped out by “Heredity” and Environment, and
Professor Clifford to invest the “conscious, automaton” Man with the
power to control his own ideas!! Responsibility varies enormously,
and is, perhaps, almost wanting in the savage (who, however, is in
all cases the degraded relic of primæval civilisation). In all
cases, the human Ego must be held to be the evolver of the group of
tendencies which make up the personality of each re-birth. The
sensualist is the victim of a “Frankenstein’s monster,” into which
he has infused strength through many lives. We really cannot follow
Mr. Beatty when he writes: “Has man instincts, desires, and
inclinations, or has he not? If he has, _why should he have them if
he is not to follow them_?” He has them because they are the
heritage handed down to him from past lives, and also because his
Karma as an individual is bound up with that of the race to which he
belongs. It rests with him as to how far he chooses to _modify_ them
“for weal or woe,” for every moment the exhaustion of past Karma
runs parallel with the creation of new. It is certainly a strange
doctrine here enunciated by Mr. Beatty, that the possession of
certain “instincts, etc,” justifies their gratification. Crime,
debauchery and cruelty would be difficult to deal with on this
hypothesis! It is certainly true—to some extent—that “we are good or
bad by reason of all the forces that act on or through us.” These
latter are the stimuli to action (_subject to the control of the
will_), but are in their turn the resultant of previous Karma.
Judging from the general tone of his criticism, it would appear that
his first acquaintance with the esoteric philosophy does not date
back to a very remote antiquity.
A. K.
------------------
“THE LATEST ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY.”
In the July number of the _Quarterly Review_ there is an article
reviewing the recent book of J. C. Morrison upon “The Service of Man
or the Future Religion.” And although Mr. Morrison, in his book,
writes to urge that the chief and primary principle of religion is
“to promote the spirit of self-sacrifice, and to direct men’s
energies to the service of their fellow creatures,” yet the
_Quarterly Review_ pours every kind of insult and obloquy on Mr.
Morrison.
But herein is the gross contradiction, that the _Quarterly Review_
admits that the primary principle of Christianity has the very same
objects in view, as Mr. Morrison urges the future religion should
have. And yet the _Quarterly Review_ ridicules Mr. Morrison, and
describes his book as an attack upon Christianity.
Then, surely, when two persons thus fall out with one another,
whilst both advocate the same lofty and noble principles, there must
be some gross misunderstanding between them!
The error thus which they both labour under, is one and the same;
for the _Quarterly Review_ errs, in assuming that the teaching or
doctrine of the Church is indisputably, and infallibly, the teaching
or doctrine of Christ. And Mr. Morrison errs in assuming that the
teaching or doctrine of Christ is the same as the doctrine of the
Church.
So that if the teaching of the Church is not the teaching of Christ,
then Mr. Morrison in attacking the supposed Christianity of the
Church is not really attacking Christianity, but only attacking the
spurious doctrine of the Church, which has passed current as
Christianity; _ex gr._, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Elijah, in denouncing
the religion of the priests, did not attack true religion (as the
priests would assert), but only their adulterated and spurious
religion.
And Christ tells us that the Priests and Pharisees made the word of
God of none effect by their traditions. And St Paul tells us that,
with the authority of the Chief Priest, he had, before conversion,
imprisoned and put men to death, and made them blaspheme (Acts
xxvi., 11) against God and the Church.
Therefore, before we accept the Church and Christianity to be
synonymous terms, and not only signifying but being actually the
Church of Christ, and so, verily, Christianity, we must have a clear
and definite understanding as to what we mean, and wish others to
understand what we mean, by “the Church.”
For the world, outside of Christianity, and often inside, is at its
wits’ end to know which of the numerous churches and sects, which
all claim to be the Church of Christ, is really and truly the Church
of Christ; because the World witnesses that they all reject one
another.
Then surely, whilst the world witnesses rival and hostile churches
all claiming to be “the Church” and Christianity, Mr. Morrison is
not at all necessarily attacking the Church of Christ, or true
Christianity, when he attacks the doctrine, or the Christianity of
the churches.
And this proposition of course, opens and raises the question as to
what is Christianity, which the _Quarterly Review_ either avoids or
assumes to be established, as being “_a sound belief in the merits
of the Saviour_,” which of course means belief in the Atonement as
commonly taught. But how can the truth of Christianity be possibly
established, whilst to this day the doctrine of Atonement taught by
the Church as Christianity, cannot be reconciled as either good or
true; and is moreover a mystery to the leaders of it, a stumbling
block to the Jews, and foolishness to the world, making the
preaching of the Church as Canon Liddon admits, utterly powerless?
The _Quarterly Review_ assumes that the doctrine of the Church has
been taught as Christianity for 1,800 years; and that 1,800 years’
teaching of it has proved it to be Christianity, because the
_Quarterly Review_ assumes that there has been liberty for 1,800
years to disprove the doctrine of the Church, and that the doctrine
of the Church, not having been disproved, is a proof that it cannot
be disproved. But the fact that to this very day there is no liberty
allowed in the pulpits of the National Churches to discuss the
doctrine of the Church (it being a law with the rulers of the Church
that “the doctrine of the Church may not be touched”), utterly
refutes all the assumptions of the _Quarterly Review_.
For whilst there is no liberty, even for fair and candid criticism
in the pulpit, on the doctrine of the Church, even in this age of
liberty and education, there could have been none when the Church,
for centuries, had power to imprison, slay, and excommunicate or
boycott; and used it against those who even questioned the doctrine
of the Church.
But we are told, by the great Bishop Butler, in his “Analogy of
Religion” (and whom the _Quarterly Review_ admits to be an authority
of the very highest class), that the doctrine of Atonement is
positively immoral, excepting for the supposed divine authority; and
the Bishop himself looked forward to the day, when the progress of
liberty and education should throw greater light upon this doctrine
of the Church, and indisputably determine whether or no it has the
divine authority, it was then supposed or asserted to have.
So great has been our progress in education and liberty that _The
Guardian_ of the 3rd August, in its review of this book of Mr.
Morrison’s, says, if Christianity is Calvinism with its doctrine of
substitution and justification, then it is _madness_ any longer to
attempt defending the morality of Christianity.
It is true that it is one thing to make this admission in the review
of a book, and another thing to publish it from the pulpit; and it
is true that the admission would be withdrawn or crucified by
silence; but the _Quarterly Review_ itself, in its argument by
analogy of the human and divine mind, admits that this doctrine of
Atonement is immoral, because it admits that no authority could be
divine which called immorality morality, as it asserts that
_whatever is moral humanly speaking, is also moral divinely
speaking, only in an infinitely greater degree_, and the converse.
So that an attack on an immoral doctrine of the Church is not an
attack on Christianity, if the doctrine of the Church is not the
teaching of Christ, as it can be shown that it is not, as soon as
liberty is allowed in the pulpits of the National Churches, for
explaining the truth of a _Crucified Christ_, and removing the
mystery that has been created, which causes it to be a stumbling
block to the Jews, and foolishness to the world.
We are told that the late Archbishop Whately said, that if the
Christian Religion did not come from God, miraculously (in the sense
commonly taught), yet the religion, nevertheless, exists, and
therefore the phenomenon has to be explained how it could have
arisen and been propagated without miracles.
But the _Quarterly Review_ asserts that for 1,800 years all the
attempts to explain it, without the aid of miracles, have utterly
failed, and therefore it must be assumed to be miraculous.
But before there can be any justification for such a bold
assumption, as that what is taught as Christianity is infallibly,
and indisputably, the teaching of Jesus Christ, what is meant by the
term Christianity, or Christian religion must be clearly defined:
for the Roman Catholic Church denounces the Protestant, and the
Protestant denounces the Roman Church, as having naught to do with
Christianity; so that even if there is anything held in common
between these Churches (as “the faith of the Primitive Church,” or
“the faith once delivered to the Saints,” or any other faith), yet
whatever it is, or is called, it would seem to be of not the
slightest value whatever, in saving them from rejecting one another
absolutely.
Canon Liddon, however, asserts that all the doctrine and teaching of
the Church derives its authority from a miraculous resurrection of
Jesus, with a material and physical body of flesh, blood, and bones,
in direct defiance of the teaching of Jesus, that the flesh
profiteth nothing, and that it was the words which He spoke, “_They
were_ spirit, _they_ were life.” (John vi., 63.)
And if we believe that the Holy Spirit of God could speak without
the aid of a material body, composed of flesh, blood, and bones, in
a still small voice to the conscience or soul of Moses and Elijah (1
Kings xix., 12); and if we believe that the same Holy Spirit is
_present_ even now (where two or three are gathered together—Matt,
xvii., 23), why should not the presence of the still small voice of
the Holy Spirit, speaking to the conscience or soul of the Apostles,
be of itself deemed sufficient, without needing the aid of a
material body?
Again, if the _presence_ of the still small voice of the Holy
Spirit, speaking to the soul of man, has been deemed sufficient by
the world both before the crucifixion of Christ, and since the
crucifixion of Christ, why should it be deemed necessary to raise up
the crucified One, with a body of flesh, blood and bones, only to
teach what the still small voice of the Holy Spirit was able,
willing, and _present_ to teach, and to doubt which would be
Atheism? And, moreover, whilst such teaching was sufficient, it
would be a contradiction to vouchsafe more.
Therefore, if the still small voice of the Holy Spirit is sufficient
and _present_ to guide us into all truth, it must have been
sufficient for the Apostles also (John xvi., 13); and, therefore,
Christ’s religion is not dependent upon a material resurrection of
the body, with flesh, blood and bones.
Here, once more, we see the necessity of liberty being allowed in
the pulpit, for fair and candid criticism on the doctrine of the
Church, for the purpose of eliminating error and eliciting truth; so
that it may be clearly seen and known what is Christ’s religion, as
it might indeed be possible that a material resurrection would seem
necessary to support the doctrine of the Church, though wholly
unnecessary for the support of Christ’s religion, or gospel.
Although the _Quarterly Review_ asserts that men have failed for
1,800 years to account for the existence of Christianity, unless it
had a miraculous resurrection to support it, yet it by no means
follows that, because a miracle is supposed to be needed to support
a doctrine of the Church, therefore a miracle is needed for
supporting the doctrine, gospel, or religion of Christ; which
exists, and will continue to exist, without needing the aid of
belief in a miraculous resurrection of the material body, to support
it. And it only needs that there should be liberty allowed in the
pulpits of the National Churches to show the deficiency of faith in
Christ’s spiritual resurrection, to see there is no need for belief
in that carnal, gross, and material resurrection of the body, with
flesh, blood and bones.
Then, let there be liberty allowed in the pulpits of the National
Churches; because it is not true that there has ever been liberty
for 1,800 years to explain the Mystery of a Crucified Christ; for,
it is refused to the present day. If any man, on behalf of the
Church, contradicts this, and asserts there is liberty to explain,
in the Church, the truth of a crucified Christ, let him mention one
Church, or one clergyman that will allow it, and I will test its
truth by asking for the same permission that the rulers of the
Synagogue accorded to St Paul at Antioch, Acts xiii., 15.
The _Quarterly Review_ says the clergy have no objection to free
discussion—that it is the very air they breathe, and that it has
been the life of Christian Truth. These are bold and brave words,
but where is there even one clergyman that will endorse them, and
act upon them? Where?
Isaiah says, “Open ye the gates that the truth may enter in” (xxvi.,
2). But instead of reverencing the just and righteous “Son of Man,”
the chief priests and rulers of the Ancient Church condemned “the
Just One,” to be slain as a blasphemer, whose blood ought to be shed
for an Atonement. And the chief priests of our Church have combined
that this doctrine should not be touched, so that by their practice
they make their statement of the _Quarterly Review_ utterly untrue.
For if there is one clergyman, A.D. 1887, who will support the
_Quarterly Review’s_ statement, and open his pulpit for explaining
the truth of “Christ crucified” and proclaiming Christian truth, as
taught by Christ—Where is he? and who is he?
And if there is not one, then need the Church be surprised that men
attack, not the Christianity of Jesus Christ, but only an erroneous
doctrine of the Church, miscalled Christianity?
(REV.) T. G. HEADLEY.
_Manor House, Petersham, S. W._
P.S.—Although the _Quarterly Review_ admits that Mr. Morrison has
established a high position in literature, and that he seeks to
promote the same lofty and noble principles as true Christianity
inculcates; yet it speaks of Mr. Morrison’s book as bad and
incomplete; feeble and illogical; full of perversities,
monstrosities, misrepresentations, and misquotations; adding, that
it is bitter, unscrupulous, ignorant, inconsistent, offensive,
bullying, brow-beating, overbearing, absurd, and ridiculous, as well
as indecent and false; insulting and flagrant; inconsecutive and
unjust; full of jugglery and a disgrace.
Is this an exhibition of how theologians, or the clergy, as the
reviewer is most probably a clergyman, love free discussion, and
crucify those from whom they differ by damning them in this gross
manner?
------------------
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY.
_To the Editors of_ LUCIFER.
In the numerous letters that have repeatedly appeared recently in
the _Times_ opposing the statements of the Rev. Canon Isaac Taylor,
in his speech at the late Church Congress, on the very great
progress of Islam, and the comparative failure of Christianity (as
taught), in India and Africa, it is frequently asserted that _“Islam
is the only religion that has laid an immutable barrier on human
progress;”_ and that _“no system could have been devised with more
consummate skill (than the Koran of Islam) for shutting out the
light of truth, from the Nations over which Islam has sway.”_
But surely this is equally as true of our Church, whilst it also
makes it an immutable law, as it has done to this day, that “_the
doctrine of the Church may not be touched_”? For how could any
system have been devised with more consummate skill for shutting out
the light of truth, than to delude the people to crucify “the Just
One,” as a blasphemer whose blood ought to be shed for an atonement,
and afterwards to quote Scripture in support of this doctrine (as
necessary to be believed in order to escape being cursed here and
damned hereafter), and stamp out and boycott all who doubted it?
And yet this is the present state of things.
And therefore, whilst the clergy have power to say that “_the
doctrine of the Church may not be touched_,” how is the mystery of a
Crucified Christ to be explained and translated, so that it may be
seen to be “_a light to lighten the Gentiles, and also the glory of
Israel_,” instead of being, as it is now, a stumbling block to the
Jews, foolishness to the world, and a mystery to the teachers of it,
making those who accept it, in India and Africa, worse than they
were before?
Then is there not a cause for demanding that liberty should be
allowed in the Church, for explaining, in the pulpit, the mystery of
a Crucified Christ, so that it may no longer remain a mystery for
want only of this liberty?
(REV.) T. G. HEADLEY.
------------------
HYLO-IDEALISM.—AN APOLOGY.
My attention has been directed to a somewhat slighting notice of the
above theory of human nature, on pages 72 and 75 of your issue for
September, the contents of which are, doubtless, most suggestive of
the _nouvelles couches mentales_ at the basis of all _nouvelles
couches sociales_, and which Physical Science, in its vulgar
realism, has altogether missed.
My main position, to which all else is but subsidiary, is that the
worlds both of thought and thing, which thus become identified and
unified, _must_ be a product of _our own_ personality or Egoity,
which thus constitutes each Ego Protagonist and Demiurge, from
whose tribunal there can be no possible appeal. This being
granted, and even Max Müller, in his “Science of Thought,”
considers the position _impregnable_, it matters not one jot, at
least in the first line and as far as my main object is concerned,
whether the Ego be a Body or a “Spirit.” Our own individuality, as
sum and substance of all “things,” is the only essential point of
the question. So that it may be argued either on the somatic
(hylozoic) or “Spiritual” hypothesis of life and mind. I have
always contended that Hylo-Idealism, or Auto-centricism, is the
only thorough and legitimate outcome of the phenomenal world
theory—this representative _Weltanschanung_ having been, for some
generations past, the accredited creed both of physical science
and philosophy. It is well summed up in Kant’s negation of “_Das
Ding an sich_.$1“$2”$3 Vulgar Physical Science, as interpreted by
its greatest hierophants, from Newton to Huxley and Darwin, from
its incarnate dualism, is fatally handicapped in its search after
the _final_ “good, beautiful, and true.” Even Cardinal Newman is
in a similar case, when he predicates _two_ luminous spectra, God
and Self, as the sole entities. The former Spectrum, on the
Hylo-ideal, or visional, or phenomenal hypothesis, _must_ be only
the functional _imago_ of the latter; Self being thus proved to be
“Alpha and Omega, beginning and ending, first and last.” Beyond
Self, it is manifest, mortal mind can never range. Whether Self be
body or “spirit” is, I repeat, for my chief contention, quite
immaterial—I sit on both sides of the stile, facing both ways.
ROBERT LEWINS, M.D.
------------------
HYLO-IDEAISM.
_To the Editors of_ LUCIFER.
As a hostile notice of the above philosophy has appeared in your
columns, will you kindly permit me to say a few words in its
defence? Not, of course, that I can hope in these few lines to
really make clear to the casual reader the greatest change in human
thought ever witnessed on earth (a change not merely as regards the
form or matter of existence, but as regards its very nature)—yet I
may hope that a few seasonable words may be the means of inducing at
least a few to enquire further into a theory, the self-evident
simplicity of which is so great, that, I am convinced, it needs but
to be understood to command universal acceptance.
The term Hylo-Ideaism is no self-contradiction, but undeniable
verity, based on the first two facts of all existence; viz., the
assumption of the material on the one hand, and the actuality of the
ideal on the other. The primary, undeniable and necessary assumption
of the “reality” of existence supplies us with the first half of our
designation, and the recognition of the correlative truism that this
existence—based on our own assumption—is, therefore, only our own
idea, completes our title, and amply vindicates the self-sufficiency
of Hylo-Ideaistic philosophy. For here is not a mere unended
argument, leaving us at both ends stranded on mere metaphysical
speculation, but a self-sustaining circle[116] where both ends meet,
and materiality and ideality are blended as one, and indissoluble.
-----
Footnote 116:
Yet, unless _metaphysical_ speculation comes to the rescue of the
new philosophy, and, completing, explains it on the old Vedantic
lines, the “circle,” instead of being a “self-sustaining” one, is
more than likely to become a—“vicious circle.”—ED.
-----
It matters not on what basis we proceed, whether we speak of
existence as material or ideal, or “spiritual” or anything else—a
moment’s reflection is sufficient to establish us in a position of
consistent monism. For all thought or knowledge is but sensation,
and sensation is and must be purely subjective, existing in, and by,
the ego itself. As now we cannot outstrip our own sensations (only a
madman could controvert this proposition—which includes
_everything_)—therefore are we absolutely, and for ever, limited to
self-existence, and the same holds good of all possible or imaginary
existence whatsoever. For the first essential of any conscious
existence—that which indeed constitutes it—is a sentient subject,
and inasmuch as all connected with this subject—thought, knowledge,
feeling, fancy, sentiment—are all _purely subjective_, _i.e._, in
the subject itself, so must the subject be to itself the sum of all
things, and objective existence only its own fancy by which it
realises itself. This then utterly disposes of all fancied objective
dualism by reducing all existence within the ring-fence of the ego
itself, and this not as mere speculative theory but as positive
fact, which, whether we recognise it or not, remains fact still—we
_are_ limited to Self, whether we know it or not.
Then finally, _in self_, we harmonise the antithesis between the
material and the ideal by recognising the two as absolutely
inter-dependent, each upon the other, and therefore one consistent
and indivisible whole. The ideal (thought, fancy, sentiment) is, and
must be, but the property and outcome of the material (the nominal
reality), which, on the other hand, is itself (and can be) but the
assumption of the ideal. Destroy reality and thought is dead, blind
thought and reality is a blank; and thus are the ideal and the
material but the two sides of one and the self-same shield, and the
line of our argument joins itself in one consistent circle, which
constitutes the existence of the Ego—He who creates light and
darkness, heaven and earth, pleasure and pain, God and devil—who is,
in Himself, the sum of all things, (viz. “thinks”) beyond which is
naught, naught, naught, for the fancy of His own which imagines a
“beyond” is, itself, but fancy—self-contained in Self.
Thou Unity of force sublime,
Th’ eternal mystery of thy time
Runs on unstay’d for ever;
Yet, self-containing God of all,
As raptur’d at thy feet I fall
In thee myself I worship.
HERBERT L. COURTNEY.
Cambridge, November, 1887.
[EDITOR’S NOTE.—In reference to the supposed “slighting
remark” of which Dr. Lewins speaks, and the no less supposed
“hostile notice,” as Mr. Herbert L. Courtney puts it—contained
in our September number—we demur to the accusation. Both
gentlemen will find it, however, fully answered in the
“Literary Jottings” of this number; where, also, their
respective pamphlets “AUTO-CENTRICISM,” “HUMANISM _versus_
THEISM,” and “The New Gospel of Hylo-Idealism”—are amply
noticed by the “Adversary.”]
----------------------------
ANSWERS TO QUERIES.
A CORRESPONDENT from New York writes:
.... “The Editors of LUCIFER would confer a great benefit on those
who are attracted to the movement which they advocate, if they
would state:
“(1.) Whether a would-be-theosophist-occultist is required to
abandon his worldly ties and duties such as family affection, love
of parents, wife, children, friends, etc.?
“I ask this question because it is rumoured here that some
theosophical publications have so stated, and would wish to know
whether such a _sine quâ non_ condition really exists in your
Rules? The same, however, is found in the New Testament. ‘He that
loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he
that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me,
etc., etc.,’ is said in Matthew (x. 37). Do the MASTERS of
Theosophy demand as much?
“Yours in the Search of Light,
“L. M. C.”
This is an old, old question, and a still older charge against
theosophy, started first by its enemies. We emphatically answer, NO;
adding that no _theosophical_ publication could have rendered itself
guilty of such a FALSEHOOD and calumny. No follower of theosophy,
least of all a disciple of the “Masters of Theosophy” (the _chela_
of a _guru_), would ever be accepted on such conditions. Many were
the candidates, but “few the chosen.” Dozens were refused, simply
because married and having a sacred duty to perform to wife and
children.[117] None have ever been asked to forsake father or
mother; for he who, being necessary to his parent for his support,
leaves him or her to gratify his own selfish consideration or thirst
for knowledge, however great and sincere, _is “unworthy”_ of the
Science of Sciences, “or ever to approach a holy MASTER.”
-----
Footnote 117:
We know but two cases of _married_ “chelas” being accepted; but
both these were Brahmins and had _child-wives_, according to Hindu
custom, and they were _Reformers_ more than _chelas_, trying to
abrogate child-marriage and slavery. Others had to obtain the
consent of their wives before entering the “Path,” as is usual in
India since long ages.
-----
Our correspondent must surely have confused in his mind Theosophy
with Roman Catholicism, and Occultism with the dead-letter teachings
of the Bible. For it is only in the Latin Church that it has become
a meritorious action, which is called serving God and Christ, to
“abandon father and mother, wife and children,” and every duty of an
honest man and citizen, in order to become a monk. And it is in St.
Luke’s Gospel that one reads the terrible words, put in the mouth of
Jesus: “If any _man_ come to me, and _hate not his father, and
mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters_, yea,
_his own life_ also, HE CANNOT BE MY DISCIPLE.” (xiv. 26.)
_Saint_ (?) Jerome teaches, in one of his writings, “If thy father
lies down across thy threshold, if thy mother uncovers to thine eyes
the bosom which suckled thee, _trample on thy father’s lifeless
body_, TRAMPLE ON THY MOTHER’S BOSOM, and _with eyes unmoistened and
dry, fly to the Lord, who calleth thee_!”
Surely then, it is not from any _theosophical_ publication that our
correspondent could have learnt such an infamous charge against
theosophy and its MASTERS—but rather in some _anti-Christian_, or
_too_ dogmatically “Christian” paper.
Our society has never been “more Catholic than the Pope.” It has
done its best to follow out the path prescribed by the Masters; and
if it has failed in more than one respect to fulfil its arduous
task, the blame is certainly not to be thrown on either Theosophy,
nor its Masters, but on the limitations of human nature. The
_Rules_, however, of _chelaship_, or discipleship, are there, in
many a Sanskrit and Tibetan volume. In Book IV. of _Kiu-ti_, in the
chapter on “_the Laws of Upasans_” (disciples), the qualifications
expected in a “regular _chela_” are: (1.) Perfect physical
health.[118] (2.) Absolute mental and physical purity. (3.)
Unselfishness of purpose; universal charity; pity for all animate
beings. (4.) Truthfulness and unswerving faith in the laws of Karma.
(5.) A courage undaunted in the support of truth, even in face of
peril to life. (6.) An intuitive perception of one’s being the
vehicle of the manifested divine _Atman_ (spirit). (7.) Calm
indifference for, but a just appreciation of, everything that
constitutes the objective and transitory world. (8.) Blessing of
both parents[119] and _their permission to become an Upasan_
(chela); and (9.) Celibacy, and freedom from any obligatory duty.
-----
Footnote 118:
This rule 1. applies only to the “temple chelas,” who must be
_perfect_.
Footnote 119:
Or one, if the other is dead.
-----
The two last rules are most strictly enforced. No man _convicted of
disrespect to his father or mother_, or _unjust abandonment of his
wife_, can ever be accepted even as a _lay chela_.
This is sufficient, it is hoped. We have heard of chelas who, having
_failed_, perhaps in consequence of the neglect of some such duty,
for one or another reason, have invariably thrown the blame and
responsibility for it on the teaching of the Masters. This is but
natural in poor and weak human beings who have not even the courage
to recognise their own mistakes, or the rare nobility of publicly
confessing them, but are always trying to find a scapegoat. Such we
pity, and leave to the Law of Retribution, or Karma. It is not these
weak creatures, who can ever be expected to have the best of the
enemy described by the wise Kirátárjuniya of Bharavi:—
“The enemies which rise within the body.
Hard to be overcome—the evil passions—
Should manfully be fought, _who conquers these
Is equal to the conqueror of worlds_.” (xi. 32.)
[ED.]
---
We have received several communications for publication, bearing on
the subjects discussed in the editorial of our last issue, “Let
every man prove his own work.” A few brief remarks may be made, not
in reply to any of the letters—_which, being anonymous, and
containing no card from the writers, cannot be published_ (nor are
such noticed, as a general rule)—but to the ideas and accusations
contained in one of them, a letter signed “M.” Its author takes up
the cudgels on behalf of the Church. He objects to the statement
that this institution lacks the enlightenment necessary to carry out
a true system of philanthropy. He appears, also, to demur to the
view that “the practical people either go on doing good
unintentionally and often do harm,” and points to the workers amid
our slums as a vindication of Christianity—which, by-the-bye, was in
no sense attacked in the editorial so criticized.
To this, repeating what was said, we maintain that more mischief has
been done by emotional charity than sentimentalists care to face.
Any student of political economy is familiar with this fact, which
passes for a truism with all those who have devoted attention to the
problem. No nobler sentiment than that which animates the unselfish
philanthropist is conceivable; but the question at issue is not
summed up in the recognition of this truth. The practical results of
his labours have to be examined. We have to see whether he does not
sow the seeds of a greater—while relieving a lesser—evil.
The fact that “thousands are making great efforts in all the cities
throughout our land” to meet want, reflects immense credit on the
character of such workers. It does not affect their creed, for such
natures would remain the same, whatever the prevailing dogmas
chanced to be. It is certainly a very poor illustration of the
fruits of centuries of dogmatic Christianity that England should be
so honeycombed with misery and poverty as she is—especially on the
biblical ground that a tree must be judged by its fruits! It might,
also, be argued, that the past history of the Churches, stained as
it is with persecutions, the suppression of knowledge, crime and
brutality, necessitates the turning over of a new leaf. The
difficulties in the way are insuperable. “Churchianity” has, indeed,
done its best to keep up with the age by assimilating the teachings
of, and making veiled truces with, science, but it is incapable of
affording a true spiritual ideal to the world.
The same Church-Christianity assails with fruitlesss pertinacity,
the ever-growing host of Agnostics and Materialists, but is _as
absolutely ignorant, as the latter, of the mysteries beyond the
tomb_. The great necessity for the Church, according to Professor
Flint, is to keep the leaders of European thought within its fold.
By such men it is, however, regarded as an anachronism. The Church
is eaten up with scepticism within its own walls; free-thinking
clergymen being now very common. This constant drain of vitality has
reduced the true religion to a very low ebb, and it is to infuse a
new current of ideas and aspirations into modern thought, in short,
to supply a logical basis for an elevated morality, a science and
philosophy which is suited to the knowledge of the day, that
Theosophy comes before the world. Mere physical philanthropy, apart
from the infusion of new influences and ennobling conceptions of
life into the minds of the masses, is worthless. The gradual
assimilation by mankind of great spiritual truths will alone
revolutionize the face of civilization, and ultimately result in a
far more effective panacea for evil, than the mere tinkering of
superficial misery. Prevention is better than cure. Society creates
its own outcasts, criminals, and profligates, and then condemns and
punishes its own Frankensteins, sentencing its own progeny, the
“bone of its bone, and the flesh of its flesh,” to a life of
damnation on earth. Yet that society recognises and enforces most
hypocritically Christianity—_i.e._ “Churchianity.” Shall we then, or
shall we not, infer that the latter is unequal to the requirements
of mankind? Evidently the former, and most painfully and obviously
so, in its present dogmatic form, which makes of the beautiful
ethics preached on the Mount, a Dead Sea fruit, a whitened
sepulchre, and no better.
Furthermore, the same “M.,” alluding to Jesus as one with regard to
whom there could be only two alternatives, writes that he “was
either the Son of God or the vilest impostor who ever trod this
earth.” We answer, not at all. Whether the Jesus of the New
Testament ever lived or not, whether he existed as an historical
personage, or was simply a lay figure around which the Bible
allegories clustered—the Jesus of Nazareth of Matthew and John, is
the ideal for every would-be sage and Western candidate Theosophist
to follow. That such an one as he, was _a_ “Son of God,” is as
undeniable as that he was neither the _only_ “Son of God,” nor the
first one, nor even the last who closed the series of the “Sons of
God,” or the children of Divine Wisdom, on this earth. Nor is that
other statement that in “His life he (Jesus) has ever spoken of
himself as co-existent with Jehovah, the Supreme, the Centre of the
Universe,” correct, whether in in its dead letter, or hidden mystic
sense. In no place does Jesus ever allude to “_Jehovah_”; but, on
the contrary, attacking the Mosaic laws and the alleged Commandments
given on Mount Sinai, he disconnects himself and his “Father” most
distinctly and emphatically from the Sinaitic tribal God. The whole
of Chapter V., in the Gospel of Matthew, is a passionate protest of
the “man of peace, love and charity,” against the cruel, stern, and
selfish commandments of “the man of war,” the “Lord” of Moses (Exod.
xv., 3). “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old times,”—so
and so—“But I say unto you,” quite the reverse. Christians who still
hold to the Old Testament and the Jehovah of the Israelites, are at
best _schismatic Jews_. Let them be that, by all means, if they will
so have it; but they have no right to call themselves even
_Chréstians_, let alone _Christians_.[120]
It is a gross injustice and untruth to assert, as our anonymous
correspondent does, that “the freethinkers are notoriously unholy
in their lives.” Some of the noblest characters, as well as
deepest thinkers of the day, adorn the ranks of Agnosticism,
Positivism and Materialism. The latter are the worst enemies of
Theosophy and Mysticism; but this is no reason why strict justice
should not be done unto them. Colonel Ingersoll, a rank
materialist, and the leader of freethought in America, is
recognised, even by his enemies, as an ideal husband, father,
friend and citizen, one of the noblest characters that grace the
United States. Count Tolstoi is a freethinker who has long parted
with the orthodox Church, yet his whole life is an exemplar of
Christ-like altruism and self-sacrifice. Would to goodness every
“Christian” should take those two “_infidels_” as his models in
private and public life. The munificence of many freethinking
philanthropists stands out in startling contrast with the apathy
of the monied dignitaries of the Church. The above fling at the
“enemies of the Church,” is as absurd as it is contemptible.
“What can you offer to the dying woman who fears to tread alone the
DARK UNKNOWN?” we are asked. Our Christian critic here frankly
confesses (_a._) that Christian dogmas have only developed _fear_ of
death, and (_b._) the _agnosticism_ of the _orthodox believer_ in
Christian theology as to the future _post-mortem_ state. It is,
indeed, difficult to appreciate the peculiar type of bliss which
orthodoxy offers its believers in—_damnation_.
The dying man—the average Christian—with a _dark_ retrospect in life
can scarcely appreciate this boon; while the Calvinist or the
Predestinarian, who is brought up in the idea that God may have
pre-assigned him from eternity to everlasting misery, through no
fault of that man, but simply because he is God, is more than
justified in regarding the latter as ten times worse than any devil
or fiend that unclean human fancy could evolve.
Theosophy, on the contrary, teaches that _perfect, absolute justice_
reigns in nature, though short-sighted man fails to see it in its
details on the material and even psychic plane, and that every man
determines his own future. The true Hell is life on Earth, as an
effect of Karmic punishment following the preceding life during
which the evil causes were produced. The Theosophist fears _no
hell_, but confidently expects rest and bliss during the _interim_
between two incarnations, as a reward for all the unmerited
suffering he has endured in an existence into which he was ushered
by Karma, and during which he is, in most cases, as helpless as a
torn-off leaf whirled about by the conflicting winds of social and
private life. Enough has been given out at various times regarding
the conditions of post-mortem existence, to furnish a solid block of
information on this point. Christian theology has nothing to say on
this burning question, except where it veils its ignorance by
mystery and dogma; but Occultism, unveiling the symbology of the
Bible, explains it thoroughly.—[ED.]
-----
Footnote 120:
See “The Esoteric Character of the Gospels,” in this number.
-----
=LITERARY JOTTINGS=
HYLO-IDEALISM _versus_ “LUCIFER,” and the “ADVERSARY.”
Under the head of CORRESPONDENCE in the present number, two
remarkable letters are published. (See Text.) Both come from fervent
Hylo-Idealists—a Master and Disciple, if we mistake not—and both
charge the “Adversary,” one, of a “slighting,” the other, of a
“hostile notice” of Hylo-Idealism, in the September number of
“_Lucifer_.”
* *
Such an accusation is better met and answered in all sincerity; and,
therefore, the reply is, a flat denial of the charge. No
_slight_—nor _hostility_ either, could be shown to “Hylo-Idealism,”
as the “little stranger” in the happy family of philosophies was
hitherto as good as unknown to “Lucifer’s” household gods. It was
_chaff_, if anything, but surely no hostility; and even that was
concerned with only some dreadful words and sentences, with
reference to the new teaching, and had nothing whatever to do with
Hylo-Idealism proper—a _terra incognita_ for the writer at the time.
But now that three pamphlets from the pens of our two correspondents
have been received in our office, for review, and carefully read,
Hylo-Idealism begins to assume a more tangible form before the
reviewer’s eye. It becomes easier to separate the grain from the
chaff, the theory from the (no doubt) scientific, nevertheless, most
irritating, words in which it is presented to the reader.
* *
This is meant in all truth and sincerity. The remarks which our two
correspondents have mistaken for expressions of hostility, were as
justified _then_, as they are _now_. What ordinary mortal, we ask,
before he had time (to use Dr. Lewins’ happiest expressions) to
“_asself_ or _cognose_”—let alone _intercranialise_[121] (!!)—the
hylo-idealistic theories, however profound and philosophical these
may be, who, having so far come into direct contact with only the
_images_ thereof “subjected by his own _egoity_” (_i.e._ as words
and sentences), who could avoid feeling his hair standing on end,
over “_his organs of mentation_,” while spelling out such
terrible words as “_vesiculo-neurosis_ in conjunction with
_medico-psychological symptomatology_,” “_auto-centricism_,” and the
like? Such interminable, outlandish, multisyllabled and
multicipital, newly-coined compound terms and whole sentences,
maybe, and no doubt are, highly learned and scientific. They may be
most expressive of true, real meaning, to a specialist of Dr.
Lewins’ powers of thought; nevertheless, I make bold to say, that
they are far more calculated to obscure than to enlighten the
ordinary reader. In our modern day, when new philosophies spring out
from the spawn of human overworked intellect like mushrooms from
their mycelium after a rainy morning, the human brain and
its capacities ought to be taken into a certain thoughtful
consideration, and spared useless labour. Notwithstanding Dr.
Lewins’ praiseworthy efforts to prove that brain (as far as we
understand his aspirations and teachings) is the only reality in the
whole kosmos, its limitations are painfully evident, on the whole.
As philanthropists and theosophists, we entreat the founder of
Hylo-Idealism and his disciples to be merciful to their new god, the
“Ego-Brain,” and not tax too heavily its powers, if they would see
it happily reign. For otherwise, it is sure to collapse before the
new theory—or, let us call it philosophy—is even half appreciated by
that “Ego-Brain.”
-----
Footnote 121:
“AUTO-CENTRICISM, or, _The Brain Theory of Life and Mind_,” p. 41.
-----
* *
By speaking as we do, we are only pursuing a life-long policy. We
have criticized and opposed the coinage of hard Greek and Latin
words by the New York Pantarchists; laughed at Hæckel’s pompous
tendency to invent thirty-three syllabled terms, and speak of the
_perigenesis_ of _plastidules_, instead of honest whirling atoms—or
whatever he means; and derided the modern psychists for calling
simple thought transference “telepathic impact.” And now, we
tearfully beg Dr. Lewins, in the interests of humanity, to have pity
on his poor readers: for, unless he hearkens to our advice, we shall
be compelled, in dire self-defence, to declare an open war to his
newly-coined words. We shall fight the usurper “Solipsism” in favour
of the legitimate king of the Universe—EGOISM—to our last breath.
* *
At the same time, as we have hitherto been ignorant of the latest
philosophy, described by Mr. H. L. Courtney as “the greatest change
in human thought,” may we be permitted to enquire whether it is
spelt as its Founder spells it, namely, “Hylo-Idealism,” or as his
disciple, Mr. Courtney does, who writes Hylo-Ideaism? Is the latter
a _schism_, an improvement on the original name, a _lapsus calami_,
or what? And now, having disburdened our heart of a heavy weight, we
may proceed to give an opinion (so far very superficial), on the
three Hylo-Idealistic (or _Ideaistic_) pamphlets.
---
_Under the extraordinary title of_ “AUTO-CENTRICISM” and “HUMANISM
_versus_ THEISM,” or “Solipsism (Egoism)=Atheism” (W. Stewart & Co.,
41, Farringdon Street, E.C.; and Freethought Publishing Co., 63,
Fleet Street, E.C.)—Dr. Lewins publishes a series of letters on the
subject of the philosophy of which he is the founder. It is
impossible not to feel admiration for the manner in which these
letters are written. They show a great deal of sincere conviction
and deep thought, and give evidence of a most wide and varied
reading. However his readers may dissent from the writer’s
conclusions, the research with which he has strengthened his theory,
cannot fail to attract their attention, and smooth their way through
the somewhat tortuous labyrinth of arguments before them. But—
Dr. Lewins is among those who regard consciousness as a function of
the nerve-tissue; and in this aspect, he is an uncompromising
materialist. Yet, on the other hand, he holds that the Universe,
God, and thought, have no reality whatever, apart from the
individual Ego. The Ego is again resolvable into brain-process. We
thus arrive at the doctrine that Brain is the workshop in which all
our ideas of external things are originated. Apart from brain there
is no Ego, no external world. What, then, is the Brain itself—this
solitary object in a void universe? Hylo-Idealism does not say.
Thus, the author cannot escape the confusion of thought which his
unique working-union of materialism and idealism involves. The
_oscillation_ between these two poles is strikingly apparent in the
subjoined quotations. At one point Matter is discussed as if it were
an objective reality; at another, it is regarded as a mere “phantasm
of the Ego.” The Brain alone survives throughout in solitary state.
We quote from the two pamphlets—
MATTER ASSERTED.
“_Matter_, organic and inorganic, is now fully known ... to
perform all _material_ operations.”
—_Auto-Centricism_, p. 40.
“Man is _all body and matter_.”
—_Do_, p. 40.
“Abstract thought [is] _neuropathy_ ... disease of the _nervous
centres_.”
—_Humanism versus Theism_, p. 25.
“What we call mind ... is a function of certain _nerve structures
in the organism_.”
—_Humanism v. Theism_, p. 24.
MATTER DENIED.
“_All discovery_ is ... a _subjective phenomenon_.”
—_Humanism v. Theism_, p. 17.
“_All things_ are for us but _modes of perception_.”—[Mental
figments].
The “celestial vault and garniture of Earth,” are “a _mere
projection of our own inner consciousness_.”
—_Humanism v. Theism_, p. 17.
“We _get rid of Matter altogether_.”
—_Humanism v. Theism_, p. 17.
“The whole objective world ... is _phenomenal or ideal_.”
—_Auto-Centricism_, p. 9.
“_Everything_ is spectral” (_i.e._, unreal).
—_Ibid_, p. 13.
Matter is at one time credited with a real being, and again resolved
into a mere mental figment as _circumstances demand_. If Matter is,
as the author frequently states, unreal, it is, at least clear that
the brain, one of its many phases, goes with it!!
As to the learned doctor’s assertion that perception is relative, a
theory which runs through his whole work, we have but one answer.
This conception is, in no sense whatever, a monopoly of
Hylo-Idealists, as Dr. Lewins appears to think. The illusory nature
of the phenomenal world—of the things of sense—is not only a belief
common to the old Brahminical metaphysics, and to the majority of
modern psychologists, but it is also a vital tenet of Theosophy. The
latter distinctly realises matter as a “bundle of attributes,”
ultimately resolvable into the subjective sensations of a
“percipient.” The connection of this simple truth with the
hylo-idealistic denial of soul is not apparent. Its acceptance has,
also, no bearing on the problem as to whether there may not exist a
duality—_within the limits of manifested being_—or contrast between
Mind and the Substance of matter. This Cosmic Duality is symbolised
by the Vedantins in the relations between the Logos and
Mulaprakriti—_i.e._, the Universal Spirit and the “material” basis
(or root) of the objective planes of nature. The _Monism_, then, of
Dr. Lewins and other negative thinkers of the day, is evidently at
fault, when applied to unify the contrast of mental and material
facts in the conditioned universe. Beyond the latter, it is indeed
valid, but that is scarcely a question for practical philosophy.
To close with a reference this once to Dr. Lewins’ letter (see
“Correspondence” in the text), in which he makes his subsequent
assertion to the effect that God is the “functional (_sic_) image,”
of the Ego, we should prefer to suggest that all individual “selves”
are but dim reflections of the universal soul of the Kosmos. The
orthodox concept of God is not, as he contends, a myth or phantasm
of the brain; it is rather an expression of a vague consciousness of
the universal, all-pervading Logos. It is because SELF pinions man
within a narrow sphere “beyond which mortal mind can never range,”
that the destruction of the personal sense of separateness is
indispensable to the Occultist.
---
“THE NEW GOSPEL OF HYLO-IDEALISM, _or Positive Agnosticism_,”
(Freethought Publishing Co., 73, Fleet Street, E. C. Price 3d.), is
another pamphlet on the same subject, in which Mr. Herbert L.
Courtney contributes his quota to the discussion of the “Brain
Theory of mind and matter.” He is, if we mistake not, an avowed
disciple of Dr. Lewins, and, perhaps, identical with the “C. N.,”
who watched over the cradle of the “new philosophy.” The whole gist
of the latter may be summed up as an attempt to frame a
working-union of Materialism and Idealism. This result is effected
on two lines (1) in the acceptance of the idealistic theorem, that
the so-called external world only exists in our consciousness; and
(2) in the designation of that consciousness, in its turn, as a mere
function of Brain. The first of these contentions is unquestionably
valid, in so far as it concerns the world of appearances, or _Maya_;
it is, however, as “old as the hills,” and incorporated into the
Hylo-Ideal argument from anterior sources. The second is untenable,
for the simple reason that on the premises of the new creed itself,
the brain, as an object of perception, can possess no reality
outside of the Ego. Hegelians might reply that Brain is but an
_i.e._ of the Ego, and cannot hence determine the existence of the
latter—its creator.
---
Metaphysicism will, however, find much to interest them in Mr.
Courtney’s brochure, representative, as it is, of the new and more
subtle phase into which modern scepticism is entering. Some
expressions we may demur to—_e.g._, “That which we see is not
Sirius, but the light-wave.” So far from the light-wave being
“seen,” it is a mere working hypothesis of Science. All we
experience is the retinal sensation, the objective counterpart to
which is a matter of pure inference. So far as we can learn,
Hylo-Idealism is chiefly based upon gigantic paradoxes, and even
contradictions in terms. For, with regard to the speculations anent
the Noumenon (p. 8.) what justification can be found for terming it
“MATTER,” especially as it is said to be “unknowable”? Obviously it
may be of the nature of mind, or—_something_ HIGHER. How is the
Hylo-Idealist to know?
---
“LAYS OF ROMANCE AND CHIVALRY,” by Mr. W. Stewart Ross. (Stewart and
Co., Farringdon Street.) In this neat little volume the author
presents to the reader a collection of vigorous verse, mostly of
chivalrous character. Some of these pieces, such as the “Raid of
Vikings” and “Glencoe,” are of merit, despite an occasional echo of
Walter Scott, whose style seems to have had a considerable modifying
influence on the author’s diction. It is in the “Bride of Steel”
that this feature is most noticeable—
“I love thee with a warrior’s love,
My Sword, my Life, my Bride!
Dear, dear as ever knighthood bore,
Though yet no gout of battle-gore
Thy virgin blade hath dyed!”
Apart from this unconscious influence of the great Scottish bard,
the ring of originality and feeling which characterises Mr. Stewart
Ross’s poetry is most refreshing. The little volume sparkles with
the vein of romance, and after perusing it, in spite of occasional
anachronisms and other literary errors, we are not surprised to hear
of the favourable reception hitherto accorded to it.
---
In the _Secular Review_ for November 26th, Mr. Beatty makes an
attack upon a former article in LUCIFER, entitled “The Origin of
Evil.” We find, however, Mr. Beatty exhibiting crass ignorance of
the ideas he criticises, as when, for instance, he speaks of the
“_Buddhistic_” Parabram (_sic_). To begin with, every tyro in
Oriental philosophy knows that “Parabrahm” is a Hindu Vedantic idea,
and has no connection whatever with Buddhist thought. If Mr. Beatty
wishes to become a serious critic, he must first learn the _a_, _b_,
_c_, of the subject with which he professes to deal. His article is
unfinished, but it seems only fair at the present stage to call his
attention to so glaring an error.
---
THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS, ANCIENT AND MEDIÆVAL. By C. W. King,
M.A. Second Edition. David Nutt, 270 Strand, London, 1887. pp. 466,
8vo.
It would be unfair to the erudite and painstaking author of “_The
Gnostics and Their Remains_” for a reviewer to take the title of his
book as altogether appropriate, for it suggests too high a standard
of criticism. Mr. King says in the introduction that his book is
intended to be subsidiary to the valuable treatise of M. Matter,
adding: “I refer the reader to him for the more complete elucidation
of the _philosophy_ of Gnosticism, and give my full attention to its
_Archæological_ side.” The italics are the author’s, and they disarm
criticism as far as the philosophical side of Gnosticism is
concerned; for thus italicised, this passage is, at the outset, as
plain a confession as could, in conscience, be expected of an author
of a fact which the reader would probably have found out for
himself, before he closed the volume: namely, that the work is
chiefly valuable as an Archæological compendium of “Gnostic
Remains.” Unfortunately, the most interesting point about the
Gnostics is their philosophy, of which their Archæological remains
are, properly speaking, little more than illustrations. But the fact
is, that the hard-shelled Archæologist is the last man in the world
to appreciate the real esoteric signification of symbolism. All true
symbols have many meanings, and for the purposes of descriptive
Archæology the more superficial of these meanings are sufficient.
Ignorance of the deeper meaning may indeed be bliss for the
Archæologist, for it necessitates an amount of ingenuity in the
fitting together of “remains,” that commands the admiration of the
public, and is productive in the Archæological bosom of that
agreeable sensation known as “fancying oneself.” As a laborious
collector and compiler, and an ingenious worker-up of materials into
interesting reading, too much can hardly be said in Mr. King’s
praise, and had he a greater intuitional power, and a knowledge of
esoteric religion, his great industry and erudition would make his
writings valuable even to students of Occultism.
Since the publication of the former edition of his work,
twenty-three years ago, Mr. King has come across and read the
_Pistis Sophia_. The discovery of this, the only remaining Gnostic
Gospel, or rather, Gospel fragment, is attributed to Schwartze, and
the Latin translation to Petermann (in 1853). But Mr. King does not
seem to be aware that as far back as 1843, another and ampler copy
than that in the British Museum was in the hands of a Russian
Raskolnik (dissident), a Cossack, who lived and married in
Abyssinia; and another is in the possession of an Englishman, an
Occultist, now in the United States, who brought it from Syria. It
seems a pity that in the interim Mr. King did not also read _Isis
Unveiled_, by H. P. Blavatsky, published by Bouton in New York in
1876, as its perusal would have saved him a somewhat absurd and
ludicrous blunder. In his _Preface_, Mr. King says:—“There seems to
be reason for suspecting that the Sibyl of Esoteric Buddhism drew
the first notions of her new religion from the analysis of the
_inner man_, as set forth in my first edition.”[122] The only person
to whom this passage could apply is one of the Editors, the author
of _Isis Unveiled_. And this, her first publication, contains the
same and only doctrine she has always, or ever, promulgated. _Isis
Unveiled_ has passed through eight editions, and has been read by
many thousands of persons; and not only they, but everyone who is
not strangely ignorant of the very literature with which it was Mr.
King’s business to make himself conversant, are perfectly aware that
the two large volumes which compose that work are entirely devoted
to a defence of the philosophy, science, and religion of the
ancients, especially of the old Aryans, whose religion can hardly be
called a “new” one, still less—“Esoteric Buddhism.” If properly
spelt, however, the latter word, or Buddhism, ought to be written
with one “d,” as in this case it means Wisdom. But “Budhism,” or the
wisdom-religion of the Aryans, was still less a religion, in the
exoteric sense, than is Buddhism, but rather a philosophy. In that
part of _Isis Unveiled_ which treats of the Gnostics, Mr. King will
find a few quotations from his writings side by side with quotations
from other writers on the same subject; but he will find no “new
religion” there, or anywhere else, in the works of H. P. Blavatsky.
And, if anyone drew the “first notions” of their religion from his
“analysis of the inner man,” it must have been the early Aryans,
who, unfortunately, have neglected to acknowledge the obligation.
What makes Mr. King’s self-complacency the more ridiculous, is that
in his preface he himself accuses someone else of “the grave error
of representing their (the Gnostics’) doctrines as _novel_, and the
pure _inventions_ of the persons who preached them.” And in another
place he confesses that he owes to Matter the first idea which has
now become a settled conviction with him, that “the seeds of the
_gnosis_ were originally of Indian growth.” If Matter “faintly
discerned” this truth, on the other hand Bailly, Dupuis, and others
had seen it quite clearly, and had declared it most emphatically. So
that Mr. King’s “discovery” is neither very new nor very original.
-----
Footnote 122:
This modest assumption is followed by the generous promise to
furnish “investigators of the same order” as the supposed “Sibyl,”
with “a still more profound theosophy.” This is extremely
considerate and kind. But if it is _Pistis-Sophia_ which the
author had in his mind, then he had better apply to Theosophists
for the explanation of the most recondite points in that gnostic
fragment, while translating it, as he proposes doing from Latin.
For though the world of the Orientalists “of the same order” as
_himself_, may labour under the mistaken impression that no one
except themselves knew or know anything about _Pistis-Sophia_ till
1853—Theosophists know better. Does Mr. King really imagine that
no one besides himself knows anything about the Gnostics “and
their remains,” or what _he_ knows is the only correct thing to
know? Strange delusion, if so; yet quite a harmless one, we
confess.
-----
Mr. King must be aware that of late years immense additions have
been made to western knowledge of eastern philosophies and
religions—a new region in ancient literature having, in fact, been
opened up by the labours of Orientalists, both European and Eastern.
A study of these Oriental systems throws a strong though often a
false light upon the inner meaning of Gnostic symbolism and ideas
generally, which Mr. King acknowledges to have come from Indian
sources; and certainly the reader has a right to expect a little
more knowledge in that direction from a writer of Mr. King’s
pretensions, than is displayed. For example, in the section about
Buddhism in the work before us: one is tempted sometimes to ask
whether it is flippancy or superficiality that is the matter with
the author—when he calls the ancient Indian gymnosophists “fakirs,”
and confounds them with Buddhists. Surely he need hardly be told
that fakirs are Mahomedans, and that the Gymnosophists he mentions
were Brahmin Yogis.
The work, however, is a valuable one in its way; but the reader
should not forget that “there seems reason for suspecting” that the
author does not always know exactly what he is talking about,
whenever he strays too far from Archæology, on which he is no doubt
an authority.
---
THE JEWISH WORLD enters bravely enough (in its issue of the 11th
November 1887) on its new character of professor of symbology and
History. It accuses in no measured terms one of the editors of
LUCIFER of ignorance; and criticises certain expressions used in our
October number, in a foot-note inserted to explain why the “Son of
the Morning” LUCIFER is called in Mr. G. Massey’s little poem, “Lady
of Light.” The writer objects, we see, to Lucifer-Venus being called
in one of its aspects “the Jewish Astoreth;” or to her having ever
been offered cakes by the Jews. As explained in a somewhat confused
sentence: “There _was no Jewish Astoreth_, though the Syrian
goddess, Ashtoreth, or Astarte, often appears in Biblical
literature, the moon goddess, the complement of Baal, the Sun God.”
This, no doubt, is extremely learned and conveys quite _new_
information. Yet such an astounding statement as that the whole of
the foot-note in LUCIFER is “pure imagination and bad history” is
very risky indeed. For it requires no more than a stroke or two of
our pen to make the whole edifice of this denial tumble on the
_Jewish World_ and mangle it very badly. Our contemporary has
evidently forgotten the wise proverb that bids one to let “sleeping
dogs lie,” and therefore, it is with the lofty airs of superiority
that he informs his readers that though the Jews in Palestine lived
surrounded with (? _sic_) this pagan form of worship, and _may, at
times_, (?!) have wandered towards it, they HAD NOTHING IN THEIR
WORSHIP IN COMMON WITH CHALDEAN OR SYRIAN BELIEFS IN MULTIPLICITY OF
DEITIES? (!!)
This is what any impartial reader might really term “bad history,”
and every Bible worshipper describe as a _direct lie_ given to the
Lord God of Israel. It is more than _suppressio veri suggestio
falsi_, for it is simply a cool denial of facts in the face of both
Bible and History. We advise our critic of the _Jewish World_ to
turn to _his_ own prophets, to Jeremiah, foremost of all. We open
“Scripture” and find in it: “the Lord God” while accusing _his_
“backsliding Israel and treacherous Judah” of following in “the ways
of Egypt and of Assyria,” of drinking the waters of Sihor, and
“serving strange Gods” enumerating his grievances in this wise:
“According _to the number of thy cities_ are thy gods, O Judah,
(Jer. ii. 28.).
“Ye have turned back to the iniquities of your forefathers who
went after other gods to serve them (xi.) ... _according to the
number of the streets of Jerusalem_ have ye set up altars to that
shameful thing, even altars unto Baal” (_Ib._).
So much for Jewish _monotheism_. And is it any more “pure
imagination” to say that the Jews offered cakes to their Astoreth
and called her “Queen of Heaven”? Then the “Lord God” must, indeed,
be guilty of more than “a delicate expansion of facts” when
thundering to, and through, Jeremiah:—
“Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah, and in the
streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers
kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough TO MAKE CAKES _to
the Queen of Heaven_, and to pour out drink offerings _unto the
gods_.” (Jer. vii. 17-18).
“The Jews _may_ AT TIMES” only (?) have wandered towards pagan forms
of worship but “had _nothing in common_ in it with Syrian beliefs in
multiplicity of deities.” Had they not? Then the ancestors of the
editors of the _Jewish World_ must have been the victims of
“suggestion,” when, snubbing Jeremiah (and not entirely without good
reason),they declared to him:
“As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the
Lord, we will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly do
whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense
unto the Queen of Heaven[123] ... _as we have done, we_, AND OUR
FATHERS, _our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and
in the streets of Jerusalem_, for _then_ had we plenty of
victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. But _since we left off
to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven_, and to _pour out drink
offerings unto her_ ... and (_to_) _make her cakes to worship her
... we have wanted all things_, and have been consumed by the
sword and by the famine....” (Jer. xliv. 16, 17, 18, 19).
-----
Footnote 123:
Astoreth-Diana, Isis, Melita, Venus, etc., etc.
-----
Thus, according to their own confession, it is not “at times” that
the Jews made cakes for, and worshipped Astoreth and the strange
gods, but constantly: doing, moreover, _as their forefathers_, kings
and princes _did_.
“_Bad_ history”? And what was the “golden calf” but the sacred
heifer, the symbol of the “Great Mother,” first the planet Venus,
and then the moon? For the esoteric doctrine holds (as the Mexicans
held) that Venus, the morning star, was _created before the sun and
moon; metaphorically_, of course, not astronomically,[124] the
assumption being based upon, and meaning that which the _Nazars_ and
the Initiate alone understood among the Jews, but that the writers
of the _Jewish World_ are not supposed to know. For the same reason
the Chaldeans maintained that the moon was produced before the sun
(_see Babylon—Account of Creation, by George Smith_). The morning
star, Lucifer-Venus was dedicated to that Great Mother symbolized by
the heifer or the “Golden Calf.” For, as says Mr. G. Massey in his
lecture on “The Hebrews and their Creations,” “This (the Golden
Calf) being of either sex, it supplied a twin-type for Venus, as
Hathor or Ishtar (Astoreth), the double star, that was male at
rising, and female at sunset” She is the “Celestial Aphrodite,”
_Venus Victrix_ νιχηφόρος associated with _Ares_ (see Pausanias i,
8, 4, 11, 25, 1).
-----
Footnote 124:
Because the stars and planets are the symbols and houses of Angels
and Elohim, who were, of course, “created,” or evoluted before the
physical or cosmic sun or moon. “The sun god was called the child
of the moon god Sin, in Assyria, and the lunar god Taht, is called
the father of Osiris, the sun god ‘in Egypt.’” (G. Massey.)
-----
We are told that “happily for them (the Jews) there was no Jewish
Astoreth.” The _Jewish World_ has yet to learn, we see, that there
would have been no Greek Venus Aphrodite; no _Ourania_, her earlier
appellation; nor would she have been confounded with the Assyrian
Mylitta (Herod, 1, 199; Pausan., 1, 14, 7; Hesiod, Μυληταν την
Ουρανιαν Ασσυριοι) had it not been for the Phœnicians and other
Semites. We say the “Jewish Astoreth,” and we maintain what we say,
on the authority of the Iliad, the Odyssey, of Renan, and many
others. Venus Aphrodite is one with the Astarte, Astoreth, etc. of
the Phœnicians, and she is one (as a planet) with “Lucifer” the
“Morning Star.” So far back as the days of Homer, she was confounded
with _Kypris_, an Oriental goddess brought by the Phœnician Semites
from their Asiatic travels (_Iliad_, V, 330, 422, 260). Her worship
appears first at Cythere, a Phœnician settlement depôt or
trade-establishment (_Odys._, VIII. 362.; Walcker, _griech.
götterl._ I, 666.) Herodotus shows that the sanctuary of Ascalon, in
Syria, was the most ancient of the fanes of Aphrodite Ourania (I,
105): and Decharme tells us in his _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_,
that whenever the Greeks alluded to the origin of Aphrodite they
designated her as _Ourania_, an epithet translated from a _semitic
word_, as Jupiter _Epouranios_ of the Phœnician inscriptions, was
the _Samemroum_ of Philo of Byblos, according to Renan (_Mission de
Phenicie_). Astoreth was a goddess of generation, presiding at human
birth (as Jehovah was _god of generation_, foremost of all). She was
the moon-goddess, and a planet at the same time, whose worship
originated with the Phœnicians and Semites. It flourished most in
the Phœnician settlements and colonies in Sicily, at Eryax. There
hosts of _Hetairae_ were attached to her temples, as hosts of
_Kadeshim_, called by a more sincere name in the Bible, were, to the
house of the Lord, “where the women wove hangings for the grove”
(II. Kings, xxiii, 7). All this shows well the Semitic provenance of
Astoreth-Venus in her capacity of “great Mother.” Let us pause. We
advise sincerely the _Jewish World_ to abstain from throwing stones
at other peoples’ beliefs, so long as its own faith is but a house
of glass. And though Jeremy Taylor may think that “to be proud of
one’s learning is the greatest ignorance,” yet, in this case it is
but simple justice to say that it is really desirable for our
friends the Jews that the writer in LUCIFER of the criticised note
about Astoreth _should know less_ of history and the Bible, and her
unlucky critic in the _Jewish World_ learn a little more about it.
“ADVERSARY.”
=THEOSOPHICAL=
=AND MYSTIC PUBLICATIONS=
THE THEOSOPHIST for October opens with the first of a series of
articles on the “Elohistic Cosmogony.” The views put forward by the
writer are certainly both striking and original, and, although Dr.
Pratt diverges very considerably from the recognised standard of
kabalistic orthodoxy, his interpretation of the Jewish version of
cosmic evolution will assuredly excite considerable interest.
Following on Dr. Pratt’s learned article, come a few—unfortunately,
too few—pages of extremely interesting notes on the Folk-lore of the
Himalayan tribes, contributed by Captain Banon. The _Theosophist_
has often been indebted to Captain Banon for similar notes
respecting such little known tribes and people; and it is much to be
regretted that the many members of the Theosophical Society who
reside in or visit such out-of-the-way places, do not make it a rule
to collect these traditions and send them for publication in the
_Theosophist_ or one of the other Theosophical magazines.
Dr. Hartmann continues his series of “Rosicrucian Letters,” with a
number of extracts from the papers of Karl von Eckartshausen, who
died in 1792. Dr. Hartmann deserves the gratitude of all students
for rendering accessible these records and notes of past generations
of “seekers after the Truth.”
Dr. Buck contributes a pithy and thoughtful article on “The Soul
Problem,” and Mr. Lazarus continues his exposition of the kabalistic
doctrine of the Microcosm. Besides these there are further
instalments of two valuable translations from Hindu works of great
antiquity and authority; the “Crest Jewel of Wisdom,” by
Sankaracharya and the “Kaivalyanita.” It is much to be desired that
one of our Hindu brothers, who adds to a knowledge of his own mystic
literature, an acquaintance with Western modes of thought and
expression, would devote a series of articles to the exposition of
the fundamental standpoint and ideas of such works as these. Such an
article would add enormously to the value of these translations to
the Western world.
In the _November_ number, Dr. Pratt takes up the _Jehovistic_
cosmogony, which he contrasts and compares with the _Elohistic_
version already referred to. In his view, the Jehovistic teaching
embodies the conception of the world as “created” and “ruled” by an
_extra-natural_ and _personal_ deity, as opposed to the more
philosophical and pantheistic conception of the earlier Elohistic
writers.
Under the title of _An Ancient Weapon_, this issue contains an
instructive account of the evocation of certain astral forces
according to the ancient Vedic rites. As here described, the _evil
intention_, with which the rite is performed, transforms it into a
ceremony of _Black Magic_, but this does not render the account any
less valuable.
This is followed by the first of a series of articles on _The
Allegory of the Zoroastrian Cosmogony_, which promises to furnish
much food for thought and study.
_Rosicrucian Letters_ contains this time an extract from an old MS.,
headed _The Temple of Solomon_, which is well worthy of careful
attention.
Besides these we have a sketch of the life and writings of
Madvachary, the great teacher of Southern India, and some further
testimonies to the fact of “self-levitation” from eye-witnesses.
Rama Prasad gives some most valuable details of the “Science of
Breathing,” one of the most curious branches of occult physics,
while the remainder of the number is occupied by an article on
“Tetragrammaton,” which may be interesting to students of the
Kabbala, and continuations of the “Kabbala and the Microcosm,” and
of the translations from Indian books mentioned in connection with
the October number.
These two numbers contain much valuable matter and well maintain the
reputation which the _Theosophist_ originally gained for itself.
---
In THE PATH for October we notice especially the following articles:
_Nature’s Scholar_, a most poetically-conceived and well-worked-out
Idyll, by J. C. Ver Plank, in which the underlying occult truth is
presented to the reader in a most attractive form.
Following this is a much needed warning against the dangers of
_Astral Intoxication_. Admirably expressed, it points out the true,
and indicates the false, path with great clearness; and we desire to
call the earnest attention of such of our readers as are engaged in
_psychic_ development to its importance.
“Pilgrim” contributes some further _Thoughts in Solitude_, the
leading idea of which may be indicated by its concluding lines,
which are quoted from Sir Philip Sydney of heroic fame:
“Then farewell, World! thy uttermost I see,
Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me!”
_Tea-Table Talk_ is even more interesting and suggestive than usual,
and, besides those above mentioned, this well-filled number contains
Part IV. of the series of articles on _The Poetry of Re-incarnation
in Western Literature_, which deals with the _Platonic Poets_.
The _November_ number opens with an able continuation of Mr.
Brehon’s article on _The Bhagavat-Gita_, commenced so long ago as
last April, of which we hope to peruse a further instalment.
Following this is a short article indicating the term “Medium” from
the loathsome connotations which phenomenal spiritualism has
attached to it. We then come to a paper on Goethe’s _Faust_, read
before one of the branches of the Theosophical Society in America.
It is of great interest to students of literature and will furnish a
clue to the real meaning of much of the poet’s writing.
Mr. Johnston makes some most suggestive remarks on _Cain and Abel_;
Harij speaks in no uncertain tones of _Personalities_ and Truth,
while Hadji Erinn points out the _Path of Action_, and warns the
members of the T. S. that they must not expect their road to become
easier and plainer before them, while yet the society is undergoing
the trials of its education.
Zadok gives some able answers to questions on various points of
practical occultism and Julius, in _Tea-Table Talk_, points out how
many people are really entering on the path of Theosophy—even though
unconsciously.
---
LE LOTUS, for October and November, is even more interesting than
usual. In the October number are contained two very valuable
articles. The first of these is a paper on Paracelsus from the pen
of Dr. Hartmann, who is especially qualified to handle the subject
by his profound study of the work, and especially the manuscripts,
of that great occultist. M. “Papus” contributes a most lucid and
able exposition of some Kabbalistic doctrines, the _practical_ value
of which has been hitherto but little realised even by professed
students of mysticism.
The opening article in the November issue is headed, _The
Constitution of the Microcosm_. It is written in a clear and
attractive style, and contains a most thorough and complete
explanation of the various classifications of the principles which
enter into the constitution of man.
“Amaravella” has evidently studied the whole subject very deeply,
and he shows the relation of these various classifications to one
another in a way which will clear up many of the misconceptions
which have arisen.
M. “Papus” writes on Alchemy in a manner which shows how conversant
he is with this little-understood topic. We therefore look forward
with great anticipations to the perusal of his book “_Traité
élémentaire de science occulte_,” the fourth chapter of which
contains the article referred to.
It is very evident that Theosophy is making great and rapid progress
in France, and this is in great measure due to the untiring and
unselfish devotion of the editor of _Le Lotus_, M. Gaboriau, whom we
congratulate most warmly on the success which has attended his
efforts.
---
_L’Aurore_ for October contains an article on the so-called “Star of
Bethlehem,” which repeats the assurance that the world is entering
on a new and happier life-phase.
Unfortunately, it seems more than probable that before this
amelioration takes place, the world must pass through the valley of
the shadow of Death, and endure calamities far worse than any it has
yet seen. Lady Caithness continues her erudite and interesting
article on the lost ten tribes of Israel. Her thesis is put forward
in admirable language, and supported by a great wealth of biblical
quotations. Unfortunately, the task undertaken is an impossible one.
There never were twelve tribes of Israel—two only—Judah and the
Levites, having had a real existence in the flesh. The remainder are
but euhemerizations of the signs of the Zodiac, and were introduced
because they were necessary to the Kabalistic scheme on which the
“History” of the Jews was written.
Lady Barrogill relates the well-known story of an English bishop and
the ghost of a Catholic priest, who haunted his former residence in
order to secure the destruction of some notes he had taken (contrary
to the rule of the Church) of an important confession which he had
heard.
Besides these articles we find the continuation of the serial
romance, “L’amour Immortel,” and LUCIFER has to thank the editor for
the appreciative notice contained in this number.
LUCIFER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOL. I. LONDON, JANUARY 15TH, 1888. NO. 5.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
=1888.=
People usually wish that their friends shall have a happy new
year, and sometimes “prosperous” is added to “happy.” It is not
likely that much happiness or prosperity can come to those who are
living for the truth under such a dark number as 1888; but still
the year is heralded by the glorious star Venus-Lucifer, shining
so resplendently that it has been mistaken for that still rarer
visitor, the star of Bethlehem. This too, is at hand; and surely
something of the Christos spirit must be born upon earth under
such conditions. Even if happiness and prosperity are absent, it
is possible to find something greater than either in this coming
year. Venus-Lucifer is the sponsor of our magazine, and as we
chose to come to light under its auspices, so do we desire to
touch on its nobility. This is possible for us all personally, and
instead of wishing our readers a happy or prosperous New Year, we
feel more in the vein to pray them to make it one worthy of its
brilliant herald. This can be effected by those who are courageous
and resolute. Thoreau pointed out that there are artists in life,
persons who can change the colour of a day and make it beautiful
to those with whom they come in contact. We claim that there are
adepts, masters in life who make it divine, as in all other arts.
Is it not the greatest art of all, this which affects the very
atmosphere in which we live? That it is the most important is seen
at once, when we remember that every person who draws the breath
of life affects the mental and moral atmosphere of the world, and
helps to colour the day for those about him. Those who do not help
to elevate the thoughts and lives of others must of necessity
either paralyse them by indifference, or actively drag them down.
When this point is reached, then the art of life is converted into
the science of death; we see the black magician at work. And no
one can be quite inactive. Although many bad books and pictures
are produced, still not everyone who is incapable of writing or
painting well insists on doing so badly. Imagine the result if
they were to! Yet so it is in life. Everyone lives, and thinks,
and speaks. If all our readers who have any sympathy with LUCIFER
endeavoured to learn the art of making life not only beautiful but
divine, and vowed no longer to be hampered by disbelief in the
possibility of this miracle, but to commence the Herculean task at
once, then 1888, however unlucky a year, would have been fitly
ushered in by the gleaming star. Neither happiness nor prosperity
are always the best of bedfellows for such undeveloped mortals as
most of us are; they seldom bring with them peace, which is the
only permanent joy. The idea of peace is usually connected with
the close of life and a religious state of mind. That kind of
peace will however generally be found to contain the element of
expectation. The pleasures of this world have been surrendered,
and the soul waits contentedly in expectation of the pleasures of
the next. The peace of the philosophic mind is very different from
this and can be attained to early in life when pleasure has
scarcely been tasted, as well as when it has been fully drunk of.
The American Transcendentalists discovered that life could be made
a sublime thing without any assistance from circumstances or
outside sources of pleasure and prosperity. Of course this had
been discovered many times before, and Emerson only took up again
the cry raised by Epictetus. But every man has to discover this
fact freshly for himself, and when once he has realised it he
knows that he would be a wretch if he did not endeavour to make
the possibility a reality in his own life. The stoic became
sublime because he recognised his own absolute responsibility and
did not try to evade it; the Transcendentalist was even more,
because he had faith in the unknown and untried possibilities
which lay within himself. The occultist fully recognises the
responsibility and claims his title by having both tried and
acquired knowledge of his own possibilities. The Theosophist who
is at all in earnest, sees his responsibility and endeavours to
find knowledge, living, in the meantime, up to the highest
standard of which he is aware. To all such LUCIFER gives greeting!
Man’s life is in his own hands, his fate is ordered by himself.
Why then should not 1888 be a year of greater spiritual
development than any we have lived through? It depends on
ourselves to make it so. This is an actual fact, not a religious
sentiment. In a garden of sunflowers every flower turns towards
the light. Why not so with us?
And let no one imagine that it is a mere fancy, the attaching of
importance to the birth of the year. The earth passes through its
definite phases and man with it; and as a day can be coloured so can
a year. The astral life of the earth is young and strong between
Christmas and Easter. Those who form their wishes now will have
added strength to fulfil them consistently.
TO THE MORNING STAR.
Lucifer, Lucifer Son of the Morning,
Trembling and fair on the opening skies,
Heralding, truly, a day that is dawning,
Telling the “Light of the World” shall arise.
Lucifer, Lucifer, all through the Ages
Weary hearts struggled and watched for the light,
Now it is coming, and thou the forerunner,
Mystical prophet, the herald of Right.
There in the desert of Night where thou dwellest,
Round thee in myriads the feebler lights stand;
Lucifer, Lucifer, ever thou tellest
The glorious Kingdom of Right is at hand.
Rising and setting, O, Star of the Morning!
Strangely prophetic, thou atom of light;
Revealing in silence the law of creation.
Out from the unseen abyss of the night,
Into a world where the stars, sympathetic,
Seem to be fraught with a pulsating breath;
Brilliant, yet shining like tear-drops pathetic,
But sinking at last in oblivion of death!
Sinking, but wrapped in the shroud of the Morning,
Folded in splendour as light shall arise;
Lucifer, herald of Truth that is dawning,
Ride through thy glorious pathway, the skies!
Soon in the east, with a splendour triumphant,
Morning shall break like a great altar-fire,
Ignorance, darkness, and gross superstition,
Shall melt in its beams, and in silence expire!
HELEN FAGG.
-----------------------
.... “THE faith that you call sacred—‘sacred as the most delicate
or manly or womanly sentiment of love and honour’—is the faith
that nearly all of your fellow men are to be lost. Ought an honest
man to be restrained from denouncing that faith because those who
entertain it say that their feelings are hurt? You say to me:
‘There is a hell. A man advocating the opinions you advocate will
go there when he dies.’ I answer: ‘There is no hell, the Bible
that teaches it is not true.’ And you say: ‘How can you hurt my
feelings?’”—R. G. INGERSOLL.—_Secular Review._
“TO THE READERS OF ‘LUCIFER.’”
Our magazine is only four numbers old, and already its young life is
full of cares and trouble. This is all as it should be; _i.e._, like
every other publication, it must fail to satisfy _all_ its readers,
and this is only in the nature of things and the destiny of every
printed organ. But what seems a little strange in a country of
culture and freethought is that LUCIFER should receive such a number
of _anonymous_, spiteful, and often abusive letters. This, of
course, is but a casual remark, the waste-basket in the office being
the only addressee and sufferer in this case; yet it suggests
strange truths with regard to human nature.[125]
-----
Footnote 125:
“VERBUM SAP.” It is not our intention to notice anonymous
communications, even though they should emanate in a round-about
way from Lambeth Palace. The matter “_Verbum Sap_” refers to is
not one of taste; the facts must be held responsible for the
offence; and, as the Scripture hath it, “Woe to them by whom the
offence cometh!”
-----
Sincerity is true wisdom, it appears, only to the mind of the moral
philosopher. It is rudeness and insult to him who regards
dissimulation and deceit as culture and politeness, and holds that
the shortest, easiest, and safest way to success is to let sleeping
dogs and old customs alone. But, if the dogs are obstructing the
highway to progress and truth, and Society will, as a rule, reject
the wise words of (St.) Augustine, who recommends that “no man
should prefer custom before reason and truth,” is it a sufficient
cause for the philanthropist to walk out of, or even deviate from,
the track of truth, because the selfish egoist chooses to do so?
Very true, as remarked somewhere by Sir Thomas Browne that not every
man is a proper champion for the truth, nor fit to take up the
gauntlet in its cause. Too many of such defenders are apt, from
inconsideration and too much zeal, to charge the troops of error so
rashly that they “remain themselves as trophies to the enemies of
truth.” Nor ought all of us (members of the Theosophical Society) to
do so personally, but rather leave it only to those among our
numbers who have voluntarily and beforehand sacrificed their
personalities for the cause of Truth. Thus teaches us one of the
Masters of Wisdom in some fragments of advice which are published
further on for the benefit of the Theosophists (see the article that
follows this). While enforcing upon such public characters in our
ranks as editors, and lecturers, etc., the duty of telling
fearlessly “the Truth to the face of LIE,” he yet condemns the habit
of private judgment and criticism in every individual Theosophist.
Unfortunately, these are not the ways of the public and readers.
Since our journal is entirely unsectarian, since it is neither
theistic nor atheistic, Pagan nor Christian, orthodox nor heterodox,
therefore, its editors discover eternal verities in the most
opposite religious systems and modes of thought. Thus LUCIFER fails
to give full satisfaction to either infidel or Christian. In the
sight of the former—whether he be an Agnostic, a Secularist, or an
Idealist—to find divine or occult lore underlying “the rubbish” in
the Jewish Bible and Christian Gospels is sickening; in the opinion
of the latter, to recognise the same truth as in the Judeo-Christian
Scriptures in the Hindu, Parsi, Buddhist, or Egyptian religious
literature, is vexation of spirit and blasphemy. Hence, fierce
criticism from both sides, sneers and abuse. Each party would have
us on its own sectarian side, recognising as truth, only that which
its particular _ism_ does.
But this cannot nor shall it be. Our motto was from the first, and
ever shall be: “THERE IS NO RELIGION HIGHER THAN—TRUTH.” Truth we
search for, and, once found, we bring it forward before the world,
whencesoever it comes. A large majority of our readers is fully
satisfied with this our policy, and that is plainly sufficient for
our purposes.
It is evident that when toleration is not the outcome of
indifference it must arise from wide-spreading charity and
large-minded sympathy. Intolerance is preeminently the consequence
of ignorance and jealousy. He who fondly believes that he has got
the great ocean in his family water-jug is naturally intolerant of
his neighbour, who also is pleased to imagine that he has poured the
broad expanses of the sea of truth into his own particular pitcher.
But anyone who, like the Theosophists knows how infinite is that
ocean of eternal wisdom, to be fathomed by no one man, class, or
party, and realizes how little the largest vessel made by man
contains in comparison to what lies dormant and still unperceived in
its dark, bottomless depths, cannot help but be tolerant. For he
sees that others have filled their little water-jugs at the same
great reservoir in which he has dipped his own, and if the water in
the various pitchers seems different to the eye, it can only be
because it is discoloured by impurities that were in the vessel
before the pure crystalline element—a portion of the one eternal and
immutable truth—entered into it.
There is, and can be, but one absolute truth in Kosmos. And little
as we, with our present limitations, can understand it in its
essence, we still know that if it is absolute it must also be
omnipresent and universal; and that in such case, it must be
underlying every world-religion—the product of the thought and
knowledge of numberless generations of thinking men. Therefore, that
a portion of truth, great or small, is found in every religious and
philosophical system, and that if we would find it, we have to
search for it at the origin and source of every such system, at its
roots and first growth, not in its later overgrowth of sects and
dogmatism. Our object is not to destroy any religion but rather to
help to filter each, thus ridding them of their respective
impurities. In this we are opposed by all those who maintain,
against evidence, that their particular pitcher alone contains the
whole ocean. How is our great work to be done if we are to be
impeded and harassed on every side by partisans and zealots? It
would be already half accomplished were the intelligent men, at
least, of every sect and system, to feel and to confess that the
little wee bit of truth they themselves own must necessarily be
mingled with error, and that their neighbours' mistakes are, like
their own, mixed with truth.
Free discussion, temperate, candid, undefiled by personalities and
animosity, is, we think, the most efficacious means of getting rid
of error and bringing out the underlying truth; and this applies to
publications as well as to persons. It is open to a magazine to be
tolerant or intolerant; it is open to it to err in almost every way
in which an individual can err; and since every publication of the
kind has a responsibility such as falls to the lot of few
individuals, it behoves it to be ever on its guard, so that it may
advance without fear and without reproach. All this is true in a
special degree in the case of a theosophical publication, and
LUCIFER feels that it would be unworthy of that designation were it
not true to the profession of the broadest tolerance and
catholicity, even while pointing out to its brothers and neighbours
the errors which they indulge in and follow. While thus keeping
strictly, in its editorials, and in articles by its individual
editors, to the spirit and teachings of pure theosophy, it
nevertheless frequently gives room to articles and letters which
diverge widely from the esoteric teachings accepted by the editors,
as also by the majority of theosophists. Readers, therefore, who are
accustomed to find in magazines and party publications only such
opinions and arguments as the editor believes to be unmistakably
orthodox—from his peculiar standpoint—must not condemn any article
in LUCIFER with which they are not entirely in accord, or in which
expressions are used that may be offensive from a sectarian or a
_prudish_ point of view, on the ground that such are unfitted for a
theosophical magazine. They should remember that precisely because
LUCIFER is a theosophical magazine, it opens its columns to writers
whose views of life and things may not only slightly differ from its
own, but even be diametrically opposed to the opinion of the
editors. The object of the latter is to elicit truth, not to advance
the interest of any particular _ism_, or to pander to any hobbies,
likes or dislikes, of any class of readers. It is only snobs and
prigs who, disregarding the truth or error of the idea, cavil and
strain merely over the expressions and words it is couched in.
Theosophy, if meaning anything, means truth; and truth has to deal
indiscriminately and in the same spirit of impartiality with vessels
of honour and of dishonour alike. No theosophical publication would
ever dream of adopting the coarse—or shall we say terribly
sincere—language of a Hosea or a Jeremiah; yet so long as those holy
prophets are found in the Christian Bible, and the Bible is in every
respectable, pious family, whether aristocratic or plebeian; and so
long as the Bible is read with bowed head and in all reverence by
young, innocent maidens and school-boys, why should our Christian
critics fall foul of any phrase which may have to be used—if truth
be spoken at all—in an occasional article upon a scientific subject?
It is to be feared that the same sentences now found objectionable,
because referring to Biblical subjects, would be loudly praised and
applauded had they been directed against any gentile system of faith
(_Vide certain missionary organs_). A little charity, gentle
readers—charity, and above all—_fairness_ and JUSTICE.
Justice demands that when the reader comes across an article in this
magazine which does not immediately approve itself to his mind by
chiming in with his own peculiar ideas, he should regard it as a
problem to solve rather than as a mere subject of criticism. Let him
endeavour to learn the lesson which only opinions differing from his
own can teach him. _Let him be tolerant, if not actually
charitable_, and postpone his judgment till he extracts from the
article the truth it must contain, adding this new acquisition to
his store. One ever learns more from one’s enemies than from one’s
friends; and it is only when the reader has credited this hidden
truth to LUCIFER, that he can fairly presume to put what he believes
to be the errors of the article, he does not like, to the debit
account.
[Illustration: decorative]
ADAPTATIONS.
We have been asked to give permission for Mr. Gerald Massey’s lines
on LUCIFER, Lady of Light, to be “adapted” and sung to the “Lord
Jesus Christ” in a chapel. This is flattering for both parties
concerned. The editors have no objection, but Mr. Massey is obdurate
enough to refuse his permission and sufficiently unfeeling to have
called the pretty “adaptation” a PARODY. The “Lady of Light” was to
have run in this wise:—
“Star of the Day and the Night,
Star of the Dark that is dying,
Star of the Dawn that is nighing,
Jesu, our Saviour, our Light!” etc.
But how truly appropriate it would be if Mr. Massey’s lines on
Shakspeare were also “adapted” and applied to the Lord Buddha.
“FOR HIM NO MARTYR-FIRES HAVE BLAZED,
NO RACK BEEN USED, NOR SCAFFOLDS RAISED;
FOR HIM NO LIFE WAS EVER SHED
TO MAKE THE CONQUEROR’S PATHWAY RED.
OUR PRINCE OF PEACE IN GLORY HATH GONE,
WITHOUT A SINGLE SWORD BEING DRAWN;
WITHOUT ONE BATTLE-FLAG UNFURLED,
TO MAKE HIS CONQUEST OF OUR WORLD.
AND FOR ALL TIME HE WEARS HIS CROWN
OF LASTING, LIMITLESS, RENOWN;
HE REIGNS WHATEVER MONARCHS FALL,
HIS THRONE IS AT THE HEART OF ALL.”
SOME WORDS ON DAILY LIFE.
(_Written by a Master of Wisdom._)
“It is divine philosophy alone, the spiritual and psychic blending
of man with nature, which, by revealing the fundamental truths that
lie hidden under the objects of sense and perception, can promote a
spirit of unity and harmony in spite of the great diversities of
conflicting creeds. Theosophy, therefore, expects and demands from
the Fellows of the Society a great mutual toleration and charity for
each other’s shortcomings, ungrudging mutual help in the search for
truths in every department of nature—moral and physical. And this
ethical standard must be unflinchingly applied to daily life.
“Theosophy should not represent merely a collection of moral
verities, a bundle of metaphysical ethics, epitomized in theoretical
dissertations. Theosophy _must be made practical_; and it has,
therefore, to be disencumbered of useless digressions, in the sense
of desultory orations and fine talk. Let every Theosophist only do
his duty, that which he can and ought to do, and very soon the sum
of human misery, within and around the areas of every Branch of your
Society, will be found visibly diminished. Forget SELF in working
for others—and the task will become an easy and a light one for
you....
“Do not set your pride in the appreciation and acknowledgment of
that work by others. Why should any member of the Theosophical
Society, striving to become a Theosophist, put any value upon his
neighbours’ good or bad opinion of himself and his work, so long as
he himself knows it to be useful and beneficent to other people?
Human praise and enthusiasm are short-lived at best; the laugh of
the scoffer and the condemnation of the indifferent looker-on are
sure to follow, and generally to out-weigh the admiring praise of
the friendly. Do not despise the opinion of the world, nor provoke
it uselessly to unjust criticism. Remain rather as indifferent to
the abuse as to the praise of those who can never know you as you
really are, and who ought, therefore, to find you unmoved by either,
and ever placing the approval or condemnation of your own _Inner
Self_ higher than that of the multitudes.
“Those of you who would know yourselves in the spirit of truth,
learn to live alone even amidst the great crowds which may sometimes
surround you. Seek communion and intercourse only with the God
within your own soul; heed only the praise or blame of that deity
which can never be separated from your _true_ self, _as it is verily
that God itself_: called the HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS. Put without delay
your good intentions into practice, never leaving a single one to
remain only an intention—expecting, meanwhile, neither reward nor
even acknowledgment for the good you may have done. Reward and
acknowledgment are in yourself and inseparable from you, as it is
your Inner Self alone which can appreciate them at their true degree
and value. For each one of you contains within the precincts of his
inner tabernacle the Supreme Court—prosecutor, defence, jury and
judge—whose sentence is the only one without appeal; since none can
know you better than you do yourself, when once you have learned to
judge that Self by the never wavering light of the inner
divinity—your higher CONSCIOUSNESS. Let, therefore, the masses,
which can never know your true selves, condemn your outer selves
according to their own false lights....
“The majority of the public Areopagus is generally composed of
self-appointed judges, who have never made a permanent deity of any
idol save their own personalities—their lower selves; for those who
try in their walk in life, to follow their _inner light_ will never
be found judging, far less condemning, those weaker than themselves.
What does it matter then, whether the former condemn or praise,
whether they humble you or exalt you on a pinnacle? They will never
comprehend you one way or the other. They may make an idol of you,
so long as they imagine you a faithful mirror of themselves on the
pedestal or altar which they have reared for you, and while you
amuse or benefit them. You cannot expect to be anything for them but
a temporary _fetish_, succeeding another fetish just overthrown, and
followed in your turn by another idol. Let, therefore, those who
have created that idol destroy it whenever they like, casting it
down with as little cause as they had for setting it up. Your
Western Society can no more live without its Khalif of an hour than
it can worship one for any longer period; and whenever it breaks an
idol and then besmears it with mud, it is not the model, but the
disfigured image created by its own foul fancy and which it has
endowed with its own vices, that Society dethrones and breaks.
“Theosophy can only find objective expression in an all-embracing
code of life, thoroughly impregnated with the spirit of mutual
tolerance, charity, and brotherly love. Its Society, as a body, has
a task before it which, unless performed with the utmost discretion,
will cause the world of the indifferent and the selfish to rise up
in arms against it. Theosophy has to fight intolerance, prejudice,
ignorance, and selfishness, hidden under the mantle of hypocrisy. It
has to throw all the light it can from the torch of Truth, with
which its servants are entrusted. It must do this without fear or
hesitation, dreading neither reproof nor condemnation. Theosophy,
through its mouthpiece, the Society, has to tell the TRUTH to the
very face of LIE; to beard the tiger in its den, without thought or
fear of evil consequences, and to set at defiance calumny and
threats. _As an Association_, it has not only the right, but the
duty to uncloak vice and do its best to redress wrongs, whether
through the voice of its chosen lecturers or the printed word of its
journals and publications—making its accusations, however, as
impersonal as possible. But its Fellows, or Members, have
_individually_ no such right. Its followers have, first of all, to
set the example of a firmly outlined and as firmly applied morality,
before they obtain the right to point out, even in a spirit of
kindness, the absence of a like ethic unity and singleness of
purpose in other associations or individuals. No Theosophist should
blame a brother, whether within or outside of the association;
neither may he throw a slur upon another’s actions or denounce him,
lest he himself lose the right to be considered a Theosophist. For,
as such, he has to turn away his gaze from the imperfections of his
neighbour, and centre rather his attention upon his own
shortcomings, in order to correct them and become wiser. Let him not
show the disparity between claim and action in another, but, whether
in the case of a brother, a neighbour, or simply a fellow man, let
him rather ever help one weaker than himself on the arduous walk of
life.
“The problem of true Theosophy and its great mission are, first, the
working out of clear unequivocal conceptions of ethic ideas and
duties, such as shall best and most fully satisfy the right and
altruistic feelings in men; and second, the modelling of these
conceptions for their adaptation into such forms of daily life, as
shall offer a field where they may be applied with most
equitableness.
“Such is the common work placed before all who are willing to act on
these principles. It is a laborious task, and will require strenuous
and persevering exertion; but it must lead you insensibly to
progress, and leave you no room for any selfish aspirations outside
the limits traced.... Do not indulge personally in unbrotherly
comparison between the task accomplished by yourself and the work
left undone by your neighbours or brothers. In the fields of
Theosophy _none is held to weed out a larger plot of ground than his
strength and capacity will permit him_. Do not be too severe on the
merits or demerits of one who seeks admission among your ranks, as
the truth about the actual state of the inner man can only be known
to Karma, and can be dealt with justly by that all-seeing LAW alone.
Even the simple presence amidst you of a well-intentioned and
sympathising individual may help you magnetically.... You are the
free volunteer workers on the fields of Truth, and as such must
leave no obstruction on the paths leading to that field.
. . . . . . . . .
“_The degree of success or failure are the landmarks the masters
have to follow, as they will constitute the barriers placed with
your own hands between yourselves and those whom you have asked
to be your teachers. The nearer your approach to the goal
contemplated—the shorter the distance between the student and
the Master._”
=THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT=:
_THE TRUE STORY OF A MAGICIAN_.
(_Continued._)
---------------------
BY MABEL COLLINS.
---------------------
CHAPTER VII.
The cloud lifted to reveal Fleta’s face. She was bending over him;
she was at his side; she was almost leaning her face on his.
“My dear, my dear,” she said in a soft whispering voice, “has the
blow been too great? Tell me, Hilary, speak to me? Have you still
your senses?”
“And you love that man?” was Hilary’s sole answer, fixing his eyes
in a cold strange gaze on her.
“Oh! Hilary, you talk of what is unknown to you! I love him, yes,
and with a love so profound it is unimaginable to you.”
“And you tell me this! You tell this to the man who loves you, and
who has already devoted his whole life to you! Do you want a madman
for your service?”
“A life!” exclaimed Fleta, with a strange tone that had a ring as of
scorn in it. “What is a life? I count it nothing. Our great aims lie
beyond such considerations.”
Hilary raised himself and looked into her face.
“Then you are mad,” he said, “and if so, a madman in your service is
but fit. Nevertheless, my Princess, do not forget with what forces
you have to contend. I am but a man; you have accepted my love. Only
just now you have made me a murderer at heart—in desire. How soon
shall I be one in reality? That depends on you, Fleta. The next time
I see your gaze fixed on that man’s face as I saw it but now I will
kill him.”
Fleta rose to her full height and lifted her face to the sky; as she
stood there a sort of shiver passed through her, a shiver as of
pain. Instantly Hilary’s humour changed. “You are ill,” he
exclaimed. She turned her eyes on him.
“When that murderous mood is on you, it will not be Father Ivan that
you kill, but me, whom you profess to love. Do you understand that?”
“Ah!” cried Hilary, uttering a sound as if his heart was bursting
under the torture, “that is because you love him so! Well, I can
only long and serve. I have no power to protest. Yet I ask you, oh!
Princess, is it fit to use a man’s heart to play at your queenly
coquetries with? A king, your betrothed—a mysterious priest, the man
you love—are not these enough but that you must take a boy, obscure
and untaught in such misfortunes, and trample on his love? It is
unlike the nobility I have seen in you. Good-bye, for this,
Princess! I am never your lover again as I was before. I can never
believe in your pure sweet heart—only this morning it seemed to me
as a pearl, as a drop of limpid water. Good-bye, my idol! Yet I am
your servant to obey always, for I gave you my life to do with as
you would. Call me, and I come, like your dog; but I will not stay
by you, for no longer is it anything but pain to do so.”
With these wild, fierce reproaches, which seemed to stir the quiet
air of the woodland, and make it seethe and burn with passion and
despair, he turned and went from her. Fleta stood motionless, and
her eyes drooped heavily; only she murmured, “We were born under the
same star!”
Her voice was very low, yet it reached Hilary’s ear. The words
seemed to lash his heart.
“Under the same star!” he repeated, in a voice of agony, standing
suddenly still. “No, Fleta. You are the queen, I the subject. Not
only so, but you know it, and use your power to the full. Did you
not promise yourself utterly to me to be mine?”
“I promised to give you my love for yours; I promised to give you
all that you can take of me. My love is greater than you can even
imagine, else I would not have listened to one word of your
reproaches. They have humbled me, but I have borne it.”
“Ah, Fleta! you talk enigmas,” exclaimed Hilary, moving rapidly back
to her side; “you are enough to madden a man; yet I cannot but love
you. Why is this? Every act of yours proves you heartless,
faithless, and yet I love you! Why is this? Oh, that I could read
the riddle of your existence! Who are you?—What is this mysterious
place?—Who is that priest whose rule you acknowledge? I _will_
know!”
Fleta turned on him a sudden sweet smile, that seemed to light up
his inner being as the flame of a lamp illumines a dusky room.
“Yes,” she said, “find out. I cannot tell you, yet I desire you—oh!
indeed, I desire you to know. Compel the secret—force it. Yes, yes,
Hilary!”
She spoke eagerly, with a bright ring in her voice that thrilled his
soul. He forgot the Princess, the conspirator, the religieuse—he
only remembered the girl he loved—young, fresh, flower-like, with
the fair sweet face close to his own. With an unutterable cry of
love he held out his arms to her.
“Oh, my dear, my love, come!” he said, in trembling tones that
vibrated with his passion. But Fleta turned away without a word and
walked through the tall ferns, her robe trailing on the ground. No
backward glance, no turn of the head, not even a movement of those
white statuesque hands which hung at her sides. In one was a long
grass which she had plucked before she came to him. Even that,
though it fluttered in the wind, had a strangely stiff air, as if it
had become a part of that statue which but a moment since was a
woman. Hilary stood gazing after this retreating figure, powerless
to move, powerless to rouse in his mind any thought but one; and
that was not a thought. It was knowledge—consciousness. He knew, he
felt, that he dared not follow Fleta and address her as men address
the women they love; he dared not woo her with the fever on his lips
that burned there. And why? Not because of her royal birth, or her
beauty, or her power. He knew not why—he could not understand
himself. It was as though a spell were cast on him that held him
silent and motionless.
When at last she was out of sight a sudden reaction took place. The
whole burning force of the strong young man’s nature broke loose and
raged wildly through his whole system; he no longer was capable of
thought, he only felt the blood that rushed to his head and made his
brain reel as though he had drunk strong wine. He suddenly became
aware that he had aged, grown, become a new creature in these last
moments of experience. He had called himself a man five minutes ago;
but now he knew that when he had uttered those words, he was only a
boy. Across a great gulf of feeling he looked back at the love that
was in him when he had so spoken. Now his passion burned like a fire
on the altar of life; every instant the flames grew stronger and
mounted more fiercely to his inflamed brain.
The savage had burst forth. The savage untamed man, which smoulders
within, and hides behind the cultivated faces of a gentle age. One
strong touch on the chord of passion, and Hilary Estanol, a
chivalric and courteous product of a refined time, knew himself to
be a man, and knew that man to be a savage. A savage, full of
desire, of personal longing, thinking of nothing but his own needs.
And to Hilary this sudden starting forth of the nature within him
seemed like a splendid unfolding. He remained standing, erect,
strong, resolute. His seething mind hastily went over his whole
position and Fleta’s. Everything suddenly bore a new, vivid,
stirring aspect.
“This is a nest of conspirators!” he exclaimed to himself. “That
man, Ivan, is a conspirator or worse, else he would not hide here.
What crowned head is it that he threatens? He is a criminal. I will
discover his secret; I will rescue Fleta from him; by the strength
of my love I will win her love from him; I will make her my own.
Come, I must calm myself—I must be sober, for I have to find out the
meaning of this mysterious place.”
He walked slowly through the wood, trying to still the throbbing in
his brain, to check the fierce pulsations of his heart and blood. He
knew that now he needed all his instincts, all his natural
intelligence, all his power of defence; for, in his present humour,
he walked as an enemy to all men; by his new tide of feeling he had
made every man his enemy. The young King Otto had a prior right to
the Fleta whom he desired to make his own; King Otto was indeed his
enemy. Ivan had her love; how bitterly did Hilary hate that priest!
And Adine, the false Fleta—what was she but a mere tool of the
priest’s, a creature used to baffle and blind him? She was the one
most likely to trip his steps, for she defied even the knowledge
which his love gave him of Fleta’s face!
He was full of energy and activity, and his blood desired to be
stilled by action. He had quickly decided that he must immediately
do two things: inspect the whole exterior of the house, so as to get
some notion of what rooms were in it, and what their uses; and
explore the outer circle of the grounds, to see if there was any
difficulty about leaving them. As the latter task involved most
exercise, he chose to undertake it first, and swiftly, with long
strides, made his way through the woodlands in the direction where
the boundaries must lie. It did not take him long to traverse a
considerable distance; for he felt stronger than ever in his life
before. He had been a delicate lad, now he knew himself to be a
strong man, as if new blood ran in his veins. The moon was high in
the heavens, it was nearly full, and its light was strong. By it he
soon discovered that the strange place in which he was had a more
cunning and effective defence than any high wall or iron barrier. It
was surrounded by tangled virgin woodland growth, where, as it
seemed, no man’s foot could have ever trodden.
Hilary found it hard to believe that such wild land existed within a
drive of the city. But it was there, and there was no passing
through it, unless he worked his way with a wood-axe, inch by inch,
as men do when they make a clearing. Such a task was hopeless, even
if he had the tools, for it was impossible to tell in what direction
to move.
He returned at last, after many fruitless efforts; there seemed to
be no vestige of a path. He had discovered the gate by which their
entrance had been made; and discovered also that it was guarded. A
figure moved slowly to and fro in the shadow of the trees; not with
the air of one strolling for pleasure, but with the regular
movements of a sentry. It was an unfamiliar figure, but dressed in
the garb of the order.
Hilary went quietly along by the side of the path that led to the
house. It was useless to waste more time on this investigation;
quite clearly he was a prisoner. And it seemed to him equally clear
that unless he could escape, no information would be of any use to
him. He must be able to carry it to the city, where he would be free
to take it to Fleta’s father, or even to other crowned heads in
other countries, according to its nature. As he walked quietly on,
revolving his position, he saw that the task he had set himself was
no light one, even for a strong man possessed by love. These monks
belonged to an extraordinarily powerful order, and were men of great
ability.
Here he was, in the very heart of one of their secret centres, which
was, presumably, political. Fleta and King Otto were under their
influence. And they were magicians; very certain he felt that they
knew some of Nature’s secrets, and had trained Fleta in her
mysterious powers. And from this hidden and carefully guarded place
he was determined to escape, taking with him its secret—and Fleta!
Fleta, his love, his own, yet whom he had to win by his strength.
CHAPTER VIII.
In the long corridor through which Fleta had led Hilary to Father
Ivan’s room there was another door, which was fastened in a very
different manner. It was held in its place by iron clamps which
would puzzle the beholder, for they fastened on the outside as
though they secured the door of a prison instead of being any
protection for the inhabitant of the room beyond. It was inside this
door that Fleta was now lying down to rest for the night. Had Hilary
known this what agony would have torn him! He would have felt that
he must break those bars and release the prisoner within them,
however supernatural the strength might be which would be needed. He
was spared the sharp pain of knowing this, however, and he was not
likely to learn it, for a strange sentinel patrolled the long
corridor with even step—Father Ivan himself. Without any pause he
went steadily to and fro.
It was about midnight that Father Ivan went into his room and
glanced at a clock on the chimney-piece; not quite midnight, but
very nearly. Hilary was lying awake in his room, tossing to and fro
on a very luxurious and tempting bed, which gave him, however, no
hope of rest. He had wandered round and round the house a dozen
times, only to find himself bewildered by its strange shape, and the
shrubberies which grew up close to the walls, and disheartened by
the solid barricading of those windows which it was easy to
approach. And yet at last he found a window wide open, and a room
brightly lit; a lamp stood on the table and showed the pleasant
room, well-furnished, and with a bed in it, dressed in fine linen
and soft laces such as perhaps only members of an ascetic order know
how to offer to their guests. Hilary stood a moment on the
threshold, and then suddenly recognised it as his own room. It gave
him an odd feeling, this, as if he had been watched and arranged
for; treated like a prisoner. Well, it was useless to evade that
dark fact—a prisoner he was. Recognising defeat for the moment,
Hilary determined to accept it as gracefully as might be. He
entered, closed his window and the strong shutters which folded over
it, and then quickly laid himself down with intent to sleep. But
sleep would not come, and he found all his thoughts and all his
interest centred on Father Ivan. He tried to prevent this but could
not; he chased Fleta’s image in vain—he could scarcely remember her
beautiful face! What was its shape and colour? He tortured himself
in trying to recall the face he loved so dearly. But always Father
Ivan’s figure was before his eyes; and suddenly it struck him that
this vision was almost real, for he saw Ivan raise his hand in a
commanding gesture which seemed to be directed towards himself. A
moment later and he fell fast asleep, like a tired child. At this
moment Ivan was standing in his own room, looking for an instant at
the clock. He stood, perhaps, a little longer than was needed in
order to see the time; and a frown came on his fine clear forehead
which drew the arched eyebrows together. Then he turned quickly,
left his room, and closed its door behind him. He went to the door
which was so strongly barred, and noiselessly loosened its
fastenings, which swung heavily yet quite softly away from it. He
opened the door and went in.
In a sort of curtained recess was a low divan, which quite filled
it, rising hardly a foot from the ground. This was covered with
great rugs made of bear and wolf skin. Fleta lay stretched upon
them, wrapped in a long cloak of some thick white material, which
was bordered all round with white fur, and, indeed, lined with it,
too. And yet when Ivan stooped and touched her hand it was cold as
ice.
“Come,” he said; and turning, went slowly away from her. Fleta rose
and followed him. Her eyes were half-closed, and had something of
the appearance of a sleep-walker’s, and yet not altogether, for
though they appeared dim and unseeing yet there was purpose, and
consciousness, and resolution in them. No one who had not seen Fleta
before in this state could have recognised those eyes, so set and
strange were they. Ivan approached a large curtained archway, and
drawing the curtain aside he motioned to Fleta to pass through. As
she did so he touched one of her hands, as it hung at her side.
Immediately she raised it, and throwing the cloak aside showed that
she held a white silk mask. Her dress beneath the cloak was of white
silk. Slowly she raised the mask to her face and was about to put it
on when a change of state came so suddenly upon her that it was like
a tropical tornado. She opened her starry eyes wide and vivid light
flashed from them; she flung the mask away upon the floor and
clasped her hands violently together, while her whole frame shook
with emotion.
“Why must I mask myself?” she exclaimed. “You have not told me why.”
“I have,” said Ivan, very quietly. “No woman has ever entered there
till now.”
“What then?” cried Fleta, fiercely. “There is no shame in being a
woman! Have I not assailed that door in vain in a different
character? Now, a woman, I demand entrance. Master, I will not
disguise myself.”
“Be it so,” said Ivan, “yet take the mask with you lest your mood
should change again. You were willing, you remember, but a while
since.”
Fleta stood motionless regarding the mask as it lay on the floor.
Then she lifted her head suddenly and looked Ivan straight in the
eyes.
“I will cast my sex from me, and mask my womanhood without any such
help as that.”
Immediately that she had spoken Ivan walked on. They were in a long
corridor, lit, and with the walls faintly coloured in pale pink on
which shone some silver stars. Yet, bright though it was, this
corridor seemed strangely solemn. Why was it so? Fleta looked from
side to side, and could not discover. There was something new to her
which she did not understand. Though she had been instructed in so
many of the mysteries, and so much of the knowledge of the order,
she had never entered this corridor, nor indeed had she before known
of its existence. They slowly neared the end of it where was a high
door made of oak, and seemingly very solidly fastened; but Father
Ivan opened it easily enough.
“My God!” cried Fleta instantly, in a low voice of deep amazement.
“Where am I? What country am I in? Father, was that corridor a magic
place? This is no longer my own country! How far have you carried me
in this short time?”
“A long way my daughter; come, do not delay.”
A vast plain, prairie-like, stretched before them, encircled on the
right by the narrowing end of a huge arm of mountains which
disappeared upon the far horizon. Upon the plain was one spot, was
one place, where a livid flame-like light burned, and could be seen,
though the whole scene was bathed in strong moonlight. Ivan
commenced to rapidly take his way down a steep path which lay before
them. And then Fleta became aware that they were themselves upon a
height and had to descend into the plain. She did not look back; all
her thoughts were centred on that vivid light which she now saw came
from the windows of a great building. Then she suddenly saw that a
number of persons were in the plain; although it was so large yet
there were enough people to look like a crowd, which was gathering
together from different directions. All were approaching the
building.
“Father,” she said to Ivan, who was leading the way rapidly. “Will
they go in?”
“Into the Temple? Those on the plain? Indeed no. They are outside
worshippers; that crowd is in the world and of it, and yet has
courage to come here often when there is no light, and the icy winds
blow keen across the plain.”
“And they never enter. Why, my master, they can have no strength.”
Ivan glanced back for an instant, a curious look in his eyes.
“It is not always strength that is needed,” he said in a low voice.
Fleta did not seem to hear him; her eyes were fixed on the temple
windows. Suddenly she stopped and cried out:
“Is this a dream?”
“You are not asleep,” said Ivan with a smile.
“Asleep! no,” she answered, and went on her way with increased
rapidity.
Very soon they stood on the plain and advanced with great speed
towards the temple. Fleta was naturally hardy; but now it seemed to
her that the very idea of fatigue was absurd. She could scale
mountains in order to reach that light. And yet what was it in it
that drew her so? None but herself could have told. But Fleta’s
heart beat passionately with longing at the sight of it. Ivan turned
on her a glance of compassion.
“Keep quiet,” he said.
He was answered with a look and tone of fervour.
“Yes: if it is in human power,” she replied.
The great crowds were slowly gathering towards the temple and formed
themselves into masses of silent and scarcely moving figures. Fleta
was now among them and though so absorbed by the idea of the goal
before her, she was attracted by the strange appearance of these
people. They were of all ages and nationalities, but more than
two-thirds of them were men; they one and all had the appearance of
sleep-walkers, seeming perfectly unconscious of the scene in which
they moved and of their object in reaching it. Their whole nature
was turned inwards; so it appeared to Fleta. Why then had they come
to this strange place, so difficult of access, if when come they
could neither see nor hear? Fleta considered these things rapidly in
her mind and would again have asked an explanation of Father Ivan
but that while her steps slackened a little, his had hastened. He
had already reached the door of the temple—when Fleta reached it he
was not there. Of course he had entered, and Fleta, without fear or
hesitation, put her hand on the great bar which held the door and
lifted it. It was not difficult to lift; it seemed to yield to her
touch, and swung back smoothly. With a slight push the great door
opened a little before her—not wide; only as far as she had pushed
it. Ah! there was the light! There, in her eyes! It was like life
and joy to Fleta. She turned her eyes up to gaze on it, and stood an
instant with her hands clasped, in ecstacy.
Someone brushed lightly by, and, passing her, went straight in. That
reminded her that she, too, desired to go straight in. She nerved
herself for the supreme effort. For she was learned enough to know
that only the initiate in her faith could enter that door; and she
had not, in any outward form, passed the initiation. But she
believed she had passed it in her soul; she had tested her emotions
on every side and found the world was nothing to her; she had flung
her mask away believing her woman’s shape and face to be the merest
outward appearance, which would be unseen at the great moment. And
now it hardly seemed as if she were a woman—she stood transfigured
by the nobility of her aspirations—and some who stood on the step
outside remained there awestruck by her majestic beauty. By a
supreme effort she resolved to face all—and to conquer all. She
boldly entered the door and went up the white marble steps within
it. A great hall was before her, flooded with the clear, soft light
she loved; an innumerable number of objects presented themselves to
her amazed eyes, but she did not pause to look at them—she guessed
that the walls were jewelled from their sparkling—she guessed that
the floor was covered with flowers, which lay on a polished silver
surface, from the gleaming and the colour—and who were these, the
figures in silver dresses with a jewel like an eye that saw, clasped
at the neck? A number came towards her. She would not allow herself
to feel too exultant—she tried to steady herself—and yet joy came
wildly into her heart, for she felt that she was already one of this
august company. But their faces, as they gathered nearer, were all
strange and unfamiliar. She looked from one to another.
“Where is Ivan?” she murmured.
Suddenly all was changed. The white figures grew in numbers till
there seemed thousands—with outstretched hands they pushed Fleta
down the steps—down, down, down, resist how she might. She did more!
She fought, she battled, she cried aloud, first for justice, then
for pity. But there was no relenting, no softening in these
superhuman faces. Fleta fled at last from their overpowering numbers
and inexorable cruelty, and then there came a great cry of voices,
all uttering the same words;
“You love him! Go!”
Fleta fell, stunned and broken, at the foot of the outer step, and
the great door closed behind her. But she was not unconscious for
more than a few minutes. She opened her eyes and looked at the
starry sky. Then she felt suddenly that she could not endure even
that light and that the stars were reading her soul. She rose and
hurried away, blindly following in any path that her feet found. It
did not take her to any familiar place. She found herself in a dark
wood. The moss was soft and fragrant and violets scented it. She lay
down upon it, drawing her white cloak round her and hiding her eyes
from the light.
CHAPTER IX.
It seemed to her that for long ages she was alone. Her mind achieved
great strides of thought which at another time would have appeared
impossible to her. She saw before her clearly her own folly, her own
mistake. Yesterday she would not have credited it—yesterday it would
have been unmeaning to her. But now she understood it, and
understood too how heavy and terrible was her punishment; for it was
already upon her. She lay helpless, her eyes shut, her whole body
nerveless. Her punishment was here. She had lost all hope, all
faith.
A gentle touch on her hand roused her consciousness, but she was too
indifferent to open her eyes. It mattered little to her what or who
was near her. The battle of her soul was now the only real thing in
life to her.
A voice that seemed strangely familiar fell on her ears; yet last
time she had heard it it was loud, fierce, arrogant; now it was
tender and soft, and full of an overwhelming wonder and pity.
“You, Princess Fleta, here? My God! what can have happened? Surely
she is not dead? No! What is it, then?”
Fleta slowly opened her eyes. It was Hilary who knelt beside her;
she was lying on the dewy grass, and Hilary knelt there, the morning
sun shining on his head and lighting up his beautiful boy’s face.
And Fleta as she lay and looked dully at him felt herself to be
immeasurably older than he was; to be possessed of knowledge and
experience which seemed immense by his ignorance. And yet she lay
here, nerveless, hopeless.
“What is it?” again asked Hilary, growing momently more distressed.
“Do you want to know?” she said gently, and yet with an accent of
pity that was almost contempt in her tone. “You would not
understand.”
“Oh, tell me!” said Hilary. “I love you—let me serve you!”
She hardly seemed to hear his words, but his voice of entreaty made
her go on speaking in answer:
“I have tried,” she said, “and failed.”
“Tried what?” exclaimed Hilary, “and how failed? Oh, my Princess, I
believe these devils of priests have given you some fever—you do not
know what you are saying!”
“I know very well,” replied Fleta; “I am in no fever. I am all but
dead—that is no strange thing, for I am stricken.” Hilary looked at
her as she lay, and saw that her words were true. How strange a
figure she looked, lying there so immovably, as if crushed or dead,
upon the dewy grass; wrapped in her white robes. And her face was
white with a terrible whiteness; the great eyes looked out from the
white face with a sad, smileless gaze; and would those pale drawn
lips never smile again? Was the radiant, brilliant Fleta changed for
ever into this paralysed white creature? Hilary knew that even if it
was so he loved her more passionately and devotedly than before. His
soul yearned towards her.
“Tell me, explain to me, what has done this?” he cried out, growing
almost incoherent in his passionate distress. “I demand to know by
my love for you. What have you tried to do in this awful past
night?”
Fleta opened her eyes, the lids of which had drooped heavily, and
looked straight into his as she answered:
“I have tried for the Mark of the White Brotherhood. I have tried to
pass the first initiation of the Great Order. I did not dream I
could fail, for I have passed through many initiations which men
regard with fear. But I have failed.”
“I cannot believe,” said Hilary, “that you could fail in anything.
You are—dreaming—you are feverish. Let me lift you, let me carry you
into the house.”
“Yes, I have failed,” answered Fleta dully; “failed, because I had
not measured the strength of my humanity. It is in me—in me still! I
am the same as any other woman in this land. I, who thought myself
supreme—I, who thought myself capable of great deeds! Ah, Hilary,
the first simple lesson is yet unlearned. I have failed because I
loved—because I love like any other fond and foolish woman! And yet
no spark of any part of love but devotion is in my soul. That is too
gross. Is it possible to purge even that away? Yes, those of the
White Brotherhood have done it. I will do it even if it take me a
thousand years, a dozen lifetimes!”
She had raised herself from the ground as she spoke, for a new
fierce passion had taken the place of the dull despair in her
manner; she had raised herself to her feet, and then unable to stand
had fallen on to her knees. Hilary listened yet hardly heard; only
some of her words hurried into his mind. He bent down till his face
touched her white cloak where it lay on the grass, and kissed it a
dozen times.
“You have failed because of love? Oh, my Princess, then it is not
failure! Men live for love, men die for love! It is the golden power
of life. Oh, my Princess, let me take you from this terrible
place—come back with me to the world where men and women know love
to be the one great joy for which all else is well lost. Fleta,
while I doubted that you loved me I was as wax; but now that I know
you do, and with a love so great that it has power to check the
career of your soul, now I am strong, I am able to do all that a
strong man can do. Come, let me raise you and take you away from
here to a place of peace and delight!”
He had risen to his feet and stood before her, looking magnificent
in the morning sunshine. He was slight of build, yet that slightness
was really indicative of strength; when Hilary Estanol had been
effeminate it was because he had not cared to be anything else. He
stood grandly now, his hands stretched towards her; a man, lofty,
transformed by the power of love. Fleta looking at him saw in his
brilliant eyes the gleam of the conquering savage. She rose suddenly
and confronted him.
“You are mistaken,” she said abruptly. “It is not you that I love.”
Then, as suddenly as Fleta had moved and spoken, the man before her
vanished, with his nobility, and left the savage only, unvarnished,
unhumanised.
“My God,” gasped Hilary, almost breathless from the sudden blow,
“then it is that accursed priest?”
“Yes,” answered Fleta, her eyes on his, her voice dull, her whole
form like that of a statue, so emotionless did she seem, “it is that
accursed priest.”
She moved away from him and looked about her. The spot was familiar.
She was in the woodland about the monastery. She could find her way
home now without difficulty. And yet how weak she was, and how hard
it was to take each footstep! After moving a few paces she stood
still and tried to rouse herself, tried to use her powerful will.
“Where are my servants?” she said in a low voice. “Where are those
who do my bidding?”
She closed her eyes, and standing there in the sunlight, used all
her power to call the forces into action which she had learned to
control. For she was a sufficiently learned magician to be the
mistress of some of the secrets of Nature. But now it seemed she was
helpless—her old powers were gone. A low, bitter cry of anguish
escaped from her lips as she realised this awful fact. Hilary,
terrified by the strange sound of her voice, hastily approached her
and looked into her face. Those dark eyes, once so full of power,
were now full of an agony such as one sees in the eyes of a hunted
and dying creature. Yet Fleta did not faint or fail, or cling to the
strong man who stood by her side. After a moment she spoke, with a
faint yet steady voice.
“Do you know the way to the gate?” she asked.
“Yes,” replied Hilary; who indeed had but recently explored the
whole demesne.
“Take my hand,” she said, “and lead me there.”
She used her natural power of royal command now; feeble though she
was, she was the princess. Hilary did not dream of disobeying her.
He took the cold and lifeless hand she extended to him, and led her
as quickly as was possible over the grass, through the trees and
flowering shrubs, to the gateway. As they neared it she spoke:
“You are to go back to the city,” she said. “Do not ask why—you must
go; yet I will tell you this—it is for your own safety. I have lost
my power—I can no longer protect you, and there are both angels and
devils in this place. I have lost all! all! And I have no right to
risk your sanity as well as my own. You must go.”
“And leave you here?” said Hilary, bewildered.
“I am safe,” she answered proudly. “No power in heaven or earth can
hurt me now, for I have cast my all on one stake. Know this, Hilary,
before we part; I shall never yield or surrender. I shall cast out
that love that kills me from my heart—I shall enter the White
Brotherhood. And, Hilary, you too will enter it. But, oh! not yet!
Bitter lessons have you yet to learn! Good-bye, my brother.”
The sentinel who guarded the gate now approached them in his walk;
Fleta moved quickly towards him. After a few words had passed
between them he blew a shrill, fine whistle. Then he approached
Hilary.
“Come,” he said, “I will show you the way for some distance and will
then obtain you a horse and a guide to the city.”
Hilary did not hesitate in obeying Fleta’s commands; he knew he must
go. But he turned to look once more into her mysterious face. She
was no longer there. He bowed his head, and silently followed the
monk through the gate into the outer freedom of the forest.
Fleta meantime crept back to the house through the shelter of the
trees. Her figure looked like that of an aged woman, for she was
bowed almost double and her limbs trembled as she moved. She did not
go to the centre door of the house, but approached a window which
opened to the ground and now stood wide. It was the window of
Fleta’s own room; she hurried towards it with feeble, uncertain
steps. “Rest! Rest! I must rest!” she kept murmuring to herself. But
on the very threshold she stumbled and fell. Someone came
immediately to her and tried to raise her. It was Father Ivan. Fleta
disengaged herself, tremblingly yet resolutely. She rose with
difficulty to her feet and gazed very earnestly into his face.
“And you knew why I should fail?” she said.
“Yes,” he answered, “I knew. You are not strong enough to stand
alone amid the spirit of humanity. I knew you clung to me. Well have
you suffered from it. I know that very soon you will stand alone.”
“Of what use would that mask have been?” demanded Fleta, pursuing
her own thoughts.
“None. If you had obeyed me and worn it you would have been of so
craven a spirit you could never have reached the temple, never have
seen the White Brotherhood. You have done these things, which are
more than any other woman has accomplished.”
“I will do yet more,” said Fleta. “I will be one of them.”
“Be it so,” answered Ivan. “To do so you must suffer as no woman has
yet had strength to suffer. The humanity in you must be crushed out
as we crush a viper beneath our feet.”
“It shall be. I may die, but I will not pause. Good-bye, my master.
As I am a queen in the world of men and women, so you are king in
the world of soul, and to you I have done homage; that homage they
call love. It is so, perhaps. I am blind yet, and know not. But no
more may you be my king. I am alone, and all knowledge I gain I must
now gain myself.”
Ivan bowed his head as if in obedience to an unanswerable decree,
and in a moment had walked away among the trees. Fleta watched him
stonily till he was out of sight, then dragged herself within the
window to fall helplessly upon the ground, shaken by sobs and strong
shudders of despair.
---
CHAPTER X.
It was late in the day before Fleta again came out of her room. She
seemed to have recovered her natural manner and appearance; and yet
there was a change in her which anyone who knew her well must see.
She had not been into the general rooms, or greeted the other
guests; nor did she do so now. Her face was full of resolution, but
she was calm, at all events externally. Without going near the guest
rooms or the great entrance hall, she made her way round the house
to where a very small door stood almost hidden in an angle of the
wall. It was such a door as might lead to the cellars of a house,
and when Hilary had explored the night before he had scarcely
noticed it. But it was exceedingly solid and well fastened. Fleta
gave a peculiar knock upon it with a fan which she carried in her
hand. It was immediately opened, and Father Amyot appeared.
“Do you want me?” he asked.
“Yes; I want you to go on an errand for me.”
“Where am I to go?”
“I do not know; probably you will know. I must speak to one of the
White Brotherhood.”
Amyot’s face clouded and he looked doubtfully at her.
“What is there you can ask that Ivan cannot answer?”
“Does it matter to you?” said Fleta imperiously. “You are my
messenger, that is all.”
“You cannot command me as before,” said Father Amyot.
“What! do you know that I have failed? Does all the world know it?”
“The world?” echoed Amyot, contemptuously. “No; but all the
Brotherhood does, and all its servants do. No one has told me, but I
know it.”
“Of course,” said Fleta to herself. “I am foolish.” She turned away
and walked up and down on the grass, apparently buried in deep
thought. Presently she raised her head suddenly, and quickly moved
towards Amyot, who still stood motionless in the dim shadow of the
little doorway. She fixed her eyes on him; they were blazing with an
intense fire. Her whole attitude was one of command.
“Go,” she said.
Father Amyot stood but for a moment; and then he came out slowly
from the doorway, shutting it behind him.
“You have picked up a lost treasure,” he said. “You have found your
will again. I obey. Have you told me all your command?”
“Yes. I must speak to one of the White Brothers. What more can I
say? I do not know one from another. Only be quick!”
Instantly Amyot strode away over the grass and disappeared. Fleta
moved slowly away, thinking so deeply that she did not know any one
was near her till a hand was put gently on her arm. She looked up,
and saw before her the young king, Otto.
“Have you been ill,” he asked, looking closely into her face.
“No,” she answered. “I have only been living fast—a century of
experience in a single night! Shall I talk to you about it, my
friend?”
“I think not,” answered Otto, who now was walking quietly by her
side. “I may not readily understand you. I am anxious above all to
advance slowly and grasp each truth as it comes to me. I have been
talking a long time to-day to Father Ivan; and I feel that I cannot
yet understand the doctrines of the order except as interpreted
through religion.”
“Through religion?” said Fleta. “But that is a mere externality.”
“True, and intellectually I see that. But I am not strong enough to
stand without any external form to cling to. The precepts of
religion, the duty of each towards humanity, the principle of
sacrifice one for another, these things I can understand. Beyond
that I cannot yet go. Are you disappointed with me?”
“No, indeed,” answered Fleta. “Why should I be.”
Otto gave a slight sigh as of relief. “I feared you might be,” he
answered; “but I preferred to be honest. I am ready, Fleta, to be a
member of the order, a devout member of the external Brotherhood.
How far does that place me from you who claim a place among the wise
ones of the inner Brotherhood.”
Fleta looked at him very seriously and gravely.
“I claim it,” she said; “but is it mine? Yet I will win it, Otto;
even at the uttermost price, I will make it mine.”
“And at what cost?” said Otto. “What is that uttermost price?”
“I think,” she said slowly, “I already feel what it is. I must learn
to live in the plain as contentedly as on the mountain tops. I have
hungered to leave my place in the world, to go to those haunts where
only a few great ones of the earth dwell, and from them learn the
secret of how to finally escape from the life of earth altogether.
That has been my dream, Otto, put into simple words; the old dream
of the Rosicrucian and those hungerers after the occult who have
always haunted the world like ghosts, unsatisfied, homeless. Because
I am a strong-willed creature, because I have learned how to use my
will, because I have been taught a few tricks of magic I fancied
myself fitted to be one of the White Brotherhood. Well, it is not
so. I have failed. I shall be your queen, Otto.”
The young king turned on her a sudden look full of mingled emotions.
“Is that to be, Fleta? Then may I be worthy of your companionship.”
Fleta had spoken bitterly, though not ungently. Otto’s reply had
been in a strange tone, that had exultation, reverence, gladness, in
it; but not any of the passion which is called love. A coquette
would have been provoked by a manner so entirely that of friendship.
“Otto,” said Fleta, after a moment’s pause, during which they had
walked on side by side. “I am going to test your generosity. Will
you leave me now?”
“My generosity?” exclaimed Otto. “How is it possible for you to
address me in that way?” Without any further word of explanation he
turned on his heel and walked quickly away. Fleta understood his
meaning very well; she smiled softly as she looked for a moment
after him. Then, as he vanished, her whole face changed, her whole
expression of attitude, too. For a little while she stood quite
still, seemingly wrapt in thought. Then steadily and swiftly she
began to move across the grass and afterwards to thread her way
through the trees. Having once commenced to move, she seemed to have
no hesitation as to the direction in which she was going. And,
indeed, if you had been able to ask her how she knew what path to
take, she would have answered that it was very easy to know. For she
was guided by a direct call from Amyot, as plainly heard as any
human voice, though audible only to her inner hearing. To Fleta, the
consciousness of the double life—the spiritual and the natural—was a
matter of constant experience, and, therefore, there was no need for
the darkness of midnight to enable her to hear a voice from what
ordinary men and women call the unseen world. To Fleta it was no
more unseen than unheard. She saw at once, conquering time and
space, the spot where she would find Father Amyot at the end of her
rapid walk; and more, the state she would find him in. The sun
streamed in its full power and splendour straight on the strange
figure of the monk, lying rigidly upon the grass. Fleta stood beside
him and looked down on his face, upturned to the sky. For a little
while she did nothing, but stood there with a frown upon her
forehead and her dark eyes full of fierce and changing feeling.
Amyot was in one of his profound trances, when, though not dead, yet
he was as one dead.
“Already my difficulties crowd around me,” exclaimed Fleta aloud.
“What folly shall I unknowingly commit next? My poor servant—dare I
even try to restore you—or will Nature be a safer friend?”
Full of doubt and hesitation, she turned slowly away and began to
pace up and down the grass beside the figure of the priest.
Presently she became aware that she was not alone—some one was near
her. She started and turned quickly. Ivan stood but a pace from her,
and his eyes were fixed very earnestly upon her.
He was not dressed as a priest, but wore a simple hunting dress,
such as an ordinary sportsman or the king incognito might wear.
Simple it was, and made of coarse materials; but its easy make
showed a magnificent figure which the monkish robes had disguised.
His face had on it a deep and almost pathetic seriousness; and yet
it was so handsome, so nobly cut, and made so brilliant by the deep
blue eyes, which were bluer than their wont now, even in the full
blaze of the sun—that in fact as a man merely, here stood one who
might make any woman’s heart, queen or no queen, beat fiercely with
admiration. Fleta had never seen him like this before; to her he had
always been the master, the adept in mysterious knowledge, the
recluse who hid his love of solitude under a monkish veil. This was
Ivan! Young, superb, a man who must be loved. Fleta stood still and
silent, answering the gaze of those questioning, serious blue eyes,
with the purposeful, rebellious look which was just now burning in
her own. The two stood facing each other for some moments, without
speaking—without, as it seemed, desiring to speak. But in these
moments of silence a measuring of strength was made. Fleta spoke
first.
“Why have you come?” she demanded. “I did not desire your presence.”
“You have questions to ask which I alone can answer.”
“You are the one person who cannot answer them, for I cannot ask
them of you.”
“It is of me that you must ask them,” was all Ivan’s reply. Then he
added: “It is of me you have to learn these answers. Learn them by
experience if you like, and blindly. If you care to speak, you shall
be answered in words. This will spare you some pain, and save you
years of wasted time. Are you too proud?”
There was a pause. Then Fleta replied deliberately:
“Yes, I am too proud.”
Ivan bowed his head and turned away. He stooped over Father Amyot,
and taking a flask from his pocket, rubbed some liquid on the monk’s
white and rigid lips.
“I forbid you,” said Ivan, “to use your power over Amyot again.”
“You forbid me?” repeated Fleta in a tone of profound amazement.
Evidently this tone was entirely new to her.
“Yes, and you dare not disobey me. If you do, you will suffer
instantly.”
Fleta looked the amazement which was evidently beyond her power to
express in words. Ivan’s manner was cold, almost harsh. Never had he
addressed her without gentleness before. Hastily she recovered
herself, and without pausing to address to him any other word she
turned away and went quickly through the trees and back to the
house. Otto was standing at one of the windows; she went straight to
him.
“I wish to go back to the city at once,” she said, “will you order
my horses?”
“May I come with you?”
“No, but you may follow me to-morrow if you like.”
(_To be continued._)
[Illustration: decorative separator]
SPECULATION.
Man’s reasoning faith can outlive and can ride
O’er countless speculations. Navies float
On changeful waves, and for this ark-like boat
Winds from all quarters, every swelling tide
Will serve. By all the virgin spheres that glide
Like timid guests across sky-floor we note
Where lies the pole-star. Those who only quote
Their compass, fail, and antique charts must slide
To error, in this shifting sand of thought
And _new-found science_, where sweet isles of palm
And olive sink, that were as land-marks sought,
While others rise from Ocean’s fertile bed.
No storm, nor heat, nor cold I fear; my dread
Is lest the ship should meet a death-like calm.
REVOLUTION.
Ah! wondrous happy rounding universe
Where suns and moons alike as tears e’er mould
Themselves to beauteous circles! He that rolled
The planets, curved their paths; though seas immerse
Both shattered ship and shell, naught _shall escape_
Th’ inevitable wheel that must restore
The seeming lost. The potent buried lore
Of saint and sage revives to melt and shape
Our thoughts to comeliness, and souls that leave
Earth’s shores float back as craft that cruising sails;
Each blessed gift that hourly from us flies,
God will rain down albeit in other guise;—
And e’en the very dew-drop _noon exhales_
May find again the self-same rose at eve.
MARY W. GALE.
TWILIGHT VISIONS.
“At evening time there shall be light.”
—ZECH. xiv., 7.
The day’s work done, I cast my pen aside
And rose, with aching eye and troubled brain,
Thinking how oft my fellow workers here
Have suffered in the flesh for labours wrought
In love to all mankind; and how the world
Cares nought for words which teach not of itself;
For to the world, itself is all in all,
And nought outside it can the world conceive
As real and true. And yet this earth must cease
To be for ever to each mortal, when
The Spirit casts off earth, and, in new life
Will feel and know the world to be the vale
Of deathly shadows compass’d round about
With ignorance and error, sin and crime,
With yearnings, longings, miseries, and griefs,
And all that makes the “Breath of Lives” to seem
As Angels wrestling with the powers of hell.
* * * *
A gentle Spirit with the twilight came
And rested on my soul; then hope with peace,
Long since to me as strangers, touched my heart,
And, sitting at the organ, soft and sweet
There streamed a flow of harmony, tho’ I
Scarce seemed to touch the keys, yet simple hymns
Called forth a train of Spirits bright and young,
Amongst them saw I all that I had known
And loved in days when life seem’d sweet to me.
I was a child again, and saw myself
As such—no aching eye—no troubled brain
Had that young being who in faith and hope
Sang songs of holiness, of peace and truth—
There, resting on his Mother’s breast, with arms
Clasped round her neck, with loving eyes that watched
The loving face, whereon a parent’s smile
Was ever present in the days now past,
Now buried in the dust with former things.
* * * *
In saddened notes swelled forth “Thy will be done!”
And then appeared a radiant spirit form
Of one who, as a babe, was called away,
From out this world of wretchedness and sin.
An infant—which scarce breathed upon the earth
Ere God, in His great mercy, took her home
To dwell with Him, and she, an Angel bless’d,
Now looks in pity on her parents here,
A weeping witness of the vacant lives
Which in the world their souls are forced to pass
As, hung’ring for the love of One in heaven
They stagger on from day to day in doubt—
In misery, which none but they can know.
* * * *
Some cursed bonds can ne’er be snapped in twain,
Save death or sin alone be brought to bear
To shatter human customs hard and vile,
And false and horrible as hell itself.
For man exists in darkness, bound by laws
Which curse and damn his very soul on earth;
Mankind will not accept the Master’s words
Or listen to His cry within the soul.
And so the world in falsehood wanders on
And dooms the inner Man of Light again
To suffer crucifixion in the flesh;
The Trinity—of Wisdom, Love and Truth—
The Christ, is absent from this “Christian” World
And ignorance with hatred lies and sin
Reign rampant in their infidel abode.
* * * *
“Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.”
O Lord! we suff’ring mortals here on earth
Have nought but Thee, Thou Guide of all mankind
To lead us in our wand’rings, and to turn
Our falt’ring footsteps from the way of death;
Thy Angels true are sent to fainting souls,
And lovingly their voices soft are heard
Peace! troubled hearts, hereafter all shall be
Made up in heaven. Know that sufferings
Are sent in love that we may minister,
To all your needs, and bear you safely home
To that good land ordained for all mankind—
The kingdom bright—of happiness and love,
Whereon your lives shall ever be a rest
In one long summer day of light and joy.
No mortal e’er can comprehend the peace
Of God, which shall be yours, when, from the world
Your glorious inner beings stand apart
For ever! Soon shall you know all that we
Would tell you now—yet hope and struggle on.
“At evening time there shall be Light! and then—
The Living Light shall lead you home to God,
Home to the place which He hath made,—’tis yours
For ever! We are sent to tell you this
And by the Mighty One we do not lie!
* * * *
“O Glorious Angels of our Loving God!
Pray tell us if this land, we fain would know,
Contains the dear ones we have loved on earth?
For what were heaven e’en to us, if we
Could nevermore be all in all to those
Who when on earth were all in all to us!”
A voice replied—’twas one I oft have heard
And learned to love with more than mortal love,
“Look up, my own! and see me with thee now
For ever on this earth. If then ’tis so,
How canst thou think that I shall ever be
Apart from thee in heav’n—the land of love
Wherein alone life’s consummation finds
A fullness in its own eternal self?
For God is all—thus He is life and love
And love eternal is the power that welds
Each atom in the universal chain
Of infinite expanse throughout the skies—
Which ever shows to godly men on earth
The Power of powers that reigneth over all!”
* * * *
Then in the gloom a glorious form appeared,
And, standing by my side, it pressed its lips
Upon the troubled brow which none could calm
On earth, save she who was beside me then.
And so an Angel from our loving God
Came down to comfort, in the eventide—
To show, by light of love, God’s holy truth,
Which from the world—in darkness—hath been hid
Because the world in darkness will exist,
And, living thus, man sins against himself
And so against his loving God of Life.
The promised Light appeared at evening time,
And by its living rays did I perceive—
Mankind to wander on in sin and shame;
Thus HELL prevails to-day where heaven should be....
WM. C. ELDON SERJEANT.
London, _6th December, 1887_.
ESOTERICISM OF THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA.
CREATION AS TAUGHT BY MOSES AND THE MAHATMAS.
BY THE ABBÉ ROCA (_Honorary Canon_).
[Extracts translated from the “LOTUS” _Revue des Hautes Etudes
Theosophiques_. Journal of “Isis,” the French Branch of The
Theosophical Society. December, 1887. Paris, George Carrés, 58,
Rue St André des Arts.—VERBAL TRANSLATION.]
I.
Thanks to the light which is now reaching us from the far East
through the Theosophical organs published in the West, it is easy to
foresee that the Catholic teaching is about to undergo a
transformation as profound as it will be glorious. All our dogmas
will pass from “the letter which killeth” to “the spirit which
giveth life,” from the mystic and sacramental to the scientific and
rational form, perhaps even to the stage of experimental methods.
The reign of faith, of mystery and of miracle, is nearing its close;
this is plain and was, moreover, predicted by Christ himself. Faith
vanishes from the brains of men of science, to make way for the
clear perception of the essential truths which had to be veiled at
the origin of Christianity, under symbols and figures, so as to
adapt them, as far as possible, to the needs and weaknesses of the
infancy of our faith.
Strange! It is at the very hour when Europe is attaining the age of
reason, and when she is visibly entering upon the full possession of
her powers, that India prepares to hand on to us those loftier ideas
which exactly meet our new wants, as much from the intellectual, as
from the moral, religious, social and other standpoints.
One might believe that the “BROTHERS” kept an eye from afar on the
movements of Christendom, and that from the summits of their
Himalayan watch towers, they had waited expectantly for the hour
when they would be able to make us hear them with some chance of
being understood....
It is certain that the situation in the West is becoming more and
more serious. Everyone knows whence comes the imminence of the
catastrophe which threatens us; hitherto men have only evoked the
animal needs, they have only awakened and unchained the brute forces
of nature, the passional instincts, the savage energies of the lower
Kosmos. Christianity does indeed conceal under the profound
esotericism of its Parables, those truths, scientific, religious,
and social, which this deplorable situation imperiously demands, but
sad to say, sad indeed for a priest, hard, hard indeed for Christian
ears to hear, all our priesthoods, that of the Roman Catholic Church
equally with those of the Orthodox Russian, the Anglican, the
Protestant, and the Anglo-American churches, seem struck with
blindness and impotence in face of the glorious task which they
would have to fulfil in these terrible circumstances. They see
nothing; their eyes are plastered and their ears walled up. They do
not discover; one is tempted to say, they do not even suspect what
ineffable truths are hidden under the dead letter of their
teachings.
Say, is it not into that darkness that we are all stumbling, in
State and in Church, in politics as in religion! A double calamity
forming but one for the peoples, which suffer horribly under it, and
for our civilisation which may be shipwrecked on it at any moment.
May God deliver us from a war at this moment! It would be a
cataclysm in which Europe would break to pieces in blood and fire,
as Montesquieu foresaw: “Europe will perish through the soldiers, if
not saved in time.” We must escape from this empiricism and this
fearful confusion. But who will save us? The Christ, the true
Christ, the Christ of esoteric science.[126] And how? Thus: the same
key which, under the eyes of the scientific bodies, shall open the
secrets of Nature, will open their own intellects to the secrets of
true Sociology; the same key which, under the eyes of the
priesthoods, shall open the Arcana of the mysteries and the gospel
parables, will open their intellects to these same secrets of
Sociology. Priests and savants will then develope in the radiance of
one and the same light.
-----
Footnote 126:
“The Christ of esoteric science” is the _Christos_ of Spirit—an
impersonal principle entirely distinct from any carnalised Christ
or Jesus. Is it this Christos that the learned Canon Roca
means?—[ED.]
-----
And this key—I can assert it, for I have proved it in application to
all our dogmas—THIS KEY IS THE SAME WHICH THE MAHATMAS OFFER AND
DELIVER TO US AT THIS MOMENT.[127]
-----
Footnote 127:
The capitals are our own; for these “Mahatmas” are the real
Founders and “Masters” of the Theosophical Society.—[ED.]
-----
There is here an interposition of Providence, before which we should
all of us offer up our own thanksgivings. For my part, I am deeply
touched by it; I feel I know not what sacred thrill! My gratitude is
the more keen since, if I confront the Hindu tradition with the
occult theosophic traditions of Judeo-Christianity, from its origin
to our own day, through the Holy Kabbala, I can recognise clearly
the agreement of the teaching of the “Brothers” with the esoteric
teaching of Moses, Jesus, and Saint Paul.
People are sure to say: “You abase the West before the East, Europe
before Asia, France before India, Christianity before Buddhism. You
are betraying at once your Country and your Church, your quality as
a Frenchman, and your character as a Priest.” Pardon me, gentlemen!
I abase nothing whatever; I betray nothing at all! A member of
Humanity, I work for the happiness of Humanity; a son of France, I
work for the glory of France; a Priest of Jesus Christ, I work for
the triumph of Jesus Christ. You shall be forced to confess it;
suspend, therefore, your anathemas, and listen, if you please!
We are traversing a frightful crisis. For the last hundred years we
have been trying to round the _Cape of Social Tempests_, which I
spoke of before; we have been enduring, without intermission, the
fires, the lightnings the thunders, and the earthquakes of an
unparalleled hurricane, and we feel, clearly enough, that everything
is giving way around us; under our feet and over our heads! Neither
pontiffs, nor savants, nor politicians, nor statesmen, show
themselves capable of snatching us from the abysses towards which we
are being, one is tempted to say, driven by a fatality! If, then, I
discover, in the distant East, through the darkness of this tempest,
the blessed star which alone can guide us, amidst so many shoals,
safe and sound to the longed-for haven of safety, am I wanting in
patriotism and religion because I announce to my brethren the rising
of this beneficent star?...
I know as well as you that it was said to Peter: “I _will_ give thee
the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, that thou mayest open its gates
upon earth”; yes, doubtless, but note the tense of this verb: I
_will give_ thee: in the future. Has the Christian Pontiff already
received them—those magic Keys? Before replying look and see what
Rome has made of Christendom; see the lamentable state of Europe;
not only engaged in open war with foreign nationalities, but also
exhausting herself in fratricidal wars and preparations to
consummate her own destruction; behold everywhere Christian against
Christian, church against church, priesthood against priesthood,
class against class, school against school, and, often in the same
family, brother against brother, sons against their father, the
father against his sons! What a spectacle! And a Pope presides over
it! And while, all around, men prepare for a general slaughter, he,
the Pope, thinks only of one thing—of his temporal domain, of his
material possessions! Think you that this state of things forms the
Kingdom of Heaven, and say you still that the Pontiff of Rome has
already received the Keys thereof?
It is written, perchance, in the decrees of Providence, that these
mysterious Keys shall be brought to the brethren of the West by the
“Brothers” of the East.... Such is, indeed, the expectation of all
the nations; the prophetic East sighs for the tenth incarnation of
Vishnu, which shall be the crown of all the Avatars which have
preceded it, and the Apocalypse, on its side, announces the
appearance of the _White Horse_ which is the symbol of the Christ
risen, glorious and triumphant before the eyes of all the peoples of
the earth.
This is how I, priest of Jesus Christ, betray Jesus Christ, when I
acclaim the wisdom of the Mahatmas and their mission in the West!
I have spoken of the opportuneness of the hour chosen by them for
coming to our help. I must insist upon this point.
[_The Abbé then enforces his argument by references to the position
of Modern Science, and concludes_:—TR.]
“The phenomena of motion,” by means of which men of science claim to
explain everything, explain nothing at all, because the very cause
of that motion is unknown to our physicists as they themselves
admit. “Consider, say to us the Mahatmas by the mouth of their
Adepts, that behind each physical energy is hidden another energy,
which itself serves as envelope to a spiritual force which is the
living soul of every manifested force.”
And thus Nature offers us an infinite series of forces one within
another, serving mutually as sheaths, which, as d’Alembert
suspected, produce all sensible phenomena and reach all points of
the circumference starting from a central point, which is God....
II.
I can now, after these preliminaries, give an example of the
transformation which, thanks to the Mahatmas, will soon take place
in the teaching of the Christian Church. I will take particularly
the dogma of the _Creation_, informing my readers that they will
find in a book I am preparing, _The New Heavens and the New Earth_,
an analogous work on all the dogmas of the Catholic faith.
Matter exists in states of infinite variety, and, sometimes, even of
opposite appearance. The world is constituted in two poles, the
North or Spiritual, and the South or Material pole: these two poles
correspond perfectly and differ only in form, that is, in
appearance.
Regarded from above, as the Easterns regard it, the universal
substance presents the aspect of a spiritual or divine _emanation_;
looked at from below, as the Westerns are in the habit of viewing
it, it offers, on the contrary, the aspect of a material creation.
One sees at once the difference which must exist between the two
intellectualities and, consequently, between the two civilisations
of the East and the West. Yet there is no more error in the Genesis
of Moses, which is that of the Christian teaching, than there is in
the Genesis of the Mahatmas, which is that of the Buddhist doctrine.
The one and the other of these Geneses are absolutely founded on one
and the same reality. Whether one descends or ascends the scale of
being, one only traverses, in the East from above downwards, in the
West from below upwards, the same ladder of essences, more or less
spiritualised, more or less materialised, according as one
approaches to, or recedes from, _Pure Spirit_, which is God.
It was, therefore, not worth while to fulminate so much on one side
or the other, here, against the theory of _emanation_, there,
against the theory of _Creation_. One always comes back to the
principle of Hermes Trismegistus: the universe is dual, though
formed of a single substance. The Kabbalists knew it well, and it
was taught long ago in the Egyptian sanctuaries, as the occultists
have never ceased to repeat it in the temples of India.
It will soon be demonstrated, I hope, by scientific experiments such
as those of Mr. William Crookes, the Academician, that everywhere,
throughout all nature, _spirit_ and _matter_ are not _two_ but
_one_, and that they nowhere offer a real division in life. Under
every physical force there is a spiritual or a psychic force: in the
heart of the minutest atom is hidden a vital soul, the presence of
which has been perfectly determined by Claude Bernard in germs
imperceptible to the naked eye. “This soul, human, animal, vegetal
or mineral, is but a ray lent by the universal soul to every object
manifested in the Kosmos.”
“Corporeal man and the sensible universe, says the theosophical
doctrine, are but the appearance imparted to them by the cohesion of
the interatomic or inter-astral forces which constitute both
exteriorly. The visible side of a being is an ever-changing Maya.”
The language of St. Paul is in no way different: “The aspect of the
world,” he says, “is a passing vision, an image which passes and
renews itself continually—_transit figura hujus mundi_.”
“The real man, or the _microcosm_—and one can say as much of the
_macrocosm_—is an astral force which reveals itself through this
physical appearance, and which, having existed before the birth of
this form, does not share its fate at the hour of death: surviving
its destruction. The material form cannot subsist without the
spiritual force which sustains it; but the latter is independent of
the former, for form is created by spirit, and not spirit by form.”
This theory is word for word that of the “Brothers” and the Adepts,
at the same time it is that of the Kabbalists and the Christians of
the School of Origen, and the Johannine Church.
There could not be a more perfect agreement. Transfer this teaching
to the genesis of the Kosmos and you have the secret of the
formation of the World; at the same time you discover the profound
meaning of the saying of St. Paul: “The invisible things of God are
made visible to the eye of man through the visible things of the
creation,” a saying so well translated by Joseph de Maistre by the
following: “The world is a vast system of invisible things, visibly
organised.”
The whole of the Kosmos is like a two-faced medal of which both
faces are alike. The materialists know only the lower side, while
the occultists see it from both sides at once; from the front and
from the back. It is always nature, and the same nature, but _natura
naturata_ from below, _natura naturans_ from above; here,
intelligent cause; there, brute effect; spiritual above, corporeal
below, etherealised at the North, concreted at the South Pole.
The distinction accepted everywhere in the West down to our own day,
as essential and radical, between spirit on the one hand and matter
on the other, is no longer sustainable. The progress of science,
spurred on as it will be by Hindu ideas, will soon force the last
followers of this infantile belief to abandon it as ridiculous....
Yes, all, absolutely all in the world is life, but life differently
organised and variously manifested through phenomena which vary
infinitely from the most spiritualised beings, such as the Angels,
as well known to Buddhists as to Christians, though called by other
names, down to the most solidified of beings, such as stones and
metals. In the bosom of the latter, sleep, in a cataleptic
condition, milliards of vital elementary spirits. These latter only
await, to thrill into activity, the stroke of the pick or hammer to
which they will owe their deliverance and their escape from the
_limbus_, of which the Hindu doctrine speaks as well as the
Catholic. Here lies, for these souls of life, the starting point of
the _Resurrection_ and of the _Ascension_, taught equally by both
the Eastern and the Western traditions, but not understood among us.
[_The Abbé sketches in eloquent words the development of these
“spirits of the elements,” and then continues_:—TR.]
But as they ascend, so the spirits can also descend, for they are
always free to transfigure themselves in the divine light, or to
bury themselves in the satanic shadow of error and evil. Hence,
while time is time, “these ceaseless tears and gnashings of teeth”
of which the gospel Parables speak metaphorically, and which will
last as long as shall last the elaboration of the social atoms
destined for the collective composition of the beatific Nirvana.
Nature is ever placing under our eyes examples of organic
transformations, analagous to those I am speaking of, as if to aid
us in comprehending our own destiny. But it seems that many men
“have eyes in order not to see,” as Jesus said. See how in order to
remove these cataracts, science, even in the West, constantly
approaching more and more that of the East, is at work producing in
its turn phenomena, which corroborate at once the Parables of the
Gospels and the teachings of nature. I will not speak of the
Salpêtrière and the marvels of hypnotism in the hands of M. Charcot
and his numerous disciples throughout the whole world. There are
things which strike me even more.
M. Pictet, at Geneva, is creating diamonds with air and light. This
should not astonish those who know that our coal mines are nothing
but “stored-up sunlight.” With an even more marvellous industry, do
not the flowers extract from the atmosphere the luminous substance
of which they weave their fine and joyous garments? And “all that is
sown in the earth under a material form, does it not rise under a
spiritual form,” as St. Paul says?
The glorious entities, which we call celestial spirits, have
themselves an organic form. It is defined in the canons of our
dogma, whatever the ignorance-mongers of ultramontanism may pretend.
God alone has no body, God alone is _pure Spirit_—and even to speak
thus we must consider the Deity apart from the person of Jesus
Christ, for in the “_Word made flesh_” God dwells _corporeally_,
according to the true and beautiful saying of St. Paul.
And it is because God has no body that he is present everywhere in
the infinite, under the veils of cosmic light and ether, which serve
as his garment and under the electric, magnetic, interatomic,
interplanetary, interstellar and sound fluids, which serve him as
vehicles....
And it is also because God has no created form that the Kabbala
could, without error, call him _Non-Being_. Hegel probably felt this
esoteric truth when he spoke, in his heavy and cumbrous language, of
the equivalence of Being and Non-Being.
All visible forms are thus the product, at the same time as they are
the garment and the manifestation, of spiritual forces. All sensible
order is, in reality, an _organic concretion_, a sort of living
_crystallisation_ of intelligent powers fallen from the state of
_spirituality_ into the state of materiality; in other words, fallen
from the North to the South pole of nature, in consequence of a
catastrophe called by Holy Scripture the _Fall from Eden_. This
cataclysm was the punishment of a frightful crime, of an audacious
revolt spoken of in the traditions of all Temples and called in our
dogma _original sin_. The primary priesthood of the Christian church
has hitherto lacked the light needed to explain this biological
phenomenon, which is an ascertained fact of physiology and
sociology, as I hope to prove. Questioned on this point, the priests
have always replied: It is a mystery. Now there are no mysteries
save for ignorance, and the Christ announced that “every hidden
thing should be brought to light, and proclaimed on the house-tops.”
This is why so many new lights, coming from the East and elsewhere,
enter scientifically, in our day, into the Christian mind. Glory to
the Theosophists, glory to the Adepts, glory to the Kabbalists,
glory above all to the Hermetists everywhere, glory to those new
missionaries whose coming M. de Maistre foresaw, and whom M. de
Saint-Ives d’Alveydre lately hailed as the elect of God, charged by
him to establish a communion of knowledge and of love between all
the religious centres of the earth!
Priests of the Roman Catholic Church, we shall enter in our turn
this wise communion of saints, on the day when we shall consent to
read anew our sacred texts, no longer in “the dead letter” of their
exotericism, but in the “living spirit” of their esotericism, and in
the threefold sense which Christian tradition has always canonically
recognised in them.
L’ABBE ROCA (_Chanoine_).
Chateau de Pallestres, France.
[This is a very optimistic way of putting it, and if realized
would be like pouring the elixir of life into the decrepit body of
the Latin Church. But what will his Holiness the Pope say to
it?—ED.]
THE GREAT QUEST.
CONTINUED from the December (1887) number.
The Religionist, of course, denies that man can become a god or ever
realise in himself the attributes of Deity. He may recognise the
necessity of re-incarnation for ordinary worldly men, and even for
those who are not constant in their detachment and devotion, but he
denies the necessity for that series of trials and initiations which
must cover, at all events, more than one life-time—probably many. It
would appear as if the theory of evolution might be called in, to
aid this latter view. If it is acknowledged that we, as individuals,
have been for ever whirling on the wheel of conditioned existence;
if at the beginning of each manwantara the divine monad which
through the beginningless past has inhabited in succession the
vegetable, animal, and human forms, takes to itself a house of flesh
in exact accordance with previous Karma, it will be seen that (while
inhabiting a human body) during no moment in the past eternity have
we been nearer the attainment of Nirvana than at any other. If then
there is no thinkable connection between evolution and Nirvana, to
imagine that evolution, through stages of Adeptship, conducts to
Nirvana, is a delusion. “It is purely a question of divine
grace”—says the Religionist. If in answer to this view, it is
contended that the light of the Logos is bound, eventually, to reach
and enlighten every individual, and that the steady progress to
perfection through Chelaship and Adeptship would, therefore, be a
logical conclusion, it is objected that to assert that the light of
the Logos must eventually reach and enlighten all, would involve the
ultimate extinction of the objective Universe, which is admitted to
be without beginning or end, although it passes through alternate
periods of manifestation and non-manifestation. If to escape from
this untenable position we postulate fresh emanations of Deity into
the lowest organisms at the beginning of each manwantara, to take
the place of those who pass away into Nirvana, we are met by other
difficulties. Firstly, putting out of consideration the fact that
such a supposition is expressly denied by what is acknowledged as
revelation, the projection into the evolutionary process of a monad
free from all Karma, makes the law of Karma inoperative, for the
monad’s first association with Karma remains unexplained; and also
it becomes impossible to say what the monad was, and what was the
mode of its being prior to the projection into evolution. It must be
noted that although the law of Karma does not explain _why_ we are,
yet it satisfactorily shows _how_ we are what we are; and this is
the _raison d’être_ of the law. But the above theory takes away its
occupation. It makes Karma and the monad independent realities,
joined together by the creative energy of the Deity, while Karma
ought to be regarded as a mode of existence of the monad—which mode
ceases to be when another mode, called liberation, takes its place.
Secondly, if the monad in attaining liberation only attains to what
it was before its association with Karma, _à quoi bon_ the whole
process; while, if it is stated that the monad was altogether
non-existent before its projection, the Deity becomes responsible
for all our sufferings and sins, and we fall into either the
Calvinist doctrine of predestination as popularly conceived, or into
the still more blasphemous doctrine of the worshippers of Ahriman,
besides incurring many logical difficulties. The teaching of our
eastern philosophers is that the real interior nature of the monad
is the same as the real interior essence of the Godhead, but from
beginningless past time it has a transitory nature, considered
illusive, and the mode in which this illusion works is known by the
name of Karma.
But were we not led astray in the first instance? Ought we not to
have acquiesced in the first above given definition of the theory of
evolution? The premiss was satisfactory enough—the mistake was in
allowing the religionist’s deduction as a logical necessity. When
the religionist states that there is no thinkable connection between
evolution and Nirvana, he merely postulates for the word evolution a
more limited scope than that which the Occultist attaches to it,
viz., the development of soul as well as that of mere form. He is
indeed right in stating that the natural man, while he remains such,
will never attain the ultimate goal of Being. True it is, for the
Occultist as for the religionist, that, to free himself from the
fatal circle of rebirths, he must “burst the shell which holds him
in darkness—tear the veil that hides him from the eternal.” The
religionist may call this the act of divine grace; but it may be
quite as correctly described as the “awakening of the slumbering God
within.” But the error of the religionist is surely in mistaking the
first glimmer of the divine consciousness for a guarantee of final
emancipation, at, say, the next death of the body, instead of merely
the first step of a probationary stage in the long vista of work for
Humanity on the higher planes of Being!
To provide ourselves with an analogy from the very theory of
Evolution which we have been discussing, is it not more logical to
imagine that, in the same way in which we see stretched at our feet
the infinite gradations of existence, through the lower animal,
vegetable, and mineral kingdoms—between which indeed, thanks to the
recent investigations of scientific men—there is no longer
recognised to be any distinct line of demarcation—so the heights
(necessarily hidden from our view) which still remain to be scaled
by us in our upward progress to Divinity, should be similarly filled
with the gradations of the unseen hierarchy of Being? And that, as
we have evolved during millions of centuries of earth-life through
these lower forms up to the position we now occupy, so may we, if we
choose, start on a new and better road of progress, apart from the
ordinary evolution of Humanity, but in which there must also be
innumerable grades?
That there will be progress for Humanity as a whole, in the
direction of greater spirituality, there is no doubt, but that
progress will be partaken of by continually decreasing numbers.
Whether the weeding out takes place at the middle of the “great
fifth round,” or whether it be continually taking place during the
evolutionary process, a ray of light is here thrown on the statement
met with in all the Bibles of Humanity as to the great difficulty of
the attainment. “For straight is the gate, and narrow is the way
that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it; but wide is
the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth unto destruction, and
many there be that go in thereat.” This and parallel passages
doubtless refer to the weeding out of those who are unfit to
continue the progress, on which the more spiritualized Humanity will
then have entered. The most vivid picture of the comparative handful
of elect souls, who are fit to achieve the great quest, will be
obtained by contemplating the fact already stated, that the
objective universe, with its myriads of inhabitants, will never, in
the vast abysses of the future, cease to be; and that the great
majority of humanity—the millions of millions—will thus for ever
whirl on the wheel of birth and death.
But though Nature may give us an almost infinite number of chances
to attempt the great quest, it were madness to put by the chance
offered now, and allow the old sense-attractions to regain their
dominance, for it must be remembered that the barbarism and anarchy
which every civilisation must eventually lapse into, are periods of
spiritual deadness, and that it is when “the flower of civilisation
has blown to its full, and when its petals are but slackly held
together,” that the goad within men causes them to lift their eyes
to the sunlit mountains, and “to recognise in the bewildering
glitter the outlines of the Gates of Gold.”
There are no doubt realms in the Devaloka where the bliss of heaven
may be realised by those who aspire to the selfish rewards of
personal satisfaction, but these cease to exist with the end of the
manwantara, and with the beginning of the next the devotee will
again have to endure incarceration in flesh. The eighth chapter of
the Bhagavad Gita does indeed state that there is a path to Nirvana
through the Devaloka, and amongst the countless possibilities of the
Infinite who shall assert that this is not so? but the context
surely implies such a detachment and devotion through life as is
difficult for us even to contemplate, much less to realize.
However distant, therefore, may appear to us the achievement of the
great quest, when we consider how much more closely we are allied to
the animal than to the God, it must necessarily seem an infinitely
far-off goal, but though we may have to pass through many life-times
before we reach it, our most earnest prayer should be, that we may
never lose sight of that celestial goal, for surely it is the one
thing worthy of achievement!
To many the foregoing may appear as mere speculations, and the
firmest faith indeed can scarcely call itself knowledge, but,
however necessary the complete knowledge may be, we may at least
hope that its partial possession is adequate to the requirements of
the occasion. To us whose feet tread, often wearily, towards the
path of the great quest, and whose eyes strain blindly through the
mists that wrap us round, steady perseverance and omnipotent hope
must be the watch-words—perseverance to struggle on, though the
fiends of the lower self may make every step a battle, and hope that
at any moment the entrance to the path may be found.
As an example of these two qualities, and also because all words
that strike a high key are bound to awaken responsive echoes in
noble hearts, let us conclude with the following extract from the
Ramayana:—
“Thus spoke Rama. Virtue is a service man owes himself, and though
there were no heaven nor any God to rule the world, it were not less
the binding law of life. It is man’s privilege to know the right and
follow it. Betray and persecute me brother men! Pour out your rage
on me O malignant devils! Smile, or watch my agony in cold disdain
ye blissful Gods! Earth, hell, heaven combine your might to crush
me—I will still hold fast by this inheritance! My strength is
nothing—time can shake and cripple it; my youth is transient—already
grief has withered up my days; my heart—alas! it is well-nigh broken
now. Anguish may crush it utterly, and life may fail; but even so my
soul that has not tripped shall triumph, and dying, give the lie to
soulless destiny that dares to boast itself man’s master.”
“PILGRIM.”
[Illustration: decorative description]
WHISPER OF A ROSE.
Behold me! an offspring of Darkness and Light.
With soft, tender petals of radiant white,
With golden heart mystery, full of perfume
That is Soul of my Breath—the Secret of Bloom.
Infinity’s centre is heart of the rose,
And th’ breath of Creation its perfume that flows
Through ages and eons and time yet untold—
But the _Soul_ of the _Breath_ I may not unfold.
MORA.
THE SECLUSION OF THE ADEPT.
[CONTINUATION OF “COMMENTS ON LIGHT ON THE PATH,” BY THE AUTHOR.]
“Before the voice can speak in the presence of the Masters, it
must have lost the power to wound.”
Those who give a merely passing and superficial attention to the
subject of occultism—and their name is Legion—constantly inquire
why, if adepts in life exist, they do not appear in the world and
show their power. That the chief body of these wise ones should be
understood to dwell beyond the fastnesses of the Himalayas, appears
to be a sufficient proof that they are only figures of straw.
Otherwise, why place them so far off?
Unfortunately, Nature has done this and not personal choice or
arrangement. There are certain spots on the earth where the advance
of “civilisation” is unfelt, and the nineteenth century fever is
kept at bay. In these favoured places there is always time, always
opportunity, for the realities of life; they are not crowded out by
the doings of an inchoate, money-loving, pleasure seeking society.
While there are adepts upon the earth, the earth must preserve to
them places of seclusion. This is a fact in nature which is only an
external expression of a profound fact in super-nature.
The demand of the neophyte remains unheard until the voice in which
it is uttered has lost the power to wound. This is because the
divine-astral life[128] is a place in which order reigns, just as it
does in natural life. There is, of course, always the centre and the
circumference as there is in nature. Close to the central heart of
life, on any plane, there is knowledge, there order reigns
completely; and chaos makes dim and confused the outer margin of the
circle. In fact, life in every form bears a more or less strong
resemblance to a philosophic school. There are always the devotees
of knowledge who forget their own lives in their pursuit of it;
there are always the flippant crowd who come and go——Of such,
Epictetus said that it was as easy to teach them philosophy as to
eat custard with a fork. The same state exists in the super-astral
life; and the adept has an even deeper and more profound seclusion
there in which to dwell. This place of retreat is so safe, so
sheltered, that no sound which has discord in it can reach his ears.
Why should this be, will be asked at once, if he is a being of such
great powers as those say who believe in his existence? The answer
seems very apparent. He serves humanity and identifies himself with
the whole world; he is ready to make vicarious sacrifice for it at
any moment—_by living not by dying for it_. Why should he not die
for it? Because he is part of the great whole, and one of the most
valuable parts of it. Because he lives under laws of order which he
does not desire to break. His life is not his own, but that of the
forces which work behind him. He is the flower of humanity, the
bloom which contains the divine seed. He is, in his own person, a
treasure of the universal nature, which is guarded and made safe in
order that the fruition shall be perfected. It is only at definite
periods of the world’s history that he is allowed to go among the
herd of men as their redeemer. But for those who have the power to
separate themselves from this herd he is always at hand. And for
those who are strong enough to conquer the vices of the personal
human nature, as set forth in these four rules, he is consciously at
hand, easily recognised, ready to answer.
-----
Footnote 128:
Of course every occultist knows by reading Eliphas Levi and other
authors that the “astral” plane is a plane of unequalised forces,
and that a state of confusion necessarily prevails. But this does
not apply to the “divine astral” plane, which is a plane where
wisdom, and therefore order, prevails.
-----
But this conquering of self implies a destruction of qualities which
most men regard as not only indestructible but desirable. The “power
to wound” includes much that men value, not only in themselves, but
in others. The instinct of self-defence and of self-preservation is
part of it; the idea that one has any right or rights, either as
citizen, or man, or individual, the pleasant consciousness of
self-respect and of virtue. These are hard sayings to many; yet they
are true. For these words that I am writing now, and those which I
have written on this subject, are not in any sense my own. They are
drawn from the traditions of the lodge of the Great Brotherhood,
which was once the secret splendour of Egypt. The rules written in
its ante-chamber were the same as those now written in the
ante-chamber of existing schools. Through all time the wise men have
lived apart from the mass. And even when some temporary purpose or
object induces one of them to come into the midst of human life, his
seclusion and safety is preserved as completely as ever. It is part
of his inheritance, part of his position, he has an actual title to
it, and can no more put it aside than the Duke of Westminster can
say he does not choose to be the Duke of Westminster. In the various
great cities of the world an adept lives for a while from time to
time, or perhaps only passes through; but all are occasionally aided
by the actual power and presence of one of these men. Here in
London, as in Paris and St. Petersburgh, there are men high in
development. But they are only known as mystics by those who have
the power to recognise; the power given by the conquering of self.
Otherwise how could they exist, even for an hour, in such a mental
and psychic atmosphere as is created by the confusion and disorder
of a city? Unless protected and made safe their own growth would be
interfered with, their work injured. And the neophyte may meet an
adept in the flesh, may live in the same house with him, and yet be
unable to recognise him, and unable to make his own voice heard by
him. For no nearness in space, no closeness of relations, no daily
intimacy, can do away with the inexorable laws which give the adept
his seclusion. No voice penetrates to his inner hearing till it has
become a divine voice, a voice which gives no utterance to the cries
of self. Any lesser appeal would be as useless, as much a waste of
energy and power, as for mere children who are learning their
alphabet to be taught it by a professor of philology. Until a man
has become, in heart and spirit, a disciple, he has no existence for
those who are teachers of disciples. And he becomes this by one
method only—the surrender of his personal humanity.
For the voice to have lost the power to wound, a man must have
reached that point where he sees himself only as one of the vast
multitudes that live; one of the sands washed hither and thither by
the sea of vibratory existence. It is said that every grain of sand
in the ocean bed does, in its turn, get washed up on to the shore
and lie for a moment in the sunshine. So with human beings, they are
driven hither and thither by a great force, and each, in his turn,
finds the sunrays on him. When a man is able to regard his own life
as part of a whole like this he will no longer struggle in order to
obtain anything for himself. This is the surrender of personal
rights. The ordinary man expects, not to take equal fortunes with
the rest of the world, but in some points, about which he cares, to
fare better than the others. The disciple does not expect this.
Therefore, though he be, like Epictetus, a chained slave, he has no
word to say about it. He knows that the wheel of life turns
ceaselessly. Burne Jones has shown it in his marvellous picture—the
wheel turns, and on it are bound the rich and the poor, the great
and the small—each has his moment of good fortune when the wheel
brings him uppermost—the King rises and falls, the poet is _fêted_
and forgotten, the slave is happy and afterwards discarded. Each in
his turn is crushed as the wheel turns on. The disciple knows that
this is so, and though it is his duty to make the utmost of the life
that is his, he neither complains of it nor is elated by it, nor
does he complain against the better fortune of others. All alike, as
he well knows, are but learning a lesson; and he smiles at the
socialist and the reformer who endeavour by sheer force to
re-arrange circumstances which arise out of the forces of human
nature itself. This is but kicking against the pricks; a waste of
life and energy.
In realising this a man surrenders his imagined individual rights,
of whatever sort. That takes away one keen sting which is common to
all ordinary men.
When the disciple has fully recognised that the very thought of
individual rights is only the outcome of the venomous quality in
himself, that it is the hiss of the snake of self which poisons with
its sting his own life and the lives of those about him, then he is
ready to take part in a yearly ceremony which is open to all
neophytes who are prepared for it. All weapons of defence and
offence are given up; all weapons of mind and heart, and brain, and
spirit. Never again can another man be regarded as a person who can
be criticised or condemned; never again can the neophyte raise his
voice in self-defence or excuse. From that ceremony he returns into
the world as helpless, as unprotected, as a newborn child. That,
indeed, is what he is. He has begun to be born again on to the
higher plane of life, that breezy and well-lit plateau from whence
the eyes see intelligently and regard the world with a new insight.
I have said, a little way back, that after parting with the sense of
individual rights, the disciple must part also with the sense of
self-respect and of virtue. This may sound a terrible doctrine, yet
all occultists know well that it is not a doctrine, but a fact. He
who thinks himself holier than another, he who has any pride in his
own exemption from vice or folly, he who believes himself wise, or
in any way superior to his fellow men, is incapable of discipleship.
A man must become as a little child before he can enter into the
kingdom of heaven.
Virtue and wisdom are sublime things; but if they create pride and a
consciousness of separateness from the rest of humanity in the mind
of a man, then they are only the snakes of self re-appearing in a
finer form. At any moment he may put on his grosser shape and sting
as fiercely as when he inspired the actions of a murderer who kills
for gain or hatred, or a politician who sacrifices the mass for his
own or his party’s interests.
In fact, to have lost the power to wound, implies that the snake is
not only scotched, but killed. When it is merely stupefied or lulled
to sleep it awakes again and the disciple uses his knowledge and his
power for his own ends, and is a pupil of the many masters of the
black art, for the road to destruction is very broad and easy, and
the way can be found blindfold. That it is the way to destruction is
evident, for when a man begins to live for self he narrows his
horizon steadily till at last the fierce driving inwards leaves him
but the space of a pin’s-head to dwell in. We have all seen this
phenomenon occur in ordinary life. A man who becomes selfish
isolates himself, grows less interesting and less agreeable to
others. The sight is an awful one, and people shrink from a very
selfish person at last, as from a beast of prey. How much more awful
is it when it occurs on the more advanced plane of life, with the
added powers of knowledge, and through the greater sweep of
successive incarnations!
Therefore I say, pause and think well upon the threshold. For if the
demand of the neophyte is made without the complete purification, it
will not penetrate the seclusion of the divine adept, but will evoke
the terrible forces which attend upon the black side of our human
nature.
. . . . . .
“Before the soul can stand in the presence of the Masters its feet
must be washed in the blood of the heart.”
The word soul, as used here, means the divine soul, or “starry
spirit.”
“To be able to stand is to have confidence;” and to have confidence
means that the disciple is sure of himself, that he has surrendered
his emotions, his very self, even his humanity; that he is incapable
of fear and unconscious of pain; that his whole consciousness is
centred in the divine life, which is expressed symbolically by the
term “the Masters;” that he has neither eyes, nor ears, nor speech,
nor power, save in and for the divine ray on which his highest sense
has touched. Then is he fearless, free from suffering, free from
anxiety or dismay; his soul stands without shrinking or desire of
postponement, in the full blaze of the divine light which penetrates
through and through his being. Then he has come into his inheritance
and can claim his kinship with the teachers of men; he is upright,
he has raised his head, he breathes the same air that they do.
But before it is in any way possible for him to do this, the feet of
the soul must be washed in the blood of the heart.
The sacrifice, or surrender of the heart of man, and its emotions,
is the first of the rules; it involves the “attaining of an
equilibrium which cannot be shaken by personal emotion.” This is
done by the stoic philosopher; he, too, stands aside and looks
equably upon his own sufferings, as well as on those of others.
In the same way that “tears” in the language of occultists expresses
the soul of emotion, not its material appearance, so blood
expresses, not that blood which is an essential of physical life,
but the vital creative principle in man’s nature, which drives him
into human life in order to experience pain and pleasure, joy and
sorrow. When he has let the blood flow from the heart he stands
before the Masters as a pure spirit which no longer wishes to
incarnate for the sake of emotion and experience. Through great
cycles of time successive incarnations in gross matter may yet be
his lot; but he no longer desires them, the crude wish to live has
departed from him. When he takes upon him man’s form in the flesh he
does it in the pursuit of a divine object, to accomplish the work of
“the Masters,” and for no other end. He looks neither for pleasure
nor pain, asks for no heaven, and fears no hell; yet he has entered
upon a great inheritance which is not so much a compensation for
these things surrendered, as a state which simply blots out the
memory of them. He lives now not in the world, but with it; his
horizon has extended itself to the width of the whole universe.
Δ
THE WHITE MONK.
By the Author of the “Professor of Alchemy.”
PART I.—RALPH’S STORY.
“It was after this manner, as they say,” began Ralph, swinging
himself on to a bench and pouring out for himself a tankard of our
good home-brewed, as I crouched in the hay opposite to him. “Two
centuries agone and thirty years or so, there dwelt in this very
house which I serve—and which one day, young master, you shall
rule!—Sir Gilbert de Troyes, your ancestor, and his lady, and four
fair sons, and a lovely daughter. Of these sons, twain were at the
wars, one was in his nurse’s lap, and another was gone to Italy, to
finish his studies at Parma. Thus did the old nobles use to ruin
their sons!
“This young foregoer of yours (a goodly youth!) fell in with the
usual temptations of Satan. He held, with the poets, that the world
is the best book for men to read; and he studied it, I ween, with
diligence. Now there was a certain damsel, winsome enough, I doubt
not, in the Italian style, with black hair and the devil—save the
mark!—in her wandering eyes. So it came to pass that Master Gilbert,
younger, wooed her for his bride, like an honest gentleman, as the
old tales say he was; and so great is the power of one upright soul
amongst others, that the young witch—she was but young, poor soul!
and teachable—was charmed herself from her Italian ways, and vowed
to love and follow only him; and the day before their marriage, she
was walking with him in the streets of Parma, by night—for Master
Gilbert had a governor along with him in Italy, who must be
hoodwinked—when there chanced to espy them one Pietro Rinucci, a
clerkly fellow (with a curse upon him!) who was even studying also
at Parma, and who loved the Italian witch himself.
“This Rinucci had been favoured of the girl, and only when she saw
the Englishman, with his blue eyes and his honest ways, had she
scorned her countryman and left him. Rinucci, after the manner of
his race-fellows, then dogged her steps, tracked her to her early
meetings with young Gilbert de Troyes, who was his unsuspecting
friend, and listened to their innocent ravings of love conjoined to
virtue.
“Afterward, had he gone to the damsel’s poor lodging and there, with
Heaven knows what direful threats! conjured her to renounce her
honest lover and return to himself. The signorina was not like an
English girl—she neither stormed nor yielded—she cajoled and blinded
him. ‘If he would go, she would consider; perchance she did not love
the Briton truly; perchance it was a whim; she knew not. Might she
but think? it was a whirl, and her heart, alas! was o’er
susceptible; ’twould pass; he must leave her now, at least, and she
would see. Meantime Pietruccino should wear this pretty crimson
ribbon of hers till they met again.’ After even such words, and for
a kiss, he left her. But the cunning villain was more than her
match, and waited all the next day round the corners, whence he
could see her goings out and comings in. He saw her glide to her
trysting-place; he followed cautiously; he heard her give a
signalling whispered call; he heard it answered by a short, low
whistle; young Gilbert de Troyes swung merrily round the corner and
fell into his Italian sweetheart’s arms.
“He met his death, poor, noble young fellow! ’Tis an old tale
repeated. I need scarce have wasted all these words upon it—but that
one’s heart must needs ache at these things. In the course of nature
that Italian snake, Rinucci, was bound to finish his rival there and
then. So he got behind the unwary schoolboy—for the lad was, indeed,
little more—and stabbed him, all too deep, in the back of the neck.
“Folk say Rinucci triumphed as he set his foot on his dying
college-mate, and wiped his dagger, with a laugh, before the
horror-stricken girl. Myself can scarcely believe it; he was too
young in murder then for that.
“Be this as it may, certain it is that he dragged away the mourning
damsel from the corpse of the man who would have saved her soul, and
took her back to himself.
“A sickening story, boy. Wilt thou have more, young master? Yea?
Why, there is worse to come. For Mistress Italiana—no tradition
tells her name—was spirited as any gipsy woman, and full of crafty
lore, such as her race delight in. She broke her heart over her
English lover’s corpse; but she had still the Southern amusement
left her of revenge. She concocted an evil greenish powder, and
coloured Signor Pietro’s sweetmeats with it.
“The fellow ate largely, praising the daintiness of the confection.
It was deadly enough, I daresay, in all conscience, but it killed
him not. These reptiles live on poison; morally, ’tis certain,
belike, and also physically it agreed with him. Perchance he may
have felt a qualm or two, though tradition says nought of it.
Anyway, the next fytte of this story shows us the mysterious
disappearance of the Italian girl, of whom no word hath ever since
been told.
“She left behind her, whether willingly or no, a quantity of the
false seasoning, which Master Pietro had caused to be analysed, and
which he seems to have carefully preserved.
“Some time after these events, we find Signor Pietro Rinucci entered
into the Monastery of Dominicans at Brescia, a repentant neophyte.
He had turned remorseful, no doubt, and in good time! The fellow had
ever strong imaginations. He was received in due time as a brother;
wore the garb of the Order, and cast his eyes down. Tradition saith
he was in great turmoil of soul at this time—judge for yourself,
young master, by what followed.
“One fine morning Brother Petrus was missing from his small, damp
cell, and none could tell what had become of him. None, that is,
save the poverty-stricken ropemaker who had supplied him with cords
to scale the monastery walls; and his discretion had been paid for.
The fact being, I doubt not, that discipline being ever repugnant to
our young bravo’s manners, he had fled it.
“In the meantime, the news of Gilbert de Troyes’ death had been
brought to these very doors, and certainly the grooms who then
tended the good horses of your ancestors must, even in this
saddle-room, have spent their sorrow in each other’s company. But
Ambrose de Troyes, newly back from the wars, and second-born of the
family, rose in his wrath, and swore to avenge his brother. For all
might know that the death blow had been dealt by one Pietro Rinucci,
fellow-scholar of Gilbert’s, whose absence afterward from the
University had puzzled the doctors and caused inquisition into the
matter.
“So away went Ambrose, the soldier, to Parma. And mind ye, Ambrose
was no careless school-boy, no mean foe to a man, but a great,
staunch fellow who had seen service, and who was, moreover, by
Nature something stern and hard of purpose.
“But at Parma they told him Rinucci was escaped into a monastery
which they named, and showed a painted portrait of him, and did so
minutely, point by point, describe the man, that Ambrose swore he
should know him, should he meet him in Heaven. And that was a strong
assertion, note ye.
“Well, Ambrose journeyed on towards the secluded spot where the
Monastery of Dominicans lay, and was enforced to rest one night at
the village of Santa Rosa on his road. Having stabled his steed,
refreshed it and himself, and practised his arm some moments with
the good sharp sword, he slung the weapon round him and went forth
for a stroll to pass the time.
“He came to the equivalent of what would be to us in England an
ale-house, but some way out of the village, meet for travellers to
pause and rest a moment on their way. Ambrose went in to look about
him and ordered drink for himself. He lacked a companion to pledge,
but looking round the little room saw no one but a moody man who
seemed lost in thought, though enjoying some passing sour wine.
Ambrose himself could stomach neither the fare nor the company, so
he quickly got him on his way a little further; when, meeting with a
simple shrine to the Virgin, the God-fearing soldier took his rosary
from under his baldrick, and knelt him down to pray. For something
had sore perplexed him; he had seemed to see in the features of that
morose comrade at the inn the most exact resemblance of Rinucci. But
Rinucci was safe at the Monastery, waiting till his time should
come, and the avenger should denounce him. But even as he rose from
prayer did Ambrose see a mounted messenger speeding to him, who told
him breathlessly the news had just reached Santa Rosa that the Monk
Petrus was escaped and roaming at large somewhere in the country.
“Then Ambrose de Troyes knew he had his man; and natheless, like the
large-hearted fellow he was, he would but meet him quite alone. So
he rewarded the newsbringer and sent him away. Once more he fell on
his knees before our Lady’s image, and besought that his cause might
find Heaven’s favour, and his action in it be in every point just
and serviceable. (For he looked upon himself as sent to do such
things as might cause his brother’s soul to rest in peace.) Then he
went rapidly retracing his steps towards the inn again, and, led by
Destiny, out came Pietro Rinucci, unarmed, to meet him. Ambrose de
Troyes looked into the assassin’s eyes and knew him. Stranger still,
the piercing eyes of the cunning Italian saw, in the traits of this
bronzed warrior, relationship to the Gilbert who had been his friend
and victim.
“‘I arrest thee, Pietro Rinucci, for the murder of my brother,
Gilbert de Troyes, and, though I may not draw upon a tonsured monk
(yea, I know thee through all thy false disguises!), yet, before I
hale thee to the ecclesiastical courts, I will show thee, snake,
what I think of thee, and of all such!’
“And Ambrose de Troyes smote the villain a shameful blow upon the
face.
“Even at that instant, the monk whips me Ambrose’s sword from its
scabbard, and, with the fatal dexterity of his race, ran in upon the
stately Englishman and laid him, bleeding quick to death, upon the
hot white road.
“‘Oh Margaret, my sister Margaret!’ the dying man raved, as if he
thirsted for help from the hand that had been kind to him.
“‘A right pestilent breed of Britons! but easy to kill—easy to
kill,’ quoth the Monk, as he laid down the red sword by the dying
man’s side and left him alone in his agony.
“This scene was witnessed by a terrified young country-girl, who
crouched behind a heap of stones, meanwhile, until the murderer’s
flight, and then ran to assist De Troyes, who thought she was his
sister Margaret, and said marvellous tender words, of home and of
her kindness, and of the little brother he had left in the nursery.
“After this, there comes a period of Rinucci’s life of which we know
but little. He seems to have raced about the country, in hiding
always, but doing little harm for him. Italy, however, is debateable
ground for one of her own recreant monks, so we find Messer Pietro
fleeing Justice and coming over here to England. Whether he had had
some of his heart-searchings that he knew so often, I know not, but
deem it very likely. Here is the flaw, to my mind, in the
foreigners’ constitutions. They recognize their sins as such, not so
we English! We say our evil deeds are fate, congenital infirmity,
ignorance, negligence, or even virtues; they say their sins are
sins, and yet they do them. Had I but half the talent of sinning
that Messer Pietro seems to have owned, my faith, I would have
gloried in it! So did not he, however; he went to a father
confessor, fell on the earth, and implored absolution—for life was
still sweet to him, he said, and he would not die yet awhile.
“The father sent him for penance to travel as a pilgrim, in a white
penitential garb to England, there to walk to the shrine of St.
Thomas à Becket, foully slain on earth by violence.
“The father did well for his mother-country, but evilly for us.
“The monk Petrus performed at all points the penalty enjoined him,
and afterward, having no especial call to Italy again, he followed
his roving instincts and wandered about England, even till chance
brought him to this, our, town. In this country he knew no men well
enough to desire to kill them; besides, at this period, one of his
fits of penitence seems to have been on him. Certes, he wore the
monkish habit, only different in its white colour from that of other
fraternities, and the folk grew acquainted with his white figure as
he roamed the land in deepest meditation, with his eyes bent upon
the ground.
“Now, one day, say the chronicles (which are made up of village
tales), the White Monk, as our townsfolk called him, was sitting in
a thicket by a brook in which he was bathing his travelled feet,
when there came by the sister of his victims, even Mistress Margaret
de Troyes herself, and walked the pleasant fringes of the forest,
very near to where the wanderer sat, on the further side the elders.
She was accompanied by her mother and by another lady, both of whom
were pressing the claims of some noble suitor upon her.
“The other ladies were in deepest mourning for Gilbert and for
Ambrose, and Mistress Margaret herself, though she wore no such
signs of grief, was most plainly clad in a pale, pure garb of
lavender. She listened quietly to all they urged, then spoke and
said:
“‘My mother, he is a light, false man. I care not for him.’
“It was protested to her, her high birth, the respect in which he
would hold her for herself; above all, her fair beauty, would all
ensure his faithfulness. But Margaret said:
“‘I beseech ye, press me no further. Heaven knows I wish the
gentleman much good, and that he may aspire to higher things. I will
pray for him, weep for him if need be; but, ladies, though I be but
a simple English maiden, I hold myself all too good for such as he
to marry and draw down, perchance, to like thoughts with himself. I
hate all evil—not the doers, mother; but the evil. We are all weak
and changeable, and I dare not come in contact of my free will with
evil influence. God might punish me by weakness of resolve against
infection.’
“They urged her yet once more; she might triumph and convert a soul.
“‘In truth,’ confessed fair Margaret de Troyes, ‘ye wound me sorely,
dearest ladies mine! At such a time, when good Ambrose de Troyes is
scarce cold in his grave, to bid his sister make her choice amongst
his townsfolk; and celebrate the marriage feast with a breaking
heart! My Ambrose—to think that thou, who, if I but spake of a
moment’s weariness, would quickly place a cushion for my head, and
sit by the hour on our window-seat chafing my feet, that thou
should’st be bleeding in the death-struggles, on the hard, parched
road, in a foreign land, and I be far away, not able so much as to
raise thy dear head upon my knee! Oh, I loved him so tenderly,
strong brother of mine! I gloried in my brown-maned soldier. We
prayed together the night before he left on his sacred errand, and,
at his entreaty, I laid my hand upon his head and blessed him in Our
Lady’s name. He was a grave, good man; and you would have me turn my
thoughts from him to that other! What though I know Ambrose to be
now one of God’s angels; yet he hath left me behind him on the
earth—the first unkindness he hath ever done me! And his mother and
mine would have me think of wedlock!’
“The fair, pale Englishwoman bent her head, and Pietro heard her
weeping.
“Well, it is but guesswork thenceforth. Folk say, in their coarse
way of speaking, that the White Monk ‘loved’ the lady Margaret.
Forfend! The love of such a man were an insult all too gross to
offer to the memory of any Damoiselle de Troyes. Say, rather, he
kindled to the worship of goodness in that form first of all.
“We know that from that hour when he first saw and heard her,
Rinucci, the stained wretch, wandered ever where there was a chance
to see her, even from afar. Once, indeed he even spoke with her.
Under the favour of his sacred garment he dared to near her, and
asked:
“‘Maiden, how say you? Is there mercy in Heaven for the worst
sinners, or no?’
“‘Nay, holy father,” answered the damsel, smiling, ‘thou must be
better seen in these high mysteries than I who dwell in the world,
where we all need mercy. We can but hope that our God is more
pitiful than are our fellow creatures to our faults.’
“‘Maiden,’ besought the White Monk further, ‘can such as thou look
pityingly upon a vice-stained fellow man?’
“But Margaret wept, and answered him:
“‘Oh, father, search me not over this problem. I have lost the
dearest to me in the world, two brothers, by an assassin’s hand. If
that man stood before me, tell me, _could_ I look at him
forgivingly? Oh, never, father! Human nature is too weak.’
“The rencounter was over, for Pietro dared speak no more. But,
according to the custom of that day, Mistress Margaret bent her fair
head to receive the blessing of the holy father.
“The monk started back in horror; even he was not too base to feel
that. But as the maiden still stood humbly waiting, he was forced to
stretch his hands forth from the distance, and murmur: ‘Benedicite!’
“The days went by and the townsfolk noted how the White Monk wasted,
and how strange he was. He would mutter to himself like a madman. He
never said a word of holy import to the cottagers with whom he
lodged at small cost. He ate almost nothing and appeared to spend
his days in solitary musing. His conduct smacked so oddly of mania
that Giles Hughson, his landlord, took to watching whither he went
and what he did. He saw him always following Margaret, but seeking
to avoid her if she turned where she might see him. He seemed to
dread her greatly, yet, to worship her, or, at least to follow her
like a lost soul looking after the light from some vanishing angel’s
wing.
“Once Margaret turned and saw him, but recognised him not as the man
she had spoken withal. She, taking him for a _frère quetant_,
silently, without looking upon him, pressed into his hand money,
which he took, and which was found on him when he died, as you shall
hear.”
PERCY ROSS.
(_To be continued._)
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The following remarkable passage was published some five years ago
in the _Theosophist_, of Madras (1883); and it is needless to call
attention in more detail to the fidelity with which it is being
since then verified.
Protesting against the arbitrary chronology of the Sanskritists in
the question of Indian antiquity who make it dependent on the Greeks
and Chandragupta—whose date is represented as “the sheet-anchor of
Indian chronology” that “nothing will ever shake” (Prof. Max Müller
and Weber), the author of the prophecy remarks that “it is to be
feared that as regards India, the chronological ship of the
Sanskritists has already broken from her moorings and gone adrift
with all her precious freight of conjectures and hypotheses.” And
then adds:—
“We are at the end of a cycle—geological and other—and at the
beginning of another. Cataclysm is to follow cataclysm. The pent-up
forces are bursting out in many quarters; and not only will men be
swallowed up or slain by thousands, “new” land appear and “old”
subside, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves appal; but secrets of an
unsuspected past will be uncovered to the dismay of Western
theorists and the humiliation of an imperious science. This drifting
ship, if watched, may be seen to ground upon the upheaved vestiges
of ancient civilisations, and fall to pieces. We are not emulous of
the prophet’s honours: but still, let this stand as a prophecy.”
(See also “_Five Years of Theosophy_,” p. 388.)
LOVE WITH AN OBJECT.
Some distinguished contributors to theosophical literature have of
late been describing what qualities are necessary to constitute a
perfect man, _i.e._, an Adept. They said that among other things it
was absolutely and indispensably necessary, that such a being should
possess Love—and not merely Love in the abstract—but love regarding
some object or objects. What can they possibly mean by speaking of
“love with an object,” and could there possibly be love without any
object at all? Can that feeling be called love, which is directed
solely to the Eternal and Infinite, and takes no cognizance of
earthly illusions? Can that be love which has no object or—in other
words—is the love of forms or objects the true love at all? If a man
loved all things in the universe alike, without giving any
preference to any of them, would not such a love be practically
without any object; would it not be equal to loving nothing at all;
because in such a case the individuality of any single object would
be lost to sight?
A love which is directed towards all things alike, an universal
love, is beyond the conception of the mortal mind, and yet this kind
of love, which bestows no favours upon any one thing, seems to be
that eternal love, which is recommended by all the sacred books of
the East and the West; because as soon as we begin to love one thing
or one being more than another, we not only detract from the rest an
amount of love which the rest may rightfully claim; but we also
become attached to the object of our love, a fate against which we
are seriously warned in various pages of these books.
The _Bhagavad Gita_ teaches that we should not love or hate any
object of sense whatsoever, nor be attached to any object or thing,
but renounce all projects and fix our thoughts solely on It, the
Eternal, which is no-thing and no object of cognition for us, but
whose presence can be only subjectively experienced by, and within
ourselves. It says: “He is esteemed, who is equal-minded to
companions, friends, enemies, strangers, neutrals, to aliens and
kindred, yea to good and evil men” (Cap. vi., 14); and further on it
says: “He whose soul is united by devotion, seeing the same in all
around, sees the soul in everything and everything in the soul. He
who sees Me (Brahmâ) everywhere and everything in Me, him I
forsake not and he forsakes not me.... He who sees the same in
everything—Arjuna!—whether it be pleasant or grievous, from the
self-resemblance, is deemed to be a most excellent Yogin” (Cap. vi.,
29, 32).
On almost every page of the _Bhagavad Gita_ we are instructed only
to direct our love to that which is eternal in every form, and let
the form itself be a matter of secondary consideration. “He must be
regarded as a steadfast renouncer, who neither hates nor
desires.”... “In a learned and modest Brahman, in a cow, in an
elephant, in a dog, and a Swapāka; they who have knowledge see the
same thing.”... “Let no man rejoice in attaining what is pleasant,
nor grieve in attaining what is unpleasant; being fixed in mind,
untroubled, knowing Brahma and abiding in Brahma.”... “He who is
happy in himself, pleased with himself, who finds also light in
himself, this Yogin, one with Brahmâ, finds _Nirvana_ in Him.”
The great _Hermes Trismegistus_ teaches the same identical doctrine;
for he says: “Rise and embrace me with thy whole being, and I will
teach thee whatsoever thou desirest to know.” The _Bible_ also tells
us that “God is Love” (1. John iv., 8), and that we should love Him
with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind (Math.
xxii., 37), and while it teaches that we should love nothing else
but God (Math. xx., 37), who is All in All (Ephes. i., 23), yet it
affirms, that this God is omnipresent, eternal and incomprehensible
to the finite understanding of mortals (1. Timoth. vi., 16). It
teaches this love to be the most important of all possessions,
without which all other possessions are useless (1. Corinth, xiii.,
2), and yet this God, whom we are to love, is not an “object” (John
i., 5), but everywhere. He is in us and we in Him (Rom. xii., 5). We
are to leave all objects of sense and follow Him alone (Luc. v., 2),
although we have no means of intellectually knowing or perceiving
Him, the great Unknown, for whose sake we are to give up house and
brethren, sisters, father, mother, wife, children and lands (Mark
x., 29).
What can all this mean, but that love itself is the legitimate
object of love? It is a divine, eternal, and infinite power, a
light, which reflects itself in every object while it seeks not the
object, but merely its own reflection therein. It is an
indestructible fire and the brighter it burns, the stronger will be
the light and the clearer will its own image appear. Love falls in
love with nothing but its own self, it is free from all other
attractions. A love which becomes attached to objects of sense,
ceases to be free, ceases to be love, and becomes mere desire. Pure
and eternal love asks for nothing, but gives freely to all who are
willing to take. Earthly love is attracted to persons and things,
but Divine spiritual love seeks only that which is divine in
everything, and this can be nothing else but love, for love is the
supreme power of all. It holds together the worlds in space, it
clothes the earth in bright and beautiful colours, it guides the
instincts of animals and links together the hearts of human beings.
Acting upon the lower planes of existence it causes terrestrial
things to cling to each other with fond embrace; but love on the
spiritual plane is free. Spiritual love is a goddess, who
continually sacrifices herself for herself and who accepts no other
sacrifice but her own self, giving for whatever she may receive,
herself in return. Therefore the _Bhagavad Gita_ says: “Nourish ye
the gods by this and let the gods nourish you. Thus nourishing each
other ye shall obtain the highest good” (Cap. iii., ii.,); and the
Bible says: “To him who has still more shall be given, and from him
who has not, even what he has shall be taken away” (Luke xix., 26).
Love is an universal power and therefore immortal, it can never die.
We cannot believe that even the smallest particle of love ever died,
only the instruments through which it becomes manifest change their
form; nor will it ever be born, for it exists from eternity, only
the bodies into which it shines are born and die and are born again.
A Love which is not manifest is non-existent for us, to come into
existence means to become manifest. How then could we possibly
imagine a human being possessed of a love which never becomes
manifest; how can we possibly conceive of a light which never shines
and of a fire which does not give any heat?
But “as the sun shines upon the lands of the just and the unjust,
and as the rain descends upon the acres of the evil-minded as well
as upon those of the good”; likewise divine love manifesting itself
in a perfect man is distributed alike to every one without favour or
partiality. Wherever a good and perfect human being exists, there is
divine love manifest; and the degree of man’s perfection will depend
on the degree of his capacity to serve as an instrument for the
manifestation of divine love. The more perfect he is, the more will
his love descend upon and penetrate all who come within his divine
influence. To ask favours of God is to conceive of Him as an
imperfect being, whose love is not free, but subject to the guidance
of, and preference to, mortals. To expect favours of a Mahatma is to
conceive him as an _imperfect_ man.
True, “prayer,” _i.e._ the elevation and aspiration of the soul “in
spirit and in truth” (John xiv., 14), is useful, not because it will
persuade the light to come nearer to us, but because it will assist
us to open our eyes for the purpose of seeing the light that was
already there. Let those who desire to come into contact with the
Adepts enter their sphere by following their doctrines; seeking for
love, but not for an object of love, and when they have found the
former, they will find a superabundance of the latter throughout the
whole extent of the unlimited universe; they will find it in
everything that exists, for love is the foundation of all existence
and without love nothing can possibly continue to exist.
Love—divine love—is the source of life, of light, and happiness. It
is the creative principle in the Macrocosm and in the Microcosm of
man. It is _Venus_, the mother of all the gods, because from her
alone originates Will and Imagination and all the other powers by
which the universe was evolved. It is the germ of divinity which
exists in the heart of man, and which may develop into a life-giving
sun, illuminating the mind and sending its rays to the centre of the
universe; for it originates from that centre and to that centre it
will ultimately return. It is a divine messenger, who carries Light
from Heaven down to the Earth and returns again to Heaven loaded
with sacrificial gifts.
It is worshipped by all, some adore it in one form and some in
another, but many perceive only the form and do not perceive the
divine spirit. Nevertheless the spirit alone is real, the form is an
illusion. Love can exist without form, but no form can exist without
love. It is pure Spirit, but if its light is reflected in matter, it
creates desire and desire is the producer of forms. Thus the visible
world of perishable things is created. “But above this visible
nature there exists another, unseen and eternal, which, when all
created things perish, does not perish” (Bh. G. viii. 20), and “from
which they who attain to it never return.” This is the supreme abode
of Love without any object, unmanifested and imperishable, for there
no object exists. There love is united to love, enjoying supreme and
eternal happiness within her own self and that peace, of which the
mortal mind, captivated by the illusion of form, cannot conceive.
Non-existent for us, and yet existing in that Supreme _Be-ness_, in
which all things dwell, by which the universe has been spread out,
and which may be attained to by an exclusive devotion.
EMANUEL.
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SELF MASTERY.
(A SONNET.)
O! for the power to lay this burden low!
This weight of self; to kill all vain desire
To clasp to our outer selves the scorching fire,
So that the God within shall live and grow!
O! for the strength to face the hidden foe,
To raise our being higher still and higher,
To breathe the breath that Holy ones inspire,
To break the bonds that bind to Earth below!
Great, Infinite Soul! that broodeth o’er us ever,
Say, can the human will _unaided_ win
The Victor’s crown (and earthly bondage sever),
—A Heavenly flight, triumphant over sin?
O Human and Divine, forsake us never,
Thine is the power by which we enter in!
DUM SPIRO, SPERO.
=Reviews.=
A MODERN MAGICIAN. A ROMANCE, by J. Fitzgerald Molloy, in Three
Volumes. Ward & Downey, 12, York Street, Covent Garden.
Opinions may be greatly divided as to the merits of this book; and
to those who look for unexceptionable literary style as a primary
element in fiction, it may not be satisfactory. But to all those who
regard ideas as the first requisite, this work will probably prove
of great interest. It has been somewhat curious to note the
reception with which Mr. Molloy has met. The _Pall Mall Gazette_,
for instance, devotes considerable length to him, and somewhat
smartly calls him “a novelist born, but not made”; after which it
proceeds, with more apparent animus than judiciousness, to criticise
the pedantic style of conversation and narrative which the author
occasionally makes use of. Curiously enough, the critic selects for
his worst blows the phrases used by the chief inspector of the
detectives. Now, if there is one thing more common than another, it
is to find the half educated, but uncultured, men of the class from
which police inspectors are drawn, using the longest words and
phrases, not so much as a proof of their culture, as with the object
of impressing their hearers. The reviewer was perhaps right to
assail Mr. Molloy for sending his hero to Scotland Yard to hunt up
news of his erring wife, who, as he was perfectly aware, had fled
with another man. But this, and other trifling mistakes of similar
character, are venial errors, and could only be so strongly
animadverted upon in a paper which devotes itself to hunting
plagiarisms in impossible places, through envy of successful
authors; or by a reviewer who is a personal enemy of the author. As
Macintosh well said: “The critic who is discerning in nothing but
faults, may care little to be told that this is the mark of
unenviable disposition, but he might not feel equally easy, were he
convinced that he thus gives absolute proofs of ignorance and want
of taste.” To make matters worse, and more interesting to LUCIFER,
the reviewer is plainly a partisan of the Society for Psychical
Research, to which Mr. Molloy somewhat unfeelingly alludes as the
“Society of Scientific Cackle.” The review in the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ starts with smartness and intelligence, but allows itself
to run off into partisanship and prejudice. But all that is in
strict keeping with the tone of a “Gazette” which generally starts
useful work well, continues it badly, and ends by throwing mud out
of the gutter at anybody or anything which happens to run counter to
it. For instance, here is a specimen of the reviewer:
“As a story teller he (the author) is the Bobadil of fashionable
mysticism: as a literary workman he is a pretentious bungler: his
syntax is inconceivable, his dialogue impossible, his style a
desperately careful expression of desperately slovenly thinking,
his notions of practical affairs absurd, and his conception of
science and philosophy a superstitious guess; yet he has an
indescribable flourish, a dash of half-ridiculous poetry, a
pathetic irresponsibility, a captivating gleam of Irish
imagination, and, above all, an unsuspicious good nature, that
compel a humane public to read his books rather than mortify him
by a neglect which he has done nothing malicious to deserve.”
Such criticism can only be met from the point of view of the
reviewer, by “Set a thief to catch a thief,” and from that of Mr.
Molloy, by “Heaven save me from the penny-a-liners, actuated by
personal animus!”
The reviewer may be allowed to have pointed out a few glaring errors
in Mr. Molloy’s style and syntax, but we add that, in pointing these
out, he has only exposed himself.
As regards the central figure of Benoni, the adept in the book,
LUCIFER may, perhaps, say a few words. Slightly as the character is
drawn, and startling as are the deeds of this personage, there is a
majesty about him which commands respect, and we may congratulate
Mr. Molloy on his effort. We do not entirely accord with the author
in the deeds which he sets Benoni to do, but with regard to the
words and precepts which he puts into the adept’s mouth, we do
absolutely agree, and recommend our readers, and especially all the
Theosophists, to read Mr. Molloy’s book. Here the _Pall Mall_
reviewer—being, as said, an admiring follower of the Society for
Psychical Research—again falls foul of Mr. Molloy; but we may safely
quote the impressive and truthful words of Benoni, and leave the
rest to others.
Amerton, the hero of the book, reproaches the adept with having seen
trouble approaching him, and with having neglected to warn him.
Benoni replies:
“That is true. It was not permitted that I should serve you then;
to test your strength it was necessary that you should bear the
trial unaided. When, some years ago. you came to me in Africa, and
asked me to solve experiences which perplexed you, and later
besought Amuni, the faithful One, to show you the pathway leading
towards light, you but obeyed a dictate of your nature impossible
to resist. That within you urged you forward to seek the sacred
mysteries of life and death. But these cannot be obtained by those
who are not prepared to endure with patience, and grow strong in
spirit. You have suffered, and thus taken the first step towards
the attainment of your desires.”
“But, surely,” said Philip, “you might have warned me.”
“I should have but inflicted additional pain on you.”
“Was there no escape?”
“None, indeed,” replied the mystic.
“Then I was destined to meet humiliation and pain.”
Benoni looked at him with mingled pity and affection in his gaze.
“A child,” he said, in his low, sonorous voice, “is grieved for a
broken toy, or is humiliated by correction.”
“But you don’t compare my wrongs to a child’s grievances?”
“His sorrows are as real and bitter to him as your afflictions are
to you. It is only when time has passed, he reviews his distress
with wonder, seeing the pettiness of its cause. So will it be with
you. Ten years hence, you will regard this grief, desolating your
life, with equanimity; forty years later, you will remember it
with indifference, as an item in your fate. Then shall you look
back upon the brightness and darkness of your existence as one
regards the lights and shadows chequering his pathway through
woods in spring. How futile seem woe and joy, weighed with the
consideration that all men are as shadows that fade, and as
vapours which flee away.... Think, my friend,” continued the
mystic earnestly, “of your existence but as a journey towards a
goal, on which hardships must be suffered by the way. You are now
but working out the fulfillment of your fate. Remember, those who
would ascend must suffer; affliction is the flame which purifies;
pain teaches compassion.” (pp. 89, 90. Vol. III.)
When asked of himself, Benoni replies:
“Misfortune cannot compass, distress overwhelm, nor
disappointments assail me, because the things of the world are as
naught to my senses, and man’s life seems but a dream. Before this
stage affliction must have crucified the senses; self must be
conquered, slain, and entombed.” (p. 91, Vol. III.)
There are other passages equally true from the occult standpoint,
and we trust their readers will benefit by them and appreciate them.
As regards Amerton’s character, we see the natural, born, mystic
turning aside and voluntarily taking upon himself, though warned,
the bonds of married life. These become intolerable to him, and the
unhappiness of two persons results. Occultism is a jealous mistress,
and, once launched on that path, it is necessary to resolutely
refuse to recognise any attempt to draw one back from it. Amerton
wanted to crush out his natural tendencies to occultism, and failed.
It is as hard to draw back from them, and turn attention solely to
the things of the world, as it is, when studying occultism, to turn
our attention solely to the invisible regions, and neglect
absolutely the physical world.
The other characters in the novel make it light, graceful and
pleasant reading. The interest is ever preserved from the first to
the last scene, and certainly no one could find, in all the three
volumes, one dull page in them. Moreover, Mr. Fitzgerald Molloy
seems an acute observer. Some of his secondary heroes, such as the
wealthy widow, Mrs. Henry Netley, a plebeian enamoured of rank and
title, and Lord Pompey Rokeway, “a gay, though ancient, personage,”
who uses rouge, wig, and corsets, and imagines every woman in love
with him—are portraits from nature, to one who knows anything of
modern society. In short, “The Modern Magician,” as a work of
fiction, can fearlessly bear comparison with any of the modern
productions written lately upon occult subjects, with the solitary
exception of Rider Haggard’s “She,” and surpasses some in unabated
interest. We might be more exacting and severe, perhaps, were it a
purely theosophical work. As it stands, however, we must
congratulate Mr. Molloy in having clothed the subject of mysticism
in such graceful robes; had he been as good a literary workman as he
is an excellent constructor of plots, the book should have met with
unqualified approval. Meanwhile, we wish it the greatest success.
------------------
“THE TWIN SOUL: A PSYCHOLOGICAL AND REALISTIC ROMANCE,” in two
volumes, by an Anonymous Author. Ward & Downey, 12, York Street,
Covent Garden.
This is quite another kind of literary production than the “Modern
Magician,” just reviewed. It aspires to more serious and
philosophical mysticism, but fails rather ungloriously. There are
passages in it which, taken out of the work, especially at the
beginning of Volume I., might be made the subjects of short and
rather useful little treatises upon mystic theories; but, as a
whole, the book is one of the most disappointing novels published
for some time. It begins well, goes on from bad to worse, promises
much, holds nothing, and ends nowhere, seeming to be written not as
a work of fiction, but simply to ventilate the author’s ideas.
These—the work being anonymous—have to be judged by the novel alone.
It is rumoured that the “Twin Soul” is the occasional work of twelve
years’ labour, and the disconnected character of its events bears
out the rumour. Its style is pedantic, though good in writing, while
the matter and plot are heavy, and delivered in a long-winded and
didactic manner.
The story is that of one Mr. Rameses, an exceedingly virtuous,
learned, and solemn Oriental millionaire, whose real nationality
remains to the end a mystery, and whose story is narrated by a
somewhat cynical English philosopher, called De Vere. The latter
tells the story in the style which suits him best, and is perfectly
natural. He is humorous and amusing, even if slightly ponderous. But
alas for the reader! Mr. De Vere suddenly stops short at an early
stage, and the story is taken up, without any apparent cause or
reason, by a man unknown, who “had less sympathy with Mr. Rameses,”
and who has all the defects of Mr. De Vere’s qualities, and a good
many of his own besides, for he is even more ponderous and more
cynical, without his humour. Mr. Rameses is a peculiar character,
but, as sketched, he is quite in keeping with his Oriental origin.
He believes in many theories: re-incarnation, socialism, certain
occult doctrines, the possibility of recovering the memory of past
incarnations, and, as a matter of course, the modern craze of the
day, the theory of “twin souls.” He is perpetually in search of his
“twin,” and hunts her with the pertinacity of a sleuth-hound under
all forms, and in all places. Mr. De Vere is the possessor of an
Assyrian collection, Egyptian papyri, and also of two female
mummies—Amenophra and Lurulâ, the first the daughter of a Pharaoh,
the second a priestess of Isis—of which the sarcophagi are covered
with hieroglyphics, which Mr. Rameses reads with most surprising
ease. The hero, claiming his memory as a palimpsest, which by
certain processes clearly discovers the obliterated record of his
past incarnations, cannot, in spite of this, make up his mind which
of the two mummies was formerly the body of his twin-soul. Finally,
he solves the doubt by declaring them both to have been the mortal
casket of his beloved—with Lurulâ for choice. The reader here has
great hopes held out to him that there will be a grand ceremony, at
which the mummies are to be unrolled, and at which the soul of the
deceased mummy will be summoned back to shuffle on a mortal coil
again. Alas! such hopes are fallacious; for the ceremony never takes
place, owing to Mr. Rameses falling in love with the sister of a
Hindu lady married to an English baronet. After much hesitation the
lady so honoured by his choice is also declared to be the vehicle of
his twin-soul, _i.e._, to save appearances—to be a re-incarnation of
the ego which formerly dwelt in the mummy or mummies. Finally, after
a long-winded oration over the mystic properties of a magnificent
present of jewels, Mr. Rameses wins “the fair Niona,” as she is
called—who, although a Hindu, is a Zoroastrian Sun-worshipper. They
are married, notwithstanding their “paganism,” according to Roman
Catholic rites, and the pair start to spend the honeymoon in Egypt,
where, in the Temple of Isis at Thebes, they are to be again united
according to the—to them—more sacred ritual of Sun-worship. After a
very interesting dream about the Deluge, which broke through an
isthmus uniting Gibraltar to North Africa, and destroyed a vast
civilization which occupied the floor of the present Mediterranean
Sea, they arrive safely in Egypt. Here the fair Hindu of Zoroastrian
persuasion and Italian name, has another interesting psychic vision,
an interview with the Sphinx, which makes her incontinently faint,
and lose consciousness. Then they proceed to Thebes, and, after due
care, make selection of the site of the Temple of Isis. They build
their bonfire and ignite it, but at the supreme moment Niona gives a
gasp, faints, and this time dies outright, with as little reason for
it as every other incident in the novel has. The return to Cairo is
immediately commenced, and here Niona, in strict keeping with Mr.
Rameses’s habits, is at once converted into a mummy. It must be
rather interesting to possess the body of three defunct twin souls,
and reflect upon their virtues.
The rest of the book is occupied by various disquisitions of the
author, disguised flimsily under conversations of his characters on
the social and political customs of the Nineteenth century. Read
carefully, the conversations contain ideas, but are likely to offend
on account of their length and ponderousness. As regards the
construction of the book and the characters, Mr. Rameses is
interesting, in spite of his solemnity and his love of mummies, and
Mr. De Vere is amusing. The other _dramatis personæ_ seem to have
been created merely as pegs upon which to hang the author’s
opinions. What, for instance, is the object of entering into detail
upon the passionate episodes in the career of Mr. Rameses’s
secretary, or the mercenary marriage of Lady Gwendoline Pierrepoint
with “Old Methusaleh”? Their only excuse can be that they may serve
to increase the contrast between such marriages and that with a twin
soul. Taken as a whole, the ideas are interesting, and the mystic
utterances in the first volume almost correct from the orthodox
occult point. But the manner in which they are displayed is
irritating, and this chiefly because the reader is perpetually being
brought up to a point of interest, and as perpetually left
disappointed.
-----------------------
POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.[129]
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Footnote 129:
_Posthumous Humanity_, a study of Phantoms, by Adolphe d’Assier,
Member of the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences. Translated and
annotated by Henry S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical
Society. George Redway, London, 1887. 8vo. pp. 360.
-----
This is a translation from the French by Colonel H. S. Olcott,
President of the Theosophical Society, of the remarkable work of
that name, by a well-known _savant_, Adolphe d’Assier. The original
work appeared a few years ago, and produced a stir both in the
sceptical public and unbelieving science, and an outcry among the
spiritists of France, whose pet theories about the “spirits” of the
dead it upset. “Posthumous Humanity” was not only a singularly
interesting work, but it was one of the first, and perhaps the
loudest, of the bugle notes that heralded the last act of the fierce
battle between materialistic science and spiritualism; for it ended
in the virtual defeat of the former, at any rate, upon one line: it
forced the hand of the majority of sceptics in the recognition of
what is called in mysticism the “astral body” of man and animal, and
by more pretentious than wise investigators “the _phantasms_ of the
living,” forgetting those of the dead.
That a learned member of an academy of science should, of all men,
write a serious book on the phenomena of “the Borderland,” accepting
as facts in nature such things as ghostly appearances, and the
projection of the double, is almost a phenomenon in itself. And what
makes the case the more remarkable as an indication of a new current
in public opinion, is the fact that these things, which it has
hitherto been the fashion to consign with a laugh or a shudder to
the limbo of exploded superstitions, are treated by the author in a
perfectly scientific spirit. He accounts for them, not by the usual
supposition of hallucination or stupidity on the part of observers,
but by an exceedingly ingenious and plausible postulation of forces
at work in us, and around us, which are as little “supernatural” as
any of the recognised forces of nature, or portions of man’s
constitution. Not only has M. d’Assier the courage to face the
probable ridicule of the wiseacres, but he has the audacity to turn
the tables upon “men of science,” by actually making fun of their
unmeasured pretensions, and twitting them mercilessly about their
past mistakes. Not the least remarkable feature in the case is the
fact that the author, who started into these researches an ardent
positivist, has come out of them an ardent positivist still. He
believes that what he has accomplished is to extend the reign of
matter into a region previously believed to belong to spirit, thus
planting the standard of positivism in a wider and more fruitful
region, which he has happily reclaimed from the winds and tides of
superstition. But the fact is, that although our author has gone a
good deal further than most of those who start out “on their own
hook” to explore the realms of the Occult, he cannot be said to have
penetrated very far into the mysteries of being. He has peeped in at
the door of the psychic antechamber to the spiritual world
proper—the ante-chamber in which the members of Psychical Research
Societies amuse themselves and others by playing blindman’s buff
with hypothesis—and his interesting volume tells us of the wonderful
things that go on there. The result of his researches, as he says in
his _Preface_, is the conclusion that “posthumous humanity is, in
fact, but a special example of posthumous animality, and that the
latter presents itself as the immediate consequence of the living
world.” Every tyro in theosophy knows that this conclusion is a fair
approximation to the truth, and were man nothing but an animal of
high degree, it might possibly be the whole truth. But man is an
animal, plus _something_, and this something _more_, is precisely
what M. d’Assier leaves entirely out of sight, as indeed he could
hardly help doing if he attached any importance to remaining a
Positivist. It is this _something more_, of whose very existence our
author seems profoundly unconscious, that has the chief interest for
us, for that is the spiritual and eternal part of man, in
contradistinction to the psychic portion which fades away and
disappears after a time, as M. d’Assier very justly declares.
It seems a pity that a learned and ingenious man, like our author,
should not have begun investigations of this kind by making himself
familiar with at least the bare outline of the metaphysical and
psychological system that underlies the schools of philosophy of
India. This system is the result of very profound research into such
phenomena as our author deals with, and also into other far deeper
and more important manifestations that he has not considered at all;
and these researches have for thousands of years occupied, to a
greater or lesser degree, almost every thinking man among races
which are acknowledged to be possessed of a very high degree of
intellectual acuteness and spiritual insight. Were our Western
adventurers into the borderland between spirit and matter—the astral
world—to take this obvious precaution, they would know that the
ground over which they now laboriously make their way, has not only
been traversed before, but pretty fully surveyed and mapped out, and
that their supposed discoveries amount virtually to no more than a
verification of results long ago obtained by others. This very
needed exception in the work under review has been obviated by the
translator’s notes and supplement, without diminishing the practical
value of M. d’Assier’s treatise as a useful contribution to occult
literature. For, as his labours do actually confirm much of the
teachings of Theosophy, with regard to that part of the constitution
of man, which is common to him and the animals, the work, as it now
stands, is really a valuable occult treatise as to facts. The
important question with the world, in these times, being not so much
_what is said_, as _who it is that says it_, the fact that an
incorrigible positivist, has published his belief in the actuality
of a psychic plane of existence, and of the temporary survival in it
after death of a certain part or principle of the animal (including
man), is of the greatest help and importance to theosophy. It will
probably affect public opinion far more profoundly than if a
thousand Eastern sages proclaimed the same elementary fact of
Occultism in chorus. No better illustration of, and testimony to,
the reality of plain, broad facts in connection with wraiths,
“doubles,” and other such apparitions, can be found than in
d’Assier’s “Posthumous Humanity” in its new English garb, by Colonel
Olcott, and with the translator’s _Preface_ and annotations to the
text. These add greatly to the value of the book for the student of
Occultism. In fact, these additions serve the same purpose which a
notice of the work in LUCIFER might have been expected to have in
view; for they correct the author in some particulars, add
additional information in others, and generally forestall the critic
who writes from the Theosophical standpoint. Besides this, the
translator has added a highly interesting and unique _appendix_,
giving the opinions of numerous Hindus of various castes and sects
upon psychic phenomena of that kind, collected from various parts of
India, which, by itself, has considerable value to the student of
mystical sciences. In conclusion, we may record almost a general
opinion—save, of course, that of rank materialists—that no work yet
published on the subject dealt with by our author is better
calculated to reach the scientifically-minded enquirer. It is
written with calmness and logical clearness that takes the scoffer’s
laugh out of his mouth. It goes as far as anyone new to the subject
could be reasonably expected to follow; and the direction it takes
is the right one. It is preeminently _the_ book for the too
sceptical and ignorant enquirer to begin with.
-----------------------
ספר יצירה, _Sepher Yetzirah, The Book of Formation, and the
Thirty-two Paths of Wisdom_; _translated from the Hebrew, and
collated with Latin Versions. By Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, Bath: Robert
H. Fryar_, 1887.
This is a treatise of about 30 quarto pages on that well-known
Hebrew occult work, the Sepher Yetzirah. It consists of an
introduction, giving the historic aspects of the matter, an English
translation of the Sepher Yetzirah and the Thirty-two Paths, and
several pages of notes, giving remarks on and variant readings of
difficult and disputed passages.
The introductory pages bear the stamp of considerable literary
research, and the translation of the Book of Formation itself is
intelligible and concise. But we can hardly say as much for the
Thirty-two Paths, which, abstruse and difficult of comprehension in
the original, are, we are afraid, no more intelligible in the
translation. Owing to the unpopularity of the subject, there are
readers who will be readily drawing the conclusion that Dr. Westcott
himself does not altogether understand their mystical bearing and
symbolism. Yet the notes on the actual text of the “Sepher Yetzirah”
are valuable, and show considerable occult knowledge. But a still
greater error is made by the translator. We notice that Dr. Westcott
has invariably rendered the word Elohim by “God,” notwithstanding
that it is a plural noun, as shown by the plural word “Chiim” joined
thereto in the ninth section of the first chapter. This will, no
doubt, prove grateful to the staff and readers of the _Jewish
World_, whose editors pride themselves, against all fact and truth,
on the _Monotheism_ of their early ancestors. It cannot fail to
strike the Kabalists as an unfortunate deviation from the original
meaning in favour of one laboriously fabricated by both Jewish and
Christian falsificators.
The “Book of Formation” is a treatise consisting of 6 chapters and
33 sections, and thus its compilation is pentacular. The 6 chapters
refer to the Yetziratic World, the 6 periods of Genesis; while the
33 sections have a close analogy with the Thirty-two Paths which are
added at the end of the work. It is a philosophical disquisition on
the occult meanings of the ten numbers of the decimal scale, and the
22 letters of the Hebrew sacred alphabet. The first chapter deals
with the numbers, which it divides into a Tetrad (symbolising
Spirit, Air, Water, and Fire), and a Hexad (symbolising Height,
Depth, East, West, South and North). The second chapter treats
generally of the 22 letters, produced from the Air or the number 2,
and divided into 3 Mother-letters, 7 double-letters, and 12 simple
letters. The third chapter shows the symbolic reference of the 3
Mother-letters to Air, Water, and Fire; the fourth chapter that of
the 7 double-letters to the Planets &c.; the fifth chapter that of
the 12 simple letters to the signs of the Zodiac, &c.; and the sixth
chapter forms the synthesis.
The 32 paths are no other than symbolical developments of the 10
Sephiroth or numbers, and the 22 letters which form the connecting
links between them.
Altogether the work is interesting and worthy of careful study.
------------------
TREBLE CHORDS.
POEMS BY CATHERINE GRANT FURLEY.
Edinburgh: R. and R. Clark.
This is an inviting little book of verse, with an ill-chosen title.
Why “Treble Chords,” when the author cannot compose anything more
than a single part? The octave is spanned by treble or threefold
chords, but Miss Furley has not yet reached the octave of
attainment! No, the book must be re-christened at its second birth;
and the protest of the _Girton Girl_, and the more sustained poem of
the _Other Isolt_, are assuredly good enough to interest and delight
a sufficient number of women to send it into a second edition. The
writer has a distinct faculty of seeing, as well as the tendency to
take the “other side,” as she does in _Isolt of Brittany_ and in
_Galatea to Pygmalion_. The moral of the latter poem is thus
presented:
“O, frequent miracle! so often seen
We scarcely pause to think what it may mean—
Man’s power to raise within a woman’s heart
A love he does not know, nor could impart;
To wake a soul within the marble breast,
Then long to soothe it back to stony rest;
For, though the woman’s sweeter to caress,
The statue’s more convenient to possess.”
Here is a specimen of the sonnets, not the best, perhaps, but to the
purpose:
CIRCE.
Men call me Circe, but my name is Love;
And my cup holds the draught of sweet and sour,
Of gain, joy, loss, renouncement, all the dower
That woman’s love brings man. I hold above
Your outstretched hand the chalice; ere you prove
Its potency, bethink you; it has power
To test your soul. If in a sinful hour
You touch it, you shall sink as those who strove
Of old to win my heart. Lo! there they be,
Not men but beasts; for with impure desire
They sought me, and Love holds _that_ blasphemy;
And for their sin doth bid them dwell in mire
Nor know their shame. Had they been pure in thought,
My cup had strengthened them and injured not.
It is but a tiny handful, this, of first flowers; not even a
gathering of first-fruits. But they have the fragrance of promise,
and a freshness of real rarity. Whether the fruit will set and
mature must depend upon the sunshine and the rain and other
surroundings of the struggling life, and on the depth of soil and
strength of rootage. Of these we cannot judge; but the first-flowers
are sweet and pretty and worth a word of welcome.
G. M.
------------------
THE CREATOR, AND WHAT WE MAY KNOW OF THE METHOD OF CREATION.[130]
-----
Footnote 130:
The Fernley Lecture, 1887, by Dr. Dallinger. T. Woolmer, 2, Castle
Street, City Road, London E.C. (1s. 6d., paper covers.)
-----
The above is the title of a lecture, forming the seventeenth of what
are known as the “Fernley Lectures,” delivered annually, by the
leading minds in the Ministry of the Wesleyan Methodist Society.
This specific lecture is the latest of the series, and was delivered
in Manchester, August 1st in present year, by the Rev. W. H.
Dallinger, LL.D., F.R.S., Pres. R.M.S., etc., Governor of Wesley
College, Sheffield.
The lecture occupies an unique position amongst its fellows, and
will bear a most favourable comparison with any that have been
delivered by the various Presidents of the Royal Society on the
sciences of the day. For clearness of argument and lucidity of
thought—_as far as it goes_—it is unsurpassed, and, as a specimen of
the power of English language, it is a treat to all who can estimate
its value. It is all this, and more, and here its significance and
suggestiveness comes in, and I can do no less than characterise its
delivery under the circumstances, to an auditory that represents (in
the eyes of the sect itself, at all events) the purest form of
Evangelical religion, as a startling phenomenon, and as such I
consider a notice of it in no way out of place in a theosophical
journal. That such a lecture should be allowed to be delivered and
favourably received, not only by the audience, but by the Wesleyan
body at large, is a “sign of the times” that the intelligent
observer cannot fail to discern. It is, undoubtedly, an index finger
that marks a large advance in the progress of human emancipation
from the increasingly intolerable yoke of Churchianic or
Ecclesiastical tyranny; and all “friends of progress” will
cheerfully render to the worthy and eloquent lecturer the thanks
that are due for his manly and outspoken views upon the profoundest
question of the age. The strangest part is the spectacle of a
“Minister of the Gospel,” himself a scientist of no mean order,
proclaiming from a Methodist platform his adherence to, and
acceptance of, the doctrines of Charles Darwin, as true exponents of
the “Method of Creation,” which means that “Natural Selection,” and
survival of the “Fittest,” accounts for the origin of species and
the indefinite variety of extinct and extant animal forms of life.
Why not include vegetable forms as well? Methinks the fabulous
“missing link” between the vegetable and animal kingdoms may,
without much difficulty, be actually spotted. Nature, as delineated
by the great “Naturalist,” must have been very peevish and unkind to
her worshippers, when she mocks them by destroying every vestige,
even to the veriest fragmentary fossil, of this anxiously looked for
and expectant missing link, between the animal (brute) and man! To
my view, the continuous chain of sequential life forms, as presented
in the Darwinian theory, evinces a vast number of “missing links,”
and, unless these can be supplied, it will not bear the strain when
tested by the unclouded intellect of man. The philosopher of
Materialism may accept the Darwinian theories (for as yet they are
nothing less or more) as gospel, but the spiritual philosopher will
not, nor can he accept them as truth, simply because he recognises a
factor, which is an abomination in the eyes of the materialistic
“wise ones.” It is this factor that the eloquent and learned
lecturer pleads for, without suspecting what it really is. I have
reason to know that our reverend scientist regards this “Spiritual”
factor with the utmost contempt. But I leave this, and pass on to
notice some of the really valuable thoughts and facts that ennoble
the lecture, which is addressed to “thoughtful and earnest minds,
not concerned specially with questions of philosophy, metaphysics,
and science, but alive to the advanced knowledge and thought of our
times, and anxious to know how the great foundation of religious
belief, the existence of Deity, is affected by the splendid advance
of our knowledge of nature.”
This expression “existence of Deity” is conveniently elastic enough
to cover the ground of argument by a scientific theologian, inasmuch
as it may be taken to mean a personal God, according to sound
Evangelical belief, and thus assume a plausible defence of Theism
versus Atheism; or, it may admit of a much wider application to an
“Unknown God”; for when the lecturer does venture to delineate the
characteristic of Deity as the Creator, it is such terms as
“Inscrutable Power or Creator,” “Eternal Mind,” “Infinite
Intelligence,” &c., which is tantamount to saying that the Primal
Cause of all that is, is unknowable; and if this is what Dr.
Dallinger really means, he is at one with the Spiritual Philosopher;
but this will be a curious weapon in the hands of an ecclesiastical
theologian—as dangerous as it is curious. By the use of these terms
the reverend author shields himself from the charge of materialistic
heresy, albeit to the clear-sighted one there are several, if not
many, weak and vulnerable points in the defensive armour; but if the
adherents and votaries of the “faith once delivered to the saints”
might be a little chary in their acceptance of him as a “sound”
exponent of religious truth, yet all progressive minds will hail him
as a fearless champion for the truth as delivered by the Book of
Nature and interpreted by the splendid achievements of modern
science.
“The study of phenomena, their succession and their
classification, is the essential work of science. It has no
function, and is possessed of no instrument with which to look
behind or below the sequence, in quest of some higher relation.
The eye and mind of the experimentalist know only of antecedent
and consequent. These fill the whole circle of his research; let
him find these, and he has found all.”
Here the domain of “science” is defined by a master mind, which
tells us that “the researches of science are physical.” The
observable, finite contents of space and time are the subjects of
its analysis. Existence, not the cause of existence, succession, not
the reason of succession, method, not the origin of method, are the
subjects of physical research. A primordial cause cannot be the
subject of experiment nor the object of demonstration. It must for
ever transcend the most delicate physical re-action, the profoundest
analysis, and the last link in the keenest logic. Science refuses
absolutely to recognise mind as the primal cause of the sequences of
matter. This is just—within the strict region of its research—for
phenomena, their sequences and classification, are its sole domain.
But observe; science universally puts _force_ where the reason asks
for cause. The forces affecting matter are tacitly assumed to be
competent to account for every activity, every sequence, every
phenomenon, and all the harmonies of universal being, a nexus for
the infinite diversities and harmonies, a basis for all the
equilibrium of nature, is found by modern science in force. But
force is as absolutely inscrutable as mind. Force can never be known
in itself; it is known by its manifestations. It is not a
phenomenon, it produces phenomena. We cannot know it; but we know
nothing without it. The ultimate analysis of physical science is the
relations of matter and force. In irreducible terms, therefore, the
final analysis of science is _matter as affected by motion_.
We now see, from the above excerpta, the goal to which the “splendid
discoveries” of modern science lead its votaries, as portrayed by an
authority that claims to speak not as other men; and if it is not a
veritable dismal swamp, leading to nothing or negation; a miasma
suffocating the aspirations of those who are trusting to the
leadership of _savants_ to guide them in the path that conveys them
to the habitat of true wisdom and knowledge of themselves; then I
can only say of such, “miserable comforters are ye all.”
But the question intervenes here: is this a true definition of the
end and aim of science? It may be to the majority of the Royal
Society; but I may tell those who claim to be the conservators of
science, and who arrogate to themselves the right to define the
boundaries of even physical science, that they do not possess the
_all_ of human intelligence, and that there are, outside their
societies, men who refuse to bow the knee to the modern scientific
Baal, who refuse to be cajoled by the use of terms that mystify but
certainly do not enlighten. For instance, who is one wit the wiser
when, having reached the end of its tether, science discovers that
“matter and motion” govern and regulate all things observable by the
human eye, or within the range of the human mind? To the credit of
the author of the last Fernley Lecture, he sees and acknowledges the
dilemma into which “materialistic” science is driven; but whether
“theological” science, so ably represented by himself, can
altogether evade it, is a question that I do not here stay to
propound. This much, however, I may say, scientific dicta
notwithstanding, there is another department of scientific research
which _does_ form the _nexus_—the _veritable_ missing link—between
the known and their unknown, and this is the science of psychology,
which commences just where the professors of science (physical)
confess themselves baffled, and are unable, or rather unwilling, to
advance further in this to them _terra incognita_. The wilful
ignoring of this by Materialistic leaders of thought ends by putting
them out of court in the discussion of the profound problems arising
out of the discoveries of the psychological scientist. In
presence of facts, the evidence for which are world wide and as
demonstrable—_on their own plane or ground_—as geological, or
astronomical facts which the psychologist adduces, of what
conceivable use are the “relations of matter and force” of the
physicist, as explanatory of the laws, &c., pertaining to the new
world discovered by psychological _Savants_?
It will be new to many of your readers to find the Rev. Dr.
“hob-nobbing” with Professor Huxley, who is quoted as—_not_ a
Materialist! The learned professor appears to be indignant with
those who are zealous for “the fundamental article of the faith
materialistic,” who “parade force and matter as the Alpha and Omega
of existence,” and says, “If I were forced to choose between
Materialism and Idealism, I would elect for the latter”; and the
lecturer adds, “Truly, if our choice must be between them, this is
the normal alternative.” It were better had the Professor given some
inkling as to what _he_ meant by this high-sounding term
“Idealism.”[131]
-----
Footnote 131:
Both the Idealism of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and the Hylo-Idealism of
Dr. Lewins are more materialistic and atheistic than any of the
honestly declared materialistic views—Buchner’s and Molaschott’s
included.—[ED.]
-----
The author again says—“I adopt gladly the language of Professor
Huxley: Belief, in the scientific sense of the word, is a serious
matter, and needs, strong foundations. If it were given me to look
beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more
remote period when the earth was passing through physical and
chemical conditions, I should expect to be a witness of the
evolution of living protoplasm from not-living matter.”
“So should I,” adds the Rev. Dr., who brings in Mr. Crooks (?), of
whom the lecturer says, “I do not forget the recent and splendid
service done by Mr. Crooks to the philosophical side of chemistry.
It is a most subtle and exquisite means of endeavouring to deduce
the _method_, the ‘_law_’ according to which what we know as the
‘chemical elements’ were built up. He obtains indications of a
primitive element—a something out of which the elements were
evolved. He calls it _protyle_ or first stuff, and from its presence
concludes that the elements, as we know them, have been evolved from
simpler matter—or perhaps, indeed, from one sole kind of matter.” In
the following sentences he tries hard to depreciate this “splendid
discovery” by Mr. Crooks, the reason for which is anything but
difficult to discover. Dr. Dallinger _knows_ that Mr. Crooks
published a work entitled “Researches in the Phenomena of
Spiritualism,” containing his _Experimental_ Investigations in
Psychic Force, which he, in conjunction with his friend Huxley,
thinks it beneath him to notice.
But _I_ claim the “splendid discovery” of Mr. Crooks to be of far
more transcendent importance than the learned scientist will admit.
It comes marvellously near to the scientific demonstration of the
ethic propounded by the “philosophy of spirit,” “There is but one
life, and one substance, by which life is manifested in an
infinitude of forms in all universes, from the simplest to the most
complex organic.”
On this subject the Lecture contains the following eloquent, and, I
may add, brilliant peroration.
“Life, it is well known, has its phenomena inherent in, and
strictly confined to, a highly complex compound, with fixed
chemical constituents. This compound, in its living state, is
known as protoplasm. It is clear, colourless, and to our finest
optical resources, devoid of discoverable structure. There is
not a living thing on earth but possesses its life in
protoplasm, from a microscopic fungus, to Man. To depict the
properties of Life in irreducible simplicity, take one of the
lowliest instances within the range of science. Let it be one of
the exquisitely minute, almost infinitely prolific, and
universally diffused living forms that set up, and carry on,
putrefaction. The lesser of them may, when considered as solid
specks, vary from the fifty-thousand-millionth of a cubic inch
to the twenty-billionth of a cubic inch (evidently far beneath
the unaided optic power of the human eye to see). I select one
that is oval in shape. Its mission as an organism, is to break
up and set free the chemical elements that had been locked up in
dead organic compounds. (Query—Was this tiny creature
self-generated, or was it the product of the _dead_ organism?)
Its own substance wears out by this and other means; and it has
the power to renovate the waste from the dead decomposition in
which it lives, constructing, in the lavatory of its protoplasm,
new living matter. But more; this vital and inconceivably minute
speck multiplies with astounding rapidity in two ways; by the
first and common process, in the course of a minute and a half,
the entire body is divided into two precisely similar bodies,
each one perfect; almost immediately these again divide, and so
on in geometric ratio through all the populated fluid; the
rapidity of this intense and wonderful vital action transcending
all thought. By this process alone, a single form may, in three
hours, give rise to a population of organisms as great as the
human population of the globe. This is life—whether vegetable or
animal none can determine—in the simplest form in which it can
be known, and which distinguish it for ever and everywhere from
what is not life.”
Several equally interesting examples of recent scientific
discoveries are given, but space forbids me to more than mention
them. Science, as represented by the _Savants_, evidently believes
in an unbridged chasm between the forms of life and not-life. The
Scientist and Philosopher of Spirit join issue on this, for they
declare that “Life is present everywhere, and _in_ all forms,
organic or non-organic, and without the presence of Life no
forms—not even mineral—could be phenomenal or _ex_istent.”
Your space does not permit me to deal with more than one other, and,
to many, the more important subject of Biblical records coming
within the domain of science. Here is a specimen of how the learned
scientist and theologian deals with the biblical account of
Creation.
“And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature
after his kind.’ That is the utterance of the human conception,
which can alone represent to us the divine resolve to fill the
earth with life—and the joy of living things. ‘And it was so.’ But
what epochs of countless ages filled the incalculable
interval?”[132]
-----
Footnote 132:
A few years—and, who knows? perhaps only few months more, and
Protestant England will have reverend scientists explaining to
their congregations from the pulpits that Adam and Eve were but
the “missing link”—_two tailless baboons_.—[ED.]
-----
The boldness of this utterance from one in the position of the
Reverend Lecturer can be well imagined. It contains the elements of
combustion which need but the spark of investigation to deal a death
blow to the established Churchianic dogma of Biblical infallibility
in its literal sense. I conclude by repeating that such a
deliverance by a ministerial representative of the Wesleyan
denomination is a phenomenon that strikingly indicates the “Signs of
the times,” and which shows that the emancipation of the human mind
from the bonds of theological presumption is not far distant.
WILLIAM OXLEY.
Higher Broughton, Manchester, _December_ 11th, 1887.
------------------
ABSOLUTE MONISM; OR, MIND IS MATTER AND MATTER IS MIND. By SUNDARAM
IYER, F.T.S. Madras, 1887.
Under the above title the author issues an address delivered at the
last convention of the delegates of the Theosophical Society at
Adyar. Metaphysicians, who note with interest all criticisms of
Western psychology from the Oriental standpoint, will welcome the
appearance of this extremely able and instructive _brochure_, which
constitutes the first instalment of Absolute Monism. The object of
the writer is to discuss the point whether an examination of all
theories, as to relations of mind and body, “does not lead us to the
Unistic theory that Mind is Matter, and Matter is Mind.” He
endeavours to merge the apparent dualism of subject and object into
a fundamental unity:—
“Is mind a product of organized matter? No ... for organized
matter is only a combination of material particles, as is
unorganized matter. How is it, then, that there is the
manifestation of Mind in the one case, and not in the other?...
Can subjective facts ever emerge out of a group of molecules?
Never; as many times never as there are molecules in the group.
And why? Because Mind cannot issue from No Mind.” (p. 13.)
The line of argument adopted _versus_ Materialism—the doctrine that
mental facts are the _resultant_ of chemical changes in the brain;
force and matter being the only Ultimates of Existence—is
unquestionably forcible. Mind can never be resolved into a
“bye-product” of brain activity, for several valid reasons. In the
first place, in its aspect of thought, it exhibits _concentration on
an end_, _intelligence_ and _interest_ in the subject under
consideration, all of which characteristics, according to
Tyndall and Du Bois Reymond, are necessarily absent from those
remarshallings of atoms and molecules which are declared to
“cerebrate out” mental phenomena! In the second place, the gulf
between consciousness and molecular change has never been bridged;
an admission to which the leading physicists and physiologists of
the day lend all the weight of their authority. The terms
“consciousness” and “matter” are expressive of things so utterly
contrasted, that all attempts to deduce the former from the latter
have met with signal discredit. Nevertheless, materialists assume
the contrary, whenever the necessities of their philosophy demand
it. Hence, we find men, like Büchner, admitting in one place that
“in the relation of soul and brain, phenomena occur which _cannot be
explained by ... matter and force_,” and elsewhere resolving
mind into the “_activity of the tissues of the brain_,” “a
mode of motion”—contradictions, the flagrancy of which is
enhanced by the fact that the same author invests the physical
automaton Man with a power to control his actions! Lastly, the
degradation of consciousness into “brain-function” by constituting
philosophers, theologians, scientists, and all alike “conscious
automata”—(machines whose thoughts are determined _for_, not _by_
their conscious Egos)—knocks away the basis of argument. The only
resource becomes universal scepticism; a denial of the possibility
of attaining truth. Can impartiality, correct thinking and
agreement, be expected on the part of controversialists who form
part of a comedy of Automata?
If mind is not inherent in matter, it cannot be evolved by mere
nervous complexity. The combination of two chemical elements cannot
result in a compound in which something more than the constituent
factors are present. It is sometimes urged that, since the
properties of substances are often altogether changed in the course
of chemical combinations—new ones arising with the temporary lapse
of the old—consciousness may be explained as a “peculiar property”
of matter under some of its conditions. Mr. Sundaram Iyer meets this
objection ably. “Aquosity,” it is said, is a property of oxygen and
hydrogen in combination, though not in isolation. To this he
answers, “chemical properties are either purely subjective facts or
objectivo-subjective ones” (p. 57). They exist only in the
consciousness of the percipient, and represent no external and
independent reality. Psychologists of the type of Huxley would do
well to recall this fact, apart from the considerations springing
from other data.
Our author is loud in his praises of _Panpsychism_, that phase of
pantheism which regards all matter as saturated with a potential
psyche. He speaks of the “catholicity, sublimity and beauty ... not
to say the philosophy, and logic, and truthfulness of this creed of
thought.” It is, however, clear that some of the authorities he
cites in support of this view, more especially Clifford, Tyndall,
and Ueberweg, represent a phase of thought which is too
materialistic to do justice to an elevated pantheistic concept.
Clifford’s _conscious_ mind-_stuff_ is sublimated materialism, and
Ueberweg speaks of those “sensations” present in “inanimate” objects
which are “concentrated” in the human brain, as if they represented
so many substances to be weighed in scales. Instructive and
thoughtful as is the discussion of this subject (pp. 32-63), its
value would have been increased by a survey of the pantheistic
schools of German speculation, so many of whose conclusions are
absolutely at one with esoteric views as to the Logos and the
metaphysics of consciousness.
After discussing the primary and secondary (so-called) qualities of
matter, as tabulated by Mill, Hamilton and others, Mr. Sundaram Iyer
passes on the question: “What is force?”
“Force _is_ matter ... it may be related to matter in ... four
ways:—firstly, it may be an extraneous power to matter, acting
upon it from without; secondly, it may be an inherent power in
matter, influencing it from within, but yet distinct from the
substance of matter; thirdly, it may be an innate power in matter,
influencing it from within, and not distinct from the substance of
matter; or fourthly, it may be a function of the substance of
matter.” (p. 76-7.)
After an interesting criticism of current theories, he concludes
that:—
“Function is simply the phenomenal effect of the latent cause,
namely force, but never force itself. This potential existence,
which is in matter, _is a physical existence_. If not it cannot,
as shown before, produce any impression whatsoever upon or in the
substance of matter.”
Matter is force and force is matter. It is not quite evident,
however, whether this position is strictly reconcilable with the
remark that “the primary qualities of matter are all simplifiable
into ... extension and (its) motion (actual or possible).”
If force is a _physical existence_, and the real _substance_ of
matter at the same time, we get back no further into the mystery of
what things-in-themselves really are. Physical existence remains the
reality behind physical existence and the realization of matter and
force, as aspects only of one basis, in no way simplifies the crux.
It is not clear, moreover, what is the exact meaning the author
intends by the use of the word “force.” Is it motion—molar or
molecular—or the unknown cause of motion? According to Professor
Huxley, “force” is merely an expression used to denote the _cause_
of motion, whatever that may be. We only _know_ this cause in its
_aspect_ of motion, and cannot penetrate behind the veil in order to
grasp the Noumenon of which motion is the phenomenal effect. The
necessity, therefore, of recognising the fact that _motion_ is all
that falls within the cognizance of sense, forbids the (profane)
scientist to use the term “force” as representative of anything but
an abstraction. The question is complicated by the consideration
that the _substantiality_ of various so-called “forces” appears most
probable, and that this substantiality becomes objectively real to
sense, only on a plane beyond this—the domain of matter in its order
of physical differentiations.
The materialistic doctrine that force merely = a motion of matter is
contradicted by the fact that, as shown by Mill, _motion can be
temporarily neutralized_. Lift a heavy weight on to a shelf and the
mechanical energy expended in the act is latent in the potentiality
of the weight to fall to the ground again. There is _no immediate
equivalent_, as the attraction of the earth for the object remains
the same (the now greater distance tending to diminish the amount
though in a very minute degree.)
It may be further noted that, granting Mr. Sundaram Iyer’s
definition of matter as “_extension pure and simple_,” to be correct
(p. 112), it is difficult to understand how he predicates this
barren content as endowed with _motion_ (p. 83.) What moves?
The rest of the _brochure_ is taken up with some excellent criticism
of current conceptions of atoms, space and heterogenealism (a creed
now so sorely wounded by Mr. Crooke’s “Protyle.”) Dealing with one
of the late Mr. G. H. Lewe’s utterances, the author remarks
with great truth: “By some mysterious law of occurrence the
self-contradictions of the bulk of the erudite and enlightened are
in point of gravity, palpableness, and number in direct proportion
to their erudition and enlightenment.” With how many contrasted
dicta from the pages of our Büchners, Spencers, Bains etc., etc.,
could this conclusion be supported.
One word before we close. Is the title of the work well chosen? It
appears to us the least satisfactory sentence which has been traced
by the writer’s pen. The definition of “mind as matter and matter as
mind” not only offers no solution of the great psychological problem
discussed, but does injustice to the contents of the work itself.
In the process of definition we “assemble representative examples of
the phenomena,” under investigation and “our work lies in
generalizing these, in detecting community in the midst of
difference.” Now, there is _no community whatever_ between mental
and material facts. For as Professor Bain writes:
“Extension is but the first of a long series of properties all
present in matter, _all absent in mind_ ... our mental experience,
our feelings and thoughts, have no _extension_, no _place_, no
_form_[133] or _outline_, or _mechanical division_ of parts; and we
are incapable of attending to anything mental until we shut off the
view of all that.”—“_Mind and Body._” pp. 125 and 135.
-----
Footnote 133:
Nevertheless _objectively_ viewed thoughts are actual entities to
the occultist.
-----
The phenomenal contrast of mind and matter is not only at the root
of our present constitution but an essential of our terrestrial
consciousness. Duality is illusion in the ultimate analysis; but
within the limits of a Universe-cycle or Great Manwantaræ it holds
true. The _two_ bases of manifested Being—the Logos (spirit) and
Mulaprakriti, (Matter, or rather its Noumenon) are unified in the
absolute reality, but in the Manvantaric Maya, under space and time
conditions, they _are contrasted though mutually interdependent
aspects of the_ ONE CAUSE.
[Illustration: decorative separator]
EDITORS’ NOTES.
We have a good deal of correspondence now in type, but must stand
over till next month owing to lack of space.
In particular we wish to acknowledge a letter on Hylo-Idealism,
signed C. N., forwarded to us by Dr. Lewins from a correspondent of
his now in the East. This letter places Hylo-Idealism in a new and
very different light, and its straightforward style and language are
in strong contrast to the turgid effusions of such writers as G. M.
McC. An extract from one of the latter’s letters to the “_Secular
Review_” (January 7, 1888), for instance, says that “Specialism _is_
Superficialism, and _vice versa_, both being _fractionalism_;
and that the true desideratum is generalisationism (_i.e._
_all-roundism_ and _all-throughism_), whereby and wherein the
Kantian and Hegelian metaphysic may be precipitated and modern
Materialism sublimed? There is only one alembic for both, and that
is Solipsism—that true ‘wisdom of the ages,’ in which the
profoundest thinker is at one with the little child.—G. M.
McC.”!!![134]
------------------
The following books have been received and will be noticed in due
course:—
“Absolute Relativism; or, the Absolute in Relation,” by W. B.
McTaggart. (W. Stewart & Co.)
“Spirit Revealed,” by Captain William C. Eldon Serjeant. (George
Redway.)
“A Modern Apostle,” and other Poems, by Constance C. W. Naden.
(Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.)
“Manuel of Etheropathy,” by Dr. Count Manzetti.
-----
Footnote 134:
See also his letter under Correspondence.
-----
=Correspondence.=
-------
THE CHURCH AND THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT.
_To the Editors of_ LUCIFER.
As it is often supposed that the clergy are required to be united as
one man in teaching a doctrine called Atonement, and that this
doctrine requires the clergy either to teach that “God required the
blood of Jesus to be shed and offered as a sacrifice for an
Atonement,” or to leave the Church if they reject it; therefore,
since I reject this doctrine, it is sometimes wondered how I can
either have been admitted to ordination, or, being admitted, how I
can remain in, or expect to have a hearing in, the pulpits of the
National Churches.
_The explanation_ of my position is as follows:
I offered myself as a candidate for ordination much later than is
usual; and _one_ of the three beneficed clergy, whose testimonials,
as to the candidate’s religious views being orthodox, each candidate
is required to provide before being accepted as a candidate for
examination and ordination, _informed_ the Bishop of London
(Jackson) that I did not hold Church of England views on the
Atonement. The Bishop, therefore, before accepting me as a
candidate, required a personal interview; when I told the Bishop, in
reply to his question, whether I had any difficulty in accepting the
doctrine of Atonement as taught in the second of the XXXIX.
Articles, that I was entering the Church in order to teach, that it
was the work of Jesus Christ to devote His life a living sacrifice
to persuade us to believe that in His love, His mind, His spirit
towards us, we saw (so far as it could be manifested in the human
form) the love, mind, and spirit of God towards us; and that the
sacrifice of Jesus consisted in His leaving nothing undone that love
could do or suffer, even to drinking to its very dregs the cup of
our hatred, whilst blind and ignorant, in order that we might accept
and believe His testimony.
And, in addition, I told the Bishop that if the XXXIX. Articles did
not allow of this teaching, and demanded of the clergy to believe
and teach that “God required the blood of Jesus to be shed and
offered as a sacrifice for an Atonement, either to appease God’s
wrath, satisfy His justice, or propitiate His favour,” then such a
doctrine was immoral, anti-Christian, contrary to the Scriptures,
and made God to be no better than Shylock, a wolf, or a devil. And I
dared the Bishop to refuse accepting me as a candidate.
The Bishop made no reply, neither assenting nor dissenting, and I
returned to Petersham to await the result of this interview. After a
day or two the Bishop’s chaplain wrote that I might consider my
proposal to come to the Bishop’s examination for Orders accepted;
and I was ordained without one word of comment upon the conversation
at this private interview. But my first vicar only allowed me to
preach three times, and then for the rest of the year he boycotted
me from either preaching, reading, or even speaking in the parish,
excepting only in a particular part of it. My second vicar, after
allowing me to preach three times, also boycotted me entirely. I
appealed to the Bishop, but he declined to interfere. So after
striving in vain to find a clergyman who would allow me to preach
what I was ordained to teach, I published pamphlets, and delivered
them by the hundred and thousand at the church doors after the
service, wherever there was a large congregation; but after a time
the Bishop was appealed to to stop me; when he not only denied me,
as Peter denied Jesus, but he threatened to instruct the police to
prevent me; and the ruling powers at St Paul’s Cathedral did
instruct the chief of the police to prevent me.
As a last resort, I write letters in the Press wherever I can find a
newspaper willing to open its columns, to explain my views and
appeal to the people to obtain liberty in the Church for teaching
the truth of “Christ Crucified.” But so great is the opposition to
this, that the chief organ of the Church and the Press (the _Times_)
refuses even to allow me to advertise for a pulpit, on the ground
that it is _inadmissible_; notwithstanding all the minutest details
of divorce trials are freely _admissible_, thus proving that
everything is admissible excepting one thing, viz.: the truth of
Christ Crucified.
And yet the Archbishop of Canterbury has recently told the world
that “the Church wishes the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, to be told,” and the Bishops of Carlisle, Durham,
Peterborough, Manchester, Liverpool and Bedford, have also used
words to the same effect. But although I have spent the best part of
my life (17 years) in striving to find one clergyman (from the
highest to the lowest), I have not found one who would allow this
liberty to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, concerning Christ Crucified. And I appeal to the rulers of
the Church to allow this liberty—and to the people to demand and
obtain this liberty, if the rulers of the Church refuse it. For I
have a letter from Canon Liddon, in which he says to me, “I can
believe with all my heart, although I only know you from the two
letters which you have written to me (upon my sermons), that if you
were to preach, people would go to hear you as they go to hear me.”
Is there not a cause then, why I should complain of being thus
cruelly and unjustly boycotted for 17 years without any reason?
The chief organ of the Church and the Press (the _Times_) in the
supposed chief Christian city in the world, refused to publish, even
as an advertisement, any one of the three following appeals, on the
ground that they were _inadmissible_. Yes, _inadmissible_, whilst
all the minutest details of the Barrett trial, the Dilke trial, the
Colin Campbell trial, the Seabright trial, and a host of others of a
like nature, were all _freely admissible_.
I.
“A pulpit wanted, in the National Church, in which liberty will be
allowed to teach the truth of Christ Crucified, openly and
fearlessly, in order that it may no longer remain either a
stumbling-block to the Jews, foolishness to the world, or a mystery
to the teachers of it (as it is to this day, for want only of this
liberty), but may verily be seen to be, as it is, and as St. Paul
asserted it to be, the power of God, and wisdom of God for the
salvation of all men.”
II.
“The Rev. T. G. Headley, of Petersham, S.W., appeals to the Clergy
and people of the Church of England for a pulpit in which he may be
allowed to preach seven sermons: I. on Unbelief; II. the Trial of
Abraham; III. the Day of Judgment; IV. Mary Magdalene; V. Conversion
of St. Paul; VI. Jesus, only; VII. Inspiration.”
III.
“The Rev. T. G. Headley, of Petersham, S.W., appeals to the Clergy
for a pulpit in which he may be allowed to explain the mystery of
Christ Crucified, that it may no longer remain a mystery.”
Rev. T. G. HEADLEY.
Manor House, Petersham, S.W.
---
[This persistent refusal is the more remarkable as other preachers
are allowed to teach worse, _from an orthodox standpoint, of
course_. Is it _inadmissible_ “to explain the mystery of Christ
Crucified,” as the Rev. Mr. Headley is likely to, lest it should
interfere with the explanation and description of Jehovah—“_one with
Christ Jesus_” in the orthodox dogma—by the Rev. H. R. Haweis, M.
A.? Says this truthful and cultured if not very pious orator: “At
first the chief attributes of Satan were given to Jehovah. It was
God who destroyed the world, hardened Pharaoh, tempted David,
provoked to sin, and punished the sinner. This way of thinking
lingered even as late as 700 B.C.: ‘I the Lord make peace and create
evil’ (Isa. xlv. 7). We have an odd survival of this identification
of God with the Devil in the word ‘_Deuce_,’ which is none other
than ‘_Deus_,’ but which to us always means the Devil. As the Jew
grew more spiritual he gradually transferred the devilish functions
to a ‘Satan,’ or accusing spirit. The transition point appears in
comparing the early passage (2 Sam. xxiv.), when _God_ is said to
‘move’ David to number the people, with the later (1 Chron. xxi.),
where _Satan_ is said to be the instigator who ‘provoked’ the
numbering. But Satan is not yet the King Devil. We can take up our
Bible and trace the gradual transformation of Satan from an accusing
angel into the King Devil of popular theology.”—(_The Key_, etc p.
22.) This, we believe, is an even more damaging teaching for the
Orthodox Church than any theory about “Christ Crucified.” Mr.
Headley seeks to prove Christ, the Rev. Haweis ridiculing and making
away with the Devil, _destroys and makes away for ever with Jesus_,
as Christ, also. For, as logically argued by Cardinal Ventura de
Raulica, “_to demonstrate the existence of Satan, is to
re-establish_ ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL DOGMAS OF THE CHURCH, _which
serves as a basis for Christianity, and without which_, Satan (and
Jesus) would be but names”; or to put it in the still stronger terms
of the pious Chevalier des Mousseaux, “_The Devil is the chief
pillar of Faith_ ... 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.” (See _Isis
Unveil._ vol. i., 103; vol. ii., 14.) Truly so. Were there no Devil,
a Christ to save the World from him would be hardly wanted! Yet, the
Rev. Haweis says: (p. 24) “I cannot now discuss the teaching of the
N. T. on the King Devil, or I might show that Jesus did not endorse
the popular view of one King Devil, and ... notice the way in which
our translators have played fast and loose with the words _Diabolus
and Satan_;” adding that the Tree and Serpent worship was an
Oriental cult, “of which the narrative of Adam and Eve is a Semitic
form.” Is this _admissible_ orthodoxy?—ED.]
SOCIALISM AND THEOSOPHY.
_To the Editors of_ LUCIFER.
MESDAMES,—In the December number of LUCIFER Mr. J. B. Bright takes
exception to some remarks on Socialism in an article on
“Brotherhood,” which appeared in your pages a month previously.
As the writer of that article, I think it right to accept Mr.
Bright’s challenge, and endeavour to replace my somewhat hasty
generalisations by a more precise statement of the teachings of
Theosophy, as they appear to me to bear on the question at issue.
Mr. Bright objects to my use of the phrase “_materialistic_
Socialism.” My intention was to draw a distinction between that
which “concerns itself primarily with the material or physical
condition of mankind,” and that other form of purely voluntary
association, springing, as regards each of its members, from a
recognition of their unity of purpose, and the realisation of the
idea of brotherhood, for an example of which we may turn to the
communistic system of the early Christian Church. I would point out
that this is not a fanciful distinction, as in the first case what
is described as “a juster distribution of wealth” is the very
essence of the Socialistic idea, while in the second it is only an
incident, arising from the conviction that worldly possessions have
in themselves no value in comparison with “the things of the
spirit.” I maintain then that the teachings of Theosophy are opposed
to “modern materialistic Socialism,” and I will endeavour to point
out, as briefly as possible, in what this opposition consists.
There is at the outset a fundamental difference between Theosophy
and Socialism in the value they attach to the “material and
physical” well-being of mankind. Theosophy regards any given earth
life as an infinitesimal link in the chain of lives which leads from
the first glimmerings of a separate consciousness up to the very
threshold of Divinity and All-knowledge. And taking the doctrines of
Re-incarnation and Karma, as interacting laws, it sees in the
apparent injustices of physical life, and in the inequalities of
intellectual and moral development among mankind, the results of
good or bad use made of opportunities in previous incarnations. The
Universe is governed by the great law of Harmony, whose agent is
Karma, and infractions of this law, or rebellion against it, are
punished by the action of Karma, whether in the individual or the
race. Thus the position of every individual in respect to his fellow
men, and the position of every nation (the compound, as it were, of
individual Karmas) in respect to other nations, is the direct result
of previously acquired characteristics and affinities. The
re-incarnation of an individual will be governed by his personal
affinities; firstly, to the general Karma of his nation: secondly,
to the particular circumstances of his parentage and condition in
life. Theosophy therefore teaches that so far as regards his
individual Karma, a man’s place in Society is what he has made it,
and he has no right to cry out against the injustice of the law
which he has broken, and which inexorably exacts the penalty of his
default. This does not however quite hold good as regards the
national or the cyclic Karma. It is quite possible that by the
action of cyclic Karma injustice may be done to individuals, to be
atoned for no doubt in future existences, but at the same time
calculated to impede their due and regular development. The
combating of this cyclic Karma, in so far as it deals unjustly with
individuals, is the work of the great and wise ones of this earth,
and every true Theosophist will to the best of his ability take part
in the struggle. But the Socialist movement is itself a part of the
cyclic Karma, and in its endeavour to rectify what seem, from its
limited point of view, injustices, it cannot fail to be unjust to
those the justice of whose position in life it declines to
recognise. Thus it cannot be otherwise than that it should meet with
opposition from those whose object is the improvement of humanity as
a whole.
I must in the second place point out that the teaching of Theosophy
is entirely opposed to the idea that any very great progress can be
made by humanity as a whole, within the space of a few generations.
Speaking of the destruction of evil in the human heart, the author
of “Light on the Path” says, “Only the strong can kill it out. The
weak must wait for its growth, its fruition, its death. And it is a
plant which lives and increases throughout the ages. It flowers when
man has accumulated unto himself innumerable existences.” This is
undoubtedly Theosophical teaching, but I do not think it tallies
with Mr. Bright’s view that “this self same society——contains within
it all the germs of such a reconstruction of the physical
environment as shall shortly place the means of spiritual and
psychical regeneration within the reach of all.” It is impossible
that Socialism or any other external organisation can “raise the
intellectual and instinctive moral standard of the whole community
to such an extent that all will, in the next generation after the
Social Revolution, be amenable to the truths” of Theosophy. This
would be equivalent to saying that every member of the community was
prepared definitely to undertake the task of self-conquest, and it
happens unfortunately that almost all the external work of Socialism
is in the opposite direction. Further, it must be distinctly pointed
out that this task of self-conquest must be undertaken and carried
through by each man for himself, and only those who have reached a
certain point in human evolution are ready for the struggle. There
is one other point on which I feel some stress must be laid. It
seems to me impossible that Theosophy, recognising as it does the
immense gulf which exists between ordinary humanity (in which term I
of course include all its followers), and those who are on the
threshold of Divinity, can fail to recognise at the same time the
principle of hierarchy in its best and noblest sense. I mean of
course a spiritual hierarchy, but even this is incompatible with
that innate hatred of domination which is so obvious in Socialism.
There is no doubt some inconsistency in this hatred of domination,
as in practice Socialists are prepared to substitute for the
existing domination of intelligence that of mere numbers, but this,
if anything, only makes the contrast between the two ideas somewhat
stronger. It is only right to point out that an accepted disciple
(not a mere student) practically surrenders his personal liberty,
and pledges himself to obedience to those great ones who are the
initiators of the Theosophical movement.
I have endeavoured thus far to particularise my general statement
that the teachings of Theosophy were opposed to Socialism. I think
Mr. Bright’s objections to my other statements are in effect
answered in what I have already said, but I may perhaps be permitted
to deal with them separately. If Mr. Bright has understood the
meaning of the article on Brotherhood, he will, I think, see that
whereas the Theosophical idea of brotherhood is based on the
identity of the Divine spirit inherent in humanity, and thence
working downwards, the brotherhood of Socialism is based on the
assumption of equality on the material, or intellectual plane, and
has, _per se_, no existence at all on the higher plane. The
brotherhood of Theosophy, once rightly understood, will no doubt be
manifested on the lower planes, but that does not make it the same
thing as an idea of Brotherhood which begins and ends in physical
existence.
As to my remark that Socialism is an attempt to interfere with the
action of the Laws of Karma, I should perhaps have added the word
“individual,” which, in conjunction with my reference to the parable
of the talents, should make the meaning clear. Socialism aims at the
levelling of classes, which is nothing else than a redistribution of
the responsibilities of life. I understand the parable of the
talents to indicate the true meaning of the differences in
opportunities accorded to individuals during their life on earth.
Every opportunity is also a responsibility, and from those to whom
much is given much will be demanded. Further, responsibility is
thrust upon those who can bear it, and to relieve them from it, and
transfer it to the shoulders of the weaker brethren, is an
interference with the laws of Karma, and can only lead to a
retardation of the general evolution of humanity. I will only say in
conclusion that I have endeavoured to confine my remarks to the view
of Socialism advanced by Mr. Bright. It is indeed hardly necessary
to point out that Theosophy can never be a party to the incitements
to violence, and the appeals to the baser passions which Mr. Bright
rightly deprecates, but which are unfortunately too often the
stock-in-trade of the Socialist orator.
I feel that there are many points in Mr. Bright’s letter to which I
should be glad to reply more in detail, but I fear that in so doing
I might be considered as trenching too much on those purely
political aspects of the question which are outside the scope of
Theosophical work.
I am, Mesdames,
Your obedient servant,
THOS. B. HARBOTTLE.
-----------------------
WHAT IS THEOSOPHY?
_The question is answered by Schopenhauer as follows_:
“... Starting from the plane of _mental conception_ (_Vorstellung_),
and proceeding on our way towards the attainment of _objective
knowledge_, we shall never be able to arrive at a higher point than
our own conception (imagination), _i.e._ of the external appearance
of the object of our observation; but we shall never be able to
penetrate into the interior of the things and to find out what they
really are (not what they merely appear to be). So far I agree with
_Kant_. But as a counterpoise to this truth I have called attention
to another one; namely, that we are not merely the _cognising
subject_, but we are also ourselves a part of object of our
cognition, we are ourselves the _Thing itself_. There is
consequently an interior way open to us from that self-existing and
interior essence of things, which we cannot approach from the
outside; a kind of subterranean passage, a secret connection, by
which we by treason, as it were, may at once penetrate into a
fortress which was impregnable from the outside. The _Thing itself_
can as such enter our consciousness only in a direct manner, _i.e._
_by becoming conscious of its own self_. To attempt to know it
objectively is to ask for a self-contradiction.” (_The World as Will
and Conception._ Vol. ii., Cap. 18).
What Schopenhauer expresses in modern philosophical language might
perhaps be stated in a few words by saying, that man cannot become
conscious of the truth unless the truth is in him, and in that case
it is not the man who recognises the truth, but the truth which
recognises itself in man. He who wants to know it objectively must
separate himself from it, because no one can see his own face
without the help of a mirror; but if he separates himself from it,
the truth exists in him no longer. It is therefore the truth itself
which may become self-conscious in man, provided there exists any
truth in him.
F. H.
-----------------------
A NOTE OF EXPLANATION.
I would much rather suffer an unintentional misrepresentation of my
meaning than take the trouble to reply, and have no desire to
magnify small matters of difference. But a very critical friend
calls my attention to certain statements and apparent discrepancies
in the “Esoteric Character of the Gospels,” on which I will beg
leave to say a word.
I find it affirmed on p. 300, in a foot-note, that “Mr. G. Massey
is not correct in saying that ‘_The Gnostic form of the name
Chrest or Chrestos denotes the Good God, not a human original,’
for it denoted the latter, that is, a good, holy man._” But either
the statement has no meaning as an answer to me, or it is based on
a misunderstanding of mine.[135] I was showing that the _original_
Christ of the Gnosis was not one particular form of human
personality, like the supposed historic Christ, and that the name
denoted a divine, and not a human _original_. I was perfectly well
aware, as your quotations show, that the name was _afterwards_
conferred on the “good” as the Chrestoi or Chrestiani. Nor do I
say, or anywhere imply, that the “_Karest_,” or mummy-type of
immortality _was_ the _only form of the Christ_, as your
quotations again will prove. I have written enough about that
Gnostic Christ who was the Immortal Self in man, the reflection
of, or emanation from, the divine nature in humanity, and in both
sexes, not merely in one.[136] This is the Christ that never could
become a one person or be limited to one sex. This you accept and
preach; yet you can add “_Still the personage (Jesus) so addressed
by Paul—wherever he lived—was a great initiate, and a ‘Son of
God.’_”[137] But the Christos of Paul, being the Gnostic Christ,
as you admit (301), it cannot be a personage named Jesus, or a
great Initiate, who was addressed by him. It appears to me that in
passages like these, you are giving away all that is worth
contending for, and vouching for that which never has been, and
never can be, proved. I have searched for Jesus many years in the
Gospels and elsewhere without being able to catch hold of the hem
of the garment of any human personality. Ben-Pandira we know a
little of, but cannot make him out in the Christ of the Gospels.
The Christ of the Gnosis can be identified, but not with any
historic Jesus.
-----
Footnote 135:
The remark made has never been meant as “an answer,” but simply as
an observation that the word “Chrestos” applied to a “good man,” a
“human original,” and not to a “good God only.” If such was not
the intention of Mr. Massey, and he amplifies his idea elsewhere,
it was not so amplified in his article in the “Agnostic Annual.”
It is, therefore, simply a bare statement of facts referring to
that particular article and no more. I do not for one moment
oppose Mr. Massey’s conclusions, nor doubt his undeniable learning
in the direction of those particular researches, _i.e._, about the
words “Christos” and “Chrestos.” What I say is, that he limits
them to the negation of an historical Christ, and, for reasons no
doubt very weighty, does not touch upon their principal esoteric
meaning in the temple-phraseology of the Mysteries.—H.P.B.
Footnote 136:
This is absolutely and preeminently a Theosophical doctrine taught
ever since 1875, when the Theosophical Society was founded.—[ED.]
Footnote 137:
This, I am afraid, is a misunderstanding (due, no doubt, to my own
fault) on the part of our learned correspondent, of the meaning
that was intended to be conveyed in the articles now criticized.
If he goes to the trouble of reading over again the paragraph that
misled him (see p. 307, 5th paragraph), he will, perhaps, see that
it is so. That which was really meant was that, though the terms
_Christos_ and _Chréstos_ are generic surnames, still, the
personage so addressed (not by Paul, necessarily, but by any one),
was a great Initiate and a “Son of God.” It is the name “Jesus,”
placed in the sentence in parentheses that made it both clumsy and
misleading. Whether Paul knew of Jehoshua Ben Pandira (and he must
have heard of him), or not, he could never have applied the
surname used by him to Jesus or any other _historic_ Christ.
Otherwise his _Epistles_ would not have been withheld and exiled
as they were. The sentence which precedes the two incriminated
statements, shows that no such thing, as understood by Mr. Massey,
could have been really meant, as it is said “Occultism pure and
simple finds the same mystic elements in the Christian as in other
faiths, _though it rejects emphatically its dogmatic and historic
character_.” The two statements, viz., that Jesus or Jehoshua Ben
Pandira _whenever he lived_, was a great Initiate and the “Son of
God”—just as Apollonius of Tyana was—and that Paul never meant
either him or any other living Initiate, but a metaphysical
Christos present in, and _personal_ to, every mystic Gnostic as to
every initiated Pagan—are not at all irreconcileable. A man may
know of several great Initiates, and yet place his own ideal on a
far higher pedestal than any of these.—[H.P.B.]
-----
We do not go to the Christian Gospels to learn the true nature of
the Christ, or the incarnation according to the Gnostic religion
(I use this term in preference to yours of the “Wisdom-Religion,”
as being more definite and explanatory; not as a religion,
supposed by the _Idiotai_ to have followed in the wake of Historic
Christianity!). These were known in Egypt, more than six thousand
years ago. When the monuments began the Cult of the Supreme God
Atum was extant. We know not how many æons earlier, but six
thousand years will do. Atum = Adam was the divine father of an
eternal soul which was personated as his son, named Iu-em-hept
(the Greek Imothos or Æsculapius), an image of whom used to be
seen (on shelf 3,578, b. 1874), in the British Museum. He was the
second Atum = Adam, and is called the “Eternal Word” in the
Ritual. In external phenomena this type represented the Solar God,
re-born monthly or annually in the lunar orb; in human phenomena
the Christ or Son of God as the essential and eternal soul in man.
But he was neither a man nor an Initiate. He was just what the
Logos, the Word of Truth or Ma-Kheru, the Buddha or Christ is in
other Cults.[138]
-----
Footnote 138:
Nor shall I dispute this statement in general. But this does not
invalidate in one iota _my_ claim. The temple priests assumed
the names of the gods they served, and this is as well known a
fact, as that the defunct Egyptian became an “Osiris”—was
“osirified”—after his death. Yet Osiris was assuredly neither
“man nor an Initiate,” but a being hardly recognised as such by
the Royal Society of materialistic science. Why, then, could not
an “Initiate,” who had succeeded in merging his spiritual being
into the _Christos state_, be regarded as a Christos after his
last and supreme initiation, just as he was called _Chrestos_
before that? Neither Plotinus, Porphyry nor Apollonius were
Christians, yet, according to esoteric teaching, Plotinus
realized this sublime state (of becoming or uniting himself with
his _Christos_) six times, Apollonius of Tyana four times, while
Porphyry reached the exalted state only once, when over sixty
years of age. The Gnostics called the “_Word_” “Abraxas” and
“Christos” indiscriminately, and by whatever name we may call
it, whether Ma-Kheru, or Christos or Abraxas, it is all one.
That mystic state which gives to our inner being the impulse
that attracts “the soul toward its origin and centre, the
Eternal good,” as Plotinus teaches, and makes of man a god, the
Christos or the unknown made manifest, is a preeminently
theosophical condition. It belonged to the temple mysteries, and
the teachings of the Neo-Platonists.—[H.P.B.]
-----
I cordially agree with “M,” a correspondent whom you quote, and wish
that all our orthodox friends would as frankly face the facts. If
any historic Jesus ever did claim to be the Gnostic Christ made
flesh[139] once for all, he would be the supremest impostor in
history.
Let us define to ourselves very strictly what it is we do mean, or
we shall introduce the direst confusion into the conflict, and we
shall be unable to distinguish the face of friend from foe in the
cloud of battle-dust which we may raise. What I find is, that
Historic Christianity was based either upon the suppression or the
perversion of all that _was_ esoteric in Gnostic Christianity. And
to bring any aid from the one to the support of the other is to try
and re-establish with the left hand all that you are knocking down
with the right.
I am also taken to task on page 307 for alluding to the Bible as a
“Magazine of falsehoods already exploded, or just going off,” by the
writer who adds force to my words later on in characterizing these
same writings as a “Magazine of (_wicked_) falsehoods”[140] (p.
178), which was going farther than I went, who do set down as much
to ignorance as to knavery. What I meant was, that the “Fall of Man”
in the Old Testament, is a falsification of fable, now exploded, and
that the redemption from that fall, which is promised in the New,
whether by an “Initiate” or “Son of God” is a fraud based on the
fable, and a falsehood that is going to be exploded. There is no
call to mix up the Book of the Dead, the Vedas, or any other sacred
writings, in this matter. Each tub must stand on its own bottom, and
the one that won’t, can’t hold water.[141]
GERALD MASSEY.
P.S. By the by, I see the Adventists, and other misleading
Delusionists are all agog just now about the wonderful fulfilment of
prophecy, and corroboration of historic fact, that we are now
witnessing. The “Star of Bethlehem” has reappeared, so they say, to
prove the truth of the Christian story. But, sad to say, it is not
the star of Christ that is now visible in the south-east before
sunrise every morning. It is Venus in her heliacal rising. It is
Venus as the Maleess, or Lucifer as “Sun of the Morning.” This
particular Star of Bethlehem—there are various others less brilliant
and less noticeable—generally does return once every nineteen months
or so, when the planet Venus is the Morning Star. Only the gaping
camel-swallowers, who know all about the “Star of Bethlehem,” and
the fulfilment of prophecy, are not up in Astronomy, and they will
no doubt squirm and strain at this small gnat of real fact offered
to them by way of an explanation.
G. M.
-----
Footnote 139:
“Christ made flesh,” would be a claim worse than imposture, as it
would be _absurdity_, but a man of flesh assuming the
_Christ-condition_ temporarily, is indeed an occult, yet living,
fact.—[ED.]
Footnote 140:
Just so, if it has been originally written to be accepted in its
dead letter sense. But, as I entirely agree with Mr. Massey, that
historic Christianity was based upon the suppression, and
especially the _perversion_ of that which was esoteric in
gnosticism, it is difficult to see in what it is that we disagree?
The perversion of esoteric facts in the gospels is not so cleverly
done as to prevent the true occultist from reading the Gospel
narratives between the lines.—[H.P.B.]
Footnote 141:
If Mr. G. Massey kindly waits till the conclusion of “the Esoteric
character of the gospels” to criticise the statements, he may
perhaps arrive at the conviction that we are not so far apart in
our ideas upon this particular question as he seems to think. Of
course my critic being an Egyptologist, opposed to the Aryan
theory, and arriving at his conclusions only by what he finds in
strictly authenticated and accepted documents—and I, as a
Theosophist and an Occultist of a certain school, accepting my
proofs on data which he rejects—_i.e._ esoteric teachings—we can
hardly agree upon every point. But the question is not whether
there was or never was an _historical_ Christ, or Jesus, between
the years 1 and 33 A.D.—but simply were the Gospels of the
gnostics (of Marcion and others, for instance) perverted later by
Christians—esoteric allegories founded on _facts_, or simply
meaningless fictions? I believe the former, and esoteric teachings
explain many of the allegories.—[H.P.B.]
-----
-----------------------
[_We give room to this remarkable letter with the object of
comparison. The Secularists are loud in proclaiming the modes of
expression of the Theosophists as “stultic profundity,” and the
Esoteric Doctrine as “a hopeless chaos,” a “rudely methodised
madness.” At the same time the Hylo-Idealists are_ PERSONÆ
GRATISSIMÆ _in the “Secular Review,” and no such remarks are
passed about their theories and style_. Readers please to compare.
“Fiat Justitia, ruat Saladinus!”—ED.]
HYLO-IDEALISM—THE SECRET OF JESUS.
“Behold, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”
The primacy of Self is indisputable, if by reason of one fact
only—that this, self-same, Self is the initial postulate of all sane
philosophy. And, when Philosophy soars to Metaphysic, Scientific
Analysis “takes up the wondrous tale,” and its burden is Self-hood
also. All roads lead to Rome. All analysis runs into the Egoistic
Synthesis. “The One [Ego] remains, the Many change and pass.” Yet
the passing is only the flux and ebb of the One. In Hegel’s words,
“that which passes away passes away into its own self: only the
passing away passes away.” Which things are an allegory, and yet
“_solvitur ambulando_.” A recent traveller in the United States
tells us, that, in the Emerson country, he chanced upon cross-roads,
and found there an apparently contradictory direction-post. One arm
of it bore the inscription, “This is the way to Concord,” the other,
pointing in the opposite direction, was similarly worded, “This is
the way to Concord.” The Hylo-Ideal Thesis is this Ideal Concord, to
be reached whether you travel by way of Eastern Idealism, or by the
route of plainer Western Materialism. For, and here all
contradictions are reconciled, in the one Subject-object which is
Self, there is no diversity, neither Jew nor Greek, neither Idealism
only, nor Materialism only, or exclusively, but all is one.[142] And
in Unity there is no class distinction, no nomenclature, no
“otherness,” no Ebal _and_ Gerizim, but only the Mount of God. What
the Ego is, _all_ is.[143] It is the _x_ of every problem and
answers to any value save the spurious and indifferent one of the
Dualist.
-----
Footnote 142:
Hence the Spirit of _Non-Separateness_ in esoteric philosophy must
be the ONE _truth_.—ED.
Footnote 143:
Only this “Ego” is _universal_, not _individual_: _Absolute_
Consciousness, not the _human_ Brain.—ED.
-----
I find Hylo-Idealism (Auto-centricism)—this “pearl of great
price”—canvassed and examined by many modern thinkers, only to be
contemptuously cast away, though it would have made each one of them
in turn “richer than all his tribe.” But it was ever thus. In this
rejection there is no despair in the view of the _illuminati_. All
is ours, and paltering with the central truth of SOLIPSISM, as men
have ever paltered, does not change or diminish the truth itself, or
lessen the assurance of its ultimate victory, since to go from, or
flee from, the Egoistic presence is an impossibility. We wander here
and there, but to seek to transcend ourselves is vain. There must,
sooner or later, be the _resipiscentia_, the coming home at last to
Self, and Self only, as to the better home at last.
In this view there is no _Logos_—save that indisputable one, which
maketh all things to every one of us—no “true Light” save that
effulgent one which “lighteth every man that cometh into the world,”
namely, his own creative and illuminating Egoity—_sans_ which there
is but nothingness. Such a Gospel as this should be termed the
Evangel of common-sense were it not that that phrase shows only one
side of the question—“_Virginibus, puerisque est_” but it is also
the very acme of the exalted intelligence, “the last and sharpest
height” of human thought where the atmosphere is all too rare for
mortal breath.
The highest and the lowliest[144] are ever thus akin—“Aryan worship
secreted in the Holy of Holies the utensils of the dairy.” Grasp but
the centre truth of truths—that the Ego and its products are _one_,
that every one of us spins, from his own consciousness, the web of
thing and circumstance, which envelopes him—and you see at once and
as it were instinctively, that in this Universe-circle of Egoity
there is no “otherness” even thinkable, no lower and no higher, no
difference, nothing essentially common or unclean, everything being,
not so much cleansed of God, as very THEOBROMA,[145] God’s food and
nutrient element, seeing that in it, and by it, and through it, we
and all things CONSUBSTANTIALLY EXIST.
-----
Footnote 144:
Then why not term the philosophy “_High-Low_-Idealism” _vice_
“Hylo-Idealism”?—ED.
Footnote 145:
“Theobroma”—the same as _cacao-butter_. We take exception _to the
phraseology_, not to Dr. Lewins’ ideas.—ED.
-----
Thus _veræ causæ_ and other figments are not so much unsearchable,
or past finding out, as out of court or indifferent. Whether all be
of God, or all be from a “clam-shell,” does not matter—does not, by
one jot, affect our Thesis. Indifferently we are by origin,
patricians or “gutter-snipes.” The Ego is free of the Cosmos—equal
to either fortune, high or low, makes _its own_ universe, calls it
by its own name, and it “lives and moves and has its being.”
G. M. McC.
-----------------------
GERALD MASSEY ON SHAKSPEARE.
Mr. Massey has sent us a circular, the contents of which should be
of interest to the lovers of Shakspeare and the buyers of rare
books. The writer says:
“My work on the Secret Drama of Shakspeare’s Sonnets, with Sketches
of his Private Friends, and of his own Life and Character, first
published in the year 1866, the Second Edition of which was issued,
with a Supplement, for Subscribers in 1872, has now been out of
print many years. It is frequently enquired for, and very rarely to
be found in the catalogues of second-hand booksellers. Therefore I
am about to reproduce the work. It will have to be re-cast and
re-written where necessary, as the writing can now be more
definitely done. Errors must be confessed and corrected. The new
volume will be on lines similar to those of the earlier work,
accentuated in many of the details, but modified in others. There
will be something new and more decisive to say concerning both sets
of the Sonnets, which I call the Southampton and Herbert series; and
not without reason or warrant will the Comparative method be pushed
much farther than before. The work will be written up to date in the
light of the latest knowledge. The most recent data, the latest
results of Shakspearian Siftings, will be utilised; and something
will have to be said concerning the current Baconian Craze, which
was no doubt foreseen by the Great Humourist when he wrote, ‘_A most
fine figure! To prove you a Cypher!_’ is my aim to fight one last
battle on this field for what I maintain to be the cause of truth
and right; to entrust a final answer on the Sonnet question to the
types of John Guttenberg, and leave in his safe keeping a plea that
shall be heard hereafter, as a permanent memorial to the writer’s
love and admiration for Shakspeare the Poet and Man. After twenty
years the ground is felt to be firmer underfoot. The building will
have a more concrete base. I am enabled to give a closer clinch to
my conclusions, and, as I think, complete my case. Necessarily the
book must be large, 700 or 800 pp. The price will be One Guinea.”
[Illustration: decorative separator]
=CORRESPONDENCE=
INTERESTING TO ASTROLOGERS.
ASTROLOGICAL NOTES—No. 3.
_To the Editor of_ LUCIFER.
Question, at London, 11.45 a.m., Feb. 26th, 1887.
Will the quesited die from his present illness?
Hearing by letter that my uncle, an octogenarian, was seriously ill
from pneumonia, I drew a figure for the moment of the impression to
do so, which occurred while reading the communication. His illness
had commenced about February 7th, and he was now confined to his
bed.
The following are the elements of the figure:—
Cusp of 10th house 0° ♓.
— 11th house 3° ♈.
— 12th house 20° ♉.
— 1st house 4°
38’♋.
— 2nd house 20° ♋.
— 3rd house 8° ♌.
Planets’ places: ♆ 25° 10’ ♉; ♅ 11° 46 R ♎; ♄ 15° 54’ R ♉. ♃ 5° 48’
R ♏; ♂ 20° 31’ 31” ♓; ☉ 7° 35’ 50” ♓; ♀ 27° 53’ 14” ♓; ☿ 23° 18’ 58”
♓; ☽ 16° 22’ 36” ♈. Caput Draconis 27° 35’ ☊; ⨁ 13 24’ ♌.
As the quesited was the 4th of my mother’s brothers and sisters, my
mother being the 8th and last, I took the 10th house of the figure
for herself, the 12th (or 3rd from the 10th) for her eldest brother
or sister, the 2nd for the 2nd, the 4th for the 3rd, the 6th for the
4th—the quesited—and the 1st (the 8th from the 6th) for his 8th, or
house of death. ♂ was lord of his first house, and ☽ of his 8th. The
aspect was ☽ 25° 51’ 5” ♂, separating from the quindecile, and
applying to the semisextile. As the significators were in good
aspects, separating from one and applying to the other, and within
orbs of both, it signified sure recovery; more especially as ♂
received ☽ by house, and was dignified by triplicity. Nevertheless,
the severity of the illness was shown by _Cauda Draconis_ in
quesited’s 4th house; by ♄, lord of quesited’s 4th, posited in
quesited’s 8th, retrograde, in his detriment, and in close □ to ☽,
lady of quesited’s 8th and posited in his 6th. Furthermore, as ☽,
the applying planet of the two significators, was in a cardinal sign
and in a succeedent house of the figure, each degree signified a
week; therefore as ☽ wanted 4° 8’ 55” of the perfect semisextile
aspect, I judged that he would be convalescent in 4 weeks and 1 day,
or March 27th. _On March 29th he walked out in his garden for the
first time_, and fully recovered from his attack.
NEMO.
------------------
ERRATUM.—Page 76, 2nd column, line 2, _for_ ♍ _read_ ♏.
LUCIFER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOL. I. LONDON, FEBRUARY 15TH, 1888. NO. 6.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“WHAT IS TRUTH?”
“_Truth_ is the Voice of Nature and of Time—
_Truth_ is the startling monitor _within us_—
Nought is without it, it comes from the stars,
The golden sun, and every breeze that blows....”
—W. THOMPSON BACON.
“... Fair Truth’s immortal sun
Is sometimes hid in clouds; not that her light
Is in itself defective, but obscured
By my weak prejudice, imperfect faith
And all the thousand causes which obstruct
The growth of goodness....”
—HANNAH MORE.
“What is Truth?” asked Pilate of one who, if the claims of the
Christian Church are even approximately correct, must have known it.
But He kept silent. And the truth which He did not divulge, remained
unrevealed, for his later followers as much as for the Roman
Governor. The silence of Jesus, however, on this and other
occasions, does not prevent his present followers from acting as
though they had received the ultimate and absolute Truth itself; and
from ignoring the fact that only such Words of Wisdom had been given
to them as contained a share of the truth, itself concealed in
parables and dark, though beautiful, sayings.[146]
-----
Footnote 146:
Jesus says to the “Twelve”—“Unto you is given the mystery of the
Kingdom of God; but _unto them that are without, all things are
done in parables_,“ etc. (Mark iv. II.)
-----
This policy led gradually to dogmatism and assertion. Dogmatism in
churches, dogmatism in science, dogmatism everywhere. The possible
truths, hazily perceived in the world of abstraction, like those
inferred from observation and experiment in the world of matter, are
forced upon the profane multitudes, too busy to think for
themselves, under the form of _Divine revelation_ and _Scientific
authority_. But the same question stands open from the days of
Socrates and Pilate down to our own age of wholesale negation: is
there such a thing as _absolute truth_ in the hands of any one party
or man? Reason answers, “there cannot be.” There is no room for
absolute truth upon any subject whatsoever, in a world as finite and
conditioned as man is himself. But there are relative truths, and we
have to make the best we can of them.
In every age there have been Sages who had mastered the absolute and
yet could teach but relative truths. For none yet, born of mortal
woman in _our_ race, has, or could have given out, the whole and the
final truth to another man, for every one of us has to find that (to
him) final knowledge _in_ himself. As no two minds can be absolutely
alike, each has to receive the supreme illumination _through_
itself, according to its capacity, and from no _human_ light. The
greatest adept living can reveal of the Universal Truth only so much
as the mind he is impressing it upon can assimilate, and no more.
_Tot homines, quot sententiæ_—is an immortal truism. The sun is one,
but its beams are numberless; and the effects produced are
beneficent or maleficent, according to the nature and constitution
of the objects they shine upon. Polarity is universal, but the
polariser lies in our own consciousness. In proportion as our
consciousness is elevated towards absolute truth, so do we men
assimilate it more or less absolutely. But man’s consciousness
again, is only the sunflower of the earth. Longing for the warm ray,
the plant can only turn to the sun, and move round and round in
following the course of the unreachable luminary: its roots keep it
fast to the soil, and half its life is passed in the shadow....
Still each of us can relatively reach the Sun of Truth even on this
earth, and assimilate its warmest and most direct rays, however
differentiated they may become after their long journey through the
physical particles in space. To achieve this, there are two methods.
On the physical plane we may use our mental polariscope; and,
analyzing the properties of each ray, choose the purest. On the
plane of spirituality, to reach the Sun of Truth we must work in
dead earnest for the development of our higher nature. We know that
by paralyzing gradually within ourselves the appetites of the lower
personality, and thereby deadening the voice of the purely
physiological mind—that mind which depends upon, and is inseparable
from, its medium or _vehicle_, the organic brain—the animal man in
us may make room for the spiritual; and once aroused from its latent
state, the highest spiritual senses and perceptions grow in us in
proportion, and develop _pari passu_ with the “divine man.” This is
what the great adepts, the Yogis in the East and the Mystics in the
West, have always done and are still doing.
But we also know, that with a few exceptions, no man of the world,
no materialist, will ever believe in the existence of such adepts,
or even in the possibility of such a spiritual or psychic
development. “The (ancient) fool hath said in his heart, There is no
God”; the modern says, “There are no adepts on earth, they are
figments of your diseased fancy.” Knowing this we hasten to reassure
our readers of the Thomas Didymus type. We beg them to turn in this
magazine to reading more congenial to them; say to the miscellaneous
papers on Hylo-Idealism, by various writers.[147]
-----
Footnote 147:
_e.g._, to the little article “Autocentricism”—on the same
“philosophy,” or again, to the apex of the Hylo-Idealist pyramid
in this Number. It is a letter of protest by the learned Founder
of the School in question, against a _mistake_ of ours. He
complains of our “coupling” his name with those of Mr. Herbert
Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, and others, on the question of atheism
and materialism, as the said lights in the psychological and
physical sciences are considered by Dr. Lewins too flickering, too
“compromising” and weak, to deserve the honourable appellation of
Atheists or even Agnostics. See “Correspondence” in Double Column,
and the reply by “The Adversary.”
-----
For LUCIFER tries to satisfy its readers of whatever “school of
thought,” and shows itself equally impartial to Theist and Atheist,
Mystic and Agnostic, Christian and Gentile. Such articles as our
editorials, the Comments on “Light on the Path,” etc, etc.—are not
intended for Materialists. They are addressed to Theosophists, or
readers who know in their hearts that Masters of Wisdom _do_ exist:
and, though _absolute_ truth is not on earth and has to be searched
for in higher regions, that there still are, even on this silly,
ever-whirling little globe of ours, some things that are not even
dreamt of in Western philosophy.
To return to our subject. It thus follows that, though “general
_abstract_ truth is the most precious of all blessings” for many of
us, as it was for Rousseau, we have, meanwhile, to be satisfied with
relative truths. In sober fact, we are a poor set of mortals at
best, ever in dread before the face of even a relative truth, lest
it should devour ourselves and our petty little preconceptions along
with us. As for an absolute truth, most of us are as incapable of
seeing it as of reaching the moon on a bicycle. Firstly, because
absolute truth is as immovable as the mountain of Mahomet, which
refused to disturb itself for the prophet, so that he had to go to
it himself. And we have to follow his example if we would approach
it even at a distance. Secondly, because the kingdom of absolute
truth is not of this world, while we are too much of it. And
thirdly, because notwithstanding that in the poet’s fancy man is
“... the abstract
Of all perfection, which the workmanship
Of heaven hath modelled....”
in reality he is a sorry bundle of anomalies and paradoxes, an empty
wind bag inflated with his own importance, with contradictory and
easily influenced opinions. He is at once an arrogant and a weak
creature, which, though in constant dread of some authority,
terrestrial or celestial, will yet—
“... like an angry ape,
Play such fantastic tricks before high Heaven
As make the angels weep.”
Now, since truth is a multifaced jewel, the facets of which it is
impossible to perceive all at once; and since, again, no two men,
however anxious to discern truth, can see even one of those facets
alike, what can be done to help them to perceive it? As physical
man, limited and trammelled from every side by illusions, cannot
reach truth by the light of his terrestrial perceptions, we
say—develop in you the _inner_ knowledge. From the time when the
Delphic oracle said to the enquirer “Man, know thyself,” no greater
or more important truth was ever taught. Without such perception,
man will remain ever blind to even many a relative, let alone
absolute, truth. Man has to _know himself_, _i.e._, acquire the
_inner_ perceptions which never deceive, before he can master any
absolute truth. Absolute truth is _the symbol of Eternity_, and no
_finite_ mind can ever grasp the eternal, hence, no truth in its
fulness can ever dawn upon it. To reach the state during which man
sees and senses it, we have to paralyze the senses of the external
man of clay. This is a difficult task, we may be told, and most
people will, at this rate, prefer to remain satisfied with relative
truths, no doubt. But to approach even terrestrial truths requires,
first of all, _love of truth for its own sake_, for otherwise no
recognition of it will follow. And who loves truth in this age for
its own sake? How many of us are prepared to search for, accept, and
carry it out, in the midst of a society in which anything that would
achieve success _has to be built on appearances, not on reality, on
self-assertion, not on intrinsic value_? We are fully aware of the
difficulties in the way of receiving truth. The fair heavenly maiden
descends only on a (to her) congenial soil—the soil of an impartial,
unprejudiced mind, illuminated by pure Spiritual Consciousness; and
both are truly rare dwellers in civilized lands. In our century of
steam and electricity, when man lives at a maddening speed that
leaves him barely time for reflection, he allows himself usually to
be drifted down from cradle to grave, nailed to the Procrustean bed
of custom and conventionality. Now conventionality—pure and
simple—is a congenital LIE, as it is in every case a “_simulation_
of feelings according to a received standard” (F. W. Robertson’s
definition); and where there is any simulation _there cannot be any
truth_. How profound the remark made by Byron, that “truth is a gem
that is found at a great depth; whilst on the surface of this world
all things are weighed _by the false scales of custom_,” is best
known to those who are forced to live in the stifling atmosphere of
such social conventionalism, and who, even when willing and anxious
to learn, dare not accept the truths they long for, for fear of the
ferocious Moloch called Society.
Look around you, reader; study the accounts given by world-known
travellers, recall the joint observations of literary thinkers, the
data of science and of statistics. Draw the picture of modern
society, of modern politics, of modern religion and modern life in
general before your mind’s eye. Remember the ways and customs of
every cultured race and nation under the sun. Observe the doings and
the moral attitude of people in the civilized centres of Europe,
America, and even of the far East and the colonies, everywhere where
the white man has carried the “benefits” of so-called civilization.
And now, having passed in review all this, pause and reflect, and
then name, _if you can_, that blessed _Eldorado_, that exceptional
spot on the globe, _where_ TRUTH _is the honoured guest, and_ LIE
_and_ SHAM _the ostracised outcasts_? YOU CANNOT. Nor can any one
else, unless he is prepared and determined to add his mite to the
mass of falsehood that reigns supreme in every department of
national and social life. “Truth!” cried Carlyle, “truth, though the
heavens crush me for following her, no falsehood, though a whole
celestial Lubberland were the prize of Apostasy.” Noble words,
these. But how many think, and how many will _dare_ to speak as
Carlyle did, in our nineteenth century day? Does not the gigantic
appalling majority prefer to a man the “paradise of Do-nothings,”
the _pays de Cocagne_ of heartless selfishness? It is this majority
that recoils terror-stricken before the most shadowy outline of
every new and unpopular truth, out of mere cowardly fear, lest Mrs.
Harris should denounce, and Mrs. Grundy condemn, its converts to the
torture of being rent piecemeal by her murderous tongue.
SELFISHNESS, the first-born of Ignorance, and the fruit of the
teaching which asserts that for every newly-born infant a new soul,
_separate and distinct_ from the Universal Soul, is “created”—this
Selfishness is the impassable wall between the _personal_ Self and
Truth. It is the prolific mother of all human vices. _Lie_ being
born out of the necessity for dissembling, and _Hypocrisy_ out of
the desire to mask _Lie_. It is the fungus growing and strengthening
with age in every human heart in which it has devoured all better
feelings. Selfishness kills every noble impulse in our natures, and
is the one deity, fearing no faithlessness or desertion from its
votaries. Hence, we see it reign supreme in the world and in
so-called fashionable society. As a result, we live, and move, and
have our being in this god of darkness under his trinitarian aspect
of Sham, Humbug, and Falsehood, called RESPECTABILITY.
Is this Truth and Fact, or is it slander? Turn whichever way you
will, and you find, from the top of the social ladder to the bottom,
deceit and hypocrisy at work for dear Self’s sake, in every nation
as in every individual. But nations, by tacit Agreement, have
decided that selfish motives in politics shall be called “noble
national aspiration, patriotism,” etc.; and the citizen views it in
his family circle as “domestic virtue.” Nevertheless, Selfishness,
whether it breeds desire for aggrandizement of territory, or
competition in commerce at the expense of one’s neighbour, can never
be regarded as a virtue. We see smooth-tongued DECEIT and BRUTE
FORCE—the _Jachin_ and _Boaz_ of every International Temple of
Solomon—called Diplomacy, and we call it by its right name. Because
the diplomat bows low before these two pillars of national glory and
politics, and puts their masonic symbolism “in (cunning) strength
shall this my house be established” into daily practice; _i.e._,
gets by deceit what he cannot obtain by force—shall we applaud him?
A diplomat’s qualification—“dexterity or skill in securing
advantages“—for one’s own country at the expense of other countries,
can hardly be achieved by speaking _truth_, but verily by a wily and
deceitful tongue; and, therefore, LUCIFER calls such action—a
_living_, and an evident LIE.
But it is not in politics alone that custom and selfishness have
agreed to call deceit and lie virtue, and to reward him who lies
best with public statues. Every class of Society lives on LIE, and
would fall to pieces without it. Cultured, God-and-law-fearing
aristocracy being as fond of the forbidden fruit as any plebeian, is
forced to lie from morn to noon in order to cover what it is pleased
to term its “little peccadillos,” but which TRUTH regards as gross
immorality. Society of the middle classes is honeycombed with false
smiles, false talk, and mutual treachery. For the majority religion
has become a thin tinsel veil thrown over the corpse of spiritual
faith. The master goes to church to deceive his servants; the
starving curate—preaching what he has ceased to believe
in—hood-winks his bishop; the bishop—his God. _Dailies_, political
and social, might adopt with advantage for their motto Georges
Dandin’s immortal query—“Lequel de nous deux trompe-t-on ici?”—Even
Science, once the anchor of the salvation of Truth, has ceased to be
the temple of _naked_ Fact. Almost to a man the Scientists strive
now only to force upon their colleagues and the public the
acceptance of some personal hobby, of some new-fangled theory, which
will shed lustre on their name and fame. A Scientist is as ready to
suppress damaging evidence against a current scientific hypothesis
in our times, as a missionary in heathen-land, or a preacher at
home, to persuade his congregation that modern geology is a lie, and
evolution but vanity and vexation of spirit.
Such is the actual state of things in 1888 A.D., and yet we are
taken to task by certain papers for seeing this year in more than
gloomy colours!
Lie has spread to such extent—supported as it is by custom and
conventionalities—that even chronology forces people to lie. The
suffixes A.D. and B.C. used after the dates of the year by Jew and
Heathen, in European and even Asiatic lands, by the Materialist and
the Agnostic as much as by the Christian, at home, are—a _lie_ used
to sanction another LIE.
Where then is even relative truth to be found? If, so far back as
the century of Democritus, she appeared to him under the form of a
goddess lying at the very bottom of a well, so deep that it gave but
little hope for her release; under the present circumstances we have
a certain right to believe her hidden, at least, as far off as the
ever invisible _dark_ side of the moon. This is why, perhaps, all
the votaries of hidden truths are forthwith set down as lunatics.
However it may be, in no case and under no threat shall LUCIFER be
ever forced into pandering to any universally and tacitly
recognised, and as universally practised lie, but will hold to fact,
pure and simple, trying to proclaim truth whensoever found, and
under no cowardly mask. Bigotry and intolerance may be regarded as
orthodox and sound policy, and the encouraging of social prejudices
and personal hobbies at the cost of truth, as a wise course to
pursue in order to secure success for a publication. Let it be so.
The Editors of LUCIFER are Theosophists, and their motto is chosen:
_Vera pro gratiis_.
They are quite aware that LUCIFER’S libations and sacrifices to
the goddess Truth do not send a sweet savoury smoke into the noses
of the lords of the press, nor does the bright “Son of the
Morning” smell sweet in their nostrils. He is ignored when not
abused as—_veritas odium paret_. Even his friends are beginning to
find fault with him. They cannot see _why it should not be a
purely Theosophical magazine_, in other words, why it refuses to
be dogmatic and bigoted. Instead of devoting every inch of space
to theosophical and occult teachings, it opens its pages “to the
publication of the most grotesquely heterogeneous elements and
conflicting doctrines.” This is the chief accusation, to which we
answer—why not? Theosophy is divine knowledge, and knowledge is
truth; every _true_ fact, every sincere word are thus part and
parcel of Theosophy. One who is skilled in divine alchemy, or even
approximately blessed with the gift of the perception of truth,
will find and extract it from an erroneous as much as from a
correct statement. However small the particle of gold lost in a
ton of rubbish, it is the noble metal still, and worthy of being
dug out even at the price of some extra trouble. As has been said,
it is often as useful to know what a thing _is not_, as to learn
what it _is_. The average reader can hardly hope to find any fact
in a sectarian publication under all its aspects, _pro_ and _con_,
for either one way or the other its presentation is sure to be
biassed, and the scales helped to incline to that side to which
its editor’s special policy is directed. A Theosophical magazine
is thus, perhaps, the only publication where one may hope to find,
at any rate, the unbiassed, if still only approximate truth and
fact. Naked truth is reflected in LUCIFER under its many aspects,
for no philosophical or religious views are excluded from its
pages. And, as every philosophy and religion, however incomplete,
unsatisfactory, and even foolish some may be occasionally, must be
based on a truth and fact of some kind, the reader has thus the
opportunity of comparing, analysing, and choosing from the several
philosophies discussed therein. LUCIFER offers as many facets of
the One universal jewel as its limited space will permit, and says
to its readers: “Choose you this day whom ye will serve: whether
the gods that were on the other side of the flood which submerged
man’s reasoning powers and divine knowledge, or the gods of the
Amorites of _custom_ and _social falsehood_, or again, the Lord of
(the highest) Self—the bright destroyer of the dark power of
illusion?” Surely it is that philosophy that tends to diminish,
instead of adding to, the sum of human misery, which is the best.
At all events, the choice is there, and for this purpose only have
we opened our pages to every kind of contributors. Therefore do you
find in them the views of a Christian clergyman who believes in his
God and Christ, but rejects the wicked interpretations and the
enforced dogmas of his ambitious proud Church, along with the
doctrines of the Hylo-Idealist, who denies God, soul, and
immortality, and believes in nought save himself. The rankest
Materialists will find hospitality in our journal; aye, even those
who have not scrupled to fill pages of it with sneers and personal
remarks upon ourselves, and abuse of the doctrines of Theosophy, so
dear to us. When a journal of _free thought_, conducted by an
Atheist, inserts an article by a Mystic or Theosophist in praise of
his occult views and the mystery of Parabrahmam, and passes on it
only a few casual remarks, then shall we say LUCIFER has found a
rival. When a Christian periodical or missionary organ accepts an
article from the pen of a free-thinker deriding belief in Adam and
his rib, and passes criticism on Christianity—its editor’s faith—in
meek silence, then it will have become worthy of LUCIFER, and may be
said truly to have reached that degree of tolerance when it may be
placed on a level with any Theosophical publication.
But so long as none of these organs do something of the kind, they
are all sectarian, bigoted, intolerant, and can never have an idea
of truth and justice. They may throw innuendoes against LUCIFER and
its editors, they cannot affect either. In fact, the editors of that
magazine feel proud of such criticism and accusations, as they are
witnesses to the absolute absence of bigotry, or arrogance of any
kind in theosophy, the result of the divine beauty of the doctrines
it preaches. For, as said, Theosophy allows a hearing and a fair
chance to all. It deems no views—if sincere—entirely destitute of
truth. It respects thinking men, to whatever class of thought they
may belong. Ever ready to oppose ideas and views which can only
create confusion without benefiting philosophy, it leaves their
expounders personally to believe in whatever they please, and does
justice to their ideas when they are good. Indeed, the conclusions
or deductions of a philosophic writer may be entirely opposed to our
views and the teachings we expound; yet, his premises and statements
of facts may be quite correct, and other people may profit by the
adverse philosophy, even if we ourselves reject it, believing we
have something higher and still nearer to the truth. In any case,
our profession of faith is now made plain, and all that is said in
the foregoing pages both justifies and explains our editorial
policy.
To sum up the idea, with regard to absolute and relative truth, we
can only repeat what we said before. _Outside a certain highly
spiritual and elevated state of mind, during which Man is at one
with the_ UNIVERSAL MIND—_he can get nought on earth but relative
truth,_ _or truths, from whatsoever philosophy or religion_. Were
even the goddess who dwells at the bottom of the well to issue from
her place of confinement, she could give man no more than he can
assimilate. Meanwhile, every one can sit near that well—the name of
which is KNOWLEDGE—and gaze into its depths in the hope of seeing
Truth’s fair image reflected, at least, on the dark waters. This,
however, as remarked by Richter, presents a certain danger. Some
truth, to be sure, may be occasionally reflected as in a mirror on
the spot we gaze upon, and thus reward the patient student. But,
adds the German thinker, “I have heard that some philosophers in
seeking for Truth, to pay homage to her, have seen their own image
in the water and adored it instead.”...
It is to avoid such a calamity—one that has befallen every founder
of a religious or philosophical school—that the editors are
studiously careful not to offer the reader only those truths which
they find reflected in their own personal brains. They offer the
public a wide choice, and refuse to show bigotry and intolerance,
which are the chief landmarks on the path of Sectarianism. But,
while leaving the widest margin possible for comparison, our
opponents cannot hope to find _their faces_ reflected on the clear
waters of our LUCIFER, without remarks or just criticism upon the
most prominent features thereof, if in contrast with theosophical
views.
This, however, only within the cover of the public magazine, and so
far as regards the merely intellectual aspect of philosophical
truths. Concerning the deeper spiritual, and one may almost say
religious, beliefs, no true Theosophist ought to degrade these by
subjecting them to public discussion, but ought rather to treasure
and hide them deep within the sanctuary of his innermost soul. Such
beliefs and doctrines should never be rashly given out, as they risk
unavoidable profanation by the rough handling of the indifferent and
the critical. Nor ought they to be embodied in any publication
except as hypotheses offered to the consideration of the thinking
portion of the public. Theosophical truths, when they transcend a
certain limit of speculation, had better remain concealed from
public view, for the “evidence of things not seen” is no evidence
save to him who sees, hears, and senses it. It is not to be dragged
outside the “Holy of Holies,” the temple of the impersonal divine
_Ego_, or the indwelling SELF. For, while every fact outside _its_
perception can, as we have shown, be, at best, only a relative
truth, a ray from the absolute truth can reflect itself only in the
pure mirror of its own flame—our highest SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS.
And how can the darkness (of illusion) comprehend the LIGHT that
shineth in it?
[Illustration: decorative separator]
THE SOLDIER’S DAUGHTER.
(Judges xi., 6-xi., 39.)
In the early days of Israel’s history, whilst Israel was struggling
to be a nation and a kingdom, there was a people called the
Ammonites, who were making war upon the Israelites.
And we are told that the Israelites, in great distress and fear,
went out of their country, into the land of Tob, to find a man named
Jephthah, who was a man of mighty valour, in order to persuade him
to return with them, and be the captain and leader of their army, to
fight against, and save them from the Ammonites.
Now this man Jephthah was himself an Israelite by birth, but because
his mother had not been legally married to his father, Gilead, the
sons of Gilead’s lawful wife conspired together to drive him from
his hearth, home, and country, as a disgrace to the family and to
Israel; but the true reason was that they were envious and jealous
of him, in like manner as the brethren of Joseph who had previously
conspired against him.
For Jephthah himself was wholly innocent of having done anything to
disgrace either the family or the nation. And therefore, in common
justice, he ought not to have been made to suffer merely for the
form and manner of his birth; over which neither Jephthah nor any of
us have any control, either as to the time, when, or the manner, in
which we should be born. But although Jephthah was despised and cast
out as a dog, in the days of Israel’s prosperity, yet in the day of
Israel’s adversity and weakness, Israel no longer allowed any mean
and petty distinctions to prevent her from recognising the noble
character of Jephthah, and she entreated him to forget past
ill-usage, and return to be her captain and leader to save her from
the Ammonites.
And as this proposal of Israel afforded Jephthah the long wished-for
opportunity of returning to his country, and of establishing an
honourable reputation, _therefore_ he was not only ready to forget
and forgive the insults and injuries which he had received in the
past from his brethren, but he was also ready to return with them,
and share their troubles and dangers, even to sacrificing his life,
if need be, in order to save their lives and property.
Jephthah was the more willing to return and make this sacrifice
because he had a daughter, an only daughter and child; and she was
all the world to him, as he was to her; “for beside her he had
neither son nor daughter,” and she had patiently and willingly
suffered with him, and borne all his sorrows as her own.
But imagine the horror of Jephthah, after having saved the lives and
property of his brethren and countrymen by risking his own life, at
being then required, by these very brethren and countrymen, to shed
the blood of his only child! Immediately after the war was over,
Jephthah was required to sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering
to the Lord of Battles, for having assisted Israel to overcome the
Ammonites; and so great was the love of this heroine for her father,
and for everything that concerned his honour and glory, that she
willingly consented to be sacrificed as a burnt offering.
Can anything be conceived more heartrending and terrible than that
Jephthah should thus be required by these very brethren and
countrymen whom he had saved, to shed the blood of his only child as
a sacrifice, in acknowledgment that he owed his victory to
miraculous assistance and favour, and not to his own skill and
valour?
What to him was the deliverance either of Israel or of his brethren
(who had cared naught for him), if they now required him to
sacrifice the only being in the world that he loved, and that loved
him, and who was therefore all the world to him?
It is true that Jephthah had made a foolish and rash vow, in the mad
excitement of the moment before going into battle, that if he came
out of the battle victorious, he would sacrifice, as a burnt
offering to the Lord, the first thing that came to meet him from his
house as he returned from the battle; but when the first person that
met Jephthah was his only daughter, _what could that Deity be, which
accepted as a sacrifice the blood of this child?_ What could the
religion of Jephthah’s brethren and countrymen be, that allowed and
required him to commit such an evil deed?
For if Jephthah had saved his brethren and countrymen from their
enemies, could they not now save Jephthah from shedding the blood of
his daughter as a sacrifice, in the name of religion, _when_ the
very deed itself proclaimed the religion, and their conception both
of religion and of the Deity, to be evil? And if his brethren and
countrymen would not save his daughter, but even required him to
fulfil his vow, could not Jephthah save himself and his child by
refusing to commit this evil deed? But if, in order to save his own
blood from being shed as a blasphemer for an atonement, Jephthah had
to flee from the country as an outcast and a criminal, whither could
he flee to, that would make life worth keeping? For surely the world
would be no desirable place for an honest man to live in, if he had
to live at enmity with men both at home and abroad, because he had
made a rash and foolish vow, which no Deity worthy of being
worshipped could or would require him to perform?
Because under such a sanguinary conception of religion, and of the
Deity, there was no remission, or redemption either, with, or
without, the shedding of blood. If Jephthah refused to shed the
blood of his daughter, then both his own and his daughter’s would be
shed by his brethren and countrymen, whilst if Jephthah shed the
blood of his daughter, as a sacrifice to save his own, what
remission or redemption was there in this? None!
And he cried for a deliverer to save him and his daughter, from this
great trouble. For he had staked his life and his all upon obtaining
a position and reputation for himself and his daughter at home in
Israel; and now, to give up hope of this for ever, and to shed the
blood of his daughter, or again flee as an outcast—what was it but a
living death to Jephthah, either way, whether he remained and
sacrificed his daughter, or fled to save her?
But who, in this agonising moment of Jephthah’s trouble, could raise
his voice to demand, in the name of religion, this diabolical
sacrifice of his innocent child?
Yes; diabolical. For what spirit, or voice, but that of a devil or
fiend could _counsel_ men to shed the blood of this pure and noble
girl? And where could the devil or fiend be found who would _commit_
the deed itself?
Jephthah is mockingly told that he is the fiend who must sacrifice
his child, as Abraham is said to have offered Isaac. And Jephthah is
told that he has no one to blame but himself, for having made the
vow. But who heard the vow? or who accepted the vow? Who could he,
or they be, who would require the fulfilling of it?[148]
-----
Footnote 148:
Jehovah, of course, in his own national character of Baal, Moloch,
Typhon, etc. The final and conclusive identification of the “Lord
God” of Israel with Moloch, we find in the last chapter of
_Leviticus_, concerning _things devoted not to be redeemed_.... “A
man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, _both of man_
and beast.... None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall
be redeemed, _but shall surely be put to death_ ... for it is
_most holy unto the Lord_.” (See Leviticus xxvii., 28, 29, 30.)
“Notwithstanding the numerous proofs that the Israelites
worshipped a variety of gods, and even offered human sacrifices
until a far later period than their Pagan neighbours, they have
contrived to blind posterity in regard to truth. They sacrificed
human life as late as 169 B.C. (_Vide_ “_Joseph. contra Apion_,”
11, 8—what Antiochus Epiphanius found in the Temple), and the
_Bible_ contains a number of such records. At a time when the
Pagans had long abandoned the abominable practice, and had
replaced the sacrificial man by the animal, and the ox of
Dionysius was sacrificed at the Bacchic Mysteries (“Anthon,” p.
365), Jephthah is represented sacrificing his own daughter to the
‘Lord’ for a burnt-offering.” _Isis Unveiled_, vol ii., pp. 524,
525.
-----
Are they worthy of the name of brethren and countrymen who would
persuade Jephthah _to assassinate_ his daughter, in the name of
religion, or even look on at such an assassination? Would it not be
blasphemy to say that a good Deity required Jephthah to kill his
innocent child? And would not a good Deity release Jephthah from his
vow, and forbid him to sacrifice his daughter, in like manner as the
Scriptures teach us Abraham was forbidden to sacrifice his son
Isaac? And if it is said, it would have been faithless and sinful of
Jephthah after returning from the battle victorious, to have refused
the offering of his daughter as a sacrifice; yet surely to bind
Jephthah to break the Sixth Commandment, and to shed innocent blood
in the name of religion, would be making the Deity that required
such a sacrifice to be evil, and His worshippers to be the doers of
evil; and thus Jephthah would be required to sell himself to the
devil.
And how could men be other than the doers of evil, and the priests
of evil, who would counsel Jephthah to commit this evil deed, and be
ready to commit it themselves if he hesitated? How? Whether Jephthah
received any miraculous assistance or not, in the war, yet he was in
no wise bound to surrender his personality and to become an abject
slave to the supposed power that helped him. For Jephthah’s personal
services were needed as an instrument to deliver and save the
Israelites, or his services would not have been asked for. It was
also possible that he might have given certain services, which even
a miraculous power was unable to give—as we read in the Book of
Judges that “Judah could not drive out the inhabitants of the
valley, because they had chariots of iron.” (Judges i. 19.)[149]
-----
Footnote 149:
It is said in the “Holy Book,” that it was “the Lord (who) was
with Judah,” who “could not drive out the inhabitants of the
valley, because they had chariots of iron,” (Judges i. 19), and
not “Judah” at all. This is but natural, according to popular
belief and superstition that “the Devil is afraid of _iron_.” The
strong connection and even identity between Jehovah and the Devil
is ably insisted upon by the Rev. Haweis. See his “Key” (p.
22).—ED.
-----
And again, if all the glory of Jephthah’s victory had to be ascribed
to a miraculous power, then likewise all the shame would have to be
ascribed to that power also, for having ordained that Jephthah’s
daughter should be the first person to meet him after the war, to
pay _the price of victory_ to Jephthah, with _death to his
child_—for whom, alone, he coveted victory.
Victory on such terms was defeat and shame, not glory; for surely
such views of religious worship must be the _d’evil_ worship which
the Psalmist speaks of (Psalm cvi., 37), and not the service or
worship of a good God who would have mercy and _not_ sacrifice, as
Abraham learnt when he went out of the Philistine city into the
wilderness, and communed with God alone on Mount Moriah.
But it was one thing for a single individual like Abraham, at the
close of a long life, to acquire the knowledge “that God would have
mercy and not sacrifice”; and quite another thing for a Town, a
City, a Nation, or the World, to have acquired this knowledge in its
infancy; as even Abraham only acquired this knowledge by going out
of the city into the wilderness, and communing alone with God.
We can well understand how impossible it would have been for Abraham
even to have attempted, on his return from the mountain, to teach
the Philistines the faith or gospel (that God would have mercy and
not sacrifice), from the very fact that when Jesus Christ came _into
the world_ to teach the faith or gospel, which Abraham had gone _out
of the world_ to learn, Jesus was condemned by Caiaphas to be
crucified with malefactors, as a blasphemer. And to this very day
this doctrine of the power of Caiaphas, the adversary of Jesus,
continues to be taught as the doctrine of the Church, which it is
necessary to believe in order to obtain the blessing of the Church
here and of God hereafter.
Therefore it is manifestly evident that after Abraham had acquired
the knowledge that God would have mercy and not sacrifice, yet he
could not publish it, but could only lay it up in his heart as a
secret treasure, to be disclosed in the distant future, which in the
vision of his mind he saw. Meanwhile he prayed that the Lord would
raise up messengers and stewards to prepare the world to receive
this faith or gospel, because of its being too Herculean a task for
any one person to alter suddenly the religion of a people.
For whilst priests continued to teach, and the people to believe
that sacrifices of human beings were acceptable to God, how was the
man who dared (suddenly and without the cloak of a parable) to
reveal and publish the contrary, to escape being himself slain as a
blasphemer, whose blood it would be doing God service to shed for an
atonement? And until the world was sufficiently educated to declare
the generation of him who should be unjustly slain (Isaiah liii.),
it could only be like throwing pearls to swine for such an one to
attempt the task.
Then from whence, and from whom could Jephthah, who had saved
others, now look for the salvation of his daughter, or of himself,
if he refused to sacrifice that daughter?
And, in the anguish of his soul, Jephthah rent his clothes, and
bemoaned his trouble, whilst his daughter fled to the mountains to
pour out the sorrow of her soul, during the few short days she had
yet to live.
It is true that, in order to save her father from the cruel pain of
assassinating his devoted child, the noble girl may have voluntarily
leapt into the sulphurous flames on the burning altar; just as the
noble Roman soldier Curtius on his horse leapt down into the dark
and awful volcanic gulf as a sacrifice to save his countrymen.
But the more heroic and divine these persons were, the more
demoniacal and diabolical must be the religion of those persons who
required them thus to suffer.[150]
-----
Footnote 150:
And yet it is this “demoniacal and diabolical religion” that
passed part and parcel into Protestantism.—ED.
-----
It is true that the priests of such a religion may have believed in
it themselves, and may have been ready to sacrifice their own sons
and daughters in like manner; but that in no wise lessens the crime,
but on the contrary it intensifies it a hundred fold. How were the
people to be saved from a religion, of which the priests themselves
needed to be saved, whilst the priests had the sole education of the
people from infancy upwards, as well as the Chief power in the State
to make and unmake its laws, even to making and unmaking its kings?
Whilst the priests and rulers of the church taught such a cruel
religion,[151] would not the people and priests need a Mediator to
deliver and save them from practising it?
-----
Footnote 151:
So “the people and priests” do now. And as the late Rev. Henry
Ward Beecher once said in a sermon, “could Jesus come back and
behave in the streets of Christian cities as he did in those of
Jerusalem, he would be declared an impostor and then confined in
prison.”—ED.
-----
If He who mediated to deliver and save us was Himself condemned to
be slain, and crucified with thieves as a blasphemer whose blood
ought to be shed for an Atonement, what hope of salvation can there
be for the world from such a Religion, until the people not only
uplift the Crucified Jesus as having been no blasphemer, but also
expose the doctrine to be evil and false which is quoted as an
authority for requiring the blood of “the Just one” to be shed for
an Atonement? And if it is said that we have no longer women brought
like Jephthah’s daughter to be assassinated and burnt as a
sacrifice, or noble men condemned to be burnt as heretics, yet we
have to the present day noble men and women condemned by the Church
as evil (to be accursed here and damned hereafter), simply and
solely because they refuse to believe this evil doctrine of
Atonement, which is oftentimes such a burden to their soul (either
to accept or reject) that they are driven to the very verge of
madness.
It is no uncommon thing to hear priests revile even our Queen as
being no true Christian, simply because they suppose she does not
believe in this evil doctrine of atonement, which is the doctrine of
Caiaphas, the enemy of Christ, and not Christ’s doctrine, teaching,
or gospel.
Should not such scriptural stories as these of the assassination of
Jephthah’s noble daughter, of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the
spilling of the blood of a whole host of martyrs, awaken men who
have slumbered to rise, to hear, to see, to speak, and run to save
the world from having to believe in this sanguinary doctrine, which
is a stumbling-block to the Jews, foolishness to the world, and a
mystery even to the teachers of it. This doctrine of Atonement can
not be reconciled as either good or true; and therefore it is the
cause of all progress being prevented so far as the world is
dependent on the Church for progress.
Yet the man who doubts or denies the goodness of this doctrine is
branded by the Church, to the present day, as a Sceptic and Atheist,
whom all sound Churchmen should avoid. And for sixteen centuries the
Church used its sovereign power to condemn those who rejected its
doctrine of Atonement as criminals, whom it would be doing God
service to burn as heretics; and the Church is only prevented from
doing so now _because_ (to its great regret) it has no longer the
power which it formerly had in the days of “the Inquisition.” The
doctrine remains the same still, and therefore the people owe it, as
a duty to the long roll of martyrs, to expose it. For it has been
the cause of much evil, and even to this day it assassinates the
souls of noble men and women, who incarcerate themselves in
monasteries and nunneries in the vain attempt to attain a sound
belief in it.
But when the Church is willing to allow (what it has refused to the
present day) liberty in the pulpit for explaining the mystery and
translating the truth of a “Crucified Christ,” then it will be seen
that the truth is not only a light to the Gentiles, but also the
glory of Israel; and the truth shall make us free.[152] (John viii.,
32.)
Adyar, 17th October, 1887. H. S. OLCOTT, P.T.S.
-----
Footnote 152:
Only, as such _truth_ and _freedom_ amounts to the Church
committing suicide and burying herself with her own hands, she
will never allow such a thing. She will die her natural death the
day when there will not exist a man, woman or child to believe any
longer in her dogmas. And this beneficent result might be achieved
within her own hierarchy, were there many such sincere, brave and
honest clergymen who, like the writer of this article, fear not to
speak the truth—whatever may come—[ED.]
-----
LUNIOLATRY.
A friend has just informed me of the fact that when President
Cleveland was making his recent tour through the States an old negro
presented him with _the left hind foot of a grave-yard rabbit, which
had been killed in the dark of the moon_. In making his present the
negro said he had sent it because he desired the reelection of
President Cleveland. “_Tell him to preserve it carefully, and that
as long as he keeps it he will always get there._”
The friend whom I speak of had just been reading a lecture of mine
on “Luniolatry,” in which the imagery and significance of the hare
and rabbit in the moon were spoken of all too briefly, and he wishes
to know if I can interpret the meaning of the negro’s gift. I guess
so. As previously explained the hare and the rabbit are both
zootypes or living images of lunar phenomena. A rabbit pounding rice
in a mortar is a Chinese sign of the moon. Swabian children are
still forbidden to make the likeness of a rabbit or hare in shadow
on the wall, as it would be a sin against the moon. The hare in the
moon is a well-known Hindu type of Buddha. It is mythically
represented that Buddha once took the form of a hare on purpose to
offer himself as food for a poor famishing creature, and so the
Buddha was translated in that shape to be eternized as the hare in
the moon. That is one illustration of the way in which the book of
external nature was filled full of mystic meanings, the essence of
which escapes altogether in trying to read such things as
historical, no matter whether they are related of Buddha, Horus, or
Jesus. This hare or rabbit in the moon is a symbol or superstition
with various races, Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, and White. When the
meaning was understood it was a symbol; when the clue is lost it
becomes a superstition of the ignorant; thus the ancient symbolism
survives in a state of dotage with the negroes as well as with the
“noble Caucasian.”
The frog in the moon was another lunar type. In a Chinese myth—that
is, a symbolic representation—the lunar frog has three legs, like
the Persian ass in the Bundahish. In both cases the three legs stand
for three phases of the moon reckoned at ten days each in a
luni-solar month of thirty days. Now it happens that the rabbit’s
period of gestation is thirty days; and the early races included
very curious observers amongst their naturalists, who had to think
in things and express their thought in gesture-signs and _zootypes_
before there were such things as printer’s types. Hence the frog
that dropped its tail, the serpent that sloughed its skin, the
rabbit with its period of thirty days, were all symbols of the moon.
Enough that the rabbit _was_ a zootype of the moon, and the rabbit
is equal to the hare. Hor-Apollo tells us that when the Egyptians
would denote “an opening,” they delineate a hare, because this
animal always has its eyes open (B. I. 26). This can be corroborated
in several ways. The name of the hare in Egyptian is “Un,” which
means open, to open, the opener. It was applied to Osiris,
“Un-Nefer,” in his lunar character as the good opener, otherwise the
splendid or glorious hare, because “Nefer” means the handsome,
beautiful, perfect, or glorious. Also the city of Unnut was that of
the hare, “Un,” and this was the metropolis of the 15th Nome of
Upper Egypt, which is another mode of identifying the open-eyed hare
with the moon at the full, called the “Eye of Horus,” and with the
woman of the moon who brings her orb to the full on the 15th day of
the month (Egyptian Ritual, ch. lxxx). The hare was also a symbol of
the opening period at puberty, a sign therefore of being open,
unprohibited, or “it is lawful” (Sharpe). Hence the Namaqua
Hottentots would only permit the hare to be eaten by those who had
attained the age of the adult male. The proverb, “_Somnus
leporinus_,” relates to the hare that sleeps with its eyes open; and
in our old English pharmacopœia of the folk-lore or leech-craft, the
brains and eyes of the hare are prescribed as a cure for somnolency,
and a sovereign medicine for making or keeping people wide-awake.
The rabbit equates with the hare, and has the same symbolical value.
Now it is sometimes said that the hare-rabbit is of both sexes. So
the moon was both male and female in accordance with the dual
lunation. The new moon with the horns of the bull or the long ears
of the ass, the rabbit, or hare was considered to be male. The dark
lunation or hinder part was female. In the ancient symbolism the
front or fore-part is masculine, the hinder-part or the tail is
feminine. The two were head and tail in the earliest coinage as well
as on the latest coins. In Egypt the South was front and is male;
the North was the hinder-part and is female. Hence the old Typhon of
the Northern part was denoted by the tail-piece, and it follows that
Satan with the long tail is of feminine origin, and so the devil was
female from the first. The same symbolism was applied to the moon.
In the light half it was the male moon, in the dark half female. The
new moon was the Lord of Light, the Increaser, the sign of new life,
of saving and healing. The new moon was the messenger of immortality
to men in the form of the hare or the rabbit. The waning moon
represented the devil of darkness, the Typhonian power that said to
men “even as I die and do not rise again so will it be with you.”
Offerings were made to the new moon. When the moon was at the full
the Egyptians sacrificed a black pig to Osiris. This represented
Typhon, his conquered enemy. But in the dark half of the lunation
Typhon had the upper hand when he tore Osiris into fourteen parts
during the fourteen nights of his supremacy. The lunar zootype then
is male in front, and female in the hinder-part of the animal. In
the hieroglyphics the khepsh-leg or hind-quarter is the ideographic
type of Typhon, the evil power personified. Further, the left side
is female and Typhonian; the right is male. Ergo, _the left hind leg
of the grave-yard animal that was killed in the dark of the moon_,
stood for the hind (or last) quarter of the moon; literally the end
of it. And if the negro laid hold of that rabbit’s foot the right
way, we can read the symbol that he probably did not understand,
although he knew the rabbit’s hind foot was a good fetish. It shows
the survival of _intended_ symbolism, which represents some sort of
victory over the power of darkness analogous to taking the brush of
the fox (another Typhonian animal) after it has been hunted to
death. This was the last leg that the devil of darkness had to stand
on, and so it was a trophy snatched from the Typhonian power to be
worn in triumph as a token of good luck, of repetition or renewal,
thence a second term.
It would be a sort of equivalent for taking the scalp of Satan, who
could only be typified by the tail or hinder leg. The gift was
tantamount to wishing “_A Happy New Moon to You!_” expressed in the
language of symbolism, which was acted instead of being spoken. The
negroes consider this particular talisman bequeathed by “_Brer
Rabbit_” represents all the virtues and powers of renewal that are
popularly attributed to the New Moon. But do not let me be
misunderstood by those who know that in the Negro Märchen the rabbit
is the good one of the typical two, and that the fox plays the
Typhonian part. The rabbit or hare of the moon may be pourtrayed in
two characters or in one of two. In both he is the hero, the Lord of
Light and conqueror of the Power of Darkness, the rabbit, so to say,
that rises again from the graveyard in or as the New Moon. The
figure of the hind quarter and latter end of the dying moon is thus
a type of the conquered Typhon, but the magical influence depends
upon its being also a type of the conqueror, the rabbit of the
resurrection or the New Moon. It is a curious coincidence that the
luckiest of all Lucky Horse-Shoes in England is one that has been
cast off the _left hind foot_ of a Mare.
Lastly, this hind leg of the lunar rabbit is a fellow-type with the
leg of pig that is still eaten in England on Easter Monday, which is
a survival of the ancient sacrifice of the pig Typhon, in the solar
or annual reckoning, as pourtrayed in the planisphere of Denderah,
where we see the god Khunsu offering the pig by the leg in the disc
of the full moon. It must have been a potent fetish long ages ago in
Africa, and a medicine of great power according to the primitive
mysteries of the dark land. It may be surmised that much of this
fetishtic typology is still extant amongst the negroes in the United
States, and it is to be hoped that the Bureau of Ethnology at
Washington, which has done, and is doing, such good work under the
direction of Major J. W. Powell in collecting and preserving the
relics of the Red Men, will extend the range of its researches to
the black race in America, and not leave those matters to
irresponsible story-tellers.
GERALD MASSEY.
=THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT=:
_THE TRUE STORY OF A MAGICIAN_.
(_Continued._)
---------------------
BY MABEL COLLINS.
---------------------
CHAPTER XII.
It was the day of the Princess Fleta’s wedding and the whole city
was _en fête_.
Hilary Estanol paced the streets wildly, like a creature distracted.
He had never seen her face since the day he returned from the secret
monastery. He could not trust himself to go near her. He felt that
the savage in him must kill, must destroy, if too much provocation
were given him.
He held this savage in check as well as he could. He would not trust
himself under the same roof with the woman he loved as he loved
nothing else in life, and who had given him her love while she gave
herself to another man. Herself! How much that meant Hilary seemed
only now to know, now that he heard her marriage bells ringing, now
that she was absolutely given. Yes, she had given herself away to
another man. Was it possible? Hilary stood still now and again in
the midst of the crowded street trying to remember the words she had
said to him in that wood in the early morn when she had accepted his
love. What had she taken from him then? He had never been the same
since. His heart lay cold, and chill, and dull within him save when
her smile or its memory woke him to life and joy. Were these gone
for ever? Impossible. He was still young—a mere boy. She could not
have stolen so much from him! No—he had the first right—he would be
her lover still and always, to whoever else she gave herself in
name. This was the point of thought to which Hilary perpetually
returned. Undoubtedly she was his, and he would claim her. But
obscured and excited as his mind was he had sufficient intelligence
to know that his must be a secret claim even though it stood before
all others. He could not go and claim her at the altar, for she had
not given him any right to. What she had said was, “Take from me
what you can.” Well, he could not make her his wife. He could not
marry a royal Princess. She was not of his class. This being so,
what could he hope for? Nothing—and yet he had her love—yes, the
last kind touch of her hand, the last sweet smile on her lips, were
still with him, and drove his blood rioting through his veins.
At last the procession is coming—the soldiers have already cleared
the way and with their horses keep back the crowd. Hilary stands
now, still as a carven figure, watching only for one face. He sees
it suddenly—ah! so beautiful, so supremely beautiful, so
mysterious—and everything in Heaven and earth becomes invisible,
non-existent, save that one dear face. A voice rang out on the air,
clear, shrill, above all other voices.
“Fleta! Fleta! My love! my love!”
What a cry! It penetrated to Fleta’s ears; it reached the ears of
her bridegroom.
In the church, amid the pomp and ceremony, and the crowd of great
people, Otto did a thing which made those near him stare. He went to
meet his bride and touched her hand.
“Fleta,” he said, “that voice was the voice of one who loves you.
What answer do you make to it?”
Fleta put her hand in his.
“That is my answer,” she said.
And so they stepped up the broad low steps to the altar. None heard
what had been said except the king.
Fleta’s father was strangely unlike herself. He was a rugged,
morose, sombre man, ill-disposed towards all humanity, as it would
seem, save those few who held the key to his nature. Of these, his
daughter was one; some said she was the only one. Others said her
power lay in the fact that she was not his daughter, but a child of
other parents altogether than those reputed to be hers; and that a
State secret was involved in the mystery of her birth.
At all events, it was seldom indeed that the king interfered with
Fleta. But he did so now, at this moment, with all the eyes of the
Court upon them.
He spoke low into her ear, he stood beside her.
“Fleta,” he said, “is this marriage right?”
Fleta turned on him a face so full of torture, of deathly pain, that
he uttered an ejaculation of horror.
“Say no word, my father,” she said, “it is right.”
And then she turned her head again, and fixed her glorious eyes on
Otto.
What a strangely beautiful bride she was! She was dressed with
extraordinary simplicity; her robe had been arranged by her own
hands in long, soft lines that fell from her neck to her feet, and a
long train lay on the ground behind her, but it was undecked by any
lace or flowers. No flowers were in her hair, no jewels on her neck.
Never had a princess been dressed so simply, a princess who was to
be a queen. The Court ladies stared in amazement. But they knew well
that there was a grace so supreme, a dignity so lofty, in this royal
girl, that however simple her dress she outshone them all, and would
outshine any woman who stood beside her.
No one heard any of what passed between the three chief actors in
this scene; yet everyone was aware that there was something unusual
in it. There was an atmosphere of mystery, of excitement, of
strangeness. And yet what else would be possible where the Princess
Fleta was concerned? In her father’s Court she was looked upon as a
wild, capricious, imperious creature whose will none could resist.
None would have wondered had they believed her carriage to have
passed over the body of an accepted lover, now thrown aside and
discarded. So did these people interpret the character of Fleta.
Otto knew this, felt it, understood it; knew that those creatures of
intrigue and pleasure would have thought her far less worthy had
they judged her character more nearly as he did. To him she was
pure, stainless, unattainable; virgin in soul and thought. This he
said to her when, on leaving the cathedral, they entered a carriage
together and alone. They had together passed through crowds of
congratulators, nobles, great ladies, diplomats from different parts
of Europe. They had bowed and smiled, and answered courteously the
words addressed to them. And yet how far away were their thoughts
all the while! They neither of them knew who they had met, who they
had spoken to. All was lost in one absorbing thought. But it was not
the same thought. No, indeed, their minds were separated widely as
the poles.
Fleta was filled with the sense of a great purpose. This marriage
was but the first step in a giant programme. Her thoughts had flown
now from this first step and were dwelling on the end, the
fulfilment; as an artist when he draws his first sketch sees in his
own mind the completed picture.
Otto had but one overwhelming thought; a very simple one, expressed
instantly, in the first words he uttered when they were alone:
“Fleta, you did not fancy that I doubted you? I never meant that!
And yet it seemed as if there was reproach in your eyes! No, Fleta,
never that. But the cry was so terrible—it cut my heart. You did not
fancy I meant any doubt?—assure me, Fleta!”
“No, I did not,” replied Fleta quietly. “You know whose voice it
was.”
“No—it was unrecognisable—it was nothing but a cry of torture.”
“Ah! but I knew it,” said Fleta. “It was Hilary Estanol who cried
out my name.”
“He said ‘Fleta, my love, my love,’” added Otto. “Is he that?”
“Yes,” said Fleta unmoved, indeed strangely calm. “He is. More,
Otto; he has loved me long centuries ago, when this world wore a
different face. When the very surface of the earth was savage and
untaught so were we. And then we enacted this same scene. Yes Alan,
we three enacted it before, without this pomp, but with the natural
splendour of savage beauty and undimmed skies. Otto, I sinned then I
expiated my sin. Again and again have I expiated it. Again and again
has Nature punished me for my offence against her. Now at last I
know more, I see more, I understand more. The sin remains. I desired
to take, to have for myself, to be a conqueror. I conquered—I have
conquered since! how often! That has been my expiation: satiety. But
now I will no longer enjoy. I will stand on that error, that folly,
and win from it strength which shall lift me from this wretched
little theatre where we play the same dramas for ever through the
fond weariness of recurring lives.”
Otto had drawn back from her, and gazed intently upon her as she
spoke, passion and vehemence gradually entering her low voice. As
she ceased he passed his hand over his forehead.
“Fleta,” he said, “is this some spell of yours upon me? While you
spoke I saw your face change, and become the face of one familiar to
me, but far, far back! I smelled the intense rich scent of
innumerable fruit blossoms——Fleta, tell me, are you dreaming or
speaking fables, or is this thing true? Have I lived for you before,
loved you, served you, ages back, when the world was young?”
“Yes,” said Fleta.
“Ah!” cried Otto suddenly, “I feel it—there is blood on you—blood on
your hand!”
Fleta raised her beautiful hand, and looked at it with an infinite
sadness on her face.
“It is so,” she answered. “There is blood on it, and there will be,
until I have got beyond the reign of blood and of death. You held me
down then, Otto; you triumphed by brute force, not knowing that in
me lay a power undreamed of by you—a vital, stirring will. I could
have crushed you. But already I had used my will once, and found the
bitter, unintelligible suffering it produced. I determined to try
and understand Nature before I again used my power. So I submitted
to your tyranny; you learned to love it, and through many lives have
learned to love it more. It has brought you a crown at last, and a
little army of soldiers to defend it for you, and half-a-dozen
crafty old diplomats who want you to keep it, and who think they can
make you do just as their respective monarchs wish. Move your
puppets, Otto. No such kingdom satisfies me. I mean to win my own
crown. I will be a queen of souls, not of bodies; a queen in
reality, not in name.”
She seemed to wrap herself in an impenetrable veil of scorn as she
ceased speaking and leaned back in the carriage.
Some great emotion was stirring Otto through and through. At last he
spoke; and the man seemed changed—a different being. From under the
gentle manner, the docile, ready air, came struggling up the fierce
spirit of opposition.
“You despise the crown you married me for? Is that so? Well, I will
teach you to respect it.”
A smile dawned on Fleta’s clouded face and then was gone again in a
moment. This was all the answer she vouchsafed to the kingly threat.
Otto turned and looked at her steadily.
“A magnificent creature,” he said, “beautiful, and with a brain of
steel, and perhaps for all I know, a heart like it. You won a great
deal from me, Fleta, a little while since. Did I not submit to the
masquerading of your mysterious Order? Did I not trust my life to
those treacherous monks of yours, submit to be blindfolded and led
into their haunt by secret ways. For what end? Ivan told me of
aspirations, of ideas, of thoughts, which only sickened my soul and
filled me with shame and despair. For I am a believer in order, in
moral rule, in the government of the world in accordance with the
principles of religion. I told you I was willing to become a member
of the order; yes, because my nature is in sympathy with its avowed
tenets. But its secret doctrines as I have heard them from you, as I
have heard them from the man you call your master, are to me
detestable. And it is for the carrying out of this unholy theory or
doctrine that you propose to surrender your life? No, Fleta; you are
now my queen.”
“Yes,” said Fleta. “I am now your queen. I know that I have chosen
the lot willingly. You need not again tell me that I have the crown
I purposed to obtain.”
At this moment they arrived at the palace. There was yet a weary
mass of ceremony and speaking of polite nothings to be passed
through before there was any chance of their being alone again. Otto
relapsed into the pleasant and kindly manner which was habitual with
him. Fleta fell into one of her abstracted moods, and the court
adopted its usual policy under such circumstances—let her be
undisturbed. Few of the men cared to risk the satirical answers that
came readiest to her lips when she was roused out of such a mood as
this.
And yet at last someone did venture to rouse her; and a smile,
delicious as a burst of sunshine, came swiftly and suddenly on her
mouth.
It was Hilary Estanol. Pale, worn, the mere ghost of himself, his
dark eyes looking strangely large in the white face they were set
in. They were fixed on her as though there were nothing else in the
world to look at.
Fleta held out her hand to him; his companion—a military officer who
had brought him under protest, and in some doubt, for Hilary had no
friends at Court—drew back in amazement. He understood now Hilary’s
importunity.
Hilary bent over Fleta’s hand and held his lips near it for an
instant, but did not touch it. A sort of groan came to her ear from
his lips.
“You have resigned me?” she asked in a low vibrating whisper.
“You have cast me off,” he answered.
“Be it so,” she replied, “but you have lived through it, and you now
claim nothing. Is it not so? I read it in the dumb pain in your
eyes.”
“Yes,” said Hilary, straightening himself and standing upright close
beside her, and looking down upon her beautiful dark head. “It is
so. I will not cry for the moon, nor will I weary any woman with my
regret or entreaty, even you, Fleta, though it is no dishonour to
humble oneself at the feet of such as you. No; I will bear my pain
like a man. I came here to say good-bye. You are still something
like the Fleta that I loved. To-morrow you will not be.”
“How can you tell?” she said with her inscrutable smile. “Still, I
think you are right. And now that we are no longer lovers will you
enter with me another bond? Will you be my comrade in undertaking
the great task? I know you are fearless.”
“The great task?” said Hilary vaguely, and he put his hand to his
forehead.
“The one great task of this narrow life—To learn its lesson and go
beyond it.”
“Yes, I will be your comrade,” said Hilary in an even voice and
without enthusiasm.
“Then meet me at two this very morning at the gate of the
garden-house where you used to enter.”
It was now just midnight. Hilary noticed this as he turned away, for
a little clock stood on a bracket close by. He looked at it, and
looked back at Fleta. Could she mean what she said? But already the
Fleta he knew had vanished; a cold, haughty, impassive young queen
was accepting the uninteresting homage of a foreign minister. The
guests were beginning to take their departure. Fleta and Otto did
not propose to take any journey in honour of their wedding as is the
custom in some places; the king opened for their use the finest set
of guests’ chambers in the palace, and these they occupied,
remaining among the visitors until all had departed. On the next day
Otto was to take his queen home; but he had had to give way to the
wishes of Fleta and her father as to the postponing of the journey.
From the great drawing-rooms Fleta went quietly away when the last
guest had departed; she moved like a swift shadow noiselessly along
the corridors. She entered her own room, and there began, without
summoning any attendant, to hastily take off her bridal robes. On a
couch was lying the white robe and cloak which she had worn when she
had endeavoured to enter the hall of the mystics. These she put on,
and wrapping the cloak round her turned to leave the room. As she
did so she came face to face with Otto, who had entered noiselessly,
and was standing in silence beside her. She seemed scarcely to
notice him, but changed her direction and proceeded towards another
door. Otto quickly placed himself again in her way.
“No,” he said; “you do not leave this room to-night.”
“And why?” asked Fleta, looking gravely at his set face.
“Because you are now my wife. I forbid it. Stay here, and with me.
Come, let me take off that cloak, without any trouble; the white
gown under it suits you even better than your wedding-dress.”
He unfastened the clasps which held the cloak together. Fleta made
no opposition, but kept her eyes on his face; he would not meet her
gaze, though his face was white and rigid with the intensity of his
passion and purpose.
“Do you remember,” said Fleta, “the last thing that you did when you
were with Father Ivan? Do you remember kneeling before him and
uttering these words—‘I swear to serve the master of truth and the
teacher of life——’”
“That master—that teacher!” interrupted Otto hotly. “I reserved my
reason even in that incense-scented room. That master—that
teacher—is my own intelligence—so I phrased it in my own mind—I
recognise no other master.”
“Your own intelligence!” repeated Fleta. “You have not yet learned
to use it. You did not so phrase the vow then; you only rephrased it
so afterwards, when you were away, and alone, and began again to
struggle for your selfish freedom. No, Otto, you have not begun to
use your intelligence. You are still the slave of your desires,
eaten up with the longing for power and the lust of the tyrannical
soul. You do not love me—you only desire to possess me. You fancy
your power is all you wish it to be. Well, put it to the test. Take
this cloak from my shoulders.”
Otto came close, and took the cloak in his hands; and then a
sudden passion filled him—he seized her in his arms and pressed
his lips to hers—yet he did not do so, either, for the attempt was
instantaneously surrendered. He staggered back, white and
trembling.
Fleta stood erect and proud before him.
“That vow you took,” she said quietly, “you knew very well in the
inner recesses of your soul, in your true unblinded self, to make
you a slave of the Great Order. That vow may yet save you from
yourself, if you do not resent it too fiercely. But remember this; I
am a neophyte of that order, and you being its slave, are under my
command. I am your queen, Otto, but not your wife.”
She passed him as she said this, and he made no effort to detain
her; indeed, the trembling had not yet left him, and his whole
strength was taken by the attempt to control it. As she reached the
door he succeeded in speaking:
“Why did you marry me?”
“Did I not tell you?” she said, pausing a moment and turning to look
at him. “I think I did. Because I have to learn to live on the plain
as contentedly as on the mountain tops. There is but one way for me
to do this, and that is to devote my life as your queen to the same
great purpose it would serve were I the silver-robed initiate I
desire to be. I go now to commence my work, with the aid of a lover
who has learned to surrender his love.”
She moved magnificently from the room, looking much taller even than
her natural height. And Otto let her go without any word or sign.
CHAPTER XIII.
It was a fragrant night—a night rich with sweet flower-scents, not
only from the flower beds near, but coming from afar on the breeze.
Hilary stood at the gate, leaning on it and looking away at the sky,
where a faint streak of different light told of the sun’s coming. It
was quite clear, though there had been no moonlight; one of those
warm, still nights when it is easy to find one’s way, though hard to
see into the face of one near by, a night when one walks in a dream
amid changing shadows, and when the outer mysteriousness and the
dimness of one’s soul are as one. So with Hilary; so had he walked
to the gate. He waited for the woman he loved, the only woman any
man could ever love, having once known her. And yet no fever burned
now in his veins, no intoxication mounted from his heart to his
brain. Standing there, and regarding himself and his own feelings
very quietly in the stillness, it seemed to him as if he had died
yesterday when that wild cry had been unknowingly uttered; as if his
soul or his heart, or, indeed, his very self had gone forth in it.
A light touch was laid on his shoulder, and then the gate was
opened. He passed through and walked by Fleta up the flower-bordered
pathway. She moved on without speaking, her white cloak hanging
loose from her neck, and her bare arms gleaming as it fell back from
them.
“You who know so much tell me something,” said Hilary. “Why are you
so wise?”
“Because I burned my soul out centuries ago,” said Fleta. “When you
have burned out your heart you will be strong as I am.”
“Another question,” said Hilary. “Why did you fail in that
initiation?”
Fleta stopped suddenly, and fixed fierce questioning eyes upon him.
She was terrible in this quick rush of anger. But Hilary looked on
her unmoved. It seemed to him that nothing would ever be able to
move him again. Was he dead indeed that he could thus endure the
scorching light of those brilliant eyes?
“What makes you ask me that?” cried Fleta in a voice of pain. “Do
you demand to know?”
“Yes; I do wish to know.”
For a moment Fleta covered her face with her hands, and her whole
form shrank and quivered. But only for a moment; then she dropped
her hands at each side and stood erect, her queenly head poised
royally.
“It is my punishment,” she said in a murmuring voice, “to discover
so soon how absolute are the bonds of the Great Order; how the pupil
can command the master as well as the master the pupil.”
Then she turned abruptly upon Hilary, approaching him more nearly,
while she spoke in a quick, fierce voice.
“Because, though I have burned out my soul, I have not burned out my
heart! Because, though I cannot love as men do, and have almost
forgotten what passion means, yet I can still worship a greater
nature than my own so deeply that it may be called love. I have not
learned to stand utterly alone and to know myself as great as any
other with the same possibilities, the same divinity in myself. I
still lean on another, look to another, hunger for the smile of
another. O, folly, when I know so well that I cannot find any rest
while that is in me. O, Ivan, my teacher, my friend, what torture it
is to wrest the image of you from its shrine within me. Powers and
forces of indifferent Nature, I demand your help!”
She raised her arms as she uttered this invocation, and it struck
Hilary at the moment how little like a human being she looked. She
might have been the spirit of the dawn. Her voice had become
unutterably weird and mournful, like the deep cry of a broken soul.
Without pausing for any answer she dropped her arms, drew her cloak
around her, and walked away over the dewy grass. Hilary, as silent,
as mournful, but seemingly without emotion, dropped his head and
quietly followed her track. Of old—only yesterday—what an age
ago!—he would have kept his eyes fixed on her shining dark hair or
the movements of her delicate figure. Suddenly Fleta stopped, turned
and confronted him. He raised his eyes in surprise and looked at
her.
“You are no longer devoured by jealousy,” she said. “You can hear me
speak as I did just now without its turning you into a savage. What
has happened?”
Her eyes seemed to penetrate his impassive and languid expression,
looking for the soul beneath. She was longing that his answer should
be the one she needed.
“I am hopeless,” answered Hilary.
“Of what?”
“Of your love. I understand at last that you have a great purpose in
your life, and that I am a mere straw on a stream. I thought I had
some claim on you; I see I cannot have. I surrender myself to your
will. That is all I have left to do.”
Fleta stood meditatively for a moment Then she looked up very sadly
in his face.
“It is not enough,” she said. “Your gift must be a positive one.”
Then she again turned and went on her way to the house. Here
everything was silent and even dark, for the shutters were all
closed, and evidently the place was deserted. Fleta opened a side
door with a key which was attached to her girdle; they entered and
she locked it behind them. She led the way through the quiet dim
house to the door of the laboratory; they entered the room in
silence. It wore a quite new aspect to Hilary’s eyes, and he looked
round in wonder. All was pale; there was no incense burning, no
lamps were lit; the colour had gone from the walls; a faint grey
light through a skylight, which had always hitherto been curtained,
dimly broke on the darkness of the room which still lurked deeply in
the lower part. But Hilary found enough light to see that the thing
he so hated was not present; that lay figure which was to him always
such a horror was gone.
“Where is it?” he said after a moment, wondering at the sense of
relief with which its absence filled him.
“What?—oh! the figure. Again you ask a question which I am compelled
to answer. Well, I cannot use that power at present; I have again to
win the right.”
“How did you win the right before?” asked Hilary, fixing his eyes on
her; a fierce desire to know this possessed him.
Fleta started, turned towards him, and for a moment the proud
imperiousness which ordinarily characterised her came over her form
and her features. But in another moment it was gone. She stood
before him, pale, gentle and sublime.
“I will tell you,” she said in a clear yet very low voice. “By
taking your life.”
Hilary looked at her in complete perplexity and bewilderment.
“Do you not remember,” she said, “that forest, that new earth and
sky, all so sweet and strong, that wealth of apricot blossom that
came between us and the sky? Ah, Hilary, how fresh and vivid life
was then, while we lived and loved and understood not that we did
either! Was it not sweet? I loved you. Yes, I loved you—loved you.”
Her voice broke and trembled. Hilary’s numbed heart suddenly sprang
again to life. Never had her voice contained such tones of
tenderness and passion before.
“Oh, my dear, my Fleta, you love me still—now!”
He sprang towards her, but she seemed to sweep him aside with one
majestic action of her bare arm.
“With that passion,” she said, with a pale solemnity, “I can never
love now. I have not forgotten entirely what such love is—no,
Hilary, I have not forgotten—else how should I have found you again
among the multitudes of the earth?” She held out her hand to him,
and, as he clasped it, he felt it was soft and tender, that the warm
life blood of a young creature responded to his touch. “I knew you
by your dear eyes which once were so full of pure love for me that
they were like stars in my life.”
“What came between us?” asked Hilary.
She looked strangely at him, drew her hand away, folded her cloak
round her and then answered in one word:
“Passion!”
“I remember it now!” cried Hilary in sudden excitement “My God! I
see your beautiful wild face before me, I see your lips as lovely as
the soft blossom above us. Fleta, I loved you as men love—I hungered
for you—what harm lay in that?”
“None,” she answered, standing now motionless and statue-like,
wrapped in her long, white cloak, seeming like a lovely ghost rather
then a living woman. “None—for men who care only to be men, to
reproduce men, to be and to do nothing more than that! But I had
another power within me, that seemed stronger than myself—a stirring
of the dumb soul within. When that moment came, Hilary, then came
the great decision, the fierce struggle between two souls hurled
together out of the dimness of life, and finding light in the fever
of love—yes, light!—the fire that is love makes it possible for men
to live. It gives them hope, it animates them, it makes them believe
in a future, it enables them to create men to fill that future.
“In those old days beneath those apricot blossoms, you and I,
Hilary, were but children on this earth, new to its meaning, knowing
nothing of its purpose. How could we guide ourselves? We were
ignorant of the great power of sex, we were only at the beginning of
its lesson. So it must be with all. They must go through with the
lesson, they cannot guess it from the first! Nor could we. I did not
know what I did, Hilary, my lover, when I took your life. Had I
known I should only have been like a beast of prey. But I did not
know. You asserted your power—you claimed me. I asserted mine—I
conquered. I wanted power; and killing you as I did with that one
emotion only stirring within me, I got what I longed for. Not at
once—not till I had suffered patiently, not till I had struggled
hard to understand myself and the force that was at work within me.
And this for life after life, incarnation after incarnation. You not
only loved me but you were mine—I conquered you and used your life
and love for my own ends—to add to my power, to actually create the
life and strength I needed. By your life, by your strength, I became
a magician, read by my insight the mysteries of alchemy and the
buried secrets of power. Yes, Hilary, it is so. To you I owe myself.
I have become free from the common burdens of humanity, its
passions, its personal desires, its weary repetitions of experiences
till their edge grows blunted by long usage. I have seen the
Egyptian and the Roman, men of the old superb civilisations, trying
to reproduce their past pleasures, their past magnificence to-day,
in this modern life. It is useless, life after life full of
selfishness and pleasure, ends in the weariness of living that kills
men’s souls and darkens their thought. But you and I, Hilary, have
escaped from this dismal fate. I would not be content to live again
as I had lived before, to use the life principle which lies in love,
only for pleasure or the bringing of eidolons on to the earth. I
determined to rise, to raise myself, to raise you, and out of our
love perpetually to create something nobler than we ourselves. I
have succeeded, Hilary, I have succeeded. We stand now before the
gate of the first initiation. I tried to enter it and failed for
want of strength—for want of strength, Hilary! I could not pluck my
master’s image utterly out of my soul—I looked for him to lean on—at
least to find comfort in seeing that face I knew. Give me strength,
Hilary! Be my comrade! Help me to enter and your strength shall come
back to you a hundredfold. For your reward shall be that you too
shall enter with me.”
She had changed from moment to moment as she spoke. She looked like
an inspired priestess—like a Divine being. Now she stood like a
flame with a strange appearance, as if her whole soul and self,
spirit and body, rose upwards in adoration. The dawn had come; the
first rays of the sun shot through the skylight and fell on her
transfigured face and gleaming hair.
Hilary looked at her as a worshipper might look at his idol.
“I am yours,” he said, “but I know not how to prove it.”
She held out her hand to him, and lowered her eyes from the light to
which they had been raised until they met his.
“We must discover the great secret together, Hilary. No longer may
you give yourself to me without knowledge. Hitherto our lives have
been but the lives of the blossom; now we must be wise and enter the
state when the fruit comes. We have to find out what that power is
which the sun represents to us; to discover the pure creative power.
But we have not strength yet, Hilary; alas! I dread and fear
sometimes. More strength means more sacrifice.”
She drew her cloak closer round her, the light faded from her eyes
and face, and turning away she went and sat down on a couch which
was back in the shadow. Hilary felt a profound sense of sadness, of
sympathy, of sorrow, sweep over his being. He followed her and sat
down beside her. One pale hand lay on the couch, outside her cloak.
He laid his upon it, and fell deep into thought. Thus they sat,
silent, breathing softly, for long hours, till the sun was high. But
still, even then, the room was very dim and cool, and full of
shadows.
CHAPTER XIV.
On the next day, the same day rather, for they sat together in the
laboratory till long after the sun was high, Hilary, to his own
amazement, found that he had an official post in the household of
the young Queen which would keep him continually about her. Indeed,
he had to pack up instantly on being informed of the fact, in order
to follow Fleta to her own dominions. How this had been effected
none could tell—Hilary, least of all, for he saw immediately on
presenting himself in King Otto’s presence that he was regarded by
him with dislike and distrust. Before, Otto had scarcely noticed
him. The present state of things was decidedly a change for the
worse. However, Hilary had already perceived very clearly that to
serve under Fleta was to serve under a hard master. And he had no
longer any kind of choice. Life was inconceivable without
her—without the pain caused by her difficult service. He had rather
suffer that than enjoy any other kind of pleasure. And, indeed,
pleasure, apart from Fleta, did not appear to him to exist.
And yet he was still capable of doubting her.
Fleta had chosen a companion of royal birth to travel with her; a
young duchess who bore the same family name as Fleta herself. This
girl had been reared in a nunnery, and then taken to court, where
she took part in all the pageants and immediately found herself
surrounded by suitors. She was not very pretty, and certainly not at
all clever. To go with Fleta seemed to her delightful, as it would
introduce her to a new court and a fresh series of suitors. It
struck Hilary as quite extraordinary that Fleta should choose this
child as her companion—not that the Duchess was any younger than
Fleta—indeed, they were almost of an age; but Fleta appeared to
carry within her beautiful head the wisdom of centuries, while the
Duchess was a mere school-girl trained in court etiquette.
These three were to travel together in Fleta’s own favourite
travelling carriage. She simply refused to travel with her husband.
When he addressed her on the subject, she merely replied:
“You would weary me; and, moreover, I have work to do.”
And so they started; and as Hilary took his place, he thought of
that strange drive when he and Fleta, and Father Amyot, had been the
three. Recollecting this made him wonder what had become of Father
Amyot; for the priest had not returned to his duties in the city. He
asked Fleta, while the thought was in his mind, why Amyot was not
with her now.
“He is of no use to me,” she answered coldly.
The journey was a very long and a very weary one to Hilary; for the
Duchess, finding no one else to flirt with, insisted upon flirting
with him; while Fleta lay back in her corner of the carriage hour
after hour, with her eyes closed. What was the work she had to do?
Hilary, who had overheard her answer to the King, wondered very
much. And yet, as he watched her intently he saw that her face
changed. It grew darker, more inscrutable, more set in purpose.
Late one evening, and when they were indeed travelling later than
usual, hoping to reach their destination that same night, a curious
thing happened. All day long Fleta had been silent, seemingly buried
in thought; but sometimes when Hilary was watching her he noticed
her lips move as if in speech. He sat opposite her whenever he
could; this was not always possible, as the young Duchess would talk
to him, and the carriage being very large and roomy, he had to
change his position, and go nearer to her in order to carry on a
conversation with any comfort. But as it grew dark the Duchess grew
tired, and leaned back half asleep, for indeed they had had a long
day’s journey.
Hilary withdrew himself to the corner opposite Fleta. It grew so
dark he could no longer see her; they had a swinging-lamp in the
roof of the carriage, but he did not want to light it unless Fleta
wished it so; and, indeed, he longed for the quiet and the darkness
very much. It made him feel more alone with her, he could try to
follow and seize her thoughts then without the perpetual disturbance
of the little Duchess’s quick eyes on him and her light voice in his
ears.
He sat still and thought of Fleta—Fleta herself in her glorious
beauty—sitting there opposite him shrouded by the darkness. He could
endure it no longer—the man rose up in him and asserted itself—he
leaned forward and put his hand upon her. He had scarcely done so
when the Duchess uttered a shrill cry.
“My God!” she exclaimed, in a voice of horror, “who is in the
carriage with us?”
She flung herself across and knelt upon the floor between Hilary and
Fleta; her terror was so great she did not know what she was doing.
Hilary leaned across her and instantly discovered that she was
right—that there was another man in the carriage besides himself.
“Oh, kill him! kill him!” cried the little Duchess, in an agony of
fear; “he is a thief, a murderer, a robber!”
Hilary rose up and precipitated himself upon this person whom he
could not see. A sense of self-defence, of defence of the women with
him, seized him as we see it seize the animals. He discovered that
this man had risen also. Blindly and furiously he attacked him, and
with extraordinary strength. Hilary was young and full of vigour,
but slight and not built like an athlete. Now, however, he seemed to
be one. He found his adversary to be much larger and stronger than
himself.
A fearful struggle followed. The carriage drove on through unseen
scenery as fast as possible; Fleta could have stopped it had she
thrown the window down and cried out to the postilions. But Fleta
remained motionless—she might have fainted, she was so still. The
little Duchess simply cowered on the ground beside her, clinging to
her motionless figure. This terrified girl had not the presence of
mind to think of stopping the carriage, and so obtaining help. She
was too horror-struck to do anything. And, indeed, it was horrible,
for the swaying struggling forms sometimes were right upon the two
women, sometimes at the other side of the carriage; it was a deadly,
horrible, ghastly struggle, all the more horrid for the silence.
There were no cries, no exclamations, for indeed, so far as Hilary
was concerned, he had no breath to spare for them. There were only
gasps, and heavy breathings, and the terrible sound that comes from
a man’s throat when he is fighting for his life. How long this
hideous battle lasted none could tell—Hilary had no idea of the
passage of time. The savage in him had now come so entirely
uppermost and drowned all other consciousness, that his one thought
was he must kill—kill—kill—and at last it was done. There was a
moment when his adversary was below him, when he could use his whole
force upon him—and then came a gasp and an unearthly cry—and
silence.
Absolute silence for a little while. No one moved, no one stirred.
The Duchess was petrified with horror. Hilary had sunk exhausted on
the seat of the carriage—not only exhausted, but bewildered, for a
host of other emotions besides savage fury began to rise within him.
What—who—-was this being he had destroyed? At that moment they were
urged into a gallop, for they were entering the city gates. Hilary
threw down the window next him with a crash. “Lights, lights!” he
cried out, “bring lights.” The carriage stopped, and there was a
crowd immediately at the windows, and the glare of torches fell into
the carriage, making it bright as day. The little Duchess was
crouched in the corner on the ground in a dead faint. Fleta sat up,
strangely white, but calm. Nothing else was to be seen, alive or
dead, save Hilary himself; and so horror-struck was he at this
discovery that he turned and buried his face in the cushions of the
carriage, and he never knew what happened—whether he wept, or
laughed, or cursed—but some strange sound of his own voice he heard
with his ears.
There was a carriage full of servants behind Fleta’s carriage; when
hers stopped so suddenly they all got out and came quickly to the
doors.
“The Duchess has fainted,” said Fleta, rising so as to hide Hilary;
“the journey has been too long. Is there a house near where she can
lie still a little while, and come on later to the palace?”
Immediately offers of help were made, and the servants and those who
were glad to help them carried the poor little Duchess away.
“On to the palace!” cried Fleta, and shut the door and drew down the
blinds. The postilion started the horses with all speed.
Suddenly the blood in Hilary’s body began to surge and burn. Was it
Fleta’s arms that clung round him? Fleta’s lips that printed warm,
living kisses on his neck, his face, his hair? He turned and faced
her.
“Tell me the truth,” he said. “Are you a devil?”
“No,” she answered, “I am not. I want to find my way to the pure
good that governs life. But there are devils about me, and you have
killed one of them to-night. Hush, calm yourself; remember what we
are in the eyes of the world. For we are at the palace door, and
Otto is standing there to receive us.”
She stepped out, the young queen.
Hilary followed her, stumbling, broken. He said he was ill, to those
who spoke to him; and stood staring in wonder at the brilliant sight
before him.
CHAPTER XV.
The great hall of the palace was illuminated gloriously by huge
dragons made of gold, placed high up on the walls; within these
strange creatures were powerful lamps, which shed their light not
only through the eyes and opened mouths, but from the gleaming
claws. The whole place was filled with a blaze of light from them;
and the dresses of the household assembled below seemed to Hilary
another blaze of light, so gay were they. Yet this was only a
domestic reception. It was late, and Otto had refused to allow any
more general demonstration to take place that night. Yet Fleta, when
she threw off her travelling cloak and hood, might have been the
centre of any pageant. She showed no trace of the weariness of
travel, or even of the strange excitement she had passed through.
She was pale, but her face was calm and wore its most haughty and
unapproachable expression. Her dress of black lace hung about her
slender form like clouds. Otto was filled with pride as he noted her
superb dignity and beauty; with hatred, as he observed that her eyes
never met his own, that she treated him with just the same civility
as the steward, or any servant of the establishment. No one could
notice this but himself and perhaps Hilary, supposing the latter to
be capable of regarding anyone but Fleta herself; for she was too
much a woman of the world, this mystic, this wild girl, to admit
anyone even to the most evident of the secrets of her life.
After a few moments passed among the little crowd assembled in the
great hall, Fleta proposed to go to her own rooms for the night, and
a stately little procession formed itself at once to conduct her
there. But before going she beckoned to Hilary.
“The Duchess must come to me to-night,” she said. “I wish her to be
in my own room. Send a carriage and servants to fetch her.”
How her eyes glittered! Had he ever seen them shine so vividly
before?
“Tell me one thing,” he said hoarsely. “I believe you have taken to
yourself that creature’s life and very body that I killed for you.
Is it not true?”
“You are shrewd,” she said with a laugh. “Yes, it is true. My whole
being is stronger for his death; I absorbed his vital power the
instant you wrenched it from him.”
“And he?” said Hilary, with wild eyes.
“Was one of those half-human, half-animal creatures that haunt men
to their ill, and which fools call ghosts or demons. I have done him
a service in taking his life into my own.”
Hilary shuddered violently.
“You doubt me,” said Fleta very quietly. “You still doubt if it is
not I who am the devil. Be it so. I am indifferent to your opinion
of me, Hilary; you cannot help loving and serving me. We were born
under the same star. Now go and give orders about the Duchess.”
Under the same star! Those words had not come to his mind for a long
while; yet how horribly true they were. For he, Hilary, it was who
had actually done this dreadful deed and killed this unseen,
unknown, unimaginable creature. Horror made him clutch his hands
together as he thought that he had touched this thing, more, had
killed it hideously. Might it not have been some good thing striving
to baffle Fleta? Ah, yes! he still doubted her. And yet to doubt her
so completely made the very earth to sink away from under his feet.
He himself, his life, his all, were given to her, be she good or
evil! Staggering and overpowered by the terrible thoughts that
crushed his wearied brain, Hilary found his way to a supper-table;
and too exhausted to think of anything else but recruiting his
strength, sat down to drink wine—and to try to eat. This latter
seemed impossible, but the wine revived him; and presently he
remembered that it was his business to look after the Duchess.
By-and-bye she was carried into the palace; she could not yet stand,
for she had only come out of one fainting fit to fall into another.
And now came a strange and dreadful scene—one which only a few
witnessed, Hilary as it happened being among those few, for he
saw the Duchess taken to the suite of rooms Fleta occupied. In
the corridor Fleta came out to them; she was still in her
travelling-dress, and looked very quiet and even subdued. But at
the sight of her the young Duchess screamed as if she saw some
awful thing; she would not let Fleta touch her, she absolutely
refused to enter her room.
“But you must be with me,” said Fleta in a low voice.
“I will not,” answered the Duchess with a firm resolution which
amazed everyone who knew her. She rose up and walked unassisted
along the corridor and down the great staircase; she met the young
king coming up it; he had heard her shrill cries and came to see
what was happening.
“What is the matter, little cousin?” seeing her tear-stained and
agitated face.
“Fleta wants me to be in her room all night! I would not do it for
all the world! She is a devil—she would kill me or make her lover
kill me, and then no one would ever hear of me or even find my body.
No! No!”
And so she ran on, down the wide stairs, leaving Otto thunderstruck.
He noticed that a number of persons were gathering on the landing
and stairs, and so, with a stern and quiet face, he passed through
the little throng, making no observation. He went down the corridor
and straight into Fleta’s room. Here he found her standing silent,
dark, like a sombre statue. One other person was in the room—Hilary
Estanol. He was in the most extraordinary state of agitation,
pouring out words and accusations; some horror appeared to possess
and blind him, for he took no notice of the king’s entrance. Fleta
did, however; she looked up at him and smiled—such a strange, sweet,
subtle smile. Seldom, indeed, had Fleta given him a look like this.
Otto’s heart leaped within him, and he knew himself her slave. For
he loved her increasingly with every passing moment; and she had but
to turn her face on him softly to make the loving soul in him burn
with ardour. But that burning was fiery indeed. He turned upon
Hilary and stayed his words by a sudden sharp order:
“Leave the room,” he said. “And you had better go and see Doctor
Brandener before you go to bed, for you are either in a fever or
mad. Go at once.”
Hilary was in a condition in which an order given in such a tone
took the place of the action of his own brain, and he mechanically
obeyed it. This was the best possible thing that could have happened
to him; for he was in fact in a high fever, and if he had not,
without thinking about it, done as he was told and gone to the
resident doctor of the palace, he would probably have wandered
raving about all night. As it was he was obliged to drink a strong
sleeping draught, and was placed in his bed, where he fell at once
into a sleep so profound it seemed like death.
Hilary gone, Fleta closed the door behind him.
“Do not let there be any struggle of wills between us to-night,”
said Fleta very softly. “I warn you, I am much stronger than I was;
I am very much stronger than you are, now. And you found before that
you could not even come near enough to touch me. Let me rest, and
that quietly; I wish to retain my beauty, both for your sake and my
own.”
Otto paused a few moments before he made any answer to this
extraordinary speech. Then he spoke with difficulty; and as he did
so raised his hand to brush away some great drops of sweat which had
gathered on his forehead.
“I know I am powerless against you to-night, Fleta,” he said. “I
cannot even move nearer to you. But be warned; I intend to probe the
mystery of your being. I intend to conquer you at last. I will do it
if I have to visit hell itself for the magic which shall be stronger
than yours.”
(_To be continued._)
——*———
TWILIGHT VISIONS.
PART II.—THE CRESCENT.
“_The_ LORD _appeared of old unto me, saying, ‘Yea, I have loved
thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving-kindness have
I drawn thee.’_”—JER. xxxi., 3.
“In life, in death, O Lord! abide with me!”
Thou, Ruler o’er the Living Rosy Cross—
Great Master Mason of the mortal frame,
Which is the temple of the Holy Ghost—
Grand Power of all who through the secret sun
Dost hold the soul in tenement of clay
To guide it safely through the gloom of night
Into the golden morn, when all things then
In Light of Love—thine own Eternal Self—
Shall truly stand revealed to those that strive
In truth to know the Power which all mankind
Shall worship in the Universal King.
* * * * *
My children! saith the living God of Love,
Now “if with all your hearts ye truly seek,”[153]
Ye surely shall find me your King in Heaven,
And finding me shall know yourselves to be
Anointed Princes—Rulers of the Earth—
The Powers of Light sent by me in the flesh,
And named Michael! You are here to fight,
To hurl down Satan to his black abyss,
Where ignorance and error, sin and crime,
And hellish spirits dark for ever dwell
With all who in the bonds of slavery
Lead deathly lives as creatures of the world—
The wretched earth-worms of that bounden sphere,
Which is the only Hell mankind can know!
* * * * *
The night is now far spent, and in the sky
From out a dark blue setting there hath shone
In ages past, as now, full many a star
Proclaiming to mankind the Light of Heaven,
Each with its own peculiar brilliancy
Illumining the minds of men with rays
Which point to other realms beyond this world,
And ever tell of one star differing
In glory from its fellow star on high.
What great and hidden meaning lieth here!
Why are the stars above held forth to man
As entities which tell of other states?
The Stars of Heaven are never seen by man;
As man, he cannot know that glorious light
Sent forth—from States of Wisdom not in skies—
Through brilliant rays which meet not mortal gaze,
And are invisible save to the one
Who—seeing through perception—contacts light,
That Light of ancient days, since passed away
Into the sombre gloom of deepest night;
Because in ignorance and selfishness
Man willed to dwell in darkness on this earth.
And now behold the fallen Lucifer!—
Thou Morning Star of Truth—again arise—
To touch with thy bright rays the mind of man
And open to his gaze the Light of Love,
Reflected in the silv’ry Crescent now
About to crown the Living Cross of Truth.
* * * * *
Shine forth, fair Luna! Man hath waited long
For thee—O bringer of the Golden Light.
Surmount the Cross—thou Goddess of the Gods—
Which suff’ring mortals here in agony
Have borne along, desiring of their King—
Of whom thou art—those better things on earth,
Which He hath promised them in days of old,
Shall take the place of former things to pass—
With mourning, weeping, bitterness, and death—
Away for ever, as the first-born states
Of Heaven and earth and sea no more to be.[154]
* * * * *
Fair Keeper of the rays shed by the Sun!
Whilst feeble mortals now deny thy power,
We of the morn declare thee as thou art;
The mediate force to govern all mankind,
The force of love which mortals cannot know.
For that man holds as love is passion foul:
It hath transformed the earth into a hell,
And none save thou can mediately stand
To rid the earth—by Truth who comes from thee—
From that curs’d tyrant in the world or hell,
The devil—Satan—he that doth deceive,
Accuser of our brethren, soon to be
Bound hand and foot in heaven, then cast to earth,
When angels dark and all who fight for him
Shall fall with him through Michael’s power and might.[155]
* * * * *
The grandest vision seen in heaven from earth
Has burst upon the wond’ring mind of man,
For woman has appear’d with Sun array’d—
She stands on Luna, o’er her holy brow
A coronet of twelve bright golden stars:
She crieth out and travaileth in pain
To be delivered of the Child of Truth,
Which is, in love, to rule mankind as one,
The one great body in the Spirit CHRIST[156]
Who cometh now a second time to man
Through her who clothes him with a mortal form,
Our Holy Mother in the Living God.
And yet about the woman, as of old,
Damned Satan’s lurks, with seven diadems—
The dragon stands as knowledge of the World,
Which would devour the holy child of God.
But so-called knowledge is not ever true,
Frail mortals know not that the states of Heaven
Permit below themselves the states of Hell
To be—that mortals there may feel the Truth—
The everlasting fire, consuming Self—
Destroying all the former things in man
Through fiery sufferings induced by self,
Through freedom granted by a Loving God.
The Universal King in love ordains
That man shall ever reap the crop he sows,
And so the Woman clothed with the Sun,
Who sows the seed of love amongst mankind,
Shall reap the fruits of love in Heaven—her home—
Where happiness and peace eternal reign,
Wherein the dragon hath no place—no power.
All hail! thou glorious Bride, in Light array’d,
O, woman, clothed with the Bridegroom’s Power,[157]
Arise and shine! The time is now at hand
To change this earth into a heaven bright,
This hell into a paradise of Saints;
Through thee alone can mortals rise from earth
To soar into Eternity—God’s Peace;
Through thee alone can man perceive the light—
The Sun of Wisdom,[158] which shall soon appear
Acknowledged King supreme of all that is,
Which He hath made in love for all mankind.
Woman! behold a groaning world awaits
The crushing of the Serpent’s power through thee;
Look on the fairest cities of this globe,
In misery the love-starved of the earth
Now walk the streets; whilst degradation vile
Confronts them in their daily—hourly lives,
Because mankind will sell itself for gold
To one, who is the prince of hell; he rules
The States of falsehood in this mortal world
Wherein the moaning of tormented souls
Appeals to God[159] in mortal agony
To ease the burdens of their earthly lives
By teaching them of thee, O Queen of Heaven!
* * * * *
Woman, behold the sighing, wretchedness,
Depravity, disease and death on earth!
Pure life has left these mortals who transgress
The laws of God by being of the world;
They know not happiness and peace and thee.
Thou art of nations all, the Saving Health.
Stretch forth thine hands and save, O Queen of Heaven!
* * * * *
Woman! behold the man of war exists
Whose work it is to shed the blood of him
Who truly is a portion of thyself;
Nay more, thine ALL, within this weary state;
The Father of thy loved ones in the flesh!
How long wilt thou permit ungodly strife
To keep thee from thy lawful throne on earth,
The one great Empire that shall bow to thee,
That thou alone can’st rule, Queen of the South?[160]
O, Bride of Heaven, thou knowest well that He—
The Son of Man—thy bridegroom—came to save,
Not to destroy, the lives of men on earth![161]
* * * * *
Great Spirit Love! Bright Queen of Highest Heaven,
Send forth thy potent force, and let it fire
The hearts of all within this little sphere;
Show worldly rulers in their sinful states
That thou alone art Queen of all Mankind;
And in these petty princes of the earth
Destroy, we pray thee, all the mortal lusts
Of self, of gold, and praise, and feeble power,
Implanted in their natures by the one
Who rules them with their subjects in this hell
Created by themselves through ignorance
Of thee, O, Spirit Love, Blest Queen of Heaven!
WM. C. ELDON SERJEANT.
London, 28th January, 1888.
-----
Footnote 153:
See Deut. iv.
Footnote 154:
See Rev. xxi.
Footnote 155:
See Rev. xii.
Footnote 156:
_i.e._, The invisible, universal, and eternal principle which
mortals can only conceive of as the sum total of the combined
spirits of Truth, Love, and Wisdom, when manifested in that “Son
of Man,” or HUMANITY, which is also the “Son of God,” collectively
and individually.
Footnote 157:
In the Kabala, the Bride of the “Heavenly Man,” _Tetragrammaton_,
is Malkuth—the foundation or kingdom. It is our earth, which, when
_regenerated_ and purified (as matter), will be united to her
bridegroom (Spirit). But in Esotericism there are two aspects of
the LOGOS, or the “Father-Son,” which latter becomes his own
father; one is the UNMANIFESTED Eternal, the other the manifested
and periodical LOGOS. The “Bride” of the former is the universe as
nature in the abstract. She is also his “MOTHER”; who, “clothed
with the bridegroom’s power,” gives birth to the manifested
universe (the second _logos_) through her own inherent, mystic
power, and is, therefore, the Immaculate Mother; “the woman
clothed with the sun, and travailing” in child birth, in
Revelation, ch. xii.—ED.
Footnote 158:
See Psalm lxxxiv., 11.
Footnote 159:
_i.e._ The Universal Spirit in whom all things exist and have
being. That Eternal Principle which fills all Space and Time, and
is SPACE and Time (in its abstract sense, as otherwise it would be
an _extra-Cosmic_ God), and is perfect in perfection.
Footnote 160:
See Matt. xii., 42.
Footnote 161:
Luke ix., 56.
-----
------------------
EDITORS’ NOTE.
This second part of the three which form the bulk of the poem
called “Twilight Visions” by their author—from a purely Kabalistic
standpoint of universal symbolical Esotericism, is most
suggestive. Its literary value is apparent. But literary form in
occultism counts for nothing in such mystic writing if its spirit
is sectarian—if the symbolism fails in universal application or
lacks correctness. In this, Part II., however (of the third to
come we can yet say nothing), the Christian-Judæan names may be
altered and replaced by their Sanskrit or Egyptian equivalents,
and the ideas will remain the same. It seems written in the
universal “mystery-language,” and may be readily understood by an
occultist, of whatever school or nationality. Nor will any true
mystic, versed in that international tongue, whose origin is lost
in the dark night of pre-historic ages, fail to recognise a true
Brother, who has adopted the phraseology of the Initiates of the
ancient Judæan Tanaim—Daniel and St. John of the Apocalypse—and
partially that of the Christian Gnostics, only to be the more
readily understood by the profane of Christian lands. Yet the
author means precisely the same thing that would be in the mind of
any Brahminical or Buddhist Initiate, who, while deploring the
present degenerated state of things, would place all his hope in
the transient character of even the _Kali Yuga_, and trust in the
speedy coming of the Kalki Avatar. We say again, the divine
Science and Wisdom—_Theosophia_—is universal and common property,
and the same under every sky. It is the physical type and the
outward appearance in the dress, that make of one individual a
Chinaman and of another a European, and of a third a red-skinned
American. The inner man is one, and all are “Sons of God” by
birth-right.
The editors regret that, by an over-sight, the sub-title, “The
Cross,” that headed Part I. of “Twilight Visions,” published in
our January number, should have been omitted.
THE WHITE MONK.
By the Author of “A Professor of Alchemy.”
(_Continued._)
“Margaret had been in grief so sad and potent since her brother’s
death, that it at last brought her into a fever, from which, with
difficulty, she recovered, and which kept her long to her chamber.
“During this time the monk roamed like a restless spirit, seeming to
seek her, and despairing because he found her not. Giles Hughson
even went so far as to suspect he was no true priest at all, until
he had seen his tonsure. Even then he was drawn into most
sacrilegious surmises by what he beheld some few nights after.
“Having some work to do in Castle Troyes garden, he noted the White
Monk, his lodger, glide noiselessly through the grounds, hidden
behind the thick black walls of yew, and pause under the casement of
Mistress Margaret and stand there listening intently for a certain
space. At last, with a gesture of despair, he slung himself with
infinite agile stillness up some feet of the ivy that covered the
wall, from which insecure footing he did long and earnestly search
if he might see her shadow cross the room. Giles, the gardener,
swore afterwards that the sight of that priest, with his cowl fallen
back from his dark face, and that look of straining, terrified
attention had in it something so partaking of the unearthly, that
for the life of him he dared not accost the daring intruder. ‘Time
enough if there were need,’ he excused himself afterwards, ‘but
Castle Troyes is ever well enow defended, and at that time there
must have been enough of inmates watching over Margaret, the
beautiful, to win her back to life.’
“The horrible recklessness of an act such as this, with the carbines
of a round thirty men within a few yards of him, made the monk seem
to Giles a creature of charmed life, who may not be addressed as
ordinary mortals.
“But the White Monk saw his discoverer when he descended and glided
away again, scared by some noise made by Margaret’s attendants. And
thus there occurred a tragedy, which you shall learn as far as it
was ever known.
“Now Giles Hughson had a young son afflicted with total dumbness,
but whom Mistress Margaret de Troyes had taught to write; and it is
through this scholarship of his that we come to know as much as we
do of what really happened. The White Monk appeared fond of this
boy, possibly because he had seen Margaret kiss him. Thus the lad
had greater access to the monk’s small attic than any other; and
this is the tale he tells of the night after Giles had espied his
lodger clinging to the wall of Castle Troyes.
“The boy had noiselessly, so as not to disturb the often musings of
the solitary one, stepped up the attic stairs to fetch some trifle
he wanted of the monk. Pausing timidly at the door, he beheld the
familiar white-clad figure, with an air of terrible malignity,
mixing some powder of a greenish colour, which, at the sight of the
intruder, he hastily laid aside, thinking it had not been seen.
“But the lad was unnerved by the expression he had caught on the
monk’s face, and he forgot not so lightly.
“At the frugal supper, that very night, he observed the monk ate
even less than was his wont, and of one dish only, the which he also
pressed upon the young lad by his side, seeming to wish to keep the
others from him. The others of the family, Giles Hughson and his
dame, did eat as usual, and were both found dead on the morrow.
“The monk strove to comfort the poor boy by every means in his
power, but it was all of no avail. The lad seized a moment, fled
into the wood, and there wrote down all that he had seen and
suspected, with which account he presently did seek the justices.
These caused proper inquiry into the manner of the deaths of the
workman and his wife to be made, and, finding they had died of
potent poison, instituted careful search for the person of the White
Monk, who had vanished from the cottage.
“At length they found him, in a strange state for one of his way of
living. Into the wood had he gone, but not so far as that he could
hide him. He had stopped beside a little brook, where he had sat
when first he saw fair Margaret, the sister of his victims. There,
even there, was he found, in so deep contemplation that he never
heard his pursuers’ footsteps. He had made a cross of two elder
branches (folk about us say that the elder-wood formed the Cross
whereon Christ died), and having set it on the summit of a bank, was
deep in prayer, as it seemed, before it.
“One of his Italian repentances, I doubt not.
“He seemed in sore distress of mind, and lost to all thought of his
surroundings.
“So they took him; the foreign wild beast, tracked at last. But not
without trouble for he fought like the panther he was. Escaping
lissomely from their hands at the moment when they would have bound
him, the ex-bravo snatched a genuine stiletto from the folds of his
monastic frock and stabbed one man to death, laughing coarsely at
the stupid astonishment of the harquebusiers to see this weapon in
so unseemly a hand.
“He had no chance, being taken thus unawares, and exhaustion came
upon him; so, with tremours, the officers of justice held him fast.
Before the first cord was fastened round his struggling wrists, he
fell back, rigid, in their arms; sighed once or twice, smiled
bitterly to himself at their consternation, and flung his head back,
dead.
“A small quantity of a green powder was found on him (a large dose,
I ween, had killed so hardy a villain!), and by comparing the signs
of death with those of Giles Hughson and his wife, they saw he had
poisoned himself some time within the last five hours. Whether he
had seen Margaret again, and by seeing her upon the earth, had come
to know himself too bad for it; or whether the weariness attendant
upon sins so heavy had worn him out at last, remains a mystery. The
leeches said a man so wasted and wan as this could scarce, in the
way of Nature, have lived many years longer; but I question this,
and so did the men who had so great trouble to hold him!
“News travelled slowly in those days from Italy to England, and it
was not until very shortly after the White Monk’s death that our
town learnt it had harboured Pietro Rinucci, the slayer of the two
good brothers, Ambrose and Gilbert de Troyes. No one ever told
Mistress Margaret that she had spoken with such a man. And now the
beautiful maiden rose from her bed, and asked for her mostly costly
gowns, of amber, blue and rosy colours; and went amongst her friends
brightly, wreathed with pearls and radiant in smiles. She was
thought to have recovered, though she looked ethereal as a daisy or
white cloud; but she said and averred that she was dying, and that
her brother Ambrose had appeared to her in a vision, bidding her
make all speed to do what remained to her upon the earth and be soon
ready, when he should come behind the angels to fetch her hence. Her
kinsfolk thought she wandered in her mind. She asked for the man who
had wooed her, and held long speech with him, very merrily, and yet
with tears; beseeching him to pause e’er he rashly threw away his
life on this earth, since we know not in the beginning, whither our
pleasant sins may carry us, and when we have no enjoyment of them,
save by memory, what are they to us? The instruments of our present
ruin.
“‘All this,’ said the lovely Margaret with a smile, ‘hath right off,
my Lord, been heard, by you and others; but from a lady’s lips (and
that lady who is even now bent to consider the past failings of her
own life, soon to be taken from her) it hath been made evident to
me, these poor oft-repeated words shall have some power. God bless
you, my Lord—farewell.’
“The gentleman came out from her boudoir exceeding sobered, and
essaying as he might to conceal his tears.
“The words of this dying angel—for so indeed she seemed—he vowed
should be as a challenge to him from God to purify his ways. And
indeed from that day the gentleman made such progress in godliness
as can be made by one of his complexion.
“And now a strange and terrible portent was observed.
“Those who watched by the Lady Margaret, began to see a vision, and
of that most dreaded being, the White Monk!
“Night or day, it mattered not; with a chill like to that of Death
itself, the horrified watchers knew the presence of the phantom. In
the dark corners of the room would shape themselves dimly the
features of the murderer, Rinucci, and his monastic gown, so glaring
white in its dimness through the dark that the eye could not search
it, and gone, ever gone, if some bold spirit neared the spot where
he had thought he saw it.
“No one said aught of this to the Lady Margaret, in fear to fright
her; and she alone, of all who watched, did never see nor feel the
constant presence. It seemed sometimes as though the phantom yearned
to make itself visible to her kind, half-divine eyes, but her
thoughts were too high-set for it to be given her to see a sight so
horrible.
“She was much upheld by visions then—her contemplative soul shaped
to itself many fair sights and sounds that others knew not. Sitting
by the open casement in her sun-coloured gown, with white arms,
pearl encircled, leaning out, and her smile ever brighter as she
murmured to herself, she would stretch far over the lattice and
grasp at rosy clouds, which she said floated past her in the peopled
air. She would reply, still leaning out and smiling, to what she
vowed was said to her by wandering happy spirits. And all this
while, behind her, there would stand the White Mystery, with slight
hand lifting the cowl from a face whose eyes were as deep as death
and more despairing.
“Small marvel that the murderer’s ghost should cling to our saint
while she yet lived on earth! He may have known that, once dead,
restored to Heaven, she would thenceforth move in worlds where such
as he should never have the force to breathe.
“And in her due hour she died; and after that for a space no one saw
aught of the dread ghost. His spirit, drawn by some power to enter
our house, wherein was held all he knew of goodness, had now no
further business there, for a while. His loathed name, fraught with
horror to your ancestors’ home, was now never spoken. It was
thought, doubtless, that since Margaret de Troyes—the innocent
avenger—had unwittingly caused the murderer’s death, the house he
had so deeply injured was for ever free from his godless presence.
And, indeed, for a while, the chronicles are silent respecting him.
The next two generations were happy, and no great misfortune blasted
the house. But in the third generation there were harsh feuds in the
city, and much bloodshed, and several of your name came to violent
and sometimes mysterious ends. Then it was that there arose a
searching into past traditions to discover the secret of a certain
white spectre said to appear about the castle previous to each
calamity. Not all saw it; but still it grew known, and it bore a
marked resemblance to an ancient portrait—hung up for curiosity’s
sake—of Pietro Rinucci.
“Well, young master, I myself served your grandfather, and I myself
can bear witness to the presence of the White Monk’s ghost on one of
the shrewd moments of the family destinies. Wilt hear it? So your
father was then a stalwart young man, away at the wars in Spain.
Your uncles, two blithe young gallants, were at home at the time I
speak of, and there was some merry-making toward in the castle.
Myself was seeing to the torches in the garden, when I chanced to
see your uncle, Geoffrey de Troyes, come hastily into the yew-walk
with his rapier drawn, followed by another youth whom I knew well,
his rival, and in some sort, his enemy.
“As the guests danced within, these nobles fought without. A man
dared not have interposed; it was matter of life and death to them,
and they were there to prove it.
“I was glad, as I stood on the further side the hedge, to mark the
vigour and the skill of our Geoffrey. Methought the vantage was with
him, and with my whole heart I hated his opponent, the cold, selfish
Ernle Deane, and wished him to succumb.
“And so, by mine honour, he should have done, for my boy was the
pride of us all for swordsmanship; but it was not to be.
“Geoffrey de Troyes never suffered more from his mortal wound than I
did in my heart and my pride, as I led him, bleeding piteously to
this very stable-room, where he sank on the hay and said he must
die.
“‘Look to it,’ groaned the poor young noble, as he lay dying, ‘that
Mistress Beatrice Savile has this token from me—my gold chain—warn
her from me when I am dead, that she wed not Ernle Deane—he is bad
to the core, and she is too good to mend him. Oh! but for that
hateful vision!’
“‘What vision, a God’s name?’ I cried.
“And he told me trembling—he who had never trembled of his whole
life!—that even at the moment when he had thought to subdue his
enemy—even as he raised his sword to strike home to a worthless
heart—even then had his arm fallen paralysed and a frightful shiver
quite unmanned him at the sight of a poor monk in white, who stood
some yards away, and raised his cowl with a thin white hand, and
fixed unearthly eyes upon him with a steadfast look that drew the
soul away from the deadliest earthly peril.
“‘And so I fell!’ cried the shamed noble, crimsoning though the
pallor of exhaustion. ‘_I_—a practised hand, a not unworthy
courage—a De Troyes! I fell—for this!—and so would any man have
fallen,’ he defiantly ended, ‘for ’twas a devil—’twas Pietro Rinucci
himself, who came from hell to lure me from my hopes of earthly
happiness. O, life! O, Beatrice!’
“And I nursed him and wept over him like any woman, whilst one
young, bright life more departed,
“In truth, young master,” ended honest Ralph, “the noble Geoffrey
may have been deceived, and fancied this; but, you shall pardon me,
I would rather think that armies of devils nightly march these
grounds than that one De Troyes was ever seen to quail, save under
magic! Thus it is that I, and that many of us yet believe in the
spectre of Pietro Rinucci, ‘the White Monk.’”
Oh these faithful servitors, they would die for us children of the
house, I believe, and yet they have ever this curious bent to
terrify the childish minds. I know not when it was precisely that I
thus first heard the White Monk’s story, but this I know, I was
young enough to sit with my clenched fistlets supporting my chin,
and my eyes and mouth very wide open.
“And was he always in _white_, that fearful man?” I asked, somewhere
toward the middle of the story. “_Always in white?_” I know not why,
but this detail struck my child’s phantasy more powerfully than all
the rest; _this_ was awful, this was the pith of the whole matter,
and from that moment I sat trembling, and drinking in the history
with reluctant suspense, until it became the bane of my life for a
term of years.
For hours I lay shuddering ofttimes in my bed, dreading with my body
and my soul lest the Monk should appear to me! And never had I
courage to speak of this to anyone of the many loving house mates
who would so promptly have put an end to my fears by leaving me no
more alone at night. There is a keen, hard honour for children to
maintain, and to them the confession of nocturnal terror is as
flight to the soldier. So, as the banquet sped its course below, I
shuddered lonely in my bed in the oaken room, often weeping angrily
amidst my fears because I alone, the only son of the house, was the
only soul in it left desolate.
A little later I was comforted in some sort by my baby sister
Margaret, who was put to sleep in an adjacent cot, and being too
tiny for Fear to reach, would sleep secure, all gold and white in
the dusky gleam of our rushlight—the one oasis of hope throughout
the terrible oaken room. Yet she in her turn, became a source of
fear to me. Should the Monk appear, and should the dire extremity
cause me to shriek, what would become of Marguerite? She would die
of sudden terror. Worse—if he should stand by her bedside, raising
his cowl off the awful face, and her blue eyes should open at that
instant? How should I protect her?
But before I wander further, I must begin straight and tell how we
lived, and where, and to what end.
PERCY ROSS.
(_To be continued._)
AN AUTO-HYPNOTIC RHAPSODY.
“_When all desires_ that dwell in the heart _cease, then the mortal
becomes immortal, and obtains Brahman_.
_When all the fetters of the heart_ here on earth _are broken_;
_When all that bind us to_ this life _is undone, then the mortal
becomes immortal—here my teaching ends_.”
—KATHA UPANISHAD.
I (Âtman) have crossed the sea—I have reached the other shore—I have
triumphed over gravitation, my soul is in the sun-currents, moving
sunwards with the sun.
Where the currents are bearing me to I scarcely know, but yet
something has been revealed.
I died the mystical death, I was received by the Dawn-Maidens—the
bright ones of the eternal twilights, the two bright Ushas, Ahana
and Antigone, Isis, and Nephtys of Aanru.[162]
-----
Footnote 162:
_Aanru_ is the celestial field where the defunct’s soul received
wheat and corn, growing therein _seven cubits high_. (See “Book of
the Dead,” 124 _et seq._)—ED.
-----
The Ahana-Aurora of Eternity laid me asleep on her bosom, giving me
_amrita_[163] to drink, as Hebe gave to Herakles, and then I at once
knew that I (_Atman_) was immortal; the Mask of Personality had
fallen to earth, the Âtma was revealed—my true SELF—I knew my name,
and found myself soaring sunwards. Then the Voice of that DAWN said,
“I give you the ‘Amrita’ of the cessation of deaths,” and her lips
burning with sun-ardours, kissed my forehead, and said, “I bring you
to the sun; when blind—on earth, that Sanskara of sorrow—you fancied
your sun was nothing but a great centre of physical force—light and
heat, and their equivalents; but it was Maya, the Earth-Queen of
illusions, who thus deceived your earth eyes. Look now, and you can
see nothing but a vast group of mighty spirit-wills clustered round
a yet mightier Spirit centre, drawing from thence inspiration, and
ever-radiating sun effluxes, for the good and advancement of those
unhappy lower wills yet sunk in the earth. What you called light was
intelligence, and heat was—love. Did not Koré suggest this to you, O
my weak child, for she, too, was one of the Ushas, a Maiden of the
Dawn, kindling your soul to love?”
-----
Footnote 163:
_Amrita_ (immortal) applied to the Soma juice, and called the
“Water of Life.”—ED.
-----
I was silent to this question, for a dread sorrow clung to me.
“Though” (began again the Voice) “the sun-souls attract the
earth-souls, the lost ones, for a while, to bring them up to
themselves by the path that leads to Nirvana[164] ‘where there is no
sorrow’; yet the sun-groups of Spirits are themselves attracted by a
grander centre of force, and the Sun, with his planet-children, are
speeding in a mighty orbit round a far mightier Soul-centre—the lost
Pleiad—lost on earth to be found in Heaven. Dost thou not hear the
solemn music of that tempest flight?” And then she touched my ears,
and I heard the myriad voiced song of the blessed ones as they
passed on rejoicing, and the Voice continued: “That lost Pleiad, the
dove-woman, the ‘Woman Clothed with the Sun,’ who, as Jeremiah
prophesied, should ‘compass man,’ is that eternal womanhood which
attracts all men.” And the chorus of the psalm I heard them sing, as
they passed on Pleiad-ward, was “Freedom and Love—Love in Bi-unity.
The Two in One foretold has come even to earth.” And the souls in
that Pleiad-world are infinite in number as the sands of the seas of
countless worlds, elective affinities attract like to like, forming
celestial choirs, each member of which breathes the akasian air
synchronously with the other, and what you call in your
earth-symbol-language their “hearts,” beat and throb in unison
together as one heart, and thus become coalesced in, and by, love.
-----
Footnote 164:
This is a doctrine of the Visishtadwaita sect of the Vedantins.
The _Jiva_ (spiritual life principle, the living _Monad_) of one
who attained Moksha or Nirvana, “breaks through the Brahmarandra
and goes to _Suryamandala_ (the region of the sun) through the
Solar rays. Then it goes, through a dark spot in the Sun, to
Paramapeda to which it is directed by the Supreme Wisdom acquired
by _Yoga_, and helped thereinto by the _Devas_ (gods) called
Archis, the “Flames,” or Fiery Angels, answering to the Christian
archangels.—ED.
-----
“Listen, O my child, to the music of their breathing,” and I said,
“Is Koré there?” Then I heard voices in Heaven, and I began to
breathe the interior akasa breath synchronously with her—our breaths
became one, I was mingled with, and melted in her; and lo! a great
mystery! that Dawn-maiden changed to Koré, and Koré gave me the
amrita of the Pleiad, and I knew that our biune love was immortal.
I have passed over the deep waters, I am free, I have infinite peace
and infinite joy, at rest for ever.
Have I not, like Herakles, slept on the bosom of Athéné, breathing
the wisdom of her breaths? I, too, breathe internally akasian
love-breaths, I live in the love-choirs of the Pleiad Sun, I am in
the true Nirvana, where there is no sorrow and no desire, for desire
is lost in an ever-abiding and eternal fruition. The Lotus has
bloomed in the Sun-fire,[165] and my soul is newborn in the pure
white calyx, and floats down the golden waters that wash the eternal
shores. I have found the “Path,” “suffering, and the cause of
suffering” (separation from the loved one) have been seen, and have
passed away, whilst we ever rise and pass onwards by the star-paths.
I am no more blind, but, like Orion of old, gazing eastwards on that
rising sun, the red flush of whose dawn is ever blushing in our
central souls. I have received my sight.—OM....
A. J. C.
Lucerne.
-----
Footnote 165:
_Vide_ Legend of Jyotishka, mentioned in “Life of Buddha from the
Bkah-Hgyur.”
-----
---
Since writing the foregoing, A. J. C. has met with the following
note contained in Mr. Edwin Arnold’s interesting essay, “Death and
Afterwards,” which throws light on the views in said Rhapsody: “That
which safely bears our ‘solid world’ in the gulfs of space is no
base or basis, no moveless central rock, but _throbbing energies_ in
complex and manifold action, _in swing and wave and thrill_;
whirling us onward in mighty sweeps of three-fold rythm _to which
our hearts are set_. So therefore not solidity of base in fixity of
status is our supreme and vital need, but moving _power beyond our
ken or senses_; known to us in _energising action_, and working
through blue ‘void’; impelling us in rings of spiral orbit round a
moving sun in which we are dependent.”
The same book contains Walt Whitman’s beautiful and striking poem on
Death, in which the poet says:
“Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?”
Yes, one other, the writer of the foregoing Rhapsody, has attempted
a song in praise of Death the deliverer, and the Italian poet,
Leopardi, stated in beautiful verse years ago that the world had two
good things in it—Love and Death.
“Due belle cose ho il mondo
L’amor e la Morte”...
----------
OUR OTHER HALF.
When our ancient brethren, the Kabalists, Jewish as well as
Oriental, taught that the divine monad, starting on its long journey
from the bosom of the Infinite One was divided into halves, they had
a double meaning, one exoteric, the other esoteric. The exoteric
one, being that the two halves, swept through cycles upon cycles of
time, in search of each other; and, that, when they finally met, in
a perfect union, or marriage, the two halves became one on earth,
and after death, united again. The true explanation, however, the
esoteric one, is, that each and every one of us, contains within
himself, both the halves: the feminine predominating through some
incarnations, the masculine through others. It adds that, when we
evolute into the perfect being, the Adept, the Mahatma, both
principles are in perfect harmony. Or, as the Kabalists have
recorded it, harmony is in equilibrium, and equilibrium exists by
the analogy of contraries. How often we discern in the most
masculine of men, distinct feminine traits of character, and _vice
versa_, in the gentlest of the fair sex, discover masculine traits.
The Jewish Kabbalists represented these two principles in the
letters forming their Ineffable Name. Its first three characters
mean Eve, or Eva, or Hâyah היה or woman, or by another reading it
means mother, and is, in fact, the proper name as given in Genesis
for Eve, “the mother of all living.” Adding the character י Yodh or
Yah, the male, the number one, the masculine, we have Jehovah, or
Jah-eve, or being as male-female, the perfect number—10, symbolised
by the Sephirothal Adam Kadmon.
A few evenings ago, while pondering on this subject, in a room
devoted to occult research, where an Eastern incense burning with a
ruddy glow on the triangular-shaped altar, sent its refreshing
fragrance through the apartment, my outer senses were lulled, and
the inner ones came into play, and I became conscious of my other
“half.” I saw standing before me, a being, whom I had hitherto
considered as my guardian angel stretching out her hands to me, and
saying—“my beloved one, know thy-_self_.”
The fire on the altar burnt low. The north-east wind, which had been
blowing in furious gusts outside, lashing the bosom of the lake into
white foam, died away, sounding like some far distant choral chant.
An unearthly silence ensued, and seemed to pervade the infinitudes
of space. A thousand voices spoke to me, saying, “Man, know
thyself.” Shadowy, ghostly forms filled the apartment. One, more
distinct than the rest, tall in form, clad in a long flowing garment
of pure white, the long black hair falling in curly locks over his
shoulders, the silky beard reaching to his waist, the light of
centuries of centuries gleaming forth from his dark eyes—extended
his right hand toward me. A thrill of unutterable delight passed
through my being. Slowly I emerged from my earthly casket, looked
for an instant at its sleeping form, then felt irresistibly drawn to
the fair being, who still stood with outstretched hands, and seemed
to lose myself in her. The twain had become one. The mystic union
had taken place. For a few brief moments I realized the
possibilities of _jnânayoga_, the wisdom-power of the adepts. Space
was annihilated. I could see systems upon systems of worlds,
galaxies of stars, suns and systems of suns, whirling through space.
I thought of some distant place, and I was there. Complex problems
solved themselves quite naturally: I had become all THOUGHT....
The extended hand of the tall form flashed before my eyes, and I
became unconscious. When I awoke, I found lying on the altar a
full-blown white rose. The north-east wind was again roaring in
fierce gusts, the fire on the altar had died out. The mirrors had
draped themselves with their curtains of black. The two interlaced
triangles had merged into a circle, of pure gold in colour. Once
more I took upon myself my objective life. But I had solved the
problem which has taken me seven years to solve. I was content....
“BERTRAND STONEX,” F.T.S.
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THE THREE DESIRES.
The first three of the numbered rules of “Light on the Path” must
appear somewhat of an unequal character to bracket together. The
sense in which they follow each other is purely spiritual. Ambition
is the highest point of personal activity reached by the mind, and
there is something noble in it, even to an Occultist. Having
conquered the desire to stand above his fellows, the restless
aspirant, in seeking what his personal desires are, finds the thirst
for life stand next in his way. For all that are ordinarily classed
as desires have long since been subjugated, passed by, or forgotten,
before this pitched battle of the soul is begun. The desire for life
is entirely a desire of the spirit, not mental at all; and in facing
it a man begins to face his own soul. But very few have even
attempted to face it; still fewer can guess at all at its meaning.
The connection between ambition and the desire of life is of this
kind. Men are seldom really ambitious in whom the animal passions
are strong. What is taken for ambition in men of powerful physique
is more often merely the exercise of great energy in order to obtain
full gratification of all physical desires. Ambition pure and simple
is the struggle of the mind upwards, the exercise of a native
intellectual force which lifts a man altogether above his peers. To
rise—to be preeminent in some special manner, in some department of
art, science, or thought, is the keenest longing of delicate and
highly-tuned minds. It is quite a different thing from the thirst
for knowledge which makes of a man a student always—a learner to the
end, however great he may become. Ambition is born of no love for
anything for its own sake, but purely for the sake of oneself. “It
is I that will know, I that will rise, and by my own power.”
“Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition;
By that sin fell the angels.”
The place-seeking for which the word was originally used, differs in
degree, not in kind, from that more abstract meaning now generally
attached to it. A poet is considered ambitious when he writes for
fame. It is true; so he is. He may not be seeking a place at court,
but he is certainly seeking the highest place he knows of. Is it
conceivable that any great author could really be anonymous, and
remain so? The human mind revolts against the theory of the Baconian
authorship of Shakespeare’s works, not only because it deprives the
world of a splendid figure, but also because it makes of Bacon a
monster, unlike all other human beings. To the ordinary intelligence
it is inconceivable that a man should hide his light in this
purposeless manner. Yet it is conceivable to an occultist that a
great poet might be inspired by one greater than himself, who would
stand back entirely from the world and all contact with it. This
inspirer would not only have conquered ambition but also the
abstract desire for life, before he could work vicariously to so
great an extent. For he would part with his work for ever when once
it had gone to the world; it would never be his. A person who can
imagine making no claim on the world, neither desiring to take
pleasure from it nor to give pleasure to it, can dimly apprehend the
condition which the occultist has reached when he no longer desires
to live. Do not suppose this to mean that he neither takes nor gives
pleasure; he does both, as also he lives. A great man, full of work
and thought, eats his food with pleasure; he does not dwell on the
prospect of it, and linger over the memory, like the gluttonous
child, or the gourmand pure and simple. This is a very material
image, yet sometimes these simple illustrations serve to help the
mind more than any others. It is easy to see, from this analogy,
that an advanced occultist who has work in the world may be
perfectly free from the desires which would make him a part of it,
and yet may take its pleasures and give them back with interest. He
is enabled to give more pleasure than he takes, because he is
incapable of fear or disappointment. He has no dread of death, nor
of that which is called annihilation. He rests on the waters of
life, submerged and sleeping, or above them and conscious,
indifferently. He cannot feel disappointment, because although
pleasure is to him intensely vivid and keen, it is the same to him
whether he enjoys it himself or whether another enjoys it. It is
pleasure, pure and simple, untarnished by personal craving or
desire. So with regard to what occultists call “progress”—the
advance from stage to stage of knowledge. In a school of any sort in
the external world emulation is the great spur to progress. The
occultist, on the contrary, is incapable of taking a single step
until he has acquired the faculty of realizing progress as an
abstract fact. Someone must draw nearer to the Divine in every
moment of life; there must always be progress. But the disciple who
desires that he shall be the one to advance in the next moment, may
lay aside all hope of it. Neither should he be conscious of
preferring progress for another or of any kind of vicarious
sacrifice. Such ideas are in a certain sense unselfish, but they are
essentially characteristic of the world in which separateness
exists, and form is regarded as having a value of its own. The shape
of a man is as much an _eidolon_ as though no spark of divinity
inhabited it; at any moment that spark may desert the particular
shape, and we are left with a substantial shadow of the man we knew.
It is in vain, after the first step in occultism has been taken,
that the mind clings to the old beliefs and certainties. Time and
space are known to be non-existent, and are only regarded as
existing in practical life for the sake of convenience. So with the
separation of the divine-human spirit into the multitudes of men on
the earth. Roses have their own colours, and lilies theirs; none can
tell why this is when the same sun, the same light, gives the colour
to each. Nature is indivisible. She clothes the earth, and when that
clothing is torn away, she bides her time and re-clothes it again
when there is no more interference with her. Encircling the earth
like an atmosphere, she keeps it always glowing and green, moistened
and sun-lit. The spirit of man encompasses the earth like a fiery
spirit, living on Nature, devouring her, sometimes being devoured by
her, but always in the mass remaining more ethereal and sublime than
she is. In the individual, man is conscious of the vast superiority
of Nature; but when once he becomes conscious that he is part of an
indivisible and indestructible whole, he knows also that the whole
of which he is part stands above nature. The starry sky is a
terrible sight to a man who is just self-less enough to be aware of
his own littleness and unimportance as an individual; it almost
crushes him. But let him once touch on the power which comes from
knowing himself as part of the human spirit, and nothing can crush
him by its greatness. For if the wheels of the chariot of the enemy
pass over his body, he forgets that it is his body, and rises again
to fight among the crowd of his own army. But this state can never
be reached, nor even approached, until the last of the three desires
is conquered, as well as the first. They must be apprehended and
encountered together.
Comfort, in the language used by occultists, is a very comprehensive
word. It is perfectly useless for a neophyte to practise discomfort
or asceticism as do religious fanatics. He may come to prefer
deprivation in the end, and then it has become his comfort.
Homelessness is a condition to which the religious Brahmin pledges
himself; and in the external religion he is considered to fulfil
this pledge if he leaves wife and child, and becomes a begging
wanderer, with no shelter of his own to return to. But all external
forms of religion are forms of comfort, and men take vows of
abstinence in the same spirit that they take pledges of boon
companionship. The difference between these two sides of life is
only apparent. But the homelessness which is demanded of the
neophyte is a much more vital thing than this. It demands the
surrender from him of choice or desire. Dwelling with wife and
child, under the shelter of a familiar roof-tree, and fulfilling the
duties of citizenship, the neophyte may be far more homeless, in the
esoteric sense, than when he is a wanderer or an outcast. The first
lesson in practical occultism usually given to a pledged disciple is
that of fulfilling the duties immediately to hand with the same
subtle mixture of enthusiasm and indifference as the neophyte would
imagine himself able to feel when he had grown to the size of a
ruler of worlds and a designer of destinies. This rule is to be
found in the Gospels and in the Bhagavad Gita. The immediate work,
whatever it may be, has the abstract claim of duty, and its relative
importance or non-importance is not to be considered at all. This
law can never be obeyed until all desire of comfort is for ever
destroyed. The ceaseless assertions and re-assertions of the
personal self must be left behind for ever. They belong as
completely to the character of this world as does the desire to have
a certain balance at the bank, or to retain the affections of a
loved person. They are equally subject to the change which is
characteristic of this world; indeed, they are even more so, for
what the neophyte does by becoming a neophyte is simply to enter a
forcing-house. Change, disillusionment, disheartenment, despair will
crowd upon him by invitation; for his wish is to learn his lessons
quickly. And as he turns these evils out they will probably be
replaced by others worse than themselves—a passionate longing for
separate life, for sensation, for the consciousness of growth in his
own self, will rush in upon him and sweep over the frail barriers
which he has raised. And no such barriers as asceticism, as
renunciation, nothing indeed which is negative, will stand for a
single moment against this powerful tide of feeling. The only
barrier is built up of new desires. For it is perfectly useless for
the neophyte to imagine he can get beyond the region of desires. He
cannot; he is still a man, Nature must bring forth flowers while she
is still Nature, and the human spirit would loose its hold on this
form of existence altogether did it not continue to desire. The
individual man cannot wrench himself instantly out of that life of
which he is an essential part. He can only change his position in
it. The man whose intellectual life dominates his animal life,
changes his position; but he is still in the dominion of desire. The
disciple who believes it possible to become selfless in a single
effort, will find himself flung into a bottomless pit as the
consequence of his rash endeavour. Seize upon a new order of
desires, purer, wider, nobler; and so plant your foot upon the
ladder firmly. It is only on the last and topmost rung of the
ladder, at the very entrance upon Divine or Mahatmic life, that it
is possible to hold fast to that which has neither substance or
existence.
The first part of “Light on the Path” is like a chord in
music; the notes have to be struck together though they must
be touched separately. Study and seize hold of the new desires
before you have thrust out the old ones; otherwise in the
storm you will be lost. Man while he is man has substance and
needs some step to stand on, some idea to cling to. But let it
be the least possible. Learn as the acrobat learns, slowly and
with care, to become more independent. Before you attempt to
cast out the devil of ambition—the desire of something,
however fine and elevated, outside of yourself,—seize on the
desire to find the light of the world within yourself. Before
you attempt to cast out the desire of conscious life, learn to
look to the unattainable or in other language to that which
you know you can only reach in unconsciousness. In knowing
that your aim is of this lofty character, that it will never
bring conscious success, never bring comfort to you, that it
will never carry you _in your own temporary personal self_ to
any haven of rest or place of agreeable activity, you cut away
all the force and power of the desires of the lower astral
nature. For what avail is it, when these facts have been once
realised, to desire separateness, sensation or growth?
The armour of the warrior who rises to fight for you in the battle
depicted in the second part of “Light on the Path,” is like the
shirt of the happy man in the old story. The king was to be cured of
all his ills by sleeping in this shirt; but when the one happy man
in his kingdom was found, he was a beggar, without care, without
anxiety—and shirtless. So with the divine warrior. None can take his
armour and use it, for he has none. The king could never find
happiness like that of the careless beggar. The man of the world,
however fine and cultivated he may be, is hampered by a thousand
thoughts and feelings which have to be cast aside before he can even
stand on the threshold of occultism. And, be it observed, he is
chiefly handicapped by the armour he wears, which isolates him. He
has personal pride, personal respect. These things must die out as
the personality recedes. The process described in the first part of
“Light on the Path,” is one which takes off that shell, or armour,
and casts it aside for ever. Then the warrior arises, armourless,
defenceless, offenceless, identified with the afflicters and the
afflicted, the angered and the one that angers; fighting not on any
side, but for the Divine, the highest in all.
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GOLDEN SENTENCES OF DEMOCRITUS.
It is beautiful to impede an unjust man; but if this be not
possible, it is beautiful not to act in conjunction with him.
Sin should be abstained from, not through fear, but, for the sake of
the becoming.
Many who have not learnt to argue rationally, still live according
to reason.
Vehement desires about any one thing render the soul blind with
respect to other things.
The equal is beautiful in everything, but excess and defect to me do
not appear to be so.
It is the property of a divine intellect to be always intently
thinking about the beautiful.
THE RELATION OF COLOUR TO THE INTERLACED
TRIANGLES, OR THE PENTACLE.[166]
-----
Footnote 166:
A paper read before the Chicago Branch of the Theosophical
Society, by its Secretary, M. L. Brainard.
-----
Colour registers grades of vibration. Vibration registers grades of
life. Life, esoterically considered, is ascent towards its
source—the great First Cause, the celestial sun which lights
universal creation.
If a ray of white light is passed through a triangular piece of
glass, called a prism, it becomes separated into the seven colours
known as the “solar spectrum.” Careful scientific analysis has
proven that these colours are produced by different rates of
vibration.
It has shown that the slowest vibrations are red, the quickest
violet. The red ray of the spectrum gives 477 millions of millions
(or billions) of vibrations in a second, the orange 506, the yellow
535, the green 577, the blue 622, Indigo 658, and violet 699.
Thus there is a regular ascent in the colour-scale from red to
violet, and the trans-violet rays go on octaves higher, becoming
invisible to the physical eye as their rates of vibration increase.
It has also been discovered that these seven prismatic rays of the
solar spectrum correspond to the seven notes on the musical scale,
the ray of slowest vibration, red, being a correlate of the base
note of the musical gamut, and the violet ray answering to the
highest musical note.
When the vibrations exceed a certain limit, the tympanum of the ear
has not time to recoil before a succeeding impulse arrives, and it
remains motionless. Darkness and silence are, therefore, equivalents
for the cessation of vibrations on the retina of the eye and
tympanum of the ear respectively. Incidentally it may be stated that
cold is also considered to be the cessation of vibrations through
the nerves of feeling.
Colour, therefore, is to light what pitch is to sound—both depend on
length of vibrations.
The thought will immediately suggest itself in this connection that
if colour and music are thus correlated, the perfect clairvoyant
might _see_ a concert as well as hear it. This is true, and there
are instances on record of such transcendent views. In one case of
this kind, it was not alone a poetical play of colour springing into
life under the touch of a German professor’s hands, but a host of
airy sprites clothed in the various rays which called them forth.
_Isis_ declares that “sounds and colours are all spiritual numerals;
and as the seven prismatic rays proceed from one spot in Heaven, so
the seven powers of Nature, each of them a number, are the seven
radiations of the unity, the central spiritual sun.”[167]
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Footnote 167:
“ISIS UNVEILED,” Vol 1., p. 514.
-----
It is easy to follow along the lines of these suggestions, and trace
the origin of chanting the seven vowels to one of their gods, among
the Egyptians, as a hymn of praise at sunrise. In the so-called
mythical Golden Age this must have been the mode of putting
themselves _en rapport_ or _in tune_ with the Cosmic powers, and
ensuring harmony while the vibrations were synchronous.
The third necessary correlation to be considered in this analysis is
that of form. Scientific research has proven that not only are music
and colour due to rates of vibration, but form also marshals itself
into objective being in obedience to the same mysterious law. This
is demonstrated by the familiar experiment of placing some dry sand
on a square of glass, and drawing a violin bow across the edge.
Under the influence of this intonation, the sand assumes star shapes
of perfect proportion; if other material is placed on the square of
glass at the same time, other shapes are assumed, varying in
proportion to the power resident in the atoms to _respond_ to the
vibrations communicated.
It is noticeable, however, that the vibration makes the spaces, and
the sand falls into the _rest_ places.
We have now discovered a triangular key—light, music, form—which
will disclose to us the exact relations which colour sustains to the
interlaced triangles, the six-rayed star, universal symbol of
creative force acting upon matter.[168] This triangular key is
simply three modes of one being, three differential expressions of
one force—vibration.
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Footnote 168:
Hence in Kabalistic symbolism the _pentacle_, or the six-pointed
star, is the sign of the _manifested_ “Logos,” or the “Heavenly
man,” the Tetragrammaton. “The four-lettered Adni (_Adonai_, “the
Lord”), is the _Eheieh_ (the symbol of _life_ or existence), is
the Lord of the six limbs (6 Sephiroth) and his Bride (_Malkuth_,
or physical nature, also Earth) is his seventh limb.” (Ch. _Book
of Numbers_ viii. 3-4.)—ED.
-----
That which causes the vibration we can only represent by the
Ineffable Name, behind which burns the quenchless glory of En Soph,
the Boundless.
Thus, in our symbology we start from the centre of a circle, which
should be represented by white light.
The seven rays issuing therefrom, must first pass through the
interior and invisible triangle of Akasa, the prism A.U.M., before
they can flow outward, and by their action upon chaos, wheel the
myriad forms of physical life into consonance with their rates of
vibration. In this manner is the visible formulated from the
invisible. By such subtle music is born the gorgeous flora of our
tropics, drinking its wealth of colour from the yellow and warm rays
of the sunlight; and in accord with the same harmony is produced the
subdued vegetation of colder climes. The blue and violet beams carry
the quick pulses of the parent flame deep within the earth, and
by-and-bye she gives back that which she has received, transformed
into a thousand brilliant hues woven in the magic loom of Love,
presided over by the solar spectrum. Or, as Egyptian myth phrases
it, Osiris (the sun) weds Isis (the earth), and the child,
Horus-Apollo, glorifies all things as the product of this divine
union.
The culmination of light resides in the yellow ray, and hence to
that colour is given the East point in our symbolised centre of
radiation.[169] The others follow in the order of the solar
spectrum.
-----
Footnote 169:
It is the secret of the great reverence shown in the East for this
colour. It is the colour of the _Yogi_ dress in India, and of the
_Gelupka_ sect (“Yellow caps”) in Thibet. It symbolizes _pure
blood_ and sunlight, and is called “the stream of life.” Red, as
its opposite, is the colour of the _Dugpas_, and black
magicians.—ED.
-----
But it is noticeable in this connection, that _in_ that order, the
coarsest and warmest of the visible rays—red—is placed next to the
coldest and most refined ray, the violet. Here we have the analogy
of contraries. The ray of lowest refrangibility and the ray of
highest refrangibility become next-door neighbours in the divergent
circle of necessity. What is the result? It is not hard to discover,
when we know that the cooling colours are essential to the balanced
action of the thermal rays. “A small amount of blue when combined
with other rays will even increase the heat, because it kindles into
activity its opposite warm principle, red, through chemical
affinity.”
Having determined the law which should govern the symbology of
colours at the centre of our circle, we come next to the interlaced
triangles.
The truly Theosophical Pentacle should be made by the interlacing of
a white triangle with a black triangle—the white representing pure
spirit, the black, gross matter. This is the true symbology, for the
reason that white reflects all colours, and black absorbs all
colours. It is the face of the White Ancient looking into the face
of the Black Ancient.
Absolute blackness appears to give back nothing; nor does it ever,
save through processes of slow evolution, wrought by continued
vibration upon its molecules from the Divine Centre of Light.
Continuous vibration polarizes these particles, so that at last
rising from the lowest grade of refrangibility to the highest, into
the invisible octaves of being, our planetary chain in its
culmination will reach a point where every atom will give an
answering thrill of resonance to the throbbing of the heart of the
Universe—the Central Spiritual Sun.
As every substance in Nature has its colour, so the human family
publish their grades of advancement to the clairvoyant eye by their
astral colours; and seekers after the true Light may know what “ray”
they are in, by a comparison of their own auras with the colours of
the overshadowing soul.
The middle rays of the solar spectrum—blue, green, and yellow—give a
very powerful triangle, a wonderful _working_ triangle of forces;
for green is Hermetic silver, yellow is Hermetic gold, and blue is a
despatch-messenger from the “Lord of the Worlds,” Jupiter.
The blue and the yellow of this group, on account of their
position—the third and the fifth reckoned both ways—have been chosen
as the colours of our incense-holders, alternating on the points of
the Pentacle. As odours are also correlated with colours, and as
sandal-wood is the perfume which belongs to the sun, we use that
incense to intensify the vibrations from the radiating points, in
order to increase the volume of accord which will reach other
centres at a distance; for the akasa is more sensitive than an
Eolian harp—it registers the very aroma of our thoughts. It was,
therefore, no exaggeration of the poet when he said:
“Guard well thy thought:
Our thoughts are _heard_ in Heaven.”
But if colours and sounds are spiritual numerals, then the seven
symbolical points of the Pentacle represent numbers of the greatest
importance in world-building, and in soul-building also. For we must
all build our own souls. And the symbology of the interlacing of the
triangle of spirit with the triangle of matter, finds its
correspondence in man, the little world, who, though a spiritual
ego, yet dwells in a physical house, and whose business it is to
merge himself completely into the region of the white triangle.
When Man has raised his vibrations into perfect harmony with the
universal sun, he has then unbound himself from the wheel of
re-birth—the Zodiac—and is ready to enter Nirvana.
The word “heaven” in Hebrew signifies the abode of the sun. When,
therefore, the Nazarene said “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you,”
he virtually declared that all the seven cosmic powers are resident
within us.
Esoteric science recognises man as a septenary, working in
conjunction with other orders of numerals which register divine
vibrations.
All nature listens to that universal song, and the music of the
spheres is no fable. The swarming zöospores in the protoplasm of
plants hear it, and thrilled by that enchantment, fall into
invisible rhythm, bringing up by quick marches into the region
of Day the tiny dwellers in stem and leaf. How do we know that
the mystery of the six-sided cell of the honey-bee may not find
its solution here? Perhaps the bee is susceptible only to
vibrations which fall into these lines, and faithfully obeys the
master-musician in the construction of its hexagonal house. The
great law of cosmic and microcosmic correspondence was revealed
ages ago to the Sages who _listened_, and listening, _heard_ the
wondrous revelations breathed forth from the harp of Akasa.
Sighing winds from other worlds passed over the delicate
strings, and as they passed, uttered in soundless tones the
profound mystery of near and remote planets. These Sages dwelt
in that White Palace—the Lotus of the Heart—the sun-palace
indeed. From centre to circumference their vast circle of vision
was permeated by the reflected _All_, and from the White Palace
they ascended the sacred mountain Meru, where dwelleth wisdom
and love.
The key which opens the White Palace is held by the seven mystic
children of the Royal Arch of the Rainbow, guarding the seven gates
of the Sun, every gate of which answers to a musical note, and every
note of which enfolds three tones.
Hence, if we understand the analogies of colour, we may open the six
doors of Nature, and also the seventh, to Nirvana.
M. L. BRAINARD.
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QUESTIONS.
What can we do in temptation’s hour?
How shall we conquer its fiery power?
How can we master it—standing _alone_,
Just on the threshold of things unknown?
Strong is its power as Death and Hell,
Led by its lure, even angels fell!
Dazed by the glare of a rising light
How shall poor mortals see aright?
Tempted we were in the morning of life,
With earth’s simple joys that are ever rife,
To idly bask in the sun’s warm beam
And to care no jot for a holier dream.
Tempted again in the heyday sun,
To choose fair paths and in gardens run,
_Claiming_ as ours, all joy—all love,
Flowerets of bliss from the Heavens above.
Temptings come now, in life’s later prime,
Deeper and stronger than in past time,
To feed with fuel the inward fire,
The passionate dream of the _soul’s desire_!
-----------------------
Two feet are creeping on paths unknown,
Weary and mournful, sad and lone;
Two eyes are looking and longing for light,
Two hands are locked in a desperate fight.
A heart is breaking with pain and grief,
A soul in strong agony cries for relief;
Echoes no kindred chord above?
Stretcheth no Hand in responsive love?
Is our Great God, but a God of stone?
Are we—His people—dazed and alone?
Is there no Ear that can hear us cry?
No Christ,—to succour us e’er we die?
L. F. Ff.
A THEORY OF HAUNTINGS.
Very few persons realise the powerful and long-lasting effects of
human “auras”—those mysterious psychical emanations which are
mentally cognised, and which silently impress one as to the
character of a locality, the idiosyncrasies of a nation, a family,
or an individual. Personal auras are strictly speaking the effects
of the innate, and presumably hidden natures, of individuals, and
are entirely the effluence of soul and mind. A house, or a
neighbourhood, becomes imbued with the individual or collective
auras of its inhabitants, which convey to the psychic senses, and
thence to the mind, a powerful impression of character. At the same
time within the aura of individuals, or families, are indelibly
imprinted their thought-pictures, which may, or may not, have been
embodied in acts; the faces and forms of relatives, friends,
visitors, of the very animals they pet, the image of their pursuits,
in short the whole life. These are imprinted in the _astral_ element
which surrounds each individual soul, as the atmosphere surrounds
our bodies; and as the air we breathe becomes changed in
respiration, so this ethereal atmosphere becomes transformed by
personal impress.
Education, morality, religion, health, disease, happiness or misery,
are largely the effects of the widely diffused auras of individuals
continually given forth into the ambient atmosphere. As a man, or
body of men, think, act, and live, such is the quality of the aura,
or odylic sphere they emanate. This has an effect for good or evil
upon all who approach within its radius; a formative, educating
effect upon the ignorant, if it is of a high, intellectual, or
spiritual quality; or a depressing, stultifying, deforming effect
upon the minds and souls of innocent, or negative sensitives, when
it is of an impure, debased, or brutal character.
Thought governs the world. It is by thought, and its embodiment in
acts, that progress is made. Every thought has its aura, and nothing
can prevent its diffusion in the atmospheres, both the astral and
the natural or physical. Hence being continually surrounded by the
effects of thoughts universally diffused, we are insensibly governed
by their aura of good or evil, and we grow in beauty, or are warped
in deformity, mental and bodily, from infancy, under the moulding
consequences of the local thought-auras of the family, neighbourhood
and nation in which we happen to be born.
Psychometry proves that even stones retain the impression of the
scenes which have been enacted in their neighbourhood. That is, the
stone having been bathed in the psychic emanations of creatures,
human and animal, during, perhaps, centuries, retains such auras
indestructibly in its atmosphere; and a psychometric clairvoyant
will gradually perceive the most trivial details of the more active
life which has daily passed in the vicinity of the stone. A fragment
from the Temple of Diana of Ephesus, for instance, were it
procurable, would enable a good psychometrist to describe every
minute particular of the ancient temple worship and ceremonies. A
stone from the Colosseum held in the hand, or to the forehead of a
psychometrist, would produce a vision of the scenes in the arena
which were wont to attract the Roman population. A fossil of some
antediluvian animal would bring before the mind’s eye surroundings
corresponding to the period in which the animal had lived. In truth,
upon the plane of more ethereal matter adjacent to this, are to be
found the images of all things, subject neither to time nor the
changes of time; and there our image-producing faculties,
temporarily divested of the blinding veil of flesh, may call them up
at will.
The aura of a great crime becomes diffused in the neighbourhood of
its commission, and concealment would be impossible if the psychic
vision of men were open instead of being closed. A picture of the
deed committed becomes impressed upon the astral atmosphere, with
the faces and forms of those engaged in its commission. This effect
is never destroyed, but may be recalled at will by a good
clairvoyante. At the same time the aura of good deeds is equally
powerful and indestructible. The one is like a transitory
convulsion, disturbing the beauty of order and harmony with Nature;
the other is the fixed and equable moral atmosphere arising from
thoughts and actions consonant with wisdom. In short, the aura of
good thoughts and deeds is the _pabulum_ of souls; the invigorating
and supporting air they inspire and respire, producing health,
happiness, mental activity, and inciting to progress. If it were not
for the good on the earth, we might doubtless often cry in
vain—“Heaven help us!”—for we should be so smothered under evil
auras that spiritual breathing, and rapport with purer realms of
life, would be a radical impossibility.
A crime is the insane product of an unbalanced, disordered mind. It
causes a species of astral electric disturbance, which is as
sensibly felt by sensitives as any explosion or convulsion on the
natural plane. Astral, or ethereal molecules become violently
displaced, and forced into new conditions of juxtaposition. A
mysterious terror pervades the air, which affects all neighbouring
minds, even to the very animals. It is as if the living soul of
Nature had been violently wrenched from its normal condition of
peace and happiness, and stood electrified with horror, whilst upon
its veil of ethereal matter is fixed an indestructible image of the
painful tragedy which has been suddenly enacted.
We are, in fact, surrounded, upon the soul plane of life, by an
atmosphere which receives, so to speak, a photographic impression of
even our very thoughts, which is a mirror to reflect our whole life,
an image-world, retaining sounds as well as forms. It may be made
subject to our will, which can call up before the mind, and make
visible to the eye of the soul whatsoever, without exception, we
will to see, to hear, or to know. The phantoms or apparitions of
which we so frequently hear, are matters of fact to all psychic
seers; are things as absolutely existent as any objects on the more
familiar plane of dense matter. Once to realise this great fact, and
to understand some of the laws which would enable us consciously to
control, and illustrate to our satisfaction, certain of the hidden
mysteries of the inner world of ethereal matter, from which our own
proceeds as an effect from a cause, would set us upon a mountain
height of knowledge whence all clouds of superstition, doubt, and
uncertainty, would roll away.
There are many stories extant of certain haunting apparitions which
have been seen at various times during the lapse of centuries,
reappearing again and again in the same families as warnings, or
otherwise; or it may be a mysterious sound, such as the cry of the
“banshee” in Ireland. The popular fallacy regarding such apparitions
is that a _human_ soul, or “spirit”—it may be wrongly called—is
compelled, as a retribution for the commission of some crime, to
remain on the earth haunting the scene of its former sins. Or, if
the visitant be a benevolent ghost, it is supposed that it is some
ancestor or ancestress, ever present in loving watchfulness over the
destinies of the family, giving warning of death or danger. The idea
of a human soul being chained in this melancholy fashion to the
earth is exceedingly repugnant to most minds, and naturally excites
the utmost compassion for the poor ghost which has to wear out so
dreary a doom. Such a hypothesis contradicts all those religious
teachings which assign to souls either a state of absolute
unconscious sleep, until the day of judgment, or an abode,
presumably in a conscious state, in heaven or hell. It contradicts
all those more modern teachings of “progress” after death, of the
gradual ascension of the soul to its place of rest. If we accept the
ideas of Eastern teachers concerning those occult mysteries—that the
higher self, the spiritualised entity, gradually separates from its
more animal, or lower principles of organism, which adhere together
for a longer or shorter period as a shell-like or shadowy
personality—even then, these principles or ethereal molecules which
go to form an astral body, disintegrate after a time. They would not
be likely, at all events, to endure over a century. Apparitions of
persons deceased _within_ a century might be considered as
essentially ghosts, or shades—the shadowy, sidereal shapes of
personalities passed away from the physical plane, and in a
condition of gradual separation from all that can attach them to the
earth. And it is presumable that a phantom which is seen repeatedly
during the lapse of centuries, is merely a reflection in the astral
light, called up by the will of a seer; or projected upon the plane
of soul-vision either by some psychological disturbance, or by some
change of condition on the part of those who see the phantom. The
immediate action may be due to “_elementals_,” those mysterious
entities called by Liebnitz “Monads,” which are in close attendance
upon mankind, and have so much to do with his very existence that he
would fare but indifferently without them. Not only are they as
intimately consociated with him as his own thoughts, but certain
grades of them depend upon him also for their existence. These
beings often become tutelary, or “house-spirits,” and the _rôle_ of
re-appearing again and again, as a sort of hereditary ghost, to give
warning of death or danger, is not incompatible with their condition
of existence. Time does not exist for them, and one century would be
like any other. They live in the personal or family aura, and become
intimately blended with the daily lives of its members. When, as in
the case of royal or noble houses, the family aura remains
undisturbed in its ancient palaces or castles during centuries, a
haunting elemental would find it an easy matter to make itself
visible, frequently by a semi-materialisation, or a condensation of
the ethereal atoms of its body. In such a case it would be seen
objectively by anyone who happened to be present. In other cases,
when an apparition is only a reflection in the astral light, a
sensitive in moments of abnormal or psychic lucidity would perceive
it. Others sympathetically inclined would perceive the same. At
length, after repeated similar visions, the locality would get the
name of being haunted. The image so repeatedly beheld becomes fixed
in the atmosphere of that particular spot. Upon entering a locality
with such a reputation a species of psychological inebriation would
assail every individual so constituted as to fall under the effects
of the aura already established, and they would then always behold
the spectre thus ideally produced. These mental or astral spectres
need not necessarily be merely immovable pictures. They will move,
or walk, threaten, or act a pantomime exactly as they may have the
reputation of doing; or as the person who beholds them expects or
imagines them to be doing.
In some respects these apparitions or warning cries may be mental
legacies left indelibly impressed in the astral light by the
powerful will of a departed ancestor, friendly or inimical, as a
blessing or a curse; or even by a member of some alien family, as a
pursuing Nemesis which falls as a retribution upon the perpetrator
of evil, but can possess no power over the innocent and good.
FRANK FAIRHOLME.
(_To be continued._)
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THE ESOTERIC CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS.
III.
No one can be regarded as a Christian unless he professes, or is
supposed to profess, belief in Jesus, by baptism, and in salvation,
“through the blood of Christ.” To be considered a good Christian,
one has, as a _conditio sine quâ non_, to show faith in the dogmas
expounded by the Church and to profess them; after which a man is at
liberty to lead a private and public life on principles
diametrically opposite to those expressed in the Sermon on the
Mount. The chief point and that which is demanded of him is, that he
should have—or _pretend to have_—a blind faith in, and veneration
for, the ecclesiastical teachings of his special Church.
“Faith is the key of Christendom,”
saith Chaucer, and the penalty for lacking it is as clearly stated
as words can make it, in St. Mark’s Gospel, Chapter xvi., verse
16th: “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that
believeth not shall be damned.”
It troubles the Church very little that the most careful search for
these words in the oldest texts during the last centuries, remained
fruitless; or, that the recent revision of the Bible led to a
unanimous conviction in the truth-seeking and truth-loving scholars
employed in that task, that no such _un-Christ_-like sentence was to
be found, except in some of the latest, fraudulent texts. The good
Christian people had assimilated the consoling words, and they had
become the very pith and marrow of their charitable souls. To take
away the hope of eternal damnation, for all others except
themselves, from these chosen vessels of the God of Israel, was like
taking their very life. The truth-loving and God-fearing revisers
got scared; they left the forged passage (an interpolation of eleven
verses, from the 9th to the 20th), and satisfied their consciences
with a foot-note remark of a very equivocal character, one that
would grace the work and do honour to the diplomatic faculties of
the craftiest Jesuits. It tells the “believer” that:—
“The two oldest Greek MSS. and some other authorities OMIT from
verse 9 to the end. Some authorities _have a different ending_ to
the Gospel.”[170]—
—and explains no further.
-----
Footnote 170:
Vide “Gospel according to St. Mark,” in the _revised_ edition
printed for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 1881.
-----
But the two “oldest Greek MSS.” _omit_ the verses _nolens volens_,
as these _have never existed_. And the learned and truth-loving
revisers know this better than any of us do; yet the wicked
falsehood is printed at the very seat of Protestant Divinity, and it
is allowed to go on, glaring into the faces of coming generations of
students of theology and, hence, into those of their future
parishioners. Neither can be, nor are they deceived by it, yet both
_pretend_ belief in the authenticity of the cruel words worthy of a
_theological Satan_. And this Satan-Moloch is their own _God of
infinite mercy and justice_ in Heaven, and the incarnate symbol of
love and charity on Earth—blended in one!
Truly mysterious are your paradoxical ways, oh—Churches of Christ!
I have no intention of repeating here stale arguments and logical
_exposés_ of the whole theological scheme; for all this has been
done, over and over again, and in a most excellent way, by the
ablest “Infidels” of England and America. But I may briefly repeat
a prophecy which is a self-evident result of the present state of
men’s minds in Christendom. Belief in the Bible _literally_, and
in a _carnalised_ Christ, will not last a quarter of a century
longer. The Churches will have to part with their cherished
dogmas, or the 20th century will witness the downfall and ruin of
all Christendom, and with it, belief even in a Christos, as pure
Spirit. The very name has now become obnoxious, and theological
Christianity must die out, _never to resurrect again_ in its
present form. This, in itself, would be the happiest solution of
all, were there no danger from the natural reaction which is sure
to follow: crass materialism will be the consequence and the
result of centuries of blind faith, unless the loss of old ideals
is replaced by other ideals, unassailable, because _universal_,
and built on the rock of eternal truths instead of the shifting
sands of human fancy. Pure immateriality must replace, in the end,
the terrible anthropomorphism of those ideals in the conceptions
of our modern dogmatists. Otherwise, why should Christian
dogmas—the perfect counterpart of those belonging to other
exoteric and pagan religions—claim any superiority? The bodies of
all these were built upon the same astronomical and physiological
(or phallic) symbols. Astrologically, every religious dogma the
world over, may be traced to, and located in, the Zodiacal signs
and the Sun. And so long as the science of comparative symbology
or any theology has only two keys to open the mysteries of
religious dogmas—and these two only very partially mastered, how
can a line of demarcation be drawn, or any difference made between
the religions of say, Chrishna and Christ, between salvation
through the blood of the “first-born primeval male” of one faith,
and that of the “only _begotten_ Son” of the other, far younger,
religion?
Study the Vedas; read even the superficial, often disfigured
writings of our great Orientalists, and think over what you will
have learnt. Behold Brahmans, Egyptian Hierophants, and Chaldean
Magi, teaching several thousand years before our era that the gods
themselves had been only mortals (in previous births) until they won
their immortality by _offering their blood to their Supreme God_ or
chief. The “Book of the Dead,” teaches that mortal man “became one
with the gods through an interflow of a common life in the common
blood of the two.” Mortals gave the blood of their first-born sons
in sacrifice to the Gods. In his _Hinduism_, p. 35, Professor Monier
Williams, translating from the _Taitiriya Brâhmana_, writes:—“By
means of the sacrifice the gods obtained heaven.” And in the _Tandya
Brâhmana_:—“The lord of creatures offered himself a sacrifice for
the gods.”... And again in the _Satapatha Brâhmana_:—“He who,
knowing this, sacrifices with the _Purusha-madha_ or the sacrifice
of the primeval male, becomes everything.”
Whenever I hear the Vedic rites discussed and called “disgusting
human sacrifices,” and cannibalism (_sic._), I feel always inclined
to ask, where’s the difference? Yet there is one, in fact; for while
Christians are compelled to accept the allegorical (though, when
understood, highly philosophical) drama of the New Testament
Crucifixion, as that of Abraham and Isaac literally,[171]
Brahmanism—its philosophical schools at any rate—teaches its
adherents, that this (_pagan_) sacrifice of the “primeval male” is a
purely allegorical and philosophical symbol. Read in their
dead-letter meaning, the four gospels are simply slightly altered
versions of what the Church proclaims as Satanic plagiarisms (by
anticipation) of Christian dogmas in Pagan religions. Materialism
has a perfect right to find in all of them the same sensual worship
and “solar” myths as anywhere else. Analysed and criticised
superficially and on its dead-letter face, Professor Joly (“Man
before Metals,” pp. 189-190) finding in the _Swastika_, the _crux
ansata_, and the cross pure and simple, mere sexual symbols—is
justified in speaking as he does. Seeing that “the father of the
sacred fire (in India) bore the name of _Twashtri_, that is the
divine carpenter who made the _Swastika_ and the _Pramantha_, whose
friction produced the divine child _Agni_, in Latin _Ignis_; that
his mother was named _Maya_; he himself, styled _Akta_ (_anointed_,
or _Christos_) after the priests had poured upon his head the
spirituous _soma_ and on his body butter purified by sacrifice”;
seeing all this he has a full right to remark that:—
“The close resemblance which exists between certain ceremonies of
the worship of _Agni_ and certain rites of the Catholic religion
may be explained by their common origin. _Agni_ in the condition
of _Akta_, or anointed, is suggestive of Christ; _Maya_, Mary, his
mother; _Twashtri_, St. Joseph, the carpenter of the Bible.”
-----
Footnote 171:
_Vide_ “The Soldier’s Daughter,” in this number, by the Rev. T. G.
Headley, and notice the desperate protest of this _true_
Christian, against the _literal_ acceptance of the “blood
sacrifices,” “Atonement by blood,” etc., in the Church of England.
The reaction begins: another _sign of the times_.
-----
Has the professor of the Science Faculty of Toulouse explained
anything by drawing attention to that which anyone can see? Of
course not. But if, in his ignorance of the esoteric meaning of the
allegory he has added nothing to human knowledge, he has on the
other hand destroyed faith in many of his pupils in both the
“_divine_ origin” of Christianity and its Church and helped to
increase the number of Materialists. For surely, no man, once he
devotes himself to such comparative studies, can regard the religion
of the West in any light but that of a pale and enfeebled copy of
older and nobler philosophies.
The origin of all religions—Judaeo-Christianity included—is to be
found in a few primeval truths, not one of which can be explained
apart from all the others, as each is a complement of the rest in
some one detail. And they are all, more or less, broken rays of the
same Sun of truth, and their beginnings have to be sought in the
archaic records of the Wisdom-religion. Without the light of the
latter, the greatest scholars can see but the skeletons thereof
covered with masks of fancy, and based mostly on personified
Zodiacal signs.
A thick film of allegory and _blinds_, the “dark sayings” of
fiction and parable, thus covers the original esoteric texts from
which the New Testament—_as now known_—was compiled. Whence, then,
the Gospels, the life of Jesus of Nazareth? Has it not been
repeatedly stated that no human, _mortal_ brain could have
invented the life of the Jewish Reformer, followed by the awful
drama on Calvary? We say, on the authority of the esoteric Eastern
School, that all this came from the Gnostics, as far as the name
Christos and the astronomico-mystical allegories are concerned,
and from the writings of the ancient _Tanaïm_ as regards the
Kabalistic connection of Jesus or Joshua, with the Biblical
personifications. One of these is the mystic esoteric name of
Jehovah—not the present fanciful God of the profane Jews ignorant
of their own mysteries, the God accepted by the still more
ignorant Christians—but the compound Jehovah of the pagan
Initiation. This is proven very plainly by the glyphs or mystic
combinations of various signs which have survived to this day in
the Roman Catholic hieroglyphics.
The Gnostic Records contained the epitome of the chief scenes
enacted during the mysteries of Initiation, since the memory of man;
though even that was given out invariably under the garb of
semi-allegory, whenever entrusted to parchment or paper. But the
ancient Tanaïm, the Initiates from whom the wisdom of the Kabala
(_oral tradition_) was obtained by the later Talmudists, had in
their possession the secrets of the mystery language, and it is _in
this language that the Gospels_ were written.[172] He alone who has
mastered the esoteric cypher of antiquity—the secret meaning of the
numerals, a common property at one time of all nations—has the full
proof of the genius which was displayed in the blending of the
purely Egypto-Jewish, Old Testament allegories and names, and those
of the pagan-Greek Gnostics, the most refined of all the mystics of
that day. Bishop Newton proves it himself quite innocently, by
showing that “St. Barnabas, the companion of St. Paul, in his
epistle (ch. ix.) discovers ... the name of Jesus crucified in the
number 318,” namely, Barnabas finds it in the mystic Greek I H T—the
_tau_ being the glyph of the cross. On this, a Kabalist, the author
of an unpublished MS. on the Key of Formation of the Mystery
Language, observes:—“But this is but a play upon the Hebrew letters
_Jodh_, _Chith_, and _Shin_, from whence the I H S as the monogram
of Christ coming down to our day, and this reads as יהש or 381, the
sum of the letters being 318 or the number of Abraham and his Satan,
and of Joshua and his Amalek ... also the number of Jacob and his
antagonist ... (Godfrey Higgins gives the authority for the number
608).... It is the number of Melchizedek’s name, for the value of
the last is 304 and Melchizedek was the priest of the most high God,
without beginning nor ending of days.” The solution and secret of
Melchizedek are found in the fact that “in the ancient Pantheons the
two planets which had existed from eternity (_æonic_ eternity) and
were eternal, were the Sun and the Moon, or Osiris and Isis, hence
the terms of _without beginning nor ending of days_. 304 multiplied
by two is 608. So also the numbers in the word Seth, who was a type
of the year. There are a number of authorities for the number 888 as
applying to the name of Jesus Christ, and as said this is in
antagonism to the 666 of the Anti-Christ.... The staple value in the
name of Joshua was the number 365, the indication of the Solar year,
while Jehovah delighted in being the indication of the Lunar
year—and Jesus Christ was both Joshua and Jehovah in the Christian
Pantheon....”
-----
Footnote 172:
Thus while the three Synoptics display a combination of the pagan
Greek and Jewish symbologies the _Revelation_ is written in the
mystery language of the Tanaïm—the relic of Egyptian and Chaldean
wisdom—and St John’s Gospel is purely Gnostic.
-----
This is but an illustration to our point to prove that the Christian
application of the compound name Jesus-Christ is all based on
Gnostic and Eastern mysticism. It was only right and natural that
Chroniclers like the initiated Gnostics, pledged to secresy, should
veil or _cloak_ the final meaning of their oldest and most sacred
teachings. The right of the Church fathers to cover the whole with
an epitheme of euhemerized fancy is rather more dubious.[173] The
Gnostic Scribe and Chronicler deceived no one. Every Initiate into
the Archaic gnosis—whether of the pre-Christian or post-Christian
period—knew well the value of every word of the “mystery-language.”
For these Gnostics—the inspirers of primitive Christianity—were “the
most cultured, the most learned and most wealthy of the Christian
name,” as Gibbon has it. Neither they, nor their humbler followers,
were in danger of accepting the dead letter of their own texts. But
it was different with the victims of the fabricators of what is now
called _orthodox_ and _historic_ Christianity. Their successors have
all been made to fall into the mistakes of the “foolish Galatians”
reproved by Paul, who, as he tells them (Galat. iii. 1-5), having
begun (by believing) in the Spirit (of Christos), “ended by
believing in _the flesh_,”—_i.e._, a _corporeal_ Christ. For such is
the true meaning of the Greek sentence,[174] “ἐναρξάμενοι Πνεύματι
νῦν σαρκι ἐπιτελεῖσθε.” That Paul was a gnostic, a founder of a new
sect of _gnosis_ which recognized, as all other gnostic sects did, a
“Christ-Spirit,” though it went against its opponents, the rival
sects, is sufficiently clear to all but dogmatists and theologians.
Nor is it less clear that the primitive teachings of Jesus, whenever
he may have lived, could be discovered only in Gnostic teachings;
against which discovery, the falsifiers who dragged down Spirit into
matter, thus degrading the noble philosophy of primeval
Wisdom-Religion, have taken ample precautions from the first. The
works of Basilides alone—“The philosopher devoted to the
contemplation of Divine things,” as Clement describes him—the 24
volumes of his _interpretations upon the Gospels_—were all burned by
order of the Church, Eusebius tells us (H. E., iv. 7).
-----
Footnote 173:
“The claim of Christianity to possess Divine authority rests on
the ignorant belief that the mystical Christ could and did become
a Person, whereas the gnosis proves the corporeal Christ to be
only a counterfeit Presentment of the trans-corporeal man;
consequently, historical portraiture is, and ever must be, a fatal
mode of falsifying and discrediting the Spiritual Reality.” (G.
Massey, “Gnostic and Historic Christianity.”)
Footnote 174:
This sentence analyzed means “Shall you, who in the beginning
looked to the _Christ-Spirit_, now _end_ by believing in a Christ
of flesh,” or it means nothing. The verb ἐπιτελοῦμαι has not the
meaning of “becoming perfect,” but of “ending by,” becoming so.
Paul’s lifelong struggle with Peter and others, and what he
himself tells of his vision of a Spiritual Christ and not of Jesus
of Nazareth, as in the _Acts_—are so many proofs of this.
-----
As these _Interpretations_ were written at a time when the Gospels
we have now, were not yet in existence,[175] here is a good proof
that the Evangel, the doctrines of which were delivered to Basilides
by the Apostle Matthew, and Glaucus, the disciple of Peter (_Clemens
Al._ “_Strom._” vii. 7, § 106), must have differed widely from the
present New Testament Nor can these doctrines be judged by the
distorted accounts of them left to posterity by Tertullian. Yet even
the little this partisan fanatic gives, shows the chief gnostic
doctrines to be identical, under their own peculiar terminology and
personations, with those of the _Secret Doctrine_ of the East. For,
discussing Basilides, the “pious, god-like, theosophic philosopher,”
as Clement of Alexandria thought him, Tertullian exclaims:
“After this, Basilides, the _heretic_, broke loose.[176] He
asserted that there is a Supreme God, by name Abraxas, by whom
Mind (_Mahat_) was created, which the Greeks call _Nous_. From
this emanated the Word; from the Word, Providence; from
Providence, Virtue and Wisdom; from these two again, Virtues,
_Principalities_,[177] _and Powers_ were made; thence infinite
productions and emissions of angels. Among the lowest angels,
indeed, and those that made this world, he sets _last of all_ the
god of the Jews, whom he denies to be God himself, affirming that
he is but one of the angels.”[178] (Isis Unv. vol. ii.)
-----
Footnote 175:
See “Supern. Relig.,” vol. ii., chap. “Basilides.”
Footnote 176:
It was asked in “Isis Unveiled,” were not the views of the
Phrygian Bishop Montanus, also deemed a HERESY by the Church of
Rome? It is quite extraordinary to see how easily that Church
encourages the abuse of one _heretic_, Tertullian, against another
_heretic_, Basilides, when the abuse happens to further her own
object.
Footnote 177:
Does not Paul himself speak of “_Principalities_ and _Powers_ in
heavenly places” (Ephesians iii. 10; i. 21), and confess that
there be _gods_ many and _Lords_ many (Kurioi)? And angels, powers
(Dunameis), and _Principalities_? (See 1 Corinthians, viii. 5; and
Epistle to Romans, viii. 38.)
Footnote 178:
Tertullian: “Præscript.” It is undeniably owing only to a
remarkably casuistical, sleight-of-hand-like argument that
Jehovah, who in the _Kabala_ is simply a Sephiroth, the third,
left-hand power among the Emanations (Binah), has been elevated to
the dignity of the _One_ absolute God. Even in the Bible he is but
one of the _Elohim_ (See Genesis, chapter iii. v. 22. “The Lord
God” making no difference between himself and others.)
-----
Another proof of the claim that the Gospel of Matthew in the usual
Greek texts is not the original gospel written in Hebrew, is given
by no less an authority than S. Jerome (or Hieronymus). The
suspicion of a conscious and gradual _euhemerization_ of the Christ
principle ever since the beginning, grows into a conviction, once
that one becomes acquainted with a certain confession contained in
book ii. of the “Comment. to Matthew” by Hieronymus. For we find in
it the proofs of a deliberate substitution of the whole gospel, the
one now in the Canon having been evidently re-written by this too
zealous Church Father.[179] He says that he was sent toward the
close of the fourth century by “their Felicities,” the Bishops
Chromatius and Heliodorus to Cæsarea, with the mission to compare
the Greek text (the only one they ever had) with the Hebrew original
version preserved by the Nazarenes in their library, and to
translate it. He translated it, but under protest; for, as he says,
the _Evangel_ “exhibited matter _not for edification, but for
destruction.”_[180] The “destruction” of what? Of the dogma that
Jesus of Nazareth and the _Christos_ are one—evidently; hence for
the “destruction” of the newly planned religion.[181] In this same
letter the Saint (who advised his converts to kill their fathers,
trample on the bosom that fed them, by walking over the bodies of
their mothers, if the parents stood as an obstacle between their
sons and Christ)—admits that Matthew did not wish his gospel to be
_openly written_, hence that the MS. _was a secret_ one. But while
admitting also that this gospel “was written in Hebrew characters
and _by the hand of himself_” (_Matthew_), yet in another place he
contradicts himself and assures posterity that _as it was tampered
with, and re-written by a disciple of Manicheus, named Seleucus_ ...
“the ears of the Church properly refused to listen to it.”
(_Hieron._, “Comment. to Matthew,” book ii. chapter xii., 13.)
-----
Footnote 179:
This is _history_. How far that _re-writing_ of, and tampering
with, the primitive gnostic fragments which are now become the New
Testament, went, may be inferred by reading “Supernatural
Religion,” which went through over twenty-three editions, if I
mistake not. The host of authorities for it given by the author,
is simply appalling. The list of the English and German Bible
critics alone seems endless.
Footnote 180:
The chief details are given in “Isis Unveiled,” vol. ii pp.
180-183, _et seq._ Truly faith in the infallibility of the Church
must be _stone-blind_—or it could not have failed being killed
and—dying.
Footnote 181:
See Hieronymus: “De Viros,” illust. cap. 3; Olshausen: “Neuen
Test.,” p. 32. The Greek text of Matthew’s Gospel is the only one
used or ever possessed by the Church.
-----
No wonder that the very meaning of the terms _Chrestos_ and
_Christos_, and the bearing of both on “Jesus of Nazareth,” a name
coined out of Joshua the _Nazar_, has now become a dead letter for
all with the exception of non-Christian Occultists. For even the
Kabalists have no original data now to rely upon. The _Zohar_ and
the Kabala have been remodelled by Christian hands out of
recognition; and were it not for a copy of the Chaldean _Book of
Numbers_ there would remain no better than garbled accounts. Let not
our Brothers, the so-called Christian Kabalists of England and
France, many of whom are Theosophists, protest too vehemently; for
_this is history_ (See Munk). It is as foolish to maintain, as some
German Orientalists and modern critics still do, that the Kabala has
never existed before the day of the Spanish Jew, Moses de Leon,
accused of having forged this pseudograph in the 13th century, as to
claim that any of the Kabalistical works now in our possession are
as original as they were when Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochaï delivered the
“traditions” to his son and followers. Not a single of these books
is immaculate, none has escaped mutilation by Christian hands. Munk,
one of the most learned and able critics of his day on this subject,
proves it, while protesting as we do, against the assumption that it
is a post-Christian forgery, for he says:
“It appears evident to us that the author made use of ancient
documents, and among these of certain _Midraschim_ or collections of
traditions and Biblical expositions, which we do not now possess.”
After which, quoting from Tholuck (l. c. pp. 24 and 31), he adds:
“Haya Gaon, who died in 1038, is to our knowledge the first author
who developed the theory of the Sephiroth and he gave to them the
names which we find again to be among the Kabalists (Tellenik, Moses
ben Schem Tob di Leon, p. 13, note 5); this doctor, _who had
intimate intercourse with the Syrian and Chaldean Christian savans_,
was enabled by these last to acquire a knowledge of some of the
Gnostic writings.”
Which “Gnostic writings” and esoteric tenets passed part and parcel
into the Kabalistic works, with many more modern interpolations that
we now find in the _Zohar_, as Munk well proves. The Kabala is
Christian now, not Jewish.
Thus, what with several generations of most active Church Fathers
ever working at the destruction of old documents and the
preparation of new passages to be interpolated in those which
happened to survive, there remains of the _Gnostics_—the
legitimate offspring of the Archaic Wisdom-religion—but a few
unrecognisable shreds. But a particle of genuine gold will glitter
for ever; and, however garbled the accounts left by Tertullian and
Epiphanius of the Doctrines of the “Heretics,” an occultist can
yet find even in them traces of those primeval truths which were
once universally imparted during the mysteries of Initiation.
Among other works with most suggestive allegories in them, we have
still the so-called _Apocryphal Gospels_, and the last discovered
as the most precious relic of Gnostic literature, a fragment
called _Pistis-Sophia_, “Knowledge-Wisdom.”
In my next article upon the Esoteric character of the Gospels, I
hope to be able to demonstrate that those who translate _Pistis_ by
“Faith,” are utterly wrong. The word “faith” as _grace_ or something
to be believed in through unreasoned or blind faith, is a word that
dates only since Christianity. Nor has Paul ever used this term in
this sense in his Epistles; and Paul was undeniably—an INITIATE.
H. P. B.
(_To be continued._)
=Reviews.=
---
“SPIRIT REVEALED.”[182]
-----
Footnote 182:
By Captain Wm. C. Eldon Serjeant. Published by Geo. Redway, York
Street, Covent Garden. Price 7s. 6d.
-----
The new work by Captain Serjeant (New Dispensationist and Fellow of
the Theosophical Society) is certainly what he describes it as
being, the “book for the age,” if, at least, it be admitted that the
age requires arousing. I have no hesitation in saying that no such
book has before been presented to the public. It sounds forth like a
trumpet to arouse the sleepers from their crass forgetfulness of
every law of Brotherly Love and Spiritual Truth. One might almost
imagine, in reading it, the sensation produced upon his
contemporaries by Ezekiel, when first he gave forth his prophecies
to a wondering world; or by Bunyan, when he startled the English of
his time with the magnificent allegory of the “Pilgrim’s Progress.”
It is true that here and there whole passages are bodily
transplanted from St John’s “Revelation,” but they are so
marvellously dovetailed into the context that, without constant
reference to the Apocalypse, it is almost impossible to say where
the quotations begin and where they end. From a literary point of
view this may be a fault; but if we recognise the one Spirit
speaking through many voices we cannot deny that the same truth may
call for repetition and expansion, and the same Spirit may emit
again, with fuller details, what it has emitted before.
Were this an _orthodox_ journal, I am aware that I dare not advance
such tenets for fear the luckless editors should be deemed
blasphemous by their subscribers. But LUCIFER at least must allow
that the Universal Spirit has not in the sacred books of olden times
breathed its last words. Then, again, Captain Serjeant disclaims all
_personal_ responsibility for these utterances when he states that
the very passages which the reader will find the most glowing in the
fierceness of their heat, are not words conceived by his own
personality, but given to him by processes well-known to
Spiritualists as “direct” and “automatic” writing.
The root idea of the volume is that _one Spirit_ permeates all men
and all things, and that this Spirit is that of Wisdom, Love and
Truth; yet that this Spirit is denied or hidden out of sight by its
own children; and that not till it is again made manifest in the
public affairs of the world, can mankind hope for that happiness
which it is now vainly pursuing in every other direction save the
right one, namely, _within_. The dedication of the book sounds the
key-note of its contents; for it is inscribed to “Love, the Queen of
Heaven; and to Faith, the Star of the Soul.” The inscription closes
with the words “Follow after Love—Love never faileth,” and the
reader is intentionally left to supply the third term, “God is
Love.” It is in this conception of the Supreme that we shall find
the whole meaning of the work. The words “God” and the “Father,” as
also the “Mother” and “Christ,” are employed pretty freely; yet with
this clue, we shall see that the writer believes in no _personal_
Deity, but in one Universal Spirit, of whom each intelligence is a
manifestation in the flesh, little though such being may show or
know it.
It is impossible in a short review to touch upon all the striking
features of “Spirit Revealed,” and I must, therefore, content myself
with noticing but a very few, referring the readers of LUCIFER to
the book itself; for they will find in it a “Guide, Philosopher and
Friend.”
The preface reminds one of a passage in Ezekiel too often forgotten.
“And they were _scattered_, because there is no shepherd: and they
became meat to all the beasts of the field, _when they were
scattered_.” Captain Serjeant points out the necessity of a bond of
_union_ in these words:—
“The contentions amongst many religious sects have been to a
considerable extent responsible for the rise, growth, and
development of numerous societies of professed religious, as well as
of an anti-religious character. Each and every one of these
Societies possesses its own peculiar views on the Deity, as well as
on life and death, and though the majority of the more enlightened
of them have evidently the same fundamental principles underlying
the teachings which they endeavour to inculcate in the minds of men
generally, yet the manifest confusion generated by what are
seemingly conflicting opinions, tends, unhappily, to increase the
bewilderment and distrust experienced in connection with the truths
of the Spirit throughout all classes of Society in the nineteenth
century.”
He then proceeds to claim for his work that it “places in the hands
of Christian Ministers” (Note, that he employs the word “Christ”
continually in the sense of the divine Spirit within mankind) “many
powerful weapons wherewith to establish and uphold the universal
Church of the Living God.” The preface, which is conceived
throughout in the most elevated style of address, concludes with an
appeal to “all who, in their hearts, are ready and willing to labour
loyally in the interests of their less enlightened fellow creatures
existing in this ignorant, selfish, and love-starved world.”
After a brief Introduction, couched in a prophetic form, the writer
deals with the nature of God, man, matter, the power of Spirit
manifest in and through matter, the omnipresence of Spirit, the
Intelligent Principle, and the Seven Rays of Truth. In these seven
chapters is comprised what I may call the theoretical part of the
book. The following quotations must suffice to show in what vein
these world-riddles are worked out. “We are endued with two natures,
one of which is human or mortal, and subject to chemical change,
commonly termed dissolution or death; the other, immortal or
spiritual, capable of adding to itself by an inherent power to
comprehend the nature, qualities and capabilities of all created
visible things, which comprehension signifies the reconversion of
all material existences into true ideas.” “It is an absolute fact
that _everything is literal_. To the spiritual man symbols are
literal; they are indeed more literal than the natural man considers
what he terms facts or realities.“ ”_The ultimate atom is Spirit._
Finite wills are points on which the Infinite Will acts, for no
creature can will without being a manifestation of the Supreme
Intelligence who first wills that it shall will.“
The subsequent portion of the book deals partly with an expansion of
the general tenets laid down in these seven chapters, and their
application to the present _practical_ needs of the world; partly
with prophetic utterances as to the near approach of an awakening of
the peoples to their real position as members of one great Spiritual
community. Under the first heading a very important document is
presented to the world, being a form for enrolment in the “Universal
Rights Support Association,” which if generally adopted in the true
spirit would indeed herald the millennium. Under the second heading
in Chapter XIII. a remarkable reading of part of the Apocalypse is
given, commencing with the words from Daniel, “and at that time
shall Michael stand up, the great Prince which standeth for the
children of the people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such
as never was since there was a Nation even to that same time: At
that time the people shall be delivered, every one that shall be
found written in the book.” Such words as these are not to be
understood on the first reading, and indeed will probably meet with
nothing but derision from many. Yet LUCIFER will see in them another
and a most powerful battery opened against the powers of darkness to
wage war with which is his own chief mission.
In conclusion I can only add that, in my humble opinion, few men
have shown such courage in facing the ridicule of society as Captain
Serjeant, and that he has chosen to risk the forfeiture of a place
in social circles to which his right is undeniable, rather than give
way to the temptation to prophesy smooth things. He is one of the
foremost in the New Dispensation movement, and a man whose working
power must be enormous, if it be measured by the labours which he
daily and voluntarily undertakes. His peculiar style of writing lays
him open to the accusation of calling himself the coming Messiah. If
his accusers would only meet him face to face, they would find that
no man is humbler than he, and none is more fully conscious nor more
loudly proclaims that “individuality is but an emanation from the
one Great Spirit,” in which alone he recognises the true Christ, the
Saviour of the world. He would tell them that in _themselves_ is
incarnate the Spirit of Wisdom, and that it only awaits its union
with the Spirit of Love, to manifest itself as the Spirit of Truth.
How little he values his own personality and his own well-being or
fame, those who know him best can testify. If Theosophy is to be a
living thing, and not a mere intellectual amusement, it is by such
men as this that it must be followed. Were there many such the world
would soon be freed from its misery, by the force of their united
volition. Verily their reward is at hand.
WILLIAM ASHTON ELLIS.
-----------------------
TRAITÉ ÉLÉMENTAIRE DE SCIENCE OCCULTE, par PAPUS.
Published by Georges Carré, 58, Rue St Audré des Arts.
This, the latest of the admirable publications now being issued by
M. Georges Carré, under the auspices of “L’Isis,” the French branch
of the Theosophical Society, deserves a hearty welcome at the hands
of all students of Occultism, as it fulfils the promise of its
title, which is high praise indeed.
The book is written and constructed on correct Occult principles; it
contains seven chapters, three devoted to theory and four to the
application and practical illustration of that theory.
After an eloquent introductory chapter, M. Papus proceeds to lead
his readers by easy transitions into the mysterious science of
numbers. This—the first key to _practical_ Occultism—is at once the
simplest and the most subtle of sciences. Hitherto there has existed
no really elementary exposition of its primary, fundamental
principles. And, as this science of numbers lies at the base of
every one of those applications of occult science which are still to
any extent studied, a knowledge of it is almost indispensable.
Astrology, Chiromancy, Cartomancy, in short, all the arts of
divination, rest ultimately on numbers and their occult powers, as a
foundation.
And yet, though the students of each of these several arts must,
perforce, acquire a certain knowledge of numerical science, yet very
few of them possess that knowledge in a systematic and co-ordinated
form.
Of course M. Papus does not, and cannot, give anything like a
complete textbook on the subject, but he does give, in clear
language, the fundamental guiding principles of this science.
Moreover, he illustrates the methods of numerical working, by
numerous and well-chosen examples—an aid which is simply invaluable
to the student who is making his first entrance into this field of
study. In the third chapter these abstract formulæ are given as they
relate to man, as an individual, and as a member of that larger
whole, called humanity. This completes the purely theoretical
portion of the book, and in the fourth chapter we are shown how
these general principles work in their application.
Signs and symbols are proved to be the _natural_ expressions of
ideas in accordance with fixed laws, and the method is applied by
way of illustration to the interpretation of the Emerald Tablet of
Hermes Trismegistus. The relation between number and form is shown
as exhibited in geometrical figures, and M. Papus gives a clue to a
subject which has puzzled many—the actual _influence_ in life of
_names_. This chapter is most enthralling, but lack of space forbids
any detailed comments, for so much would have to be said.
Chapters five and six are almost equally interesting; full of
lucid illustration and valuable hints to the practical student,
they form almost a manual in themselves. But on one point M. Papus
is certainly in error, though, since it is on a matter of history,
its importance is relatively small. He attaches _far_ too much
weight to the Jews and to their national system of occultism—the
Kabbala. True, that system is the most familiar in Europe; but it
has been so much overlaid by a semi-esoteric veil, and additions
and interpolations by Christian Occultists, that its inner
grossness is lost sight of; so that students are apt to be led
away from the truth, and to form erroneous conceptions as to the
value and meaning of many symbols, the importance of which in
practical work is very great. What esoteric knowledge the Jews
possessed, they derived either from the Egyptians or the
Babylonians during the captivity. Hence M. Saint-Ives d’Alvidre,
his gigantic erudition notwithstanding, is altogether mistaken in
the stress he lays on their knowledge, their place in history and
their mission as a nation. This, however, is but a matter of small
moment in a book, the practical value of which it would be
difficult to over-estimate.
-----------------------
THE NEW WAGNER JOURNAL.
We have received from Mr. Geo. Redway, Publisher, 15, York Street,
W.C., the prospectus of a new Journal, “THE MEISTER,” which is about
to be edited for the _Richard Wagner Society_ by Mr. Wm. Ashton
Ellis, author of “Theosophy in the Works of Richard Wagner”
(Theosophical Society’s Transactions), and of “Richard Wagner as
Poet, Musician and Mystic,” read before the Society of Fine Arts. As
Mr. Ellis is a member of the Committee of the Wagner Society, and a
member of Council of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society,
we hope that prominence will be given to the esoteric side of
Richard Wagner’s works; and for this hope we have justification not
only in the pamphlets above alluded to but also in the words of the
prospectus of the MEISTER. “Religion, Art, and Social Questions are
in these works (Wagner’s) presented to his readers under novel
aspects, and such as are of the greatest interest to a generation
which is eagerly scanning the horizon for some cloud which may be
the harbinger of refreshing rain long looked for to quench the
thirst of the arid sands of Materialistic Science.”
The prospectus presents us with a specimen of the cover of the
journal, designed by Mr. Percy Anderson, an artist who has already
made a name for himself in other walks of the decorative art, and
whose first attempt in this direction shows great power of broad
effects of light and shade, and considerable expertness in
symbolism. We hope in our next issue to review the first number of
the MEISTER which, we understand, will appear on the 13th inst. It
will be published for the present _quarterly_, at the subscription
rate of 4s. per annum, but we trust that it may shortly become a
full-fledged “monthly.”
[Illustration: decorative separator]
NEW YEAR’S EVE.
All sound was hushed, except the sad sad bells,
Chanting their requiem o’er the dying year;
Alone I knelt beneath the watchful stars,
And held communion with my restless soul.
* * * * *
The Old Year died, the sad bells all were stilled,
And o’er a silent city, shone the pure cold moon.
Then unrestrained my soul poured forth its cry,
“O God Eternal, Changless, Sacred, O. M.
Let my past die with the Old Year to-night.
And when the joy-bells hail the New Year’s birth,
Let each sweet note waft up a pæan of praise,
Straight from a new-born Soul unto its Maker.”
* * * * *
The New Year dawned, madly the bells clashed forth
Beneath the stars, I still knelt on—in peace.
KATIE DUNCAN KING.
=Correspondence.=
---
AUTOCENTRICISM.[183]
-----
Footnote 183:
“Autocentricism; or, the Brain Theory of Life and Mind,” being the
substance of letters written to the Secular Review (1883-4). By
Robert Lewins, M.D. “The New Gospel of Hylo-Idealism, or Positive
Agnosticism.” By Herbert L. Courtney.
-----
Man has made God in his own image. Taking his thoughts and passions,
fears, hope and aspirations, with part thereof he endows his
fellow-men, whose natures he knows only as figured and interpreted
by his own, and thus he becomes a social being; with part thereof he
inspires the inanimate world—“the sun, the moon, the stars, the sea,
the hills, and the plains,” and thus he becomes a poet; “with the
residue” he forms his God, and “falleth down unto it, and
worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me, for thou
art my God.”
The first of these processes is legitimate, indeed necessary, for
there is a foundation of unity in human nature, however diverse and
complex are its varied developments; and the humanity which dwells
in all can recognize itself under strange disguises.
The second process is innocent and elevating, so long as it is kept
within just limits, and claims to reach results subjectively, not
objectively, true.
The third process is inevitable at a certain stage of racial
evolution, but beyond that stage becomes absolutely noxious and
degrading, because it extols as truth that which conscience and
reason have begun to condemn as untruth.
Dead are the Gods of Egypt, those supreme plutocrats, under whom
costly mummification and burial in a sculptured tomb were the
conditions of posthumous life, so that a poor man could by no means
enter into the kingdom of Osiris. Dead are Jupiter, Apollo, Pallas,
Aphrodite, the products and reflexes of Greek majesty, beauty and
intellect; or, if not dead, they are immortalised only by the art of
their human creators. Dead, or dying, as a power to be loved and
feared, is that Jehovah who reproduces the cruelty, selfishness and
stubbornness of the typical Jew, with his substratum of conscience,
showing itself from time to time in a more or less wrong-headed zeal
for righteousness.
In its infancy, every race unconsciously forms an ideal, and makes
this ideal its God. As the race grows in civilisation the ideal is
modified, and for some time the god continues to undergo
corresponding changes, and is, so to speak, kept up to date. But
increasing experience and knowledge bring increasing secularism of
thought and feeling, and incapacitate the mind for reconstructing
its Divinity. Religion loses its life-blood. In this stage, the
Deity is either an anachronism, incompatible with the highest
instincts of his worshippers, and therefore holding them back
morally and intellectually, or else he becomes a nonentity, an
abstraction, which can have no influence on life and conduct. It is
this effete conception which Dr. Lewins combats in the tract
entitled “Autocentricism, or the Brain Theory of Life and Mind.”
Man, in brief, is his own God. Saints and mystics, and all the most
beautiful souls of all religions, have seen this truth as in a glass
darkly. Christ expressed it in mystic form when he said, “The
Kingdom of Heaven is within you,” and, “I and my Father are one.”
But in Christ’s time Animism was so ingrained in human nature that
it was impossible he could escape it.[184] He had not the scientific
data on which to found a true cosmology; and even had he possessed
the data, he would have lacked the power to use them. Scientific
habits of thought were necessarily alien to the mind of the Galilean
peasant.[185] He could _feel_ rather than _comprehend_ the unity of
God, Man, and the World; but he could not know that this unity is
centred in the thought-cells of the cerebral hemispheres, and that
the Divine glory is the offspring of a material organism.[186]
Scientific synthesis can now give a solid basis to Christian and
Buddhist mysticism, to Berkleyan and Kantian Idealism, by declaring
that the brain is the one phenomenon which certifies its own nomenal
existence. It thinks, therefore it is; it creates, therefore it
exists. Yet Dualism is condemned, whatever stand-point we adopt.
“For my main argument ... it matters not a jot or tittle whether you
proceed on the nöetic or hyloic basis. A European ought to take the
latter, which admits of scientific research and discovery. An
Asiatic or African, who has not the genius for original realistic
research, may safely be left to the former.”[187] Beyond himself, no
man can think. We are apt to be deluded by the exigencies of
language, and to look upon “our” ideas, “our” imaginations, as in
some way separable from ourselves; as possessions rather than
components of the Ego. Yet nothing is clearer than that the sum of
these sentient states actually _constitutes_ the Ego, so far as it
knows itself; and that a “dominant” idea, engrossing the attention
to the exclusion of all others, is for the time absolutely identical
with and equivalent to the mind which it is said to “rule.” For
moments which are eternities, because the sense of time is
abolished, the musician may be “absorbed in” or identified with his
sonata, the poet with his verse, the mystic with his vision of the
Divine Essence. “I am as great as God, and He as small as I,” sings
Angelus Silesius; but we may rather say that in such states of
rapture the relations of “great” and “small,” of “internal” and
“external,” of “space” and “infinitude,” of “time” and “eternity,”
are annihilated, and the whole universe fused into one point of
light.
-----
Footnote 184:
“Autocentricism,” &c., p. 10.
Footnote 185:
_Christ_—A Galilean peasant! [ED.]
Footnote 186:
Nor does Dr. Lewins _know_: assumption is no proof. [ED.]
Footnote 187:
“Autocentricism,” &c., p. 33.
-----
This feeling, rationalised and stripped of mystery, though not of
wonder and solemnity, is the truth and life of Hylo-Idealism.
Worship is done away with, not by iconoclasm, but by apotheosis. “By
it we are, indeed, for ever and entirely relieved from the
humiliating and overwhelming sense of human insignificance, thus
making ourselves quite at home in the more than terrestrial
grandeurs of the universe, in which our planet is but a
sand-grain.”[188]
-----
Footnote 188:
Ibid, p. 19.
-----
In conclusion, I should like to recommend Dr. Lewins’s tractate,
with its Introduction by Mr. Courtney, and its succinct and luminous
Appendix by G. M. Mc., and also Mr. Courtney’s articles reprinted
from “Our Corner” to the attention of all sincere souls.
Hylo-Idealism, or “Autocentricism,” has the merit of not being
negative merely, but also positive and constructive, substituting
for the “renunciation” preached by Christ and Buddha, a perfect
fulfilment of self, and conquering selfishness by self-expansion. It
is thus especially potent in the fields of theoretical and practical
ethics, indeed the central idea of Spinoza’s admirable and still
unsurpassed analysis of the Passions is distinctly deducible from
our thesis, though generally regarded as an excrescence rather than
a natural growth from his own. Upon all this I cannot, at present,
dwell, but must content myself with the bare indication of fields of
thought and action which are “white already to the harvest.”
On the Nile, _Dec._ 1887.
C. N.
--------------
WHAT OF PHENOMENA?
_To the Editors of_ LUCIFER:
“I avail myself of your invitation to correspondents, in order to
ask a question.
“How is it that we hear nothing now of the signs and wonders with
which Neo-theosophy was ushered in? Is the ‘age of miracles’ past
in the Society?
“Yours respectfully,
“*”
“Occult phenomena,” is what our correspondent apparently refers to.
They failed to produce the desired effect, but they were, in no
sense of the word, “miracles.” It was supposed that intelligent
people, especially men of science, would, at least, have recognised
the existence of a new and deeply interesting field of enquiry and
research when they witnessed physical effects produced at will, for
which they were not able to account. It was supposed that
theologians would have welcomed the proof, of which they stand so
sadly in need in these agnostic days, that the soul and the spirit
are not mere creations of their fancy, due to ignorance of the
physical constitution of man, but entities quite as real as the
body, and much more important. These expectations were not realized.
The phenomena were misunderstood and misrepresented, both as regards
their nature and their purpose.
In the light which experience has now thrown upon the matter the
explanation of this unfortunate circumstance is not far to seek.
Neither science nor religion acknowledges the existence of the
Occult, as the term is understood and employed in theosophy; in the
sense, that is to say, of a super-material, but not super-natural,
region, governed by law; nor do they recognise the existence of
latent powers and possibilities in man. Any interference with the
every-day routine of the material world is attributed, by religion,
to the arbitrary will of a good or an evil autocrat, inhabiting a
supernatural region inaccessible to man, and subject to no law,
either in his actions or constitution, and for a knowledge of whose
ideas and wishes mortals are entirely dependent upon inspired
communications delivered through an accredited messenger. The power
of working so-called miracles has always been deemed the proper and
sufficient credentials of a messenger from heaven, and the mental
habit of regarding any occult power in that light is still so strong
that any exercise of that power is supposed to be “miraculous,” or
to claim to be so. It is needless to say that this way of regarding
extraordinary occurrences is in direct opposition to the scientific
spirit of the age, nor is it the position practically occupied by
the more intelligent portion of mankind at present. When people see
wonders, nowadays, the sentiment excited in their minds is no longer
veneration and awe, but curiosity.
It was in the hope of arousing and utilizing this spirit of
curiosity that occult phenomena were shown. It was believed that
this manipulation of forces of nature which lie below the
surface—that surface of things which modern science scratches and
pecks at so industriously and so proudly—would have led to enquiry
into the nature and the laws of those forces, unknown to science,
but perfectly known to occultism. That the phenomena did excite
curiosity in the minds of those who witnessed them, is certainly
true, but it was, unfortunately, for the most part of an idle kind.
The greater number of the witnesses developed an insatiable appetite
for phenomena for their own sake, without any thought of studying
the philosophy or the science of whose truth and power the phenomena
were merely trivial and, so to say, accidental illustrations. In but
a few cases the curiosity which was awakened gave birth to the
serious desire to study the philosophy and the science themselves
and for their own sake.
Experience has taught the leaders of the movement that the vast
majority of professing Christians are absolutely precluded by their
mental condition and attitude—the result of centuries of
superstitious teaching—from calmly examining the phenomena in their
aspect of natural occurrences governed by law. The Roman Catholic
Church, true to its traditions, excuses itself from the examination
of any occult phenomena on the plea that they are necessarily the
work of the Devil, whenever they occur outside of its own pale,
since it has a lawful monopoly of the legitimate miracle business.
The Protestant Church denies the personal intervention of the Evil
One on the material plane; but, never having gone into the miracle
business itself, it is apparently a little doubtful whether it would
know a _bona-fide_ miracle if it saw one, but, being just as unable
as its elder sister to conceive the extension of the reign of law
beyond the limits of matter and force, as known to us in our present
state of consciousness, it excuses itself from the study of occult
phenomena on the plea that they lie within the province of science
rather than of religion.
Now science has its miracles as well as the Church of Rome. But, as
it is altogether dependent upon its instrument maker for the
production of these miracles, and, as it claims to be in possession
of the last known word in regard to the laws of nature, it was
hardly to be expected that it would take very kindly to “miracles,”
in whose production apparatus has no part, and which claim to be
instances of the operation of forces and laws of which it has no
knowledge. Modern science, moreover, labours under disabilities with
respect to the investigation of the Occult quite as embarrassing as
those of Religion; for, while Religion cannot grasp the idea of
natural law as applied to the supersensuous Universe, Science does
not allow the existence of any supersensuous universe at all to
which the reign of law could be extended; nor can it conceive the
possibility of any other state of consciousness than our present
terrestrial one. It was, therefore, hardly to be expected that
science would undertake the task it was called upon to perform with
much earnestness and enthusiasm; and, indeed, it seems to have felt
that it was not expected to treat the phenomena of occultism less
cavalierly than it had treated divine miracles. So it calmly
proceeded at once to pooh-pooh the phenomena; and, when obliged to
express some kind of opinion, it did not hesitate, without
examination, and on hearsay reports, to attribute them to fraudulent
contrivances—wires, trap-doors and so forth.
It was bad enough for the leaders of the movement, when they
endeavoured to call the attention of the world to the great and
unknown field for scientific and religious enquiry which lies on the
borderland between matter and spirit, to find themselves set down as
agents of his Satanic Majesty, or as superior adepts in the
charlatan line; but the unkindest cut of all, perhaps, came from a
class of people whose own experiences, rightly understood, ought
certainly to have taught them better: the occult phenomena were
claimed by the Spiritualists as the work of their dear departed
ones, but the leaders in Theosophy were declared to be somewhat less
even than mediums in disguise.
Never were the phenomena presented in any other character than that
of instances of a power _over perfectly natural though unrecognised
forces_, and incidentally over matter, possessed by certain
individuals who have attained to a larger and higher knowledge of
the Universe than has been reached by scientists and theologians, or
can ever be reached by them, by the roads they are now respectively
pursuing. Yet this power is latent in all men, and could, in time,
be wielded by anyone who would cultivate the knowledge and conform
to the conditions necessary for its development. Nevertheless,
except in a few isolated and honourable instances, never was it
received in any other character than as would-be miracles, or as
works of the Devil, or as vulgar tricks, or as amusing gape-seed, or
as the performances of those dangerous “spooks” that masquerade in
séance rooms, and feed on the vital energies of mediums and sitters.
And, from all sides, theosophy and theosophists were attacked with a
rancour and bitterness, with an absolute disregard alike of fact and
logic, and with malice, hatred and uncharitableness that would be
utterly inconceivable, did not religious history teach us what mean
and unreasoning animals ignorant men become when their cherished
prejudices are touched; and did not the history of scientific
research teach us, in its turn, how very like an ignorant man a
learned man can behave, when the truth of his theories is called in
question.
An occultist can produce phenomena, but he cannot supply the world
with brains, nor with the intelligence and good faith necessary to
understand and appreciate them. Therefore, it is hardly to be
wondered at, that _word_ came to abandon phenomena and let the ideas
of Theosophy stand on their own intrinsic merits.
--------------
MR. MOHINI M. CHATTERJI.
_To the Editors of_ LUCIFER.
Will you kindly afford publicity in the pages of Lucifer to the
enclosed letter I have just received from Mr. Mohini M. Chatterji
who has been staying for a few months at Rome, with English friends,
on his way back to India.—Yours very truly,
A. P. SINNETT.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE LONDON LODGE OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
SIR,—I understand that among the members of your Society there is a
rumour to the effect that I have joined the Roman Catholic Church,
which has caused much annoyance to my friends and also to myself. I
beg therefore that you will do me the justice to make it known that
the rumour is entirely false and that I have no desire to join any
Christian Church.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
MOHINI M. CHATTERJI.
ROME (Italy), _January 30th, 1888_.
------------------
_To the Editors of_ LUCIFER.
On behalf of the members of the London Lodge, I beg to state that
the rumour referred to in Mr. Mohini’s letter emanated from two
acquaintances of his belonging to the Romish Church, who themselves
derived their information from the R. C. priesthood. As for the
members of the L. L. they never believed in this report.
BERTRAM KEIGHTLEY, Hon. Sec.
=CORRESPONDENCE=
[The editors have received the two following letters—one from the
learned Founder of Hylo-Idealism, the other from a gentleman, a
casual correspondent, of whom they know _absolutely nothing_
except his most extraordinary way of expressing his thoughts in
words and terms hitherto unheard by ordinary mortals. Both take
the editors to task for using their undeniable right of criticism
and editorial judgment. As LUCIFER, however, is a magazine _sui
generis_, and as its policy is the greatest possible tolerance and
fairness to all parties concerned, it will abstain from its legal
prerogative of leaving the letters without reply or notice.
LUCIFER hands them over, therefore, to the “ADVERSARY,” to be
dealt with according to their respective merits. The editors have
never pretended to an “understanding of Hylo-Idealism” nor do they
entertain any such rash hope for the future. They belong to that
humble class of mortals who labour to their dying day under the
belief that 2 × 2 = 4, and can by no means, even hylo-idealistic,
make 5. “C. N.”’s letter placed the new “philosophy” in an
entirely different light; firstly, because it is written in good
English, and because the style of the writer is extremely
attractive; and secondly, because at least one point has now been
made clear to the editors: “Hylo-Idealism” is, like modern
spiritualism, the _essence of transcendental materialism_. If in
Mr. Huxley’s opinion Comte’s Positivism is, in practice,
“Catholicism _minus_ Christianity,” in the views of the editors of
LUCIFER Hylo-Idealism is “Metaphysics _minus_ psychology
and—_physics_.” Let its apostles explain away its flagrant
contradictions, and then LUCIFER will be the first to render
justice to it as a philosophy. Meanwhile, it can only acknowledge
a number of remarkably profound thoughts that are to be found
scattered in independent solitude throughout the letters of Dr.
Lewins (Humanism _v._ Theism) and others, and—no more.]
_re_ HYLO-IDEALISM.
To the Editors of LUCIFER.
Perhaps space may be found in the February or other early issue of
your interesting and suggestive serial for the present curt
communication. In a footnote of your January number I am coupled
with Mr. H. Spencer as being more Atheist than Moleschott and
Büchner—to say nothing of such compromising and irresolute
scientists as Darwin, Huxley, and Co. Now, that atheistic or
non-animist standpoint is the pivot on which my whole synthesis
revolves; and is, I contend, the burning problem at this
epoch—ethical and intellectual—of the human mind—_thoroughly_ to
establish on certain concrete, rational and scientific _data_, that
is to say—not on the Utopias of Speculation and Metaphysics. My
principle is exactly that of Kant (inter alios) when he formulates
the “Thing in Itself.” But we have only to study the short and handy
“Critique of Kant,” referred to in your columns—by Kuno Fischer,
translated by Dr. Hough, to see how fast and loose that
“all-shattering” metaphysician played with his all-destructive
theme. Not only does he entirely reverse it and its corollaries in
his critique of the “Practical Reason,” and of “Judgment,” but also
in the second edition of the “Critique of Pure Reason” itself, in
which originally, as its corollary, or rather concomitant, he, like
myself, only on less sure premises, disposes of God, the Soul (Anima
or Vital Principle), and Immortality—that is of another “personal”
life after death. I hold with Lucretius, Epicurus, and others in
ancient and modern times, of whom Shelley is a typical case, that no
greater benefit can be bestowed on humanity than the elimination
from sane thought of this ghastly and maddening Triune Spectre. God
alone is quite “l’infame” Voltaire dubs the Catholic Church. Looking
through Nature “red in tooth and claws” to its _pseudo_ Author, we
must expect to find a _Pandemon_. For any omnipotent Being who,
unconditioned and unfettered in all respects, “_willed_” such a
world of pain and anguish for sentient creatures, must be a Demon
_worse_ than mythology has fabled of Satan, Moloch, Mammon, or other
fiends. It must be noted that in the classic Pantheon, the Fates, or
Fatal Sisters, are “above” all the Immortals of Olympus, including
Jove himself—a saving provision quite inadmissible in modern
Monotheism, which endows its Divinity[189] with absolute omnipotence
and fore-knowledge.
ROBERT LEWINS, M.D.
-----
Footnote 189:
Deuce, _i.e._, Devil, is the synonym of _Deus_.
-----
---
HYLO-IDEALISM.
To the Editors of LUCIFER.
I have to thank you for your kind insertion of my note on above in
January issue of the Magazine.
I have not the slightest desire to quarrel with your prefaced
comments on my style of writing. It seems to you to be “turgid,” and
you take advantage of some unkind epithets lately dealt out to
Theosophy in the _Secular Review_ to return the compliment to me
with interest added. Be it so. It would seem but fair to, let me
say, compliment those, and those only, who have directly
complimented you; but I have no wish, as I have just said, to find
fault with _any_ comment on Hylo-Idealism or on the methods of its
advocacy. _All_ criticism is, I know, received by the excogitator of
the system with thanks, and, save that both he and I think your note
_re “Theobroma”_ not a little at fault (for explanation I refer you
to the well-known Messrs. Epps), I can say the same for myself.
I can see, however, in spite of the raillery with which you honour
us, that a right understanding of Hylo-Idealism—I beg pardon,
_High-low_ Idealism—is still very far from being yours. Why, in a
recent issue of LUCIFER the old difficulty of, as I call it, the
“Coincident assumption of Materiality” is started as if it had never
before been thought of. It is, in point of fact, fully dealt with in
my “Appendix” to the “Auto-Centricism” pamphlet, which has already
passed under your review! It is not worth while to enter once more
upon this point; suffice it then to say, in addition, that I
explained it also, at full length, to a Theosophical writer—Mr. E.
D. Fawcett—in the _Secular Review_, some months ago. He had started
the same venerable objection, but after my reply, he so far honoured
me as not to return to the charge. Let him do so now, and then a
Theosophical attack and a Hylo-Ideal defence will be before you.
But, really, it is no argument against my position to extract some
half-dozen lines of my writing from a contemporary and to follow
this _soupçon_ with three printer’s “shrieks.”
I shall wait with interest the promised letter from “C. N.,” placing
Hylo-Idealism in a “new and very different light,” as you say. This
is something quite new. Dr. Lewins, C. N., and I have, none of us,
been able, hitherto, to find any material difference between our
several presentations of the system.
I have the honour to be, Mesdames,
Your most obedient servant,
G. M. McC.
TO DR. LEWINS, AND THE HYLO-IDEALISTS AT LARGE.
The several learned gentlemen of the above persuasion, who have
honoured LUCIFER with their letters and articles, will please to
accept the present as a collective Reply. Life is too short to
indulge very often in such lengthy explanations. But “une fois n’est
pas coutume.”
In “coupling” Dr. Lewins’ name with those he mentions—especially
with Mr. Herbert Spencer’s—the Editors had assuredly no intention of
saying anything derogatory to the dignity of the founder of
Hylo-Idealism. They have called the latter system—its qualification
of _Idealistic_ notwithstanding——“atheistical,” and to this Dr.
Lewins himself does not demur. Quite the contrary. If his protest
(against a casual remark made in a footnote of two lines!) means
anything at all, it means that he feels hurt to find his name
associated with the names of such “compromising and (in _atheism_)
irresolute scientists as Darwin, Huxley, and Co.” What is it that
our erudite correspondent demurs to, then? Just that, and nothing
more. His prefixed adjectives refer to the half-heartedness of these
gentlemen in the matter of atheism and materialism, not surely, to
their scientific achievements. Indeed, these illustrious naturalists
are timid enough to leave half-opened doors in their speculations
for something to enter in which is not quite matter, and yet what it
is they do not, or _do not wish_ to know.
Indeed, they derive man, his origin and consciousness, _only_ from
the lower forms of animal creation and the brutes, instead of
attributing life, mind and intellect—as the followers of the new
System do—simply to the pranks played by _Prakriti_ (the great
Ignorance and Illusion) on our “diseased nervous centres”—_abstract
thought_ being synonymous with _Neuropathy_ in the teachings of the
Hylo-Idealists (see _Auto-Centricism_, p. 40). But all this has been
already said and _better said_ by Kapila, in his _Sankhya_, and is
very old philosophy indeed; so that Messrs. Darwin and Co. have
been, perhaps, wise in their generation to adopt another theory. Our
great Darwinists are practical men, and avoid running after the hare
and the eagle at the same time, as the hare in such case would be
sure to run away, and the eagle to be lost in the clouds. They
prefer to ignore the ideas and conceptions of the Universe, as held
by such “loose,” and—as philosophically expressed by our
_uncompromising_ opponent—“all-shattering metaphysicians as Kant
was.” Therefore letting all such “metaphysical crack-brained
theories” severely alone, they made man and his thinking _Ego_ the
lineal descendant of the revered ancestor of the now tailless
baboon, our beloved and esteemed first cousin. This is only logical
_from the Darwinian standpoint_. What is, then, Dr. Lewins’ quarrel
with these great men, or with us? They have their theory, the
inventor of Hylo-Idealism has his theory, we, Metaphysicians, have
our ideas and theories; and, the _Moon_ shining with impartial and
equal light on the respective occiputs of Hylo-Idealists,
Animalists, and Metaphysicians, she pours material enough for every
one concerned to allow each of them to “live and let live.” No man
can be at once a Materialist and an Idealist, and remain consistent.
Eastern philosophy and occultism are based on the _absolute unity_
of the Root Substance, and they recognise only one infinite and
universal CAUSE. The Occultists are UNITARIANS _par excellence_. But
there is such a thing as conventional, time-honoured terms with one
and the same meaning attached to them all—at any rate on this plane
of illusion. And if we want to understand each other, we are forced
to use such terms in their generally-accepted sense, and avoid
calling mind matter, and vice versâ. The definition of a
_materialised “Spirit”_ as frozen whiskey is in its place in a
humouristic pun: it becomes an absurdity in philosophy. It is Dr.
Lewins’ argument that “the very first principle of logic is, that
two ‘causes’ are not to be thought of when one is sufficient;” and
though the first and the ultimate, the Alpha and the Omega in the
existence of the Universe, is one absolute cause, yet, on the plane
of manifestations and differentiations, matter, as phenomenon, and
Spirit as noumenon, cannot be so loosely confused as to merge the
latter into the former, under the pretext that one self-evident
natural cause (however secondary in the sight of logic and reason)
is “sufficient for our purpose,” and we need not “transcend the
proper conditions of thought” and fall back upon the lower level of
“lawless and uncertain fancy”—i.e., metaphysics. (_Vide_ “Humanism
_v._ Theism,” pp. 14, 15.)
We have nothing whatever, I say it again, against “Hylo-Idealism”
with the exception of its compound and self-contradictory name. Nor
do we oppose Dr. Lewins’ earlier thoughts, as embodied in “C. N’s”
“HUMANISM _versus_ THEISM.” That which we permit ourselves to object
to and oppose is the later system grown into a _Bifrontian_,
Janus-like monster, a hybrid _duality_ notwithstanding its forced
mask of Unity. Surely it is not because Dr. Lewins calls “Spirit—a
_fiction_” and attributes Mind, Thought, Genius, Intellect, and all
the highest attributes of thinking man to simple effects or
functions of Hylo-zoism, that the greatest problem of psychology,
_the relation of mind to matter_, is solved? No one can accuse “The
Adversary” of too much tenderness or even regard for the conclusions
of such rank materialists as the Darwinians generally are. But
surely no impartial man would attribute their constant failure to
explain the relations of mind to matter, and the confessions of
their ignorance of the ultimate constitution of that matter itself,
to timidity and irresoluteness, but rather to the right cause:
_i.e._, the _absolute impossibility of explaining spiritual effects
by physical causes_, in the first case; and the presence of that in
matter which baffles and mocks the efforts of the physical senses to
perceive or feel, and therefore to explain it, in the second case.
It is not, evidently, a desire to _compromise_ that forced Mr.
Huxley to confess that “in strictness we (the Scientists) know
nothing about the composition of matter,” but the _honesty_ of a man
of science in not speculating upon what he did not believe in, and
knew nothing about. Does J. Le Conte insult the majesty of physical
science by declaring that the creation or destruction, increase or
diminution of matter, “_lies beyond the domain of science?_”[190]
And to whose prejudices does Mr. Tyndall pander, he, who once upon a
time shocked the whole world of believers in spiritual existence, by
declaring in his Belfast address that in matter alone was “the
promise and potency of every form and quality of life” (just what
Dr. Lewins does) when he maintains that “the passage _from the
physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of_ CONSCIOUSNESS
_is unthinkable_,” and adds:
“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.”[191]
-----
Footnote 190:
“_Correl._ of _Vital with Chem. and Physical Forces_.” Appendix.
Footnote 191:
“Fragments of Science.”
-----
To our surprise, however, we find that our learned
correspondent—Tyndall, Huxley & Co., notwithstanding—has passed the
_intellectually impassable_ chasm by modes of perception,
“anti-intellectual,” so to speak. I say this in no impertinent mood;
but merely following Dr. Lewins on his own lines of thought. As his
expressions seem absolutely antiphrastic in meaning to those
generally accepted by the common herd, “anti-intellectual” would
mean with the Hylo-Idealists “anti-spiritual” (spirit being a
_fiction_ with them). Thus their Founder must have crossed the
impassable chasm—say, by a hylo-zoistic process of perception,
“starting from the region of rational cogitation” and not from “that
lower level of lawless and uncertain fancy,” as Theosophists,
Mystics, and other _hoi polloi_ of thought, do. He has done it to
his own “mental satisfaction,” and this is all a Hylo-Idealist will
ever aspire to, as Dr. Lewins himself tells us. He “cannot deny that
there may be _behind_ (?) nature a ‘cause of causes,’[192] but if
so, it is a god who hides himself, or itself, from mortal thought.
Nature is at all events vice-regent plenipotentiary, and with _her_
thought has alone to deal.” Just so, and we say it too, for reasons
given in the footnote. “There is a natural solution for everything,”
he adds. “Of course, if there be no ‘cause,’ this solution is the
arrangement and co-ordination of invariable sequences in our own
minds ... rather than an ‘explanation’ or ‘accounting for’
phenomena. Properly speaking we can ‘account for’ nothing. _Mental
satisfaction_—unity between microcosm and macrocosm, not the search
after ‘First Causes.’ ... is the true chief end of man.” (Hum. _v._
Theism, p. 15.)
-----
Footnote 192:
We Theosophists, who do not _limit_ nature, do not see the “cause
of causes” or the _unknowable_ deity _behind_ that which is
limitless, but identify that abstract Nature with the deity
itself, and explain its visible laws as secondary effects on the
plane of Universal Illusion.
-----
This seems the backbone of Hylo-Idealistic philosophy, which
thus appears as a cross breed between Epicurianism and the
“Illusionism” of the Buddhist Yogachâras. This stands proven
by the contradictions in his system. Dr. Lewins seems to have
achieved that, to do which every mortal scientist has hitherto
failed, firstly, by declaring (in Hum. _v._ Theism, p. 17) the
whole objective world—“_phenomenal_ or _ideal_”,[193] and
“everything in it _spectral_” (Auto-Centricism, p. 9), and yet
_admitting the reality of matter_. More than this. In the
teeth of all the scientific luminaries, from Faraday to
Huxley, who all confess to knowing NOTHING of matter, he
declares that—“Matter organic and inorganic _is now fully
known_” (Auto-Centricism, p. 40)!!
-----
Footnote 193:
We call the _noumenal_—the “ideal.”
-----
I humbly beg Dr. Lewins’ pardon for the rude question; but does he
really mean to say what he does say? Does he want his readers to
believe that up to his appearance in this world of matter, thinking
men did not know what they were talking about, and that among all
the “Ego Brains” of this globe his brain is the one omniscient
_reality_, while all others are empty phantasms,or _spectral_
balloons? Besides which, matter cannot surely be _real_ and _unreal_
at the same time. If _unreal_—and he maintains it—then all Science
can know about it is that it knows _nothing_, and this is precisely
what Science confesses. And if _real_—and Dr. Lewins, as shown,
declares it likewise—then his _Idealism_ goes upside down, and
_Hylo_ alone remains to mock him and his philosophy. These may be
trifling considerations in the consciousness of an _Ego_ of Dr.
Lewins’ power, but they are very serious contradictions, and also
impediments in the way of such humble thinkers as Vedantins,
Logicians, and Theosophists, toward recognising, let alone
appreciating, “Hylo-Idealism.” Our learned correspondent pooh-poohs
Metaphysics, and at the same time not only travels on purely
metaphysical grounds, but adopts and sets forth the most
metaphysical tenets, the very gist of the PARA-metaphysical Vedanta
philosophy, tenets held also by the Buddhist “Illusionists”—the
_Yogachâras_ and _Madhyamikas_. Both schools maintain that all is
void (_sarva sûnya_), or that which Dr. Lewins calls spectral and
phantasmal. Except internal sensation or intelligence (_vijnâna_)
the Yogachâras regard everything else as illusion. Nothing that is
material can have any but a _spectral_ existence with them. So far,
our “Bauddhas” are at one with _the_ Hylo-Idealists, but they part
at the crucial moment. The New School teaches that the Brain (the
originator of consciousness) is the only factor and Creator of the
visible Universe; that in _it_ alone all our ideas of external
things are born, and that, apart from it, nothing has real
existence, everything being illusion. Now what has that Brain, or
rather the material its particles and cells are composed of,
distinct in it from other matter that it should be rendered such
honours? _Physically_, it differs very little indeed from the brain
stuff and cranium of any anthropoid ape. Unless we divorce
consciousness, or the EGO, from matter, one materialistic philosophy
is as good as the other, and none is worth living for. What his
Brain-Ego _is_, Dr. Lewins does not show anywhere. He urges that his
“atheistic or _non-animist_ (soulless) standpoint is the _pivot_” on
which his “whole synthesis revolves.” But as that “pivot” is no
higher than the physical brain with its hallucinations, then it must
be a broken reed indeed. A philosophy that goes no further than
superficial Agnosticism, and says that “what Tennyson says of Deity
_may_ be true, but it is not in the region of natural cogitation;
for it transcends the logical _Encheiresis naturæ_“ (Hum. _v._
Theism)—is no philosophy, but simply _unqualified negation_. And one
who teaches that ”_savants_, or specialists, are the last to reach
the _summa scientiæ_, for the constant _search_ after knowledge must
ever prevent its _fruition_” (ibid), cuts the ground himself under
his feet, and thus loses the right, not only to be considered a man
of science, but likewise his claim to the title of philosopher, for
he rejects all knowledge. Dr. Lewins, quoting Schiller, “to the
effect that truth can never be reached while the mind is in its
analytic throes,” shows the poet-philosopher saying that:—“To
capture the fleeting phantom he (the analyst) must fetter it by
rules, must anatomatise its fair body into concepts, and imprison
_its living spirit_ into a bare skeleton of words”—and thus brings
this as a prop and proof of his own arguments that we need not
trouble ourselves with the “cause of causes.” But Schiller believed
in spirit and immortality, while the Hylo-Idealists deny them _in
toto_. What he says above is accepted by every Occultist and
Theosophist, simply because _he refers to the purely intellectual_
(not Spiritual) _analysis_ on the physical plane, and according to
the present scientific methods. Such analysis, of course, will never
help man to reach the real _inner_ soul-knowledge, but must ever
leave him stranded in the bogs of fruitless speculation.
The truth is, that Hylo-Idealism is at best QUIETISM—only on the
purely material plane. “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die,” seems its motto. Dr. Lewins tells us that he holds his views
with Epicurus. I beg leave to contradict again. Epicurus insisted
upon the necessity of making away with an unphilosophical,
anthropomorphic deity— a bundle of contradictions—and so do we,
the Theosophists. But Epicurus believed in gods, finite and
conditioned in space and time, still _divine_ when compared to
objective ephemeral man: again, just as we, Theosophists, believe
in them.
We feel sorry to have to say unpleasant truths. The Founder of
Hylo-Idealism is evidently a marvellously well-read man, his
learning is great and undeniable; and, we have always had an
instinctive respect for, and sympathy with, thinkers of his calibre.
But, we have been sent pamphlets and books on Hylo-Idealism for
review, and one would be truant to his duty to conceal one’s
honest and sincere views on anything. Therefore, we say that,
contradictions and inconsistencies in the Hylo-Idealistic system
apart, we find in it a mass of ideas and _arguments_ which come
forcibly home to us, because they are part and parcel of the Eastern
Idealism. Our premises and propositions seem to be almost identical
in some respects, but the conclusions we come to disagree in every
point, the most important of which is the true nature of matter.
This, which “has been _fabled_ as ‘Spirit,’” writes Dr. Lewins in
1878, “is really merely the ‘_vis insita_’ of matter or ‘nature’—the
latter a misnomer if creation or birth is a delusion, as it must be
on the hypothesis of the eternity of matter.”
Here the Doctor speaks evidently of “Spirit” from the Christian
stand-point, and criticises it from this aspect. And from this
stand-point and aspect he is perfectly right; but as wrong from
those of Eastern philosophy. Did he but view Spirit, _as one with
eternal matter_, which, though eternal _in esse_ is but finite and
conditioned during its periodical manifestations, he would not so
materialise its _vis insita_—which is _vis vitæ_ but when applied to
individual manifestations, the living subjects of illusion, or
animated bodies. But this would lead us too far, and we must close
the subject with one more protest. There is a casual remark in
“Humanism _v._ Theisms” to the effect (on the authority of Ueberweg)
that “the early Greek thinkers and Sages were Hylo-Zoists.” Aye,
learned Doctor; but the early Greek thinkers understood Hylo-Zoism
(from “_Hyle_” _primordial_ matter, or what the greatest chemist in
England, Mr. Crookes, has called “protyle” _undifferentiated
matter_, and “_Zoe_,” life) in a way very different from yours. So
are we, Theosophists and Eastern Occultists, “Hylo-Zoists”; but it
is because with us “life” is the synonym both of Spirit and Matter,
or the ONE eternal and infinite LIFE whether manifested or
otherwise. That LIFE is both the eternal IDEA and its periodical
LOGOS. He who has grasped and mastered this doctrine completely has
thereby solved the mystery of BEING.
“THE ADVERSARY.”
P.S.—We have in type a very excellent article by Mr. L. Courtney,
which could not find room in this present number, but will appear in
March. In it, the writer says all that he _can_ possibly say in
favour of Hylo-Idealism, and that is all one can do. Thus, LUCIFER
will give one fair chance more to the new System; after which it
will have gained a certain right to neither answer at such length,
nor accept any article on Hylo-Idealism that will go beyond a page
or so.—“A.”
------------------------------------
INTERESTING TO ASTROLOGERS.
ASTROLOGICAL NOTES—No. 4.
_To the Editor of_ LUCIFER.
QUESTION, at London, 1887, March 2nd, 6.8 p.m. What will be the
duration of quesited’s life?
Though the preceding figure showed that my relative would recover
from his illness,[194] yet it was obvious that the end could not be
far distant; and I drew the present figure for the minute of the
impression, to interrogate the stars.
-----
Footnote 194:
NOTE.—This was shown by the preceding figure; a weak aspect in
horary astrology can only symbolize a weak result. Hence, though
the weakly good semisextile was sufficient to indicate
convalescence from a self-limited disease like pneumonia, yet it
did not denote complete restoration to health. Had the
significators been applying to a Trine, I should have judged not
only convalescence from the acute attack, but a continuance of a
vigorous old age.
-----
The following are the elements of the figure:—
Cusp of 10th house 14 ♊.
— 11th house 21 ♋.
— 12th house 22 ♌.
— 1st house 17° 45’ ♍.
— 2nd house 10 ♎.
— 3rd house 9 ♏.
Planets’ places are:
♆ 25. 13. 15 ♉.
♅ 11. 37. 30 R. ♎.
♄ 15. 46. 30 R ♋.
♃ 5. 41. 30 R ♏.
♂ 23. 50. 45 ♓.
☉ 11. 52. 19 ♓.
♀ 3. 10. 30 ♈.
☿ 29. 36. 15 ♓.
☽ 8. 28. 15 ♊.
Caput Draconis 27. 21. 38 ♌.
⨁ 14. 20. 56 I.
As in the previous figure the 6th house is the quesited’s 1st, and
the 1st house is his 8th. As the time of the question was after
sunset, ☿ ruling ♏ by night was lord of his 8th, and ♅ ruling ♒ by
night was lord of his 1st. The aspect of the significators is ☿ 167°
58’ 45” ♅, separating from the Quincunx and applying to the
Opposition. The Quincunx is, like the Conjunction and Parallel,
convertible in nature, being good with benefics and evil with
malefics, and when a benefic and malefic are thus joined, the
stronger rules. It was therefore in this case doubly evil, as the
significators were separating from one evil aspect and applying to
another though not within orbs of either. As ☿, the applying planet,
was in a common sign, and is an angle of the figure, each degree
signified a week; and as 12° 1′ 15´´ were wanted to complete the
opposition, the critical period was shown to be a fraction over 12
weeks, or May 25th.
Danger to life was also shown by _Cauda Draconis_ in quesited’s 1st
house; by ☉ in quesited’s 1st afflicted by a very close Quincunx of
♅ lord of his 1st, ♅ moreover receiving ☉ in his Detriment, and ☉
receiving ♅ in his Fall; and by ☽, lady of quesited’s 6th, posited
in his 4th, and afflicted by a rather close Quartile of ☉ posited in
his 1st, ☉ moreover receiving ☽ in his Anti-triplicity (_sit venia
verbo_). Nevertheless, as the significators were not actually in any
evil aspect, ☿ moreover receiving ♅ in his Triplicity, and being
almost out of ♓ his Fall and Detriment, and the Detriment of ♅; ☽,
lady of his 6th, and posited in his 4th, applying to a Trine of ♅
lord of his 1st; and ☿ lord of his 8th applying to Conjunction with
♀ lady of his 4th, ♀ moreover receiving ☿ in her exaltation;—all
this denoted that May 25th would be the time, not indeed of certain
death, but of imminent danger, the beginning of the end.
⨁ being in the 4th house of the figure, almost on the cusp, denoted
a legacy to my father.
The actual result was as follows: After having been for some time in
fair health, considering his age and recent illness, _he was
suddenly taken ill and in great danger on the night of May 27th, and
on the morning of May 31st was in articulo mortis, and given up by
his two physicians_. From this, however, he rallied; relapsed on the
night of July 6th; rallied again; but _died on July 19th_ at 8.30
a.m., after a sudden seizure of only 15 minutes’ duration, _and my
father received a legacy under his will_.
The quesited suffered much in his last illness from cough and
dyspnœa. The certificate of death was—“_Primary_: emphysema, morbus
cordis. _Secondary_: thrombus, syncope.” With this may be compared ♄
in ♋, having dignity in quesited’s 8th house, and afflicting ♅ lord
of quesited’s 1st. ♄ in ♋ denotes “phthisis, ulceration in lungs,
obstructions and bruises in breast, ague, scurvy, cancer, and
cough.”
NEMO.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
Some longer stories and articles are continued from number to number
of the publication. Where the continued text appears in this volume,
the ‘to be continued’ note a the bottom of each section is linked to
the next. On occasion, the promised continuation is not to be found
in thi text, and no link is provided.
On p. 236, the footnote now numbered 56 was referenced both in the
title of the review and on the repetition of that phrase in the body
of the review. The first of these has been removed as redundant. On
occasion, diacritical marks in foreign words were not printed, and
have not been added here.
The copious quotations give rise to the occasional puzzle with
quotation marks, which make it difficult to say what the authors
intended. Where there is no simple resolution, the text is given
here as printed. The problematic paragraphs appear on p. 151, p.
164, p. 179, p. 205, p. 277, p. 295, p. 305.
Other errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been
corrected as noted below.
The references are to the page and line in the original. Where the
page is printed in columns, ‘L’ and ‘R’ refer to the left and right
columns. Those referenced with three numbers indicate the page,
footnote and line within the note. Since footnotes have sometimes
been moved to follow a paragraph, all references are to their
position in the printed text.
3.1.2 How art thou [f]allen from Heaven Restored.
20.1 in which the Zoroast[r]ian Mitra Inserted
22.1.1 tha[t] John saw Restored.
22.2.9 it literally means ‘to howl.’[”] Added.
38.4 I have p[re/er]suaded my aunt Transposed.
44.16 chapters of the Bha[ga]vadgita Inserted.
51.1 self-contained and harmonious within[.] Added.
55.31 the high plateaux of Central Asia[.] Added.
55.40 some amount of injustice in it[.] Added.
60.6 Count Tolstoi considers it nec[e]ssary Inserted.
67.2 in [leasurely] fashion _sic_
69.13 in the Villa Torcello[.] Added.
72L.33 my books been par[a/o]died Replaced.
75L.55 by [C/G]. H. Pember Replaced.
79R.43 But as LU[FIC/CIF]ER hopes shortly to deal Transposed.
74R.15 [“]That the first human beings Added.
80R.33 [“]The famous cynic, Cratus, Removed.
84.41 his theosop[h]ical views. Inserted.
85.19 the social respectabili[l/t]y it panders to Replaced.
87.40 [innoculated] with vice, _sic_
87.41 in his subsequent life[.] Added.
104.44 it grew importunate[.] Added.
116.8 the Hindu philosophical tenet[.] Added.
122.24 if he changes his a[l/t]titude Replaced.
122.33 that marriage is consummated.[”] Added.
124.32 [“]Not one would have the courage Added.
131.3 By [C/G]. H. Pember, M.A. Replaced.
132.32 by such cavalier treatment[.] Added.
134.12 this [insistance] upon the letter _sic_
147.29 are pearls of wisdom[.] Added.
147.32 of the Ros[i]crucians Inserted.
152.28 ‘the Great Goddess[’] Added.
152.29 in the minds of Theosophists.[”] Added.
158R.43 is the day[-]house of ♅ Inserted.
164.6 members of that society who[ who] always find Removed.
172.15 and a benefic[i]ent power Removed.
179.3.12 principle of the Theosophists,[)] Added.
185.35 all occupied with [“/‘]Fou;[”/’] Replaced.
195.22 clos[e] to the great fire Restored.
204.45 Life-renewal and Life-tran[s]mission inserted.
201.26 draw it from you[r] own beautiful soul! Added.
205.38 and is himself examined of no man.[”] Added.
206.1 not for my life, assuredly[,/.] Replaced.
206.13 because it can give _me_[,] pleasure. Removed.
206.17 I am surr[r]ounded with a whole world Removed.
206.31 may be made comfortable.[”] Added.
209.36 within his soul.[”] Removed.
218.44 most wonderfull[l]y Removed.
217.23 aim of this work[,] the bias of the writer Added.
224.33 the irrational[i]ty Inserted.
226.40 the p[h]yschic-astral and the divine-astral Removed.
230.11 in[ ]dulge in the practice Removed.
233.3 before the seventee[n]th century Inserted.
233.27 cons[e]quently the great cry Inserted.
236.27 pheno[nem/men]a of modern spiritualism Transposed.
256.7 the lustre of the firma[n/m]ent Replaced.
260.38 uplifted to his were Fleta’s eyes[.] Added.
261.17 but [eat] nothing more _sic>_
263.39 pushed the door open[,/.] Replaced.
265.38 a passionate and adoring eagerness[.] Added.
273.59 [l]ife of the Spirit Restored.
278.44 the only one to see me[,/.] Replaced.
283.15 repugnant to a belie[t/f] in this law Replaced.
284.31 in a position to apprecia[i/t]e Replaced.
292.17 as in the Jubilee[e] coinage Removed.
292.28 The question of what interpreta[ta]tion Removed.
293.68.2 (1 Corinthians xi, 11.[)] Added.
296.7 or [“/‘]problematical[”/’] Mahatma?” Replaced.
299.29 since it beg[u/a]n by a “play of words,” Replaced.
301.1.5 the Word of Truth, th[e] _Makheru_ of Egypt. Restored.
301.1.6 The preserved mummy was the bod[y] Restored.
301.15 [“]χρηστός ἑστιν επι τους,” Added.
302.16 and even by unbelievers,[”] _sic_
302.1.1 [“]Christianus quantum interpretatione Added.
303.2.3 or devoted to oracul[e/a]r services Replaced.
304.25 “the son of Iaso or _Ieso_, the [“]healer,” Removed.
305.4 of this rema[r]kable form. Inserted.
305.36 with [“/‘]oil that was taken from the wood Replaced.
305.37 he is called the Christ:[”/’] Replaced.
305.41 also as the Horus of both sexes.[”] Added.
305.2.1 for in[t]itiation into the Greek Removed.
306.34 the name of the Christ as the e[n/m]balmed Replaced.
mummy
306.47 With the Greek [t]erminal _s_ Restored.
307.30 our Christology is mummified mythology.” Removed.
309.2.1 [“]The word שיה _shiac_, Removed.
310.19 ([“]λεγόμενος,” surnamed “χρηστος.”) Added.
303.3.3 [(]here Socrates is the _Chréstos_) Added.
303.4.12 circle and solar year,[”] _sic_
311.36 tran[s]gress> that law? Inserted.
313.1 while parasit[i]es eat slowly Removed.
317.9 in the [mechanicism] of the Universe _sic_
317.13 pessimism is ro[u/o]ted in the recognition Replaced.
322.29 and that _[“] system_ Added.
326.22 from any obligatory duty.[”] Removed.
326.28 thrown the blame and responsibi[i]lty Removed.
327.55 whether in[ it] its dead letter, Removed.
330L.14 having di[r/s]burdened our heart Replaced.
332L.18 they disarm cri[c/t]icism Replaced.
333R.61 even altars unto Baal[”] Added.
334R.51 [“]where the women wove hangings for the Added.
grove”
335L.44 and the [“]Kaivalyanita.” Added.
334L.29 and by the famine....[’/”] Replaced.
349.32 knew that man to be a savage[.] Added.
351.36 recognised it as his own room[,/.] Replaced.
360.23 it was exceedingly solid and well fastened[.] Added.
361.20 [“]I may not readily understand you. Added.
366.13 were all in all to us![”] Added.
367.27 that reigneth over all![”] Added.
372.23 cannot subsist witho[n/u]t the spiritual force Inverted.
373.42 have themselves an organic form[,/.] Replaced.
375.8 —probably many[.] Added.
386.25 should he meet him in Heaven[,/.] Replaced.
387.25 [me] Ambrose’s sword _sic_ ?
389.34 [“/‘]thou> must be Replaced.
390.19 as you shall hear.[”] Added.
404.11 vegetable forms [a]s well? Restored.
406.30 from not[—/-]living matter.[’]” Replaced/Removed.
407.1.1 [“]missing link” Restored.
409.47 (actual or possible)[”] Added.
411.3 the root of [uo/ou]r present constitution Transposed.
412.19 in accepting the doct[r]ine of Atonement Inserted.
413.16 the[,] Church wishes the truth, Removed.
417.19 and transfer it [to ]the shoulders Inserted.
434.29 an hono[n/u]rable reputation Inverted.
436.1.14 to the [‘]Lord’ for a burnt-offering Restored.
437.19 must be the _d[’]evil_ worship _sic_
447.35 they were set in[.] Added.
447.27 which was habitual with him[.] Added.
450.2 learned to surrender his love.[”] Added.
456.14 follow and s[ie/ei]ze her thoughts Transposed.
469.7 [“]No one said aught Added.
472.3.1 [“]breaks through the Brahmarandra _sic_
474.5 three-fold r[h]ythm Inserted.
477.7 it would never [h/b]e his. Replaced.
477.27 by personal craving or desire[.] Added.
481.10 the quickest violet[.] Added.
484.10 the very ar[ô/o]ma of our thoughts Replaced.
486.5 the i[n]diosyncrasies of a nation Removed.
490.12 “Faith is the key of Christendom,[’/”] Replaced.
494.41 only a coun[f/t]erfeit Presentment Replaced.
495.23 _but for destruction_.[”] Added.
502.35 the Deit[r]y is either an anachronism, Removed.
502.39 in the tract entitle[s/d] “Autocentricism, or Replaced.
the Brain Theory of Life and Mind.”
503.10 which certifies it[s] own nomenal existence. Added.
503.13 the nöetic or hyloic basis[.] Added.
503.14 admits of sci[e]ntific research Inserted.
503.28 such states of rapture the relatio[u/n]s Replaced.
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