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Title: Isis unveiled, Volume 1 (of 2), Science: A master-key to mysteries of ancient and modern science and theology
Author: Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Language: English
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Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and
punctuation remains unchanged with the exception of Greek and Hebrew
which have been extensively corrected. The corrections are listed at
the end of the book.
Italics are represented thus _italic_, bold thus ~bold~ and
superscripts thus y^{en}.
[Illustration: Head and shoulders drawing of the author]
ISIS UNVEILED:
A MASTER-KEY
TO THE
MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT AND MODERN
SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY.
BY
H. P. BLAVATSKY,
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
“Cecy est un livre de bonne Foy.”—MONTAIGNE.
VOL. I.—_SCIENCE._
FOURTH EDITION.
NEW YORK:
J. W. BOUTON, 706 BROADWAY.
LONDON: BERNARD QUARITCH.
1878.
COPYRIGHT, BY
J. W. BOUTON.
1877.
TROW’S
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING CO.,
PRINTERS AND BOOKBINDERS,
_205-213 East 12th. St._,
NEW YORK.
THE AUTHOR
Dedicates these Volumes
TO THE
_THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY_,
WHICH WAS FOUNDED AT NEW YORK, A.D. 1875,
TO STUDY THE SUBJECTS ON WHICH THEY TREAT.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
BEFORE THE VEIL
Dogmatic assumptions of modern science and theology ix
The Platonic philosophy affords the only middle ground xi
Review of the ancient philosophical systems xv
A Syriac manuscript on Simon Magus xxiii
Glossary of terms used in this book xxiii
Volume first.
_THE “INFALLIBILITY” OF MODERN SCIENCE._
CHAPTER I.
OLD THINGS WITH NEW NAMES.
The Oriental Kabala 1
Ancient traditions supported by modern research 3
The progress of mankind marked by cycles 5
Ancient cryptic science 7
Priceless value of the Vedas 12
Mutilations of the Jewish sacred books in translation 13
Magic always regarded as a divine science 25
Achievements of its adepts and hypotheses of their modern
detractors 25
Man’s yearning for immortality 37
CHAPTER II.
PHENOMENA AND FORCES.
The servility of society 39
Prejudice and bigotry of men of science 40
They are chased by psychical phenomena 41
Lost arts 49
The human will the master-force of forces 57
Superficial generalizations of the French _savants_ 60
Mediumistic phenomena, to what attributable 67
Their relation to crime 71
CHAPTER III.
BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND.
Huxley’s derivation from the _Orohippus_ 74
Comte, his system and disciples 75
The London materialists 85
Borrowed robes 89
Emanation of the objective universe from the subjective 92
CHAPTER IV.
THEORIES RESPECTING PSYCHIC PHENOMENA.
Theory of de Gasparin 100
“ of Thury 100
“ of des Mousseaux, de Mirville 100
“ of Babinet 101
“ of Houdin 101
“ of MM. Royer and Jobart de Lamballe 102
The twins—“unconscious cerebration” and “unconscious
ventriloquism.” 105
Theory of Crookes 112
“ of Faraday 116
“ of Chevreuil 116
The Mendeleyeff commission of 1876 117
Soul blindness 121
CHAPTER V.
THE ETHER, OR “ASTRAL LIGHT.”
One primal force, but many correlations 126
Tyndall narrowly escapes a great discovery 127
The impossibility of miracle 128
Nature of the primordial substance 133
Interpretation of certain ancient myths 133
Experiments of the fakirs 139
Evolution in Hindu allegory 153
CHAPTER VI.
PSYCHO-PHYSICAL PHENOMENA.
The debt we owe to Paracelsus 163
Mesmerism—its parentage, reception, potentiality 165
“Psychometry” 183
Time, space, eternity 184
Transfer of energy from the visible to the invisible universe 186
The Crookes experiments and Cox theory 195
CHAPTER VII.
THE ELEMENTS, ELEMENTALS, AND ELEMENTARIES.
Attraction and repulsion universal in all the kingdoms of nature 206
Psychical phenomena depend on physical surroundings 211
Observations in Siam 214
Music in nervous disorders 215
The “world-soul” and its potentialities 216
Healing by touch, and healers 217
“Diakka” and Porphyry’s bad demons 219
The quenchless lamp 224
Modern ignorance of vital force 237
Antiquity of the theory of force-correlation 241
Universality of belief in magic 247
CHAPTER VIII.
SOME MYSTERIES OF NATURE.
Do the planets affect human destiny? 253
Very curious passage from Hermes 254
The restlessness of matter 257
Prophecy of Nostradamus fulfilled 260
Sympathies between planets and plants 264
Hindu knowledge of the properties of colors 265
“Coincidences” the panacea of modern science 268
The moon and the tides 273
Epidemic mental and moral disorders 274
The gods of the Pantheons only natural forces 280
Proofs of the magical powers of Pythagoras 283
The viewless races of ethereal space 284
The “four truths” of Buddhism 291
CHAPTER IX.
CYCLIC PHENOMENA.
Meaning of the expression “coats of skin” 293
Natural selection and its results 295
The Egyptian “circle of necessity” 296
Pre-Adamite races 299
Descent of spirit into matter 302
The triune nature of man 309
The lowest creatures in the scale of being 310
Elementals specifically described 311
Proclus on the beings of the air 312
Various names for elementals 313
Swedenborgian views on soul-death 317
Earth-bound human souls 319
Impure mediums and their “guides” 325
Psychometry an aid to scientific research 333
CHAPTER X.
THE INNER AND OUTER MAN.
Père Félix arraigns the scientists 338
The “Unknowable” 340
Danger of evocations by tyros 342
Lares and Lemures 345
Secrets of Hindu temples 350
Reïncarnation 351
Witchcraft and witches 353
The sacred soma trance 357
Vulnerability of certain “shadows” 363
Experiment of Clearchus on a sleeping boy 365
The author witnesses a trial of magic in India 369
Case of the Cevennois 371
CHAPTER XI.
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL MARVELS.
Invulnerability attainable by man 379
Projecting the force of the will 380
Insensibility to snake-poison 381
Charming serpents by music 383
Teratological phenomena discussed 385
The psychological domain confessedly unexplored 407
Despairing regrets of Berzelius 411
Turning a river into blood a vegetable phenomenon 413
CHAPTER XII.
THE “IMPASSABLE CHASM.”
Confessions of ignorance by men of science 417
The Pantheon of nihilism 421
Triple composition of fire 423
Instinct and reason defined 425
Philosophy of the Hindu Jaïns 429
Deliberate misrepresentations of Lemprière 431
Man’s astral soul not immortal 432
The reïncarnation of Buddha 437
Magical sun and moon pictures of Thibet 441
Vampirism—its phenomena explained 449
Bengalese jugglery 457
CHAPTER XIII.
REALITIES AND ILLUSION.
The rationale of talismans 462
Unexplained mysteries 466
Magical experiment in Bengal 467
Chibh Chondor’s surprising feats 471
The Indian tape-climbing trick an illusion 473
Resuscitation of buried fakirs 477
Limits of suspended animation 481
Mediumship totally antagonistic to adeptship 487
What are “materialized spirits”? 493
The _Shudâla Mâdan_ 495
Philosophy of levitation 497
The elixir and alkahest 503
CHAPTER XIV.
EGYPTIAN WISDOM.
Origin of the Egyptians 515
Their mighty engineering works 517
The ancient land of the Pharaohs 521
Antiquity of the Nilotic monuments 529
Arts of war and peace 531
Mexican myths and ruins 545
Resemblances to the Egyptian 551
Moses a priest of Osiris 555
The lessons taught by the ruins of Siam 563
The Egyptian Tau at Palenque 573
CHAPTER XV.
INDIA THE CRADLE OF THE RACE.
Acquisition of the “secret doctrine” 575
Two relics owned by a Pali scholar 577
Jealous exclusiveness of the Hindus 581
Lydia Maria Child on Phallic symbolism 583
The age of the Vedas and Manu 587
Traditions of pre-diluvian races 589
Atlantis and its peoples 593
Peruvian relics 597
The Gobi desert and its secrets 599
Thibetan and Chinese legends 600
The magician aids, not impedes, nature 617
Philosophy, religion, arts and sciences bequeathed by Mother
India to posterity 618
PREFACE.
The work now submitted to public judgment is the fruit of a somewhat
intimate acquaintance with Eastern adepts and study of their science.
It is offered to such as are willing to accept truth wherever it may
be found, and to defend it, even looking popular prejudice straight
in the face. It is an attempt to aid the student to detect the vital
principles which underlie the philosophical systems of old.
The book is written in all sincerity. It is meant to do even justice,
and to speak the truth alike without malice or prejudice. But it shows
neither mercy for enthroned error, nor reverence for usurped authority.
It demands for a spoliated past, that credit for its achievements which
has been too long withheld. It calls for a restitution of borrowed
robes, and the vindication of calumniated but glorious reputations.
Toward no form of worship, no religious faith, no scientific hypothesis
has its criticism been directed in any other spirit. Men and parties,
sects and schools are but the mere ephemera of the world’s day. TRUTH,
high-seated upon its rock of adamant, is alone eternal and supreme.
We believe in no Magic which transcends the scope and capacity of
the human mind, nor in “miracle,” whether divine or diabolical, if
such imply a transgression of the laws of nature instituted from all
eternity. Nevertheless, we accept the saying of the gifted author
of _Festus_, that the human heart has not yet fully uttered itself,
and that we have never attained or even understood the extent of its
powers. Is it too much to believe that man should be developing new
sensibilities and a closer relation with nature? The logic of evolution
must teach as much, if carried to its legitimate conclusions. If,
somewhere, in the line of ascent from vegetable or ascidian to the
noblest man a soul was evolved, gifted with intellectual qualities,
it cannot be unreasonable to infer and believe that a faculty of
perception is also growing in man, enabling him to descry facts and
truths even beyond our ordinary ken. Yet we do not hesitate to accept
the assertion of Biffé, that “the essential is forever the same.
Whether we cut away the marble inward that hides the statue in the
block, or pile stone upon stone outward till the temple is completed,
our NEW result is only an _old idea_. The latest of all the eternities
will find its destined other half-soul in the earliest.”
When, years ago, we first travelled over the East, exploring
the penetralia of its deserted sanctuaries, two saddening and
ever-recurring questions oppressed our thoughts: _Where_, WHO, WHAT
_is_ GOD? _Who ever saw the_ IMMORTAL SPIRIT _of man, so as to be able
to assure himself of man’s immortality_?
It was while most anxious to solve these perplexing problems that
we came into contact with certain men, endowed with such mysterious
powers and such profound knowledge that we may truly designate them as
the sages of the Orient. To their instructions we lent a ready ear.
They showed us that by combining science with religion, the existence
of God and immortality of man’s spirit may be demonstrated like a
problem of Euclid. For the first time we received the assurance that
the Oriental philosophy has room for no other faith than an absolute
and immovable faith in the omnipotence of man’s own immortal self.
We were taught that this omnipotence comes from the kinship of man’s
spirit with the Universal Soul—God! The latter, they said, can never be
demonstrated but by the former. Man-spirit proves God-spirit, as the
one drop of water proves a source from which it must have come. Tell
one who had never seen water, that there is an ocean of water, and he
must accept it on faith or reject it altogether. But let one drop fall
upon his hand, and he then has the fact from which all the rest may be
inferred. After that he could by degrees understand that a boundless
and fathomless ocean of water existed. Blind faith would no longer be
necessary; he would have supplanted it with KNOWLEDGE. When one sees
mortal man displaying tremendous capabilities, controlling the forces
of nature and opening up to view the world of spirit, the reflective
mind is overwhelmed with the conviction that if one man’s spiritual
_Ego_ can do this much, the capabilities of the FATHER SPIRIT must be
relatively as much vaster as the whole ocean surpasses the single drop
in volume and potency. _Ex nihilo nihil fit_; prove the soul of man by
its wondrous powers—you have proved God!
In our studies, mysteries were shown to be no mysteries. Names and
places that to the Western mind have only a significance derived from
Eastern fable, were shown to be realities. Reverently we stepped in
spirit within the temple of Isis; to lift aside the veil of “the
one that is and was and shall be” at Saïs; to look through the rent
curtain of the Sanctum Sanctorum at Jerusalem; and even to interrogate
within the crypts which once existed beneath the sacred edifice, the
mysterious Bath-Kol. The _Filia Vocis_—the daughter of the divine
voice—responded from the mercy-seat within the veil,[1] and science,
theology, every human hypothesis and conception born of imperfect
knowledge, lost forever their authoritative character in our sight.
The one-living God had spoken through his oracle—man, and we were
satisfied. Such knowledge is priceless; and it has been hidden only
from those who overlooked it, derided it, or denied its existence.
From such as these we apprehend criticism, censure, and perhaps
hostility, although the obstacles in our way neither spring from the
validity of proof, the authenticated facts of history, nor the lack
of common sense among the public whom we address. The drift of modern
thought is palpably in the direction of liberalism in religion as well
as science. Each day brings the reactionists nearer to the point where
they must surrender the despotic authority over the public conscience,
which they have so long enjoyed and exercised. When the Pope can go
to the extreme of fulminating anathemas against all who maintain the
liberty of the Press and of speech, or who insist that in the conflict
of laws, civil and ecclesiastical, the civil law should prevail, or
that any method of instruction solely secular, may be approved;[2]
and Mr. Tyndall, as the mouthpiece of nineteenth century science,
says, “... the impregnable position of science may be stated in a few
words: we claim, and we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of
cosmological theory”[3]—the end is not difficult to foresee.
Centuries of subjection have not quite congealed the life-blood of men
into crystals around the nucleus of blind faith; and the nineteenth is
witnessing the struggles of the giant as he shakes off the Liliputian
cordage and rises to his feet. Even the Protestant communion of England
and America, now engaged in the revision of the text of its _Oracles_,
will be compelled to show the origin and merits of the text itself. The
day of domineering over men with dogmas has reached its gloaming.
Our work, then, is a plea for the recognition of the Hermetic
philosophy, the anciently universal Wisdom-Religion, as the only
possible key to the Absolute in science and theology. To show that we
do not at all conceal from ourselves the gravity of our undertaking,
we may say in advance that it would not be strange if the following
classes should array themselves against us:
The Christians, who will see that we question the evidences of the
genuineness of their faith.
The Scientists, who will find their pretensions placed in the same
bundle with those of the Roman Catholic Church for infallibility, and,
in certain particulars, the sages and philosophers of the ancient world
classed higher than they.
Pseudo-Scientists will, of course, denounce us furiously.
Broad Churchmen and Freethinkers will find that we do not accept what
they do, but demand the recognition of the whole truth.
Men of letters and various _authorities_, who hide their real belief in
deference to popular prejudices.
The mercenaries and parasites of the Press, who prostitute its more
than royal power, and dishonor a noble profession, will find it easy to
mock at things too wonderful for them to understand; for to them the
price of a paragraph is more than the value of sincerity. From many
will come honest criticism; from many—cant. But we look to the future.
The contest now going on between the party of public conscience and the
party of reaction, has already developed a healthier tone of thought.
It will hardly fail to result ultimately in the overthrow of error and
the triumph of Truth. We repeat again—we are laboring for the brighter
morrow.
And yet, when we consider the bitter opposition that we are called
upon to face, who is better entitled than we upon entering the arena
to write upon our shield the hail of the Roman gladiator to Cæsar:
MORITURUS TE SALUTAT!
_New York, September, 1877._
BEFORE THE VEIL.
_Joan._—Advance our waving colors on the walls!
—_King Henry VI._ Act IV.
“My life has been devoted to the study of man, his destiny and his
happiness.”—J. R. BUCHANAN, M.D., _Outlines of Lectures on
Anthropology_.
It is nineteen centuries since, as we are told, the night of Heathenism
and Paganism was first dispelled by the divine light of Christianity;
and two-and-a-half centuries since the bright lamp of Modern Science
began to shine on the darkness of the ignorance of the ages. Within
these respective epochs, we are required to believe, the true moral
and intellectual progress of the race has occurred. The ancient
philosophers were well enough for their respective generations, but
they were illiterate as compared with modern men of science. The
ethics of Paganism perhaps met the wants of the uncultivated people
of antiquity, but not until the advent of the luminous “Star of
Bethlehem,” was the true road to moral perfection and the way to
salvation made plain. Of old, brutishness was the rule, virtue and
spirituality the exception. Now, the dullest may read the will of God
in His revealed word; men have every incentive to be good, and are
constantly becoming better.
This is the assumption; what are the facts? On the one hand an
unspiritual, dogmatic, too often debauched clergy; a host of sects, and
three warring great religions; discord instead of union, dogmas without
proofs, sensation-loving preachers, and wealth and pleasure-seeking
parishioners’ hypocrisy and bigotry, begotten by the tyrannical
exigencies of respectability, the rule of the day, sincerity and real
piety exceptional. On the other hand, scientific hypotheses built
on sand; no accord upon a single question; rancorous quarrels and
jealousy; a general drift into materialism. A death-grapple of Science
with Theology for infallibility—“a conflict of ages.”
At Rome, the self-styled seat of Christianity, the putative successor
to the chair of Peter is undermining social order with his invisible
but omnipresent net-work of bigoted agents, and incites them to
revolutionize Europe for his temporal as well as spiritual supremacy.
We see him who calls himself the “Vicar of Christ,” fraternizing
with the anti-Christian Moslem against another Christian nation,
publicly invoking the blessing of God upon the arms of those who
have for centuries withstood, with fire and sword, the pretensions
of his Christ to Godhood! At Berlin—one of the great seats of
learning—professors of modern _exact_ sciences, turning their backs on
the boasted results of enlightenment of the post-Galileonian period,
are quietly snuffing out the candle of the great Florentine; seeking,
in short, to prove the heliocentric system, and even the earth’s
rotation, but the dreams of deluded scientists, Newton a visionary, and
all past and present astronomers but clever calculators of unverifiable
problems.[4]
Between these two conflicting Titans—Science and Theology—is
a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man’s personal
immortality, in a deity of any kind, and rapidly descending to the
level of a mere animal existence. Such is the picture of the hour,
illumined by the bright noon-day sun of this Christian and scientific
era!
Would it be strict justice to condemn to critical lapidation the most
humble and modest of authors for _entirely rejecting the authority
of both these combatants_? Are we not bound rather to take as the
true aphorism of this century, the declaration of Horace Greeley: “I
accept _unreservedly_ the views of no man, living or dead”?[5] Such,
at all events, will be our motto, and we mean that principle to be our
constant guide throughout this work.
Among the many phenomenal outgrowths of our century, the strange creed
of the so-called Spiritualists has arisen amid the tottering ruins of
self-styled revealed religions and materialistic philosophies; and yet
it alone offers a possible last refuge of compromise between the two.
That this unexpected ghost of pre-Christian days finds poor welcome
from our sober and positive century, is not surprising. Times have
strangely changed; and it is but recently that a well-known Brooklyn
preacher pointedly remarked in a sermon, that could Jesus come back and
behave in the streets of New York, as he did in those of Jerusalem, he
would find himself confined in the prison of the Tombs.[6] What sort
of welcome, then, could Spiritualism ever expect? True enough, the
weird stranger seems neither attractive nor promising at first sight.
Shapeless and uncouth, like an infant attended by seven nurses, it is
coming out of its teens lame and mutilated. The name of its enemies is
legion; its friends and protectors are a handful. But what of that?
When was ever truth accepted _à priori_? Because the champions of
Spiritualism have in their fanaticism magnified its qualities, and
remained blind to its imperfections, that gives no excuse to doubt
its reality. A forgery is impossible when we have no model to forge
after. The fanaticism of Spiritualists is itself a proof of the
genuineness and possibility of their phenomena. They give us facts
that we may investigate, not assertions that we must believe without
proof. Millions of reasonable men and women do not so easily succumb to
collective hallucination. And so, while the clergy, following their own
interpretations of the _Bible_, and science its self-made _Codex_ of
possibilities in nature, refuse it a fair hearing, _real_ science and
_true_ religion are silent, and gravely wait further developments.
The whole question of phenomena rests on the correct comprehension of
old philosophies. Whither, then, should we turn, in our perplexity, but
to the ancient sages, since, on the pretext of superstition, we are
refused an explanation by the modern? Let us ask them what they know of
genuine science and religion; not in the matter of mere details, but in
all the broad conception of these twin truths—so strong in their unity,
so weak when divided. Besides, we may find our profit in comparing this
boasted modern science with ancient ignorance; this improved modern
theology with the “Secret doctrines” of the ancient universal religion.
Perhaps we may thus discover a neutral ground whence we can reach and
profit by both.
It is the Platonic philosophy, the most elaborate compend of the
abstruse systems of old India, that can alone afford us this middle
ground. Although twenty-two and a quarter centuries have elapsed since
the death of Plato, the great minds of the world are still occupied
with his writings. He was, in the fullest sense of the word, the
world’s interpreter. And the greatest philosopher of the pre-Christian
era mirrored faithfully in his works the spiritualism of the Vedic
philosophers who lived thousands of years before himself, and its
metaphysical expression. Vyasa, Djeminy, Kapila, Vrihaspati, Sumati,
and so many others, will be found to have transmitted their indelible
imprint through the intervening centuries upon Plato and his school.
Thus is warranted the inference that to Plato and the ancient Hindu
sages was alike revealed the same wisdom. So surviving the shock of
time, what can this wisdom be but divine and eternal?
Plato taught justice as subsisting in the soul of its possessor and his
greatest good. “Men, in proportion to their intellect, have admitted
his transcendent claims.” Yet his commentators, almost with one
consent, shrink from every passage which implies that his metaphysics
are based on a solid foundation, and not on ideal conceptions.
But Plato could not accept a philosophy destitute of spiritual
aspirations; the two were at one with him. For the old Grecian sage
there was a single object of attainment: REAL KNOWLEDGE. He considered
those only to be genuine philosophers, or students of truth, who
possess the knowledge of the really-existing, in opposition to the mere
seeing; of the _always-existing_, in opposition to the transitory; and
of that which exists _permanently_, in opposition to that which waxes,
wanes, and is developed and destroyed alternately. “Beyond all finite
existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas, and principles,
there is an INTELLIGENCE or MIND [νοῦς, _nous_, the spirit], the first
principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas
are grounded; the Monarch and Lawgiver of the universe; the ultimate
substance from which all things derive their being and essence, the
first and efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty,
and excellency, and goodness, which pervades the universe—who is
called, by way of preëminence and excellence, the Supreme Good, the
God (ὁ θεός) ‘the God over all’ (ὁ επι πασι θεός).”[7] He is not the
truth nor the intelligence, but “the father of it.” Though this eternal
essence of things may not be perceptible by our physical senses, it
may be apprehended by the mind of those who are not wilfully obtuse.
“To you,” said Jesus to his elect disciples, “it is given to know the
mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to them [the πολλοὶ] it is not
given; ... therefore speak I to them in parables [or allegories];
because they seeing, see not, and hearing, they hear not, neither do
they understand.”[8]
The philosophy of Plato, we are assured by Porphyry, of the
Neo-platonic School was taught and illustrated in the MYSTERIES. Many
have questioned and even denied this; and Lobeck, in his _Aglaophomus_,
has gone to the extreme of representing the sacred orgies as little
more than an empty show to captivate the imagination. As though Athens
and Greece would for twenty centuries and more have repaired every
fifth year to Eleusis to witness a solemn religious farce! Augustine,
the papa-bishop of Hippo, has resolved such assertions. He declares
that the doctrines of the Alexandrian Platonists were the original
esoteric doctrines of the first followers of Plato, and describes
Plotinus as a Plato resuscitated. He also explains the motives of the
great philosopher for veiling the interior sense of what he taught.[9]
As to the _myths_, Plato declares in the _Gorgias_ and the _Phædon_
that they were the vehicles of great truths well worth the seeking.
But commentators are so little _en rapport_ with the great philosopher
as to be compelled to acknowledge that they are ignorant where “the
doctrinal ends, and the mythical begins.” Plato put to flight the
popular superstition concerning magic and dæmons, and developed
the exaggerated notions of the time into rational theories and
metaphysical conceptions. Perhaps these would not quite stand the
inductive method of reasoning established by Aristotle; nevertheless
they are satisfactory in the highest degree to those who apprehend the
existence of that higher faculty of insight or intuition, as affording
a criterion for ascertaining truth.
Basing all his doctrines upon the presence of the Supreme Mind,
Plato taught that the _nous_, spirit, or rational soul of man, being
“generated by the Divine Father,” possessed a nature kindred, or
even homogeneous, with the Divinity, and was capable of beholding
the eternal realities. This faculty of contemplating reality in a
direct and immediate manner belongs to God alone; the aspiration for
this knowledge constitutes what is really meant by _philosophy_—the
love of wisdom. The love of truth is inherently the love of good;
and so predominating over every desire of the soul, purifying it
and assimilating it to the divine, thus governing every act of the
individual, it raises man to a participation and communion with
Divinity, and restores him to the likeness of God. “This flight,” says
Plato in the _Theætetus_, “consists in becoming like God, and this
assimilation is the becoming just and holy with wisdom.”
The basis of this assimilation is always asserted to be the
preëxistence of the spirit or _nous_. In the allegory of the chariot
and winged steeds, given in the _Phædrus_, he represents the psychical
nature as composite and two-fold; the _thumos_, or _epithumetic_
part, formed from the substances of the world of phenomena; and the
θυμοειδές, _thumoeides_, the essence of which is linked to the eternal
world. The present earth-life is a fall and punishment. The soul dwells
in “the grave which we call _the body_,” and in its incorporate state,
and previous to the discipline of education, the noëtic or spiritual
element is “asleep.” Life is thus a dream, rather than a reality. Like
the captives in the subterranean cave, described in _The Republic_, the
back is turned to the light, we perceive only the shadows of objects,
and think them the actual realities. Is not this the idea of _Maya_,
or the illusion of the senses in physical life, which is so marked a
feature in Buddhistical philosophy? But these shadows, if we have not
given ourselves up absolutely to the sensuous nature, arouse in us the
reminiscence of that higher world that we once inhabited. “The interior
spirit has some dim and shadowy recollection of its antenatal state of
bliss, and some instinctive and proleptic yearnings for its return.” It
is the province of the discipline of philosophy to disinthrall it from
the bondage of sense, and raise it into the empyrean of pure thought,
to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty. “The soul,” says
Plato, in the _Theætetus_, “cannot come into the form of a man if
it has never seen the truth. This is a recollection of those things
which our soul formerly saw when journeying with Deity, despising the
things which we now say _are_, and looking up to that which REALLY IS.
Wherefore the _nous_, or spirit, of the philosopher (or student of the
higher truth) alone is furnished with wings; because he, to the best
of his ability, keeps these things in mind, of which the contemplation
renders even Deity itself divine. By making the right use of these
things remembered from the former life, by constantly perfecting
himself in the perfect mysteries, a man becomes truly perfect—an
initiate into the diviner wisdom.”
Hence we may understand why the sublimer scenes in the Mysteries were
always in the night. The life of the interior spirit is the death
of the external nature; and the night of the physical world denotes
the day of the spiritual. Dionysus, the night-sun, is, therefore,
worshipped rather than Helios, orb of day. In the Mysteries were
symbolized the preëxistent condition of the spirit and soul, and the
lapse of the latter into earth-life and Hades, the miseries of that
life, the purification of the soul, and its restoration to divine
bliss, or reünion with spirit. Theon, of Smyrna, aptly compares the
philosophical discipline to the mystic rites: “Philosophy,” says he,
“may be called the initiation into the true arcana, and the instruction
in the genuine Mysteries. There are five parts of this initiation:
I., the previous purification; II., the admission to participation in
the arcane rites; III., the epoptic revelation; IV., the investiture
or enthroning; V.—the fifth, which is produced from all these, is
friendship and interior communion with God, and the enjoyment of that
felicity which arises from intimate converse with divine beings....
Plato denominates the _epopteia_, or personal view, the perfect
contemplation of things which are apprehended intuitively, absolute
truths and ideas. He also considers the binding of the head and
crowning as analogous to the authority which any one receives from
his instructors, of leading others into the same contemplation. The
fifth gradation is the most perfect felicity arising from hence, and,
according to Plato, an assimilation to divinity as far as is possible
to human beings.”[10]
Such is Platonism. “Out of Plato,” says Ralph Waldo Emerson, “come
all things that are still written and debated among men of thought.”
He absorbed the learning of his times—of Greece from Philolaus to
Socrates; then of Pythagoras in Italy; then what he could procure from
Egypt and the East. He was so broad that all philosophy, European and
Asiatic, was in his doctrines; and to culture and contemplation he
added the nature and qualities of the poet.
The followers of Plato generally adhered strictly to his psychological
theories. Several, however, like Xenocrates, ventured into bolder
speculations. Speusippus, the nephew and successor of the great
philosopher, was the author of the _Numerical Analysis_, a treatise
on the Pythagorean numbers. Some of his speculations are not found in
the written _Dialogues_; but as he was a listener to the unwritten
lectures of Plato, the judgment of Enfield is doubtless correct, that
he did not differ from his master. He was evidently, though not named,
the antagonist whom Aristotle criticised, when professing to cite the
argument of Plato against the doctrine of Pythagoras, that all things
were in themselves numbers, or rather, inseparable from the idea of
numbers. He especially endeavored to show that the Platonic doctrine of
ideas differed essentially from the Pythagorean, in that it presupposed
numbers and magnitudes to exist apart from things. He also asserted
that Plato taught that there could be no _real_ knowledge, if the
object of that knowledge was not carried beyond or above the sensible.
But Aristotle was no trustworthy witness. He misrepresented Plato,
and he almost caricatured the doctrines of Pythagoras. There is a
canon of interpretation, which should guide us in our examinations of
every philosophical opinion: “The human mind has, under the necessary
operation of its own laws, been compelled to entertain the same
fundamental ideas, and the human heart to cherish the same feelings
in all ages.” It is certain that Pythagoras awakened the deepest
intellectual sympathy of his age, and that his doctrines exerted a
powerful influence upon the mind of Plato. His cardinal idea was
that there existed a permanent principle of unity beneath the forms,
changes, and other phenomena of the universe. Aristotle asserted that
he taught that “numbers are the first principles of all entities.”
Ritter has expressed the opinion that the formula of Pythagoras should
be taken symbolically, which is doubtless correct. Aristotle goes on
to associate these _numbers_ with the “forms” and “ideas” of Plato. He
even declares that Plato said: “forms are numbers,” and that “ideas
are substantial existences—real beings.” Yet Plato did not so teach.
He declared that the final cause was the Supreme Goodness—το ἀγαθόν.
“Ideas are objects of pure conception for the human reason, and they
are attributes of the Divine Reason.”[11] Nor did he ever say that
“forms are numbers.” What he did say may be found in the _Timæus_: “God
formed things as they first arose according to forms and numbers.”
It is recognized by modern science that all the higher laws of nature
assume the form of quantitative statement. This is perhaps a fuller
elaboration or more explicit affirmation of the Pythagorean doctrine.
Numbers were regarded as the best representations of the laws of
harmony which pervade the cosmos. We know too that in chemistry the
doctrine of atoms and the laws of combination are actually and, as
it were, arbitrarily defined by numbers. As Mr. W. Archer Butler
has expressed it: “The world is, then, through all its departments,
a living arithmetic in its development, a realized geometry in its
repose.”
The key to the Pythagorean dogmas is the general formula of unity in
multiplicity, the one evolving the many and pervading the many. This
is the ancient doctrine of emanation in few words. Even the apostle
Paul accepted it as true. “Εξ αυτοὺ, και δι᾽ αυτοῦ, και εις αυτὸν τὰ
πάντα”—Out of him and through him and in him all things are. This, as
we can see by the following quotation, is purely Hindu and Brahmanical:
“When the dissolution—Pralaya—had arrived at its term, the great
Being—Para-Atma or Para-Purusha—the Lord existing through himself,
out of whom and through whom all things were, and are and will be ...
resolved to emanate from his own substance the various creatures”
(_Manava-Dharma-Sastra_, book i., slokas 6 and 7).
The mystic Decad 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 is a way of expressing this idea.
The One is God, the Two, matter; the Three, combining Monad and Duad,
and partaking of the nature of both, is the phenomenal world; the
Tetrad, or form of perfection, expresses the emptiness of all; and the
Decad, or sum of all, involves the entire cosmos. The universe is the
combination of a thousand elements, and yet the expression of a single
spirit—a chaos to the sense, a cosmos to the reason.
The whole of this combination of the progression of numbers in the idea
of creation is Hindu. The Being existing through himself, Swayambhu
or Swayambhuva, as he is called by some, is one. He emanates from
himself the _creative faculty_, Brahma or Purusha (the divine male),
and the one becomes _Two_; out of this Duad, union of the purely
intellectual principle with the principle of matter, evolves a third,
which is Viradj, the phenomenal world. It is out of this invisible
and incomprehensible trinity, the Brahmanic Trimurty, that evolves
the second triad which represents the three faculties—the creative,
the conservative, and the transforming. These are typified by Brahma,
Vishnu, and Siva, but are again and ever blended into one. _Unity_,
Brahma, or as the _Vedas_ called him, Tridandi, is the god triply
manifested, which gave rise to the symbolical _Aum_ or the abbreviated
Trimurty. It is but under this trinity, ever active and tangible to all
our senses, that the invisible and unknown Monas can manifest itself
to the world of mortals. When he becomes _Sarira_, or he who puts on
a visible form, he typifies all the principles of matter, all the
germs of life, he is Purusha, the god of the three visages, or triple
power, the essence of the Vedic triad. “Let the Brahmas know the sacred
Syllable (Aum), the three words of the Savitri, and read the _Vedas_
daily” (_Manu_, book iv., sloka 125).
“After having produced the universe, He whose power is incomprehensible
vanished again, absorbed in the Supreme Soul.... Having retired into
the primitive darkness, the great Soul remains within the unknown, and
is void of all form....
“When having again reünited the subtile elementary principles, it
introduces itself into either a vegetable or animal seed, it assumes at
each a new form.”
“It is thus that, by an alternative waking and rest, the Immutable
Being causes to revive and die eternally all the existing creatures,
active and inert” (_Manu_, book i., sloka 50, and others).
He who has studied Pythagoras and his speculations on the Monad, which,
after having emanated the Duad retires into silence and darkness, and
thus creates the Triad can realize whence came the philosophy of the
great Samian Sage, and after him that of Socrates and Plato.
Speusippus seems to have taught that the psychical or thumetic soul
was immortal as well as the spirit or rational soul, and further
on we will show his reasons. He also—like Philolaus and Aristotle,
in his disquisitions upon the soul—makes of æther an element; so
that there were five principal elements to correspond with the five
regular figures in Geometry. This became also a doctrine of the
Alexandrian school.[12] Indeed, there was much in the doctrines of
the _Philaletheans_ which did not appear in the works of the older
Platonists, but was doubtless taught in substance by the philosopher
himself, but with his usual reticence was not committed to writing as
being too arcane for promiscuous publication. Speusippus and Xenocrates
after him, held, like their great master, that the _anima mundi_, or
world-soul, was not the Deity, but a manifestation. Those philosophers
never conceived of the One as an _animate nature_.[13] The original One
did not _exist_, as we understand the term. Not till he had united with
the many—emanated existence (the monad and duad) was a being produced.
The τίμιον, honored—the something manifested, dwells in the centre as
in the circumference, but it is only the reflection of the Deity—the
World-Soul.[14] In this doctrine we find the spirit of esoteric
Buddhism.
A man’s idea of God, is that image of blinding light that he sees
reflected in the concave mirror of his own soul, and yet this is not,
in very truth, God, but only His reflection. His glory is there, but,
it is the light of his own Spirit that the man sees, and it is all he
can bear to look upon. _The clearer the mirror, the brighter will be
the divine image._ But the external world cannot be witnessed in it
at the same moment. In the ecstatic Yogin, in the illuminated Seer,
the spirit will shine like the noon-day sun; in the debased victim of
earthly attraction, the radiance has disappeared, for the mirror is
obscured with the stains of matter. Such men deny their God, and would
willingly deprive humanity of soul at one blow.
NO GOD, NO SOUL? Dreadful, annihilating thought! The maddening
nightmare of a lunatic—Atheist; presenting before his fevered vision,
a hideous, ceaseless procession of sparks of cosmic matter created by
_no one_; self-appearing, self-existent, and self-developing; this
Self _no_ Self, for it is _nothing_ and _nobody_; floating onward
from _nowhence_, it is propelled by no Cause, for there is none, and
it rushes _nowhither_. And this in a circle of Eternity blind, inert,
and—CAUSELESS. What is even the erroneous conception of the Buddhistic
Nirvana in comparison! The Nirvana is preceded by numberless spiritual
transformations and metempsychoses, during which the entity loses not
for a second the sense of its own individuality, and which may last for
millions of ages before the Final _No_-thing is reached.
Though some have considered Speusippus as inferior to Aristotle, the
world is nevertheless indebted to him for defining and expounding many
things that Plato had left obscure in his doctrine of the Sensible and
Ideal. His maxim was “The Immaterial is known by means of scientific
thought, the Material by scientific perception.”[15]
Xenocrates expounded many of the unwritten theories and teachings of
his master. He too held the Pythagorean doctrine, and his system of
numerals and mathematics in the highest estimation. Recognizing but
three degrees of knowledge—_Thought_, _Perception_, and _Envisagement_
(or knowledge by _Intuition_), he made the former busy itself with all
that which is _beyond_ the heavens; Perception with things in the
heavens; Intuition with the heavens themselves.
We find again these theories, and nearly in the same language in the
_Manava-Dharma-Sastra_, when speaking of the creation of man: “He (the
Supreme) drew from his own essence the immortal breath which _perisheth
not in the being_, and to this soul of the being he gave the Ahancara
(conscience of the _ego_) sovereign guide. Then he gave to that soul of
the being (man) the intellect formed of _the three qualities_, and the
five organs of the outward perception.”
These three qualities are Intelligence, Conscience, and Will; answering
to the Thought, Perception, and Envisagement of Xenocrates. The
relation of numbers to Ideas was developed by him further than by
Speusippus, and he surpassed Plato in his definition of the doctrine of
Invisible Magnitudes. Reducing them to their ideal primary elements, he
demonstrated that every figure and form originated out of the smallest
indivisible line. That Xenocrates held the same theories as Plato
in relation to the human soul (supposed to be a number) is evident,
though Aristotle contradicts this, like every other teaching of this
philosopher.[16] This is conclusive evidence that many of Plato’s
doctrines were delivered orally, even were it shown that Xenocrates
and not Plato was the first to originate the theory of indivisible
magnitudes. He derives the Soul from the first Duad, and calls it
a self-moved number.[17] Theophrastus remarks that he entered and
eliminated this Soul-theory more than any other Platonist. He built
upon it the cosmological doctrine, and proved the necessary existence
in every part of the universal space of a successive and progressive
series of animated and thinking though spiritual beings.[18] The
Human Soul with him is a compound of the most spiritual properties of
the Monad and the Duad, possessing the highest principles of both.
If, like Plato and Prodicus, he refers to the Elements as to Divine
Powers, and calls them gods, neither himself nor others connected
any anthropomorphic idea with the appellation. Krische remarks that
he called them gods only that these elementary powers should not be
confounded with the dæmons of the nether world[19] (the Elementary
Spirits). As the Soul of the World permeates the whole Cosmos, even
beasts must have in them something divine.[20] This, also, is the
doctrine of Buddhists and the Hermetists, and Manu endows with a living
soul even the plants and the tiniest blade of grass.
The dæmons, according to this theory, are intermediate beings between
the divine perfection and human sinfulness,[21] and he divides them
into classes, each subdivided in many others. But he states expressly
that the individual or personal soul is the leading guardian dæmon
of every man, and that no dæmon has more power over us than our own.
Thus the _Daimonion_ of Socrates is the god or Divine Entity which
inspired him all his life. It depends on man either to open or close
his perceptions to the Divine voice. Like Speusippus he ascribed
immortality to the ψυχη, psychical body, or irrational soul. But
some Hermetic philosophers have taught that the soul has a separate
continued existence only so long as in its passage through the spheres
any material or earthly particles remain incorporated in it; and
that when absolutely purified, the latter are _annihilated_, and the
quintessence of the soul alone becomes blended with its _divine_ spirit
(the _Rational_), and the two are thenceforth one.
Zeller states that Xenocrates forbade the eating of animal food, not
because he saw in beasts something akin to man, as he ascribed to
them a dim consciousness of God, but, “for the opposite reason, lest
the irrationality of animal souls might thereby obtain a certain
influence over us.”[22] But we believe that it was rather because,
like Pythagoras, he had had the Hindu sages for his masters and
models. Cicero depicted Xenocrates utterly despising everything
except the highest virtue;[23] and describes the stainlessness and
severe austerity of his character.[24] “To free ourselves from the
subjection of sensuous existence, to conquer the Titanic elements in
our terrestrial nature through the Divine one, is our problem.” Zeller
makes him say:[25] “Purity, even in the secret longings of our heart,
is the greatest duty, and only philosophy and the initiation into the
Mysteries help toward the attainment of this object.”
Crantor, another philosopher associated with the earliest days of
Plato’s Academy, conceived the human soul as formed out of the primary
substance of all things, the Monad or _One_, and the Duad or the _Two_.
Plutarch speaks at length of this philosopher, who like his master
believed in souls being distributed in earthly bodies as an exile and
punishment.
Herakleides, though some critics do not believe him to have strictly
adhered to Plato’s primal philosophy,[26] taught the same ethics.
Zeller presents him to us imparting, like Hicetas and Ecphantus, the
Pythagorean doctrine of the diurnal rotation of the earth and the
immobility of the fixed stars, but adds that he was ignorant of the
annual revolution of the earth around the sun, and of the heliocentric
system.[27] But we have good evidence that the latter system was taught
in the Mysteries, and that Socrates died for _atheism_, _i. e._,
for divulging this sacred knowledge. Herakleides adopted fully the
Pythagorean and Platonic views of the human soul, its faculties and its
capabilities. He describes it as a luminous, highly ethereal essence.
He affirms that souls inhabit the milky way before descending “into
generation” or sublunary existence. His dæmons or spirits are airy and
vaporous bodies.
In the _Epinomis_ is fully stated the doctrine of the Pythagorean
numbers in relation to created things. As a true Platonist, its author
maintains that wisdom can only be attained by a thorough inquiry into
the occult nature of the creation; it alone assures us an existence of
bliss after death. The immortality of the soul is greatly speculated
upon in this treatise; but its author adds that we can attain to this
knowledge only through a complete comprehension of the numbers; for
the man, unable to distinguish the straight line from a curved one
will never have wisdom enough to secure a mathematical demonstration
of the _invisible_, _i. e._, we must assure ourselves of the objective
existence of our soul (astral body) before we learn that we are in
possession of a divine and immortal spirit. Iamblichus says the same
thing; adding, moreover, that it is a secret belonging to the highest
initiation. The Divine Power, he says, always felt indignant with those
“who rendered manifest the composition of the _icostagonus_,” viz., who
delivered the method of inscribing in a sphere the dodecahedron.[28]
The idea that “numbers” possessing the greatest virtue, produce always
what is good and never what is evil, refers to justice, equanimity
of temper, and everything that is harmonious. When the author speaks
of every star as an individual soul, he only means what the Hindu
initiates and the Hermetists taught before and after him, viz.: that
every star is an independent planet, which, like our earth, has a soul
of its own, every atom of matter being impregnated with the divine
influx of the soul of the world. It breathes and lives; it feels
and suffers as well as enjoys life in its way. What naturalist is
prepared to dispute it on good evidence? Therefore, we must consider
the celestial bodies as the images of gods; as partaking of the divine
powers in their substance; and though they are not immortal in their
soul-entity, their agency in the economy of the universe is entitled
to divine honors, such as we pay to minor gods. The idea is plain, and
one must be malevolent indeed to misrepresent it. If the author of
_Epinomis_ places these fiery gods higher than the animals, plants,
and even mankind, all of which, as earthly creatures, are assigned by
him a lower place, who can prove him wholly wrong? One must needs go
deep indeed into the profundity of the abstract metaphysics of the old
philosophies, who would understand that their various embodiments of
their conceptions are, after all, based upon an identical apprehension
of the nature of the First Cause, its attributes and method.
Again when the author of _Epinomis_ locates between these highest and
lowest gods (embodied souls) three classes of dæmons, and peoples the
universe with invisible beings, he is more rational than our modern
scientists, who make between the two extremes one vast hiatus of being,
the playground of blind forces. Of these three classes the first
two are invisible; their bodies are pure ether and fire (_planetary
spirits_); the dæmons of the third class are clothed with vapory
bodies; they are usually invisible, but sometimes making themselves
concrete become visible for a few seconds. These are the earthly
spirits, or our astral souls.
It is these doctrines, which, studied analogically, and on the
principle of correspondence, led the ancient, and may now lead the
modern Philaletheian step by step toward the solution of the greatest
mysteries. On the brink of the dark chasm separating the spiritual from
the physical world stands modern science, with eyes closed and head
averted, pronouncing the gulf impassable and bottomless, though she
holds in her hand a torch which she need only lower into the depths to
show her her mistake. But across this chasm, the patient student of
Hermetic philosophy has constructed a bridge.
In his _Fragments of Science_ Tyndall makes the following sad
confession: “If you ask me whether science has solved, or is likely in
our day to solve the problem of this universe, I must shake my head
in doubt.” If moved by an afterthought, he corrects himself later,
and assures his audience that experimental evidence has helped him to
discover, in the opprobrium-covered matter, the “promise and potency
of every quality of life,” he only jokes. It would be as difficult for
Professor Tyndall to offer any ultimate and irrefutable proofs of what
he asserts, as it was for Job to insert a hook into the nose of the
leviathan.
To avoid confusion that might easily arise by the frequent employment
of certain terms in a sense different from that familiar to the reader,
a few explanations will be timely. We desire to leave no pretext
either for misunderstanding or misrepresentation. Magic may have one
signification to one class of readers and another to another class. We
shall give it the meaning which it has in the minds of its Oriental
students and practitioners. And so with the words _Hermetic Science_,
_Occultism_, _Hierophant_, _Adept_, _Sorcerer_, etc.; there has been
little agreement of late as to their meaning. Though the distinctions
between the terms are very often insignificant—merely ethnic—still, it
may be useful to the general reader to know just what that is. We give
a few alphabetically.
ÆTHROBACY, is the Greek name for walking or being lifted in the air;
_levitation_, so called, among modern spiritualists. It may be either
conscious or unconscious; in the one case, it is magic; in the other,
either disease or a power which requires a few words of elucidation.
A symbolical explanation of æthrobacy is given in an old Syriac
manuscript which was translated in the fifteenth century by one
Malchus, an alchemist. In connection with the case of Simon Magus, one
passage reads thus:
“Simon, laying his face upon the ground, whispered in her ear, ‘O
mother Earth, give me, I pray thee, some of thy breath; and I will give
thee mine; _let me loose_, O mother, that I may carry thy words to the
stars, and I will return faithfully to thee after a while.’ And the
Earth strengthening her status, none to her detriment, sent her genius
to breathe of her _breath_ on Simon, _while he breathed on her_; and
the stars rejoiced to be visited by the mighty One.”
The starting-point here is the recognized electro-chemical principle
that bodies similarly electrified repel each other, while those
differently electrified mutually attract. “The most elementary
knowledge of chemistry,” says Professor Cooke, “shows that, while
radicals of opposite natures combine most eagerly together, two metals,
or two closely-allied metalloids, show but little affinity for each
other.”
The earth is a magnetic body; in fact, as some scientists have found,
it is one vast magnet, as Paracelsus affirmed some 300 years ago. It
is charged with one form of electricity—let us call it positive—which
it evolves continuously by spontaneous action, in its interior or
centre of motion. Human bodies, in common with all other forms of
matter, are charged with the opposite form of electricity—negative.
That is to say, organic or inorganic bodies, if left to themselves will
constantly and involuntarily charge themselves with, and evolve the
form of electricity opposed to that of the earth itself. Now, what is
weight? Simply the attraction of the earth. “Without the attractions of
the earth you would have no weight,” says Professor Stewart;[29] “and
if you had an earth twice as heavy as this, you would have double the
attraction.” How then, can we get rid of this attraction? According to
the electrical law above stated, there is an attraction between our
planet and the organisms upon it, which holds them upon the surface
of the ground. But the law of gravitation has been counteracted in
many instances, by levitations of persons and inanimate objects; how
account for this? The condition of our physical systems, say theurgic
philosophers, is largely dependent upon the action of our will. If
well-regulated, it can produce “miracles;” among others a change of
this electrical polarity from negative to positive; the man’s relations
with the earth-magnet would then become repellent, and “gravity” for
him would have ceased to exist. It would then be as natural for him to
rush into the air until the repellent force had exhausted itself, as,
before, it had been for him to remain upon the ground. The altitude
of his levitation would be measured by his ability, greater or less,
to charge his body with positive electricity. This control over the
physical forces once obtained, alteration of his levity or gravity
would be as easy as breathing.
The study of nervous diseases has established that even in ordinary
somnambulism, as well as in mesmerized somnambulists, the weight
of the body seems to be diminished. Professor Perty mentions a
somnambulist, Koehler, who when in the water could not sink, but
floated. The seeress of Prevorst rose to the surface of the bath and
could not be kept seated in it. He speaks of Anna Fleisher, who being
subject to epileptic fits, was often seen by the Superintendent to
rise in the air; and was once, in the presence of two trustworthy
witnesses (two deans) and others, raised two and a half yards from
her bed in a horizontal position. The similar case of Margaret Rule
is cited by Upham in his _History of Salem Witchcraft_. “In ecstatic
subjects,” adds Professor Perty, “the rising in the air occurs much
more frequently than with somnambulists. We are so accustomed to
consider gravitation as being a something absolute and unalterable,
that the idea of a complete or partial rising in opposition to it seems
inadmissible; nevertheless, there are phenomena in which, by means
of material forces, gravitation is overcome. In several diseases—as,
for instance, nervous fever—the weight of the human body seems to be
increased, but in all ecstatic conditions to be diminished. And there
may, likewise, be other forces than material ones which can counteract
this power.”
A Madrid journal, _El Criterio Espiritista_, of a recent date, reports
the case of a young peasant girl near Santiago, which possesses a
peculiar interest in this connection. “Two bars of magnetized iron held
over her horizontally, half a metre distant, was sufficient to suspend
her body in the air.”
Were our physicians to experiment on such levitated subjects, it
would be found that they are strongly charged with a similar form
of electricity to that of the spot, which, according to the law
of gravitation, ought to _attract_ them, or rather prevent their
levitation. And, if some physical nervous disorder, as well as
spiritual ecstasy produce unconsciously to the subject the same
effects, it proves that if this force in nature were properly studied,
it could be regulated at will.
ALCHEMISTS.—From _Al_ and _Chemi_, fire, or the god and patriarch,
_Kham_, also, the name of Egypt. The Rosicrucians of the middle ages,
such as Robertus de Fluctibus (Robert Fludd), Paracelsus, Thomas
Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes), Van Helmont, and others, were all
alchemists, who sought for the _hidden spirit_ in every inorganic
matter. Some people—nay, the great majority—have accused alchemists
of charlatanry and false pretending. Surely such men as Roger Bacon,
Agrippa, Henry Kunrath, and the Arabian Geber (the first to introduce
into Europe some of the secrets of chemistry), can hardly be treated
as impostors—least of all as fools. Scientists who are reforming the
science of physics upon the basis of the atomic theory of Demokritus,
as restated by John Dalton, conveniently forget that Demokritus,
of Abdera, was an alchemist, and that the mind that was capable
of penetrating so far into the secret operations of nature in one
direction must have had good reasons to study and become a Hermetic
philosopher. Olaus Borrichias says, that the cradle of alchemy is to be
sought in the most distant times.
ASTRAL LIGHT.—The same as the _sidereal light_ of Paracelsus and other
Hermetic philosophers. Physically, it is the ether of modern science.
Metaphysically, and in its spiritual, or occult sense, ether is a great
deal more than is often imagined. In occult physics, and alchemy, it
is well demonstrated to enclose within its shoreless waves not only
Mr. Tyndall’s “_promise_ and potency of every quality of life,” but
also the _realization_ of the potency of every quality of spirit.
Alchemists and Hermetists believe that their astral, or sidereal ether,
besides the above properties of sulphur, and white and red magnesia,
or _magnes_, is the _anima mundi_, the workshop of Nature and of all
the cosmos, spiritually, as well as physically. The “grand magisterium”
asserts itself in the phenomenon of mesmerism, in the “levitation” of
human and inert objects; and may be called the ether from its spiritual
aspect.
The designation _astral_ is ancient, and was used by some of the
Neo-platonists. Porphyry describes the celestial body which is always
joined with the soul as “immortal, luminous, and star-like.” The root
of this word may be found, perhaps, in the Scythic _aist-aer_—which
means star, or the Assyrian _Istar_, which, according to Burnouf has
the same sense. As the Rosicrucians regarded the real, as the direct
opposite of the apparent, and taught that what seems light to _matter_,
is darkness to _spirit_, they searched for the latter in the astral
ocean of invisible fire which encompasses the world; and claim to have
traced the equally invisible divine spirit, which overshadows every man
and is erroneously called _soul_, to the very throne of the Invisible
and Unknown God. As the great cause must always remain invisible and
imponderable, they could prove their assertions merely by demonstration
of its effects in this world of matter, by calling them forth from the
unknowable down into the knowable universe of effects. That this astral
light permeates the whole cosmos, lurking in its latent state even
in the minutest particle of rock, they demonstrate by the phenomenon
of the spark from flint and from every other stone, whose spirit
when forcibly disturbed springs to sight spark-like, and immediately
disappears in the realms of the unknowable.
Paracelsus named it the _sidereal light_, taking the term from the
Latin. He regarded the starry host (our earth included) as the
_condensed_ portions of the astral light which “fell down into
generation and matter,” but whose magnetic or spiritual emanations kept
constantly a never-ceasing intercommunication between themselves and
the parent-fount of all—the astral light. “The stars attract from us to
themselves, and we again from them to us,” he says. The body is wood
and the life is fire, which comes like the light from the stars and
from heaven. “Magic is the philosophy of alchemy,” he says again.[30]
Everything pertaining to the spiritual world must come to us through
the stars, and if we are in friendship with them, we may attain the
greatest _magical_ effects.
“As fire passes through an iron stove, so do the stars pass through
man with all their properties and go into him as the rain into the
earth, which gives fruit out of that same rain. Now observe that the
stars _surround_ the whole earth, _as a shell does the egg_; through
the shell comes the air, and penetrates to the centre of the world.”
The human body is subjected as well as the earth, and planets, and
stars, to a double law; it attracts and repels, for it is saturated
through with double magnetism, the influx of the astral light.
Everything is double in nature; magnetism is positive and negative,
active and passive, male and female. Night rests humanity from the
day’s activity, and restores the equilibrium of human as well as of
cosmic nature. When the mesmerizer will have learned the grand secret
of polarizing the action and endowing his fluid with a bi-sexual force
he will have become the greatest magician living. Thus the astral
light is androgyne, for equilibrium is the resultant of two opposing
forces eternally reacting upon each other. The result of this is LIFE.
_When the two forces are expanded and remain so long inactive, as to
equal one another and so come to a complete rest, the condition is_
DEATH. A human being can blow either a hot or a cold breath; and can
absorb either cold or hot air. Every child knows how to regulate the
temperature of his breath; but how to protect one’s self from either
hot or cold air, no physiologist has yet learned with certainty. The
astral light alone, as the chief agent in magic, can discover to us
all secrets of nature. The astral light is identical with the Hindu
_akâsa_, a word which we will now explain.
AKÂSA.—Literally the word means in Sanscrit _sky_, but in its mystic
sense it signifies the _invisible_ sky; or, as the Brahmans term it in
the Soma-sacrifice (the _Gyotishtoma Agnishtoma_), the god Akâsa, or
god Sky. The language of the _Vedas_ shows that the Hindus of fifty
centuries ago ascribed to it the same properties as do the Thibetan
lamas of the present day; that they regarded it as the source of
life, the reservoir of all energy, and the propeller of every change
of matter. In its latent state, it tallies exactly with our idea of
the universal ether; in its active state it became the Akâsa, the
all-directing and omnipotent god. In the Brahmanical sacrificial
mysteries it plays the part of Sadasya, or superintendent over the
magical effects of the religious performance, and it had its own
appointed Hotar (or priest), who took its name. In India, as in other
countries in ancient times, the priests are the representatives on
earth of different gods; each taking the name of the deity in whose
name he acts.
The Akâsa is the indispensable agent of every Krityâ, (magical
performance) either religious or profane. The Brahmanical expression
“to stir up the Brahma” _Brahma jinvati_—means to stir up the power
which lies latent at the bottom of every such magical operation, for
the Vedic sacrifices are but ceremonial magic. This power is the Akâsa
or the _occult_ electricity; the alkahest of the alchemists in one
sense, or the universal solvent, the same _anima mundi_ as the astral
light. At the moment of the sacrifice, the latter becomes imbued with
the spirit of Brahma, and so for the time being is Brahma himself. This
is the evident origin of the Christian dogma of transubstantiation. As
to the most general effects of the Akâsa, the author of one of the most
modern works on the occult philosophy, _Art-Magic_, gives for the first
time to the world a most intelligible and interesting explanation of
the Akâsa in connection with the phenomena attributed to its influence
by the fakirs and lamas.
ANTHROPOLOGY—the science of man; embracing among other things:
_Physiology_, or that branch of natural science which discloses the
mysteries of the organs and their functions in men, animals, and
plants; and also, and especially,
_Psychology_, or the great, and in our days, so neglected science
of the soul, both as an entity distinct from the spirit and in its
relations with the spirit and body. In modern science, psychology
relates only or principally to conditions of the nervous system, and
almost absolutely ignores the psychical essence and nature. Physicians
denominate the science of insanity _psychology_, and name the lunatic
chair in medical colleges by that designation.
CHALDEANS, or Kasdim.—At first a tribe, then a caste of learned
kabalists. They were the savants, the magians of Babylonia, astrologers
and diviners. The famous Hillel, the precursor of Jesus in philosophy
and in ethics, was a Chaldean. Franck in his _Kabbala_ points to the
close resemblance of the “secret doctrine” found in the _Avesta_ and
the religious metaphysics of the Chaldees.
DACTYLS (_daktulos_, a finger).—A name given to the priests attached to
the worship of _Kybelé_ (Cybelè). Some archæologists derive the name
from δάκτυλος, finger, because they were ten, the same in number as the
fingers of the hand. But we do not believe the latter hypothesis is the
correct one.
DÆMONS.—A name given by the ancient people, and especially the
philosophers of the Alexandrian school, to all kinds of spirits,
whether good or bad, human or otherwise. The appellation is often
synonymous with that of gods or angels. But some philosophers tried,
with good reason, to make a just distinction between the many classes.
DEMIURGOS, or Demiurge.—Artificer; the Supernal Power which built the
universe. Freemasons derive from this word their phrase of “Supreme
Architect.” The chief magistrates of certain Greek cities bore the
title.
DERVISHES, or the “whirling charmers,” as they are called. Apart from
the austerities of life, prayer and contemplation, the Mahometan
devotee presents but little similarity with the Hindu fakir. The latter
may become a sannyasi, or saint and holy mendicant; the former will
never reach beyond his second class of occult manifestations. The
dervish may also be a strong mesmerizer, but he will never voluntarily
submit to the abominable and almost incredible self-punishment which
the fakir invents for himself with an ever-increasing avidity, until
nature succumbs and he dies in slow and excruciating tortures. The most
dreadful operations, such as flaying the limbs alive; cutting off the
toes, feet, and legs; tearing out the eyes; and causing one’s self to
be buried alive up to the chin in the earth, and passing whole months
in this posture, seem child’s play to them. One of the most common
tortures is that of Tshiddy-Parvâdy.[31] It consists in suspending the
fakir to one of the mobile arms of a kind of gallows to be seen in
the vicinity of many of the temples. At the end of each of these arms
is fixed a pulley over which passes a rope terminated by an iron hook.
This hook is inserted into the bare back of the fakir, who inundating
the soil with blood is hoisted up in the air and then whirled round
the gallows. From the first moment of this cruel operation until he is
either unhooked or the flesh of his back tears out under the weight
of the body and the fakir is hurled down on the heads of the crowd,
not a muscle of his face will move. He remains calm and serious and as
composed as if taking a refreshing bath. The fakir will laugh to scorn
every imaginable torture, persuaded that the more his outer body is
mortified, the brighter and holier becomes his _inner_, spiritual body.
But the Dervish, neither in India, nor in other Mahometan lands, will
ever submit to such operations.
DRUIDS.—A sacerdotal caste which flourished in Britain and Gaul.
ELEMENTAL SPIRITS.—The creatures evolved in the four kingdoms of earth,
air, fire, and water, and called by the kabalists gnomes, sylphs,
salamanders, and undines. They may be termed the forces of nature, and
will either operate effects as the servile agents of general law, or
may be employed by the disembodied spirits—whether pure or impure—and
by living adepts of magic and sorcery, to produce desired phenomenal
results. Such beings never become men.[32]
Under the general designation of fairies, and fays, these spirits of
the elements appear in the myth, fable, tradition, or poetry of all
nations, ancient and modern. Their names are legion—peris, devs, djins,
sylvans, satyrs, fauns, elves, dwarfs, trolls, norns, nisses, kobolds,
brownies, necks, stromkarls, undines, nixies, salamanders, goblins,
ponkes, banshees, kelpies, pixies, moss people, good people, good
neighbors, wild women, men of peace, white ladies—and many more. They
have been seen, feared, blessed, banned, and invoked in every quarter
of the globe and in every age. Shall we then concede that all who have
met them were hallucinated?
These elementals are the principal agents of disembodied but _never
visible_ spirits at seances, and the producers of all the phenomena
except the subjective.
ELEMENTARY SPIRITS.—Properly, the disembodied _souls_ of the
depraved; these souls having at some time prior to death separated
from themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their chance for
immortality. Eliphas Levi and some other kabalists make little
distinction between elementary spirits who have been men, and those
beings which people the elements, and are the blind forces of nature.
Once divorced from their bodies, these souls (also called “astral
bodies”) of purely materialistic persons, are irresistibly attracted to
the earth, where they live a temporary and finite life amid elements
congenial to their gross natures. From having never, during their
natural lives, cultivated their spirituality, but subordinated it to
the material and gross, they are now unfitted for the lofty career
of the pure, disembodied being, for whom the atmosphere of earth is
stifling and mephitic, and whose attractions are all away from it.
After a more or less prolonged period of time these material souls
will begin to disintegrate, and finally, like a column of mist, be
dissolved, atom by atom, in the surrounding elements.
ESSENES—from _Asa_, a healer. A sect of Jews said by Pliny to have
lived near the Dead Sea “_per millia sæculorum_” for thousands of ages.
Some have supposed them to be extreme Pharisees; and others—which
may be the true theory—the descendants of the _Benim nabim_ of the
_Bible_, and think they were “Kenites” and “_Nazarites_.” They had many
Buddhistic ideas and practices; and it is noteworthy that the priests
of the _Great Mother_ at Ephesus, Diana-Bhavani with many breasts, were
also so denominated. Eusebius, and after him De Quincey, declared them
to be the same as the early Christians, which is more than probable.
The title “brother,” used in the early Church, was Essenean: they were
a fraternity, or a _koinobion_ or community like the early converts. It
is noticeable that only the Sadducees, or Zadokites, the priest-caste
and their partisans, persecuted the Christians; the Pharisees were
generally scholastic and mild, and often sided with the latter. James
the Just was a Pharisee till his death; but Paul or _Aher_ was esteemed
a schismatic.
EVOLUTION.—The development of higher orders of animals from the
lower. Modern, or so-called _exact_ science, holds but to a one-sided
physical evolution, prudently avoiding and ignoring the higher or
spiritual evolution, which would force our contemporaries to confess
the superiority of the ancient philosophers and psychologists over
themselves. The ancient sages, ascending to the UNKNOWABLE, made
their starting-point from the first manifestation of the unseen, the
unavoidable, and from a strict logical reasoning, the absolutely
necessary creative Being, the Demiurgos of the universe. Evolution
began with them from pure spirit, which descending lower and lower
down, assumed at last a visible and comprehensible form, and became
matter. Arrived at this point, they speculated in the Darwinian method,
but on a far more large and comprehensive basis.
In the _Rig-Veda-Sanhita_, the oldest book of the World[33] (to which
even our most prudent Indiologists and Sanscrit scholars assign an
antiquity of between two and three thousand years B.C.), in the first
book, “Hymns to the Maruts,” it is said:
“_Not-being_ and _Being_ are in the highest heaven, in the birthplace
of Daksha, in the lap of Aditi” (_Mandala_, i., Sûkta 166).
“In the first age of the gods, Being (the comprehensible Deity) was
born from Not-being (whom no intellect can comprehend); after it were
born the Regions (the invisible), from them Uttânapada.”
“From Uttânapad the Earth was born, the Regions (those that are
visible) were born from the Earth. Daksha was born of Aditi, and Aditi
from Daksha” (Ibid.).
Aditi is the Infinite, and Daksha is _dáksha-pitarah_, literally
meaning _the father of gods_, but understood by Max Müller and
Roth to mean _the fathers of strength_, “preserving, possessing,
granting faculties.” Therefore, it is easy to see that “Daksha, born
of Aditi and Aditi from Daksha,” means what the moderns understand
by “correlation of forces;” the more so as we find in this passage
(translated by Prof. Müller):
“I place Agni, the source of all beings, the father of strength”
(iii., 27, 2), a clear and identical idea which prevailed so much
in the doctrines of the Zoroastrians, the Magians, and the mediæval
fire-philosophers. Agni is god of fire, of the Spiritual Ether, the
very substance of the divine essence of the Invisible God present
in every atom of His creation and called by the Rosicrucians the
“Celestial Fire.” If we only carefully compare the verses from this
Mandala, one of which runs thus: “The Sky is your father, the Earth
your mother, Soma your brother, Aditi your sister” (i., 191, 6),[34]
with the inscription on the _Smaragdine Tablet_ of Hermes, we will find
the same substratum of metaphysical philosophy, the identical doctrines!
“As all things were produced by the mediation of one being, so all
things were produced from this one thing by adaptation: ‘Its father
is the sun; its mother is the moon’ ... etc. Separate the earth from
the fire, the _subtile from the gross_.... What I had to say about the
operation of the _sun_ is completed” (_Smaragdine Tablet_).[35]
Professor Max Müller sees in this _Mandala_ “at last, something like
a theogony, though full of contradictions.”[36] The alchemists,
kabalists, and students of mystic philosophy will find therein a
perfectly defined system of Evolution in the Cosmogony of a people who
lived a score of thousands of years before our era. They will find in
it, moreover, a perfect identity of thought and even doctrine with the
Hermetic philosophy, and also that of Pythagoras and Plato.
In Evolution, as it is now beginning to be understood, there is
supposed to be in all matter an impulse to take on a higher form—a
supposition clearly expressed by Manu and other Hindu philosophers
of the highest antiquity. The philosopher’s tree illustrates it in
the case of the zinc solution. The controversy between the followers
of this school and the Emanationists may be briefly stated thus: The
Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of “the Unknowable;”
the Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved—or, as the
word means, unwombed or born—except it has first been involved, thus
indicating that life is from a spiritual potency above the whole.
FAKIRS.—Religious devotees in East India. They are generally attached
to Brahmanical pagodas and follow the laws of Manu. A strictly
religious fakir will go absolutely naked, with the exception of a
small piece of linen called _dhoti_, around his loins. They wear their
hair long, and it serves them as a pocket, as they stick in it various
objects—such as a pipe, a small flute called _vagudah_, the sounds of
which throw the serpents into a cataleptic torpor, and sometimes their
bamboo-stick (about one foot long) with _the seven mystical knots_ on
it. This magical stick, or rather _rod_, the fakir receives from his
guru on the day of his initiation, together with the three _mantrams_,
which are communicated to him “mouth to ear.” No fakir will be seen
without this powerful adjunct of his calling. It is, as they all
claim, the divining rod, the cause of every occult phenomenon produced
by them.[37] The Brahmanical fakir is entirely distinct from the
Mussulman mendicant of India, also called fakirs in some parts of the
British territory.
HERMETIST.—From Hermes, the god of Wisdom, known in Egypt, Syria, and
Phœnicia as Thoth, Tat, Adad, Seth, and Sat-an (the latter _not to be
taken_ in the sense applied to it by Moslems and Christians), and in
Greece as Kadmus. The kabalists identify him with Adam _Kadmon_, the
first manifestation of the Divine Power, and with Enoch. There were two
Hermes: the elder was the Trismegistus, and the second an emanation, or
“permutation” of himself; the friend and instructor of Isis and Osiris.
Hermes is the god of the priestly wisdom, like Mazeus.
HIEROPHANT.—Discloser of sacred learning. The Old Man, the Chief of
the Adepts at the initiations, who explained the arcane knowledge to
the neophytes, bore this title. In Hebrew and Chaldaic the term was
_Peter_, or opener, discloser; hence, the Pope, as the successor of
the hierophant of the ancient Mysteries, sits in the Pagan chair of
“St. Peter.” The vindictiveness of the Catholic Church toward the
alchemists, and to arcane and astronomical science, is explained by the
fact that such knowledge was the ancient prerogative of the hierophant,
or representative of Peter, who kept the mysteries of life and death.
Men like Bruno, Galileo, and Kepler, therefore, and even Cagliostro,
trespassed on the preserves of the Church, and were accordingly
murdered.
Every nation had its Mysteries and hierophants. Even the Jews had
their Peter—Tanaïm or Rabbin, like Hillel, Akiba,[38] and other famous
kabalists, who alone could impart the awful knowledge contained in the
_Merkaba_. In India, there was in ancient times one, and now there
are several hierophants scattered about the country, attached to the
principal pagodas, who are known as the Brahma-âtmas. In Thibet the
chief hierophant is the Dalay, or Taley-Lama of Lha-ssa.[39] Among
Christian nations, the Catholics alone have preserved this “heathen”
custom, in the person of their Pope, albeit they have sadly disfigured
its majesty and the dignity of the sacred office.
INITIATES.—In times of antiquity, those who had been initiated into the
arcane knowledge taught by the hierophants of the Mysteries; and in
our modern days those who have been initiated by the adepts of mystic
lore into the mysterious knowledge, which, notwithstanding the lapse of
ages, has yet a few real votaries on earth.
KABALIST, from קבלה, KABALA; an unwritten or oral tradition. The
kabalist is a student of “secret science,” one who interprets the
hidden meaning of the Scriptures with the help of the symbolical
_Kabala_, and explains the real one by these means. The Tanaïm were the
first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the
beginning of the third century before the Christian era. The Books of
_Ezekiel_, _Daniel_, _Henoch_, and the _Revelation_ of St. John, are
purely kabalistical. This secret doctrine is identical with that of the
Chaldeans, and includes at the same time much of the Persian wisdom, or
“magic.”
LAMAS.—Buddhist monks belonging to the Lamaic religion of Thibet, as,
for instance, friars are the monks belonging to the Popish or Roman
Catholic religion. Every lama is subject to the grand Taley-Lama, the
Buddhist pope of Thibet, who holds his residence at Lha-ssa, and is a
reïncarnation of Buddha.
MAGE, or _Magian_; from _Mag_ or _Maha_. The word is the root of the
word magician. The Maha-âtma (the great Soul or Spirit) in India
had its priests in the pre-Vedic times. The Magians were priests of
the fire-god; we find them among the Assyrians and Babylonians, as
well as among the Persian fire-worshippers. The three magi, also
denominated kings, that are said to have made gifts of gold, incense,
and myrrh to the infant Jesus, were fire-worshippers like the rest,
and astrologers; for they saw his star. The high priest of the Parsis,
at Surat, is called _Mobed_, others derived the word from Megh; Meh-ab
signifying something grand and noble. Zoroaster’s disciples were called
_Meghestom_, according to Kleuker.
MAGICIAN.—This term, once a title of renown and distinction, has come
to be wholly perverted from its true meaning. Once the synonym of
all that was honorable and reverent, of a possessor of learning and
wisdom, it has become degraded into an epithet to designate one who is
a pretender and a juggler; a charlatan, in short, or one who has “sold
his soul to the Evil One;” who misuses his knowledge, and employs it
for low and dangerous uses, according to the teachings of the clergy,
and a mass of superstitious fools who believe the magician a sorcerer
and an enchanter. But Christians forget, apparently, that Moses was
also a magician, and Daniel, “_Master_ of the magicians, astrologers,
Chaldeans, and soothsayers” (_Daniel_, v. 11).
The word magician then, scientifically speaking, is derived from
_Magh_, _Mah_, Hindu or _Sanscrit_ Maha—great; a man well versed in the
secret or esoteric knowledge; properly a sacerdote.
MANTICISM, or mantic frenzy. During this state was developed the
gift of prophecy. The two words are nearly synonymous. One was as
honored as the other. Pythagoras and Plato held it in high esteem, and
Socrates advised his disciples to study Manticism. The Church Fathers,
who condemned so severely the _mantic frenzy_ in Pagan priests and
Pythiæ, were not above applying it to their own uses. The Montanists,
who took their name from Montanus, a bishop of Phrygia, who was
considered divinely inspired, rivalled with the μάντεις (manteis) or
prophets. “Tertullian, Augustine, and the martyrs of Carthage, were
of the number,” says the author of _Prophecy, Ancient and Modern_.
“The Montanists seem to have resembled the _Bacchantes_ in the wild
enthusiasm that characterized their orgies,” he adds. There is a
diversity of opinion as to the origin of the word _Manticism_. There
was the famous Mantis the Seer, in the days of Melampus and Prœtus,
King of Argos; and there was Manto, the daughter of the prophet of
Thebes, herself a prophetess. Cicero describes prophecy and mantic
frenzy by saying that “in the inner recesses of the mind is divine
prophecy hidden and confined, a divine impulse, which when it burns
more vividly is called furor” (frenzy, madness).
But there is still another etymology possible for the word _mantis_,
and to which we doubt if the attention of the philologists was ever
drawn. The mantic frenzy may, perchance, have a still earlier origin.
The two sacrificial cups of the Soma-mystery used during the religious
rites, and generally known as grahâs, are respectively called _Sukra_
and _Manti_.[40]
It is in the latter manti or manthi cup that Brahma is said to be
“stirred up.” While the initiate drinks (albeit sparingly) of this
sacred soma-juice, the Brahma, or rather his “spirit,” personified
by the god Soma, enters into the man and takes _possession_ of him.
Hence, ecstatic vision, clairvoyance, and the gift of prophecy. Both
kinds of divination—the natural and the artificial—are aroused by
the Soma. The _Sukra_-cup awakens that which is given to every man
by nature. It unites both spirit and soul, and these, from their own
nature and essence, which are divine, have a foreknowledge of future
things, as dreams, unexpected visions, and presentiments, well prove.
The contents of the other cup, the _manti_, which “stirs the Brahma,”
put there by the soul in communication not only with the minor gods—the
well-informed but not omniscient spirits—but actually with the highest
divine essence itself. The soul receives a direct illumination from the
presence of its “god;” but as it is not allowed to remember certain
things, well known only in heaven, the initiated person is generally
seized with a kind of sacred frenzy, and upon recovering from it, only
remembers that which is allowed to him. As to the other kind of seers
and diviners—those who make a profession of and a living by it—they
are usually held to be possessed by a _gandharva_, a deity which is
nowhere so little honored as in India.
MANTRA.—A _Sanskrit_ word conveying the same idea as the “Ineffable
Name.” Some mantras, when pronounced according to magical formula
taught in the _Atharva-Veda_, produce an instantaneous and wonderful
effect. In its general sense, though, a mantra is either simply a
prayer to the gods and powers of heaven, as taught by the Brahmanical
books, and especially Manu, or else a magical charm. In its esoteric
sense, the “word” of the mantra, or mystic speech, is called by the
Brahmans _Vâch_. It resides in the mantra, which literally means those
parts of the sacred books which are considered as the _Sruti_, or
direct divine revelation.
MARABUT.—A Mahometan pilgrim who has been to Mekka; a saint, after
whose death his body is placed in an open sepulchre built on the
surface, like other buildings, but in the middle of the streets and
public places of populated cities. Placed inside the small and only
room of the tomb (and several such public sarcophagi of brick and
mortar may be seen to this day in the streets and squares of Cairo),
the devotion of the wayfarers keeps a lamp ever burning at his head.
The tombs of some of these marabuts have a great fame for the miracles
they are alleged to perform.
MATERIALIZATION.—A word employed by spiritualists to indicate the
phenomenon of “a spirit clothing himself with a material form.” The
far less objectionable term, “form-manifestation,” has been recently
suggested by Mr. Stainton-Moses, of London. When the real nature of
these apparitions is better comprehended, a still more appropriate
name will doubtless be adopted. To call them materialized spirits is
inadmissible, for they are not spirits but animated portrait-statues.
MAZDEANS, from (Ahura) Mazda. (See Spiegel’s _Yasna_, xl.) They were
the ancient Persian nobles who worshipped Ormazd, and, rejecting
images, inspired the Jews with the same horror for every concrete
representation of the Deity. “They seem in Herodotus’s time to have
been superseded by the Magian religionists. The Parsis and Ghebers
(גברים _geberim_, mighty men, of _Genesis_ vi. and x. 8) appear to be
Magian religionists.... By a curious muddling of ideas, Zoro-Aster
(_Zero_, a circle, a son or priest, Aster, Ishtar, or Astartè—in
Aryan dialect, a star), the title of the head of the Magians and
fire-worshippers, or Surya-ishtara, the sun-worshipper, is often
confounded in modern times with Zara-tustra, the reputed Mazdean
apostle” (Zoroaster).
METEMPSYCHOSIS.—The progress of the soul from one stage of existence
to another. Symbolized and vulgarly believed to be rebirths in animal
bodies. A term generally misunderstood by every class of European and
American society, including many scientists. The kabalistic axiom,
“A stone becomes a plant, a plant an animal, an animal a man, a man
a spirit, and a spirit a god,” receives an explanation in Manu’s
_Manava-Dharma-Sastra_, and other Brahmanical books.
MYSTERIES.—Greek _teletai_, or finishings, as analogous to _teleuteia_
or death. They were observances, generally kept secret from the profane
and uninitiated, in which were taught by dramatic representation
and other methods, the origin of things, the nature of the human
spirit, its relations to the body, and the method of its purification
and restoration to higher life. Physical science, medicine, the
laws of music, divination, were all taught in the same manner. The
Hippocratic oath was but a mystic obligation. Hippocrates was a priest
of Asklepios, some of whose writings chanced to become public. But
the Asklepiades were initiates of the Æsculapian serpent-worship, as
the Bacchantes were of the Dionysia; and both rites were eventually
incorporated with the Eleusinia. We will treat of the Mysteries fully
in the subsequent chapters.
MYSTICS.—Those initiated. But in the mediæval and later periods the
term was applied to men like Bœhmén the Theosophist, Molinos the
Quietist, Nicholas of Basle, and others who believed in a direct
interior communion with God, analogous to the inspiration of the
prophets.
NABIA.—Seership, soothsaying. This oldest and most respected of
mystic phenomena, is the name given to prophecy in the _Bible_, and
is correctly included among the spiritual powers, such as divination,
clairvoyant visions, trance-conditions, and oracles. But while
enchanters, diviners, and even astrologers are strictly condemned in
the Mosaic books, prophecy, seership, and nabia appear as the special
gifts of heaven. In early ages they were all termed _Epoptai_, the
Greek word for seers, clairvoyants; after which they were designated
as _Nebim_, “the plural of Nebo, the Babylonian god of wisdom.” The
kabalist distinguishes between the _seer_ and the _magician_; one is
passive, the other active; _Nebirah_, is one who looks into futurity
and a clairvoyant; _Nebi-poel_, he who possesses _magic powers_. We
notice that Elijah and Apollonius resorted to the same means to isolate
themselves from the disturbing influences of the outer world, viz.:
wrapping their heads entirely in a woolen mantle: from its being an
electric non-conductor we must suppose.
OCCULTIST.—One who studies the various branches of occult science.
The term is used by the French kabalists (See Eliphas Levi’s works).
Occultism embraces the whole range of psychological, physiological,
cosmical, physical, and spiritual phenomena. From the word _occult_
hidden or secret; applying therefore to the study of the _Kabala_,
astrology, alchemy, and all arcane sciences.
PAGAN GODS.—This term gods is erroneously understood by most of the
reading public, to mean idols. The idea attached to them is _not_ that
of something objective or anthropomorphical. With the exception of
occasions when “gods” mean either divine planetary entities (angels),
or disembodied spirits of pure men, the term simply conveys to the mind
of the mystic—whether Hindu Hotar, Mazdean Mage, Egyptian hierophant,
or disciple of the Greek philosophers—the idea of a visible or cognized
manifestation of an invisible potency of nature. And such occult
potencies are invoked under the appellation of various gods, who, for
the time being, are personating these powers. Thus every one of the
numberless deities of the Hindu, Greek, and Egyptian Pantheons, are
simply Powers of the “Unseen Universe.” When the officiating Brahman
invokes Aditya—who, in her cosmic character, is the goddess-sun—he
simply _commands_ that potency (personified in some god), which, as
he asserts, “resides in the Mantra, as the sacred _Vâch_.” These
god-powers are allegorically regarded as the divine _Hotars_ of
the Supreme One; while the priest (Brahman) is the human Hotar who
officiates on earth, and representing that particular Power becomes,
ambassador-like, invested with the very potency which he personates.
PITRIS.—It is generally believed that the Hindu term _Pitris_ means
the spirits of our direct ancestors; of disembodied people. Hence
the argument of some spiritualists that fakirs, and other Eastern
wonder-workers, are _mediums_; that they themselves confess to being
unable to produce anything without the help of the _Pitris_, of whom
they are the obedient instruments. This is in more than one sense
erroneous. The _Pitris_ are not the ancestors of the present living
men, but those of the human kind or Adamic race; the spirits of _human_
races which, on the great scale of descending evolution, preceded our
races of men, and were physically, as well as spiritually, far superior
to our modern pigmies. In _Manava-Dharma-Sastra_ they are called the
_Lunar_ ancestors.
PYTHIA, or Pythoness.—Webster dismisses the word very briefly by saying
that it was the name of one who delivered the oracles at the Temple
of Delphi, and “any female supposed to have the spirit of divination
in her—_a witch_,” which is neither complimentary, exact, nor just.
A Pythia, upon the authority of Plutarch, Iamblichus, Lamprias, and
others, was a nervous sensitive; she was chosen from among the poorest
class, young and pure. Attached to the temple, within whose precincts
she had a room, secluded from every other, and to which no one but the
priest, or seer, had admittance, she had no communications with the
outside world, and her life was more strict and ascetic than that of a
Catholic nun. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a fissure in the
ground, through which arose intoxicating vapors, these subterranean
exhalations penetrating her whole system produced the prophetic mania.
In this abnormal state she delivered oracles. She was sometimes called
_ventriloqua vates_,[41] the ventriloquist-prophetess.
The ancients placed the astral soul of man, ψυχη, or his
self-consciousness, in the pit of the stomach. The Brahmans shared this
belief with Plato and other philosophers. Thus we find in the fourth
verse of the second _Nâbhânedishtha Hymn_ it is said: “Hear, O sons
of the gods (spirits) one who speaks through his navel (nâbhâ) for he
hails you in your dwellings!”
Many of the Sanscrit scholars agree that this belief is one of the most
ancient among the Hindus. The modern fakirs, as well as the ancient
gymnosophists, unite themselves with their Âtman and the Deity by
remaining motionless in contemplation and concentrating their whole
thought on their navel. As in modern somnambulic phenomena, the navel
was regarded as “the circle of the sun,” the seat of internal divine
light.[42] Is the fact of a number of modern somnambulists being
enabled to read letters, hear, smell, and see, through that part of
their body to be regarded again as a simple “coincidence,” or shall we
admit at last that the old sages knew something more of physiological
and psychological mysteries than our modern Academicians? In modern
Persia, when a “magician” (often simply a mesmerizer) is consulted
upon occasions of theft and other puzzling occurrences, he makes his
manipulations over the pit of his stomach, and so brings himself into
a state of clairvoyance. Among the modern Parsis, remarks a translator
of the _Rig-vedas_, there exists a belief up to the present day that
their adepts have a flame in their navel, which enlightens to them
all darkness and discloses the spiritual world, as well as all things
unseen, or at a distance. They call it the lamp of _the Deshtur_, or
high priest; the light of the Dikshita (the initiate), and otherwise
designate it by many other names.
SAMOTHRACES.—A designation of the Fane-gods worshipped at Samothracia
in the Mysteries. They are considered as identical with the Kabeiri,
Dioskuri, and Korybantes. Their names were mystical—denoting Pluto,
Ceres or Proserpina, Bacchus, and Æsculapius or Hermes.
SHAMANS, or Samaneans.—An order of Buddhists among the Tartars,
especially those of Siberia. They are possibly akin to the
philosophers anciently known as _Brachmanes_, mistaken sometimes for
Brahmans.[43] They are all _magicians_, or rather sensitives or mediums
artificially developed. At present those who act as priests among
the Tartars are generally very ignorant, and far below the fakirs in
knowledge and education. Both men and women may be Shamans.
SOMA.—This Hindu sacred beverage answers to the Greek ambrosia or
nectar, drunk by the gods of Olympus. A cup of kykeon was also quaffed
by the mysta at the Eleusinian initiation. He who drinks it easily
reaches _Bradhna_, or place of splendor (Heaven). The soma-drink known
to Europeans is not the _genuine_ beverage, but its substitute; for
the initiated priests alone can taste of the real soma; and even kings
and rajas, when sacrificing, receive the substitute. Haug shows by his
own confession, in his _Aytareya Brahmanan_, that it was not the Soma
that he tasted and found nasty, but the juice from the roots of the
Nyagradha, a plant or bush which grows on the hills of Poona. We were
positively informed that the majority of the sacrificial priests of the
Dekkan have lost the secret of the true soma. It can be found neither
in the ritual books nor through oral information. The true followers
of the primitive Vedic religion are very few; these are the alleged
descendants from the _Rishis_, the real Agnihôtris, the initiates of
the great Mysteries. The soma-drink is also commemorated in the Hindu
Pantheon, for it is called the King-Soma. He who drinks of it is made
to participate in the heavenly king, because he becomes filled with it,
as the Christian apostles and their converts became filled with the
Holy Ghost, and purified of their sins. The soma makes a new man of
the initiate; he is reborn and transformed, and his spiritual nature
overcomes the physical; it gives the divine power of inspiration,
and develops the clairvoyant faculty to the utmost. According to the
exoteric explanation the soma is a plant, but, at the same time it is
an angel. It forcibly connects the _inner_, highest “spirit” of man,
which spirit is an angel like the mystical soma, with his “irrational
soul,” or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink,
they soar together above physical nature, and participate during life
in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven.
Thus the Hindu soma is mystically, and in all respects the same that
the Eucharistic supper is to the Christian. The idea is similar. By
means of the sacrificial prayers—the mantras—this liquor is supposed
to be transformed on the spot into real soma—or the angel, and even
into Brahma himself. Some missionaries have expressed themselves very
indignantly about this ceremony, the more so that, generally speaking,
the Brahmans use a _kind of spirituous liquor_ as a substitute. But do
the Christians believe less fervently in the transubstantiation of the
communion-wine into the blood of Christ, because this wine happens to
be more or less spirituous? Is not the idea of the symbol attached to
it the same? But the missionaries say that this hour of soma-drinking
is the golden hour of Satan, who lurks at the bottom of the Hindu
sacrificial cup.[44]
SPIRIT.—The lack of any mutual agreement between writers in the use
of this word has resulted in dire confusion. It is commonly made
synonymous with _soul_; and the lexicographers countenance the usage.
This is the natural result of our ignorance of the other word, and
repudiation of the classification adopted by the ancients. Elsewhere we
attempt to make clear the distinction between the terms “spirit” and
“soul.” There are no more important passages in this work. Meanwhile,
we will only add that “spirit” is the νοῦς of Plato, the immortal,
immaterial, and purely _divine_ principle in man—the crown of the human
_Triad_; whereas,
SOUL is the ψυχη, or the _nephesh_ of the _Bible_; the vital principle,
or the breath of life, which every animal, down to the infusoria,
shares with man. In the translated _Bible_ it stands indifferently
for _life_, blood, and soul. “Let us _not kill_ his nephesh,” says
the original text: “let us not kill _him_,” translate the Christians
(_Genesis_ xxxvii. 21), and so on.
THEOSOPHISTS.—In the mediæval ages it was the name by which were known
the disciples of Paracelsus of the sixteenth century, the so-called
fire-philosophers or _Philosophi per ignem_. As well as the Platonists
they regarded the soul (ψυχη) and the divine spirit, _nous_ (νοῦς), as
a particle of the great Archos—a fire taken from the eternal ocean of
light.
The Theosophical Society, to which these volumes are dedicated by the
author as a mark of affectionate regard, was organized at New York
in 1875. The object of its founders was to experiment practically in
the occult powers of Nature, and to collect and disseminate among
Christians information about the Oriental religious philosophies.
Later, it has determined to spread among the “poor benighted heathen”
such evidences as to the practical results of Christianity as will
at least give both sides of the story to the communities among which
missionaries are at work. With this view it has established relations
with associations and individuals throughout the East, to whom it
furnishes authenticated reports of the ecclesiastical crimes and
misdemeanors, schisms and heresies, controversies and litigations,
doctrinal differences and biblical criticisms and revisions, with
which the press of Christian Europe and America constantly teems.
Christendom has been long and minutely informed of the degradation
and brutishness into which Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Confucianism
have plunged their deluded votaries, and many millions have been
lavished upon foreign missions under such false representations. The
Theosophical Society, seeing daily exemplifications of this very
state of things as the sequence of Christian teaching and example—the
latter especially—thought it simple justice to make the facts known in
Palestine, India, Ceylon, Cashmere, Tartary, Thibet, China, and Japan,
in all which countries it has influential correspondents. It may also
in time have much to say about the conduct of the missionaries to those
who contribute to their support.
THEURGIST.—From Θεος, god, and εργον, work. The first school of
practical theurgy in the Christian period was founded by Iamblichus
among the Alexandrian Platonists; but the priests attached to the
temples of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia, and who took an active part
in the evocations of the gods during the Sacred Mysteries, were known
by this name from the earliest archaic period. The purpose of it was to
make spirits visible to the eyes of mortals. A theurgist was one expert
in the esoteric learning of the Sanctuaries of all the great countries.
The Neo-platonists of the school of Iamblichus were called theurgists,
for they performed the so-called “ceremonial magic,” and evoked the
“spirits” of the departed heroes, “gods,” and Daimonia (δαιμονια
divine, spiritual entities). In the rare cases when the presence of
a _tangible_ and _visible_ spirit was required, the theurgist had
to furnish the weird apparition with a portion of his own flesh and
blood—he had to perform the _theopæa_, or the “creation of gods,” by
a mysterious process well known to the modern fakirs and initiated
Brahmans of India. This is what is said in the _Book of Evocations_
of the pagodas. It shows the perfect identity of rites and ceremonial
between the oldest Brahmanic theurgy and that of the Alexandrian
Platonists:
“The Brahman Grihasta (the evocator) must be in a state of complete
purity before he ventures to call forth the Pitris.”
After having prepared a lamp, some sandal, incense, etc., and having
traced the magic circles taught to him by the superior guru, in order
to keep away _bad_ spirits, he “ceases to breathe, and calls _the fire_
to his help to disperse his body.” He pronounces a certain number of
times the sacred word, and “his soul escapes from his body, and his
body disappears, and the soul of the evoked spirit descends into the
_double_ body and animates it.” Then “His (Grihasta’s) soul reënters
into his body, whose subtile particles have again been aggregating,
after having formed of their emanations an aërial body to the spirit he
evoked.”
And now, that he has formed for the Pitri a body with the particles
the most essential and pure of his own, the grihasta is allowed, after
the ceremonial sacrifice is over, to “converse with the souls of the
ancestors and the Pitris, and offer them questions on the mysteries of
the _Being_ and the transformations of the _imperishable_.”
“Then after having blown out his lamp he must light it again, and set
at liberty the bad spirits shut out from the place by the magical
circles, and leave the sanctuary of the Pitris.”[45]
The school of Iamblichus was distinct from that of Plotinus and
Porphyry, who were strongly against ceremonial magic and practical
theurgy as dangerous, though these two eminent men firmly believed in
both. “The _theurgic_ or _benevolent_ magic, the Goëtic, or dark and
evil necromancy, were alike in preëminent repute _during the first
century_ of the Christian era.”[46] But never have any of the highly
moral and pious philosophers, whose fame has descended to us spotless
of any evil deed, practiced any other kind of magic than the theurgic,
or _benevolent_, as Bulwer-Lytton terms it. “Whoever is acquainted with
the nature _of divinely luminous appearances_ (φασματα) knows also on
what account it is requisite to abstain from all birds (animal food),
and especially for him who hastens to be liberated from terrestrial
concerns and to be established with the celestial gods,” says
Porphyry.[47]
Though he refused to practice theurgy himself, Porphyry, in his _Life
of Plotinus_, mentions a priest of Egypt, who, “at the request of a
certain friend of Plotinus (which friend was perhaps Porphyry himself,
remarks T. Taylor), exhibited to Plotinus, in the temple of Isis at
Rome, the familiar daimon, or, in modern language, the _guardian angel_
of that philosopher.”[48]
The popular, prevailing idea was that the theurgists, as well as the
magicians, worked wonders, such as evoking the souls or shadows of the
heroes and gods, and doing other thaumaturgic works by supernatural
powers.
YAJNA.—“The Yajna,” say the Brahmans, exists from eternity, for it
proceeded forth from the Supreme One, the _Brahma-Prajapâti_, in whom
it lay dormant from “_no_ beginning.” It is the key to the TRAIVIDYA,
the thrice sacred science contained in the Rig verses, which teaches
the Yagus or sacrificial mysteries. “The Yajna” exists as an invisible
thing at all times; it is like the latent power of electricity in
an electrifying machine, requiring only the operation of a suitable
apparatus in order to be elicited. It is supposed to extend from the
_Ahavaniya_ or sacrificial fire to the heavens, forming a bridge or
ladder by means of which the sacrificer can communicate with the world
of gods and spirits, and even ascend when alive to their abodes.[49]
This _Yajna_ is again one of the forms of the Akása, and the mystic
word calling it into existence and pronounced mentally by the initiated
Priest is the _Lost Word_ receiving impulse through WILL-POWER.
To complete the list, we will now add that in the course of the
following chapters, whenever we use the term _Archaic_, we mean before
the time of Pythagoras; when _Ancient_, before the time of Mahomet; and
when _Mediæval_, the period between Mahomet and Martin Luther. It will
only be necessary to infringe the rule when from time to time we may
have to speak of nations of a pre-Pythagorean antiquity, and will adopt
the common custom of calling them “ancient.”
* * * * *
Before closing this initial chapter, we venture to say a few words in
explanation of the plan of this work. Its object is not to force upon
the public the personal views or theories of its author; nor has it the
pretensions of a scientific work, which aims at creating a revolution
in some department of thought. It is rather a brief summary of the
religions, philosophies, and universal traditions of human kind, and
the exegesis of the same, in the spirit of those secret doctrines, of
which none—thanks to prejudice and bigotry—have reached Christendom
in so unmutilated a form, as to secure it a fair judgment. Since the
days of the unlucky mediæval philosophers, the last to write upon these
secret doctrines of which they were the depositaries, few men have
dared to brave persecution and prejudice by placing their knowledge
upon record. And these few have never, as a rule, written for the
public, but only for those of their own and succeeding times who
possessed the key to their jargon. The multitude, not understanding
them or their doctrines, have been accustomed to regard them _en
masse_ as either charlatans or dreamers. Hence the unmerited contempt
into which the study of the noblest of sciences—that of the spiritual
man—has gradually fallen.
In undertaking to inquire into the assumed infallibility of Modern
Science and Theology, the author has been forced, even at the risk of
being thought discursive, to make constant comparison of the ideas,
achievements, and pretensions of their representatives, with those
of the ancient philosophers and religious teachers. Things the most
widely separated as to time, have thus been brought into immediate
juxtaposition, for only thus could the priority and parentage of
discoveries and dogmas be determined. In discussing the merits of
our scientific contemporaries, their own confessions of failure in
experimental research, of baffling mysteries, of missing links in
their chains of theory, of inability to comprehend natural phenomena,
of ignorance of the laws of the causal world, have furnished the
basis for the present study. Especially (since Psychology has been
so much neglected, and the East is so far away that few of our
investigators will ever get there to study that science where alone it
is understood), we will review the speculations and policy of noted
authorities in connection with those modern psychological phenomena
which began at Rochester and have now overspread the world. _We wish
to show how inevitable were their innumerable failures, and how they
must continue until these pretended authorities of the West go to the
Brahmans and Lamaists of the far Orient, and respectfully ask them to
impart the alphabet of true science._ We have laid no charge against
scientists that is not supported by their own published admissions, and
if our citations from the records of antiquity rob some of what they
have hitherto viewed as well-earned laurels, the fault is not ours but
Truth’s. No man worthy of the name of philosopher would care to wear
honors that rightfully belong to another.
Deeply sensible of the Titanic struggle that is now in progress between
materialism and the spiritual aspirations of mankind, our constant
endeavor has been to gather into our several chapters, like weapons
into armories, every fact and argument that can be used to aid the
latter in defeating the former. Sickly and deformed child as it now is,
the materialism of To-Day is born of the brutal Yesterday. Unless its
growth is arrested, it may become our master. It is the bastard progeny
of the French Revolution and its reaction against ages of religious
bigotry and repression. To prevent the crushing of these spiritual
aspirations, the blighting of these hopes, and the deadening of that
intuition which teaches us of a God and a hereafter, we must show our
false theologies in their naked deformity, and distinguish between
divine religion and human dogmas. Our voice is raised for spiritual
freedom, and our plea made for enfranchisement from all tyranny,
whether of SCIENCE or THEOLOGY.
THE VEIL OF ISIS.
_PART ONE.—SCIENCE._
CHAPTER I.
“Ego sum qui sum.”
—_An axiom of Hermetic Philosophy._
“We commenced research where modern conjecture closes its
faithless wings. And with us, these were the common elements of
science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild chimeras, or
despair of as unfathomable mysteries.“BULWER’S “ZANONI.”
There exists somewhere in this wide world an old Book—so very old that
our modern antiquarians might ponder over its pages an indefinite time,
and still not quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon which it
is written. It is the only original copy now in existence. The most
ancient Hebrew document on occult learning—the _Siphra Dzeniouta_—was
compiled from it, and that at a time when the former was already
considered in the light of a literary relic. One of its illustrations
represents the Divine Essence emanating from ADAM[50] like a luminous
arc proceeding to form a circle; and then, having attained the highest
point of its circumference, the ineffable Glory bends back again, and
returns to earth, bringing a higher type of humanity in its vortex. As
it approaches nearer and nearer to our planet, the Emanation becomes
more and more shadowy, until upon touching the ground it is as black as
night.
A conviction, founded upon _seventy_ thousand years of experience,[51]
as they allege, has been entertained by hermetic philosophers of all
periods that matter has in time become, through sin, more gross and
dense than it was at man’s first formation; that, at the beginning,
the human body was of a half-ethereal nature; and that, before the
fall, mankind communed freely with the now unseen universes. But since
that time matter has become the formidable barrier between us and the
world of spirits. The oldest esoteric traditions also teach that,
before the mystic Adam, many races of human beings lived and died
out, each giving place in its turn to another. Were these precedent
types more perfect? Did any of them belong to the _winged_ race of men
mentioned by Plato in _Phædrus_? It is the special province of science
to solve the problem. The caves of France and the relics of the stone
age afford a point at which to begin.
As the cycle proceeded, man’s eyes were more and more opened, until
he came to know “good and evil” as well as the Elohim themselves.
Having reached its summit, the cycle began to go downward. When the arc
attained a certain point which brought it parallel with the fixed line
of our terrestrial plane, the man was furnished by nature with “coats
of _skin_,” and the Lord God “clothed them.”
This same belief in the pre-existence of a far more spiritual race
than the one to which we now belong can be traced back to the earliest
traditions of nearly every people. In the ancient Quiché manuscript,
published by Brasseur de Bourbourg—the _Popol Vuh_—the first men are
mentioned as a race that could reason and speak, whose sight was
unlimited, and who knew all things at once. According to Philo Judæus,
the air is filled with an invisible host of spirits, some of whom are
free from evil and immortal, and others are pernicious and mortal.
“From the sons of EL we are descended, and sons of El must we become
again.” And the unequivocal statement of the anonymous Gnostic who
wrote _The Gospel according to John_, that “as many as received Him,”
_i.e._, who followed practically the esoteric doctrine of Jesus, would
“become the sons of God,” points to the same belief. (i., 12.) “Know ye
not, ye are _gods_?” exclaimed the Master. Plato describes admirably
in _Phædrus_ the state in which man once was, and what he will become
again: before, and after the “loss of his wings;” when “he lived among
the gods, a god himself in the airy world.” From the remotest periods
religious philosophies taught that the whole universe was filled with
divine and spiritual beings of divers races. From one of these evolved,
in the course of time, ADAM, the primitive man.
The Kalmucks and some tribes of Siberia also describe in their legends
earlier creations than our present race. These beings, they say, were
possessed of almost boundless knowledge, and in their audacity even
threatened rebellion against the Great Chief Spirit. To punish their
presumption and humble them, he imprisoned them _in bodies_, and so
shut in their senses. From these they can escape but through long
repentance, self-purification, and development. Their _Shamans_, they
think, occasionally enjoy the divine powers originally possessed by all
human beings.
The Astor Library of New York has recently been enriched by a
fac-simile of an Egyptian Medical Treatise, written in the sixteenth
century B.C. (or, more precisely, 1552 B.C.), which, according to
the commonly received chronology, is the time when Moses was just
twenty-one years of age. The original is written upon the inner bark
of _Cyperus papyrus_, and has been pronounced by Professor Schenk, of
Leipsig, not only genuine, but also the most perfect ever seen. It
consists of a single sheet of yellow-brown papyrus of finest quality,
three-tenths of a metre wide, more than twenty metres long, and
forming one roll divided into one hundred and ten pages, all carefully
numbered. It was purchased in Egypt, in 1872-3, by the archæologist
Ebers, of “a well-to-do Arab from Luxor.” The New York _Tribune_,
commenting upon the circumstance, says: The papyrus “bears internal
evidence of being one of the six _Hermetic Books on Medicine_, named by
Clement of Alexandria.”
The editor further says: “At the time of Iamblichus, A.D. 363, the
priests of Egypt showed forty-two books which they attributed to Hermes
(Thuti). Of these, according to that author, thirty-six contained the
history of all human knowledge; the last six treated of anatomy, of
pathology, of affections of the eye, instruments of surgery, and of
medicines.[52] The _Papyrus Ebers_ is indisputably one of these ancient
Hermetic works.”
If so clear a ray of light has been thrown upon ancient Egyptian
science, by the accidental (?) encounter of the German archæologist
with one “well-to-do Arab” from Luxor, how can we know what sunshine
may be let in upon the dark crypts of history by an equally accidental
meeting between some other prosperous Egyptian and another enterprising
student of antiquity!
_The discoveries of modern science do not disagree with the oldest
traditions which claim an incredible antiquity for our race._ Within
the last few years geology, which previously had only conceded that
man could be traced as far back as the tertiary period, has found
unanswerable proofs that human existence antedates the last glaciation
of Europe—over 250,000 years! A hard nut, this, for Patristic Theology
to crack; but an accepted fact with the ancient philosophers.
Moreover, fossil implements have been exhumed together with human
remains, which show that man hunted in those remote times, and knew how
to build a fire. But the forward step has not yet been taken in this
search for the origin of the race; science comes to a dead stop, and
waits for future proofs. Unfortunately, anthropology and psychology
possess no Cuvier; neither geologists nor archæologists are able to
construct, from the fragmentary bits hitherto discovered, the perfect
skeleton of the triple man—physical, intellectual, and spiritual.
Because the fossil implements of man are found to become more rough
and uncouth as geology penetrates deeper into the bowels of the earth,
it seems a proof to science that the closer we come to the origin of
man, the more savage and brute-like he must be. Strange logic! Does
the finding of the remains in the cave of Devon prove that there
were no contemporary races then who were highly civilized? When the
present population of the earth have disappeared, and some archæologist
belonging to the “coming race” of the distant future shall excavate the
domestic implements of one of our Indian or Andaman Island tribes, will
he be justified in concluding that mankind in the nineteenth century
was “just emerging from the Stone Age?”
It has lately been the fashion to speak of “the untenable conceptions
of an uncultivated past.” _As though it were possible to hide behind
an epigram the intellectual quarries out of which the reputations of
so many modern philosophers have been carved!_ Just as Tyndall is
ever ready to disparage ancient philosophers—for a dressing-up of
whose ideas more than one distinguished scientist has derived honor
and credit—so the geologists seem more and more inclined to take for
granted that all of the archaic races were contemporaneously in a state
of dense barbarism. But not all of our best authorities agree in this
opinion. Some of the most eminent maintain exactly the reverse. Max
Müller, for instance, says: “Many things are still unintelligible to
us, and the hieroglyphic language of antiquity records but half of the
mind’s unconscious intentions. Yet more and more the image of man, in
whatever clime we meet him, rises before us, noble and pure from the
very beginning; even his errors we learn to understand, even his dreams
we begin to interpret. As far as we can trace back the footsteps of
man, even on the lowest strata of history, we see the divine gift of
a sound and sober intellect belonging to him from the very first, and
the idea of a humanity emerging slowly from the depths of an animal
brutality can never be maintained again.”[53]
As it is claimed to be unphilosophical to inquire into first causes,
scientists now occupy themselves with considering their physical
effects. The field of scientific investigation is therefore bounded by
physical nature. When once its limits are reached, enquiry must stop,
and their work be recommenced. With all due respect to our learned
men, they are like the squirrel upon its revolving wheel, for they
are doomed to turn their “matter” over and over again. Science is a
mighty potency, and it is not for us pigmies to question her. But the
“_scientists_” are not themselves science embodied any more than the
men of our planet are the planet itself. We have neither the right to
demand, nor power to compel our “modern-day philosopher” to accept
without challenge a geographical description of the dark side of the
moon. But, if in some lunar cataclysm one of her inhabitants should be
hurled thence into the attraction of our atmosphere, and land, safe and
sound, at Dr. Carpenter’s door, he would be indictable as recreant to
professional duty if he should fail to set the physical problem at rest.
For a man of science to refuse an opportunity to investigate any new
phenomenon, whether it comes to him in the shape of a man from the
moon, or a ghost from the Eddy homestead, is alike reprehensible.
Whether arrived at by the method of Aristotle, or that of Plato, we
need not stop to inquire; but it is a fact that both the inner and
outer natures of man are claimed to have been thoroughly understood by
the ancient andrologists. Notwithstanding the superficial hypotheses
of geologists, we are beginning to have almost daily proofs in
corroboration of the assertions of those philosophers.
_They divided the interminable periods of human existence on this
planet into cycles, during each of which mankind gradually reached
the culminating point of highest civilization and gradually relapsed
into abject barbarism._ To what eminence the race in its progress had
several times arrived may be feebly surmised by the wonderful monuments
of old, still visible, and the descriptions given by Herodotus of
other marvels of which no traces now remain. Even in his days the
gigantic structures of many pyramids and world-famous temples were
but masses of ruins. Scattered by the unrelenting hand of time, they
are described by the Father of History as “these venerable witnesses
of the long bygone glory of departed ancestors.” He “shrinks from
speaking of divine things,” and gives to posterity but an imperfect
description from hearsay of some marvellous subterranean chambers of
the Labyrinth, where lay—and now lie—concealed, the sacred remains of
the King-Initiates.
We can judge, moreover, of the lofty civilization reached in some
periods of antiquity by the historical descriptions of the ages of the
Ptolemies, yet in that epoch the arts and sciences were considered to
be degenerating, and the secret of a number of the former had been
already lost. In the recent excavations of Mariette-Bey, at the foot of
the Pyramids, statues of wood and other relics have been exhumed, which
show that long before the period of the first dynasties the Egyptians
had attained to a refinement and perfection which is calculated to
excite the wonder of even the most ardent admirers of Grecian art.
Bayard Taylor describes these statues in one of his lectures, and tells
us that the beauty of the heads, ornamented with eyes of precious
stones and copper eyelids, is unsurpassed. Far below the stratum of
sand in which lay the remains gathered into the collections of Lepsius,
Abbott, and the British Museum, were found buried the tangible proofs
of the hermetic doctrine of cycles which has been already explained.
Dr. Schliemann, the enthusiastic Hellenist, has recently found, in his
excavations in the Troad, abundant evidences of the same gradual change
from barbarism to civilization, and from civilization to barbarism
again. Why then should we feel so reluctant to admit the possibility
that, if the antediluvians were so much better versed than ourselves in
certain sciences as to have been perfectly acquainted with important
arts, which we now term _lost_, they might have equally excelled in
psychological knowledge? Such a hypothesis must be considered as
reasonable as any other until some countervailing evidence shall be
discovered to destroy it.
Every true _savant_ admits that in many respects human knowledge is yet
in its infancy. Can it be that our cycle began in ages comparatively
recent? _These cycles_, according to the Chaldean philosophy, _do
not embrace all mankind at one and the same time_. Professor Draper
partially corroborates this view by saying that the periods into which
geology has “found it convenient to divide the progress of man in
civilization are not abrupt epochs which hold good simultaneously for
the whole human race;” giving as an instance the “wandering Indians of
America,” who “are only at the present moment emerging from the stone
age.” Thus more than once scientific men have unwittingly confirmed the
testimony of the ancients.
Any Kabalist well acquainted with the Pythagorean system of numerals
and geometry can demonstrate that the metaphysical views of Plato were
based upon the strictest mathematical principles. “True mathematics,”
says the _Magicon_, “is something with which all higher sciences are
connected; common mathematics is but a deceitful phantasmagoria, whose
much-praised infallibility only arises from this—that materials,
conditions, and references are made its foundation.” Scientists who
believe they have adopted the Aristotelian method only because they
creep when they do not run from demonstrated particulars to universals,
glorify this method of inductive philosophy, and reject that of Plato,
which they treat as unsubstantial. Professor Draper laments that
such speculative mystics as Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus should have
taken the place “of the severe geometers of the old museum.”[54] He
forgets that geometry, of all sciences the only one which proceeds from
universals to particulars, was precisely the method employed by Plato
in his philosophy. As long as exact science confines its observations
to physical conditions and proceeds Aristotle-like, it certainly cannot
fail. But notwithstanding that the world of matter is boundless for
us, it still is finite; and thus materialism will turn forever in
this vitiated circle, unable to soar higher than the circumference
will permit. The cosmological theory of numerals which Pythagoras
learned from the Egyptian hierophants, is alone able to reconcile the
two units, matter and spirit, and cause each to demonstrate the other
mathematically.
The sacred numbers of the universe in their esoteric combination solve
the great problem and explain the theory of radiation and the cycle of
the emanations. The lower orders before they develop into higher ones
must emanate from the higher spiritual ones, and when arrived at the
turning-point, be reabsorbed again into the infinite.
Physiology, like everything else in this world of constant evolution,
is subject to the cyclic revolution. As it now seems to be hardly
emerging from the shadows of the lower arc, so it may be one day proved
to have been at the highest point of the circumference of the circle
far earlier than the days of Pythagoras.
Mochus, the Sidonian, the physiologist and teacher of the science of
anatomy, flourished long before the Sage of Samos; and the latter
received the sacred instructions from his disciples and descendants.
Pythagoras, the pure philosopher, the deeply-versed in the profounder
phenomena of nature, the noble inheritor of the ancient lore, whose
great aim was to free the soul from the fetters of sense and force it
to realize its powers, must live eternally in human memory.
_The impenetrable veil of arcane secrecy was thrown over the sciences
taught in the sanctuary._ This is the cause of the modern depreciating
of the ancient philosophies. Even Plato and Philo Judæus have been
accused by many a commentator of absurd inconsistencies, whereas the
design which underlies the maze of metaphysical contradictions so
perplexing to the reader of the _Timæus_, is but too evident. But has
Plato ever been read understandingly by one of the expounders of the
classics? This is a question warranted by the criticisms to be found in
such authors as Stalbaüm, Schleirmacher, Ficinus (Latin translation),
Heindorf, Sydenham, Buttmann, Taylor and Burges, to say nothing of
lesser authorities. The covert allusions of the Greek philosopher to
esoteric things have manifestly baffled these commentators to the last
degree. They not only with unblushing coolness suggest as to certain
difficult passages that another phraseology was evidently intended, but
they audaciously make the changes! The Orphic line:
“Of the song, the order of the _sixth race_ close”
which can only be interpreted as a reference to the _sixth_ race
evolved in the consecutive evolution of the spheres,[55] Burges says: “
... was evidently taken from a cosmogony _where man was feigned to be
created the last_.”[56]—Ought not one who undertakes to edit another’s
works at least understand what his author means?
Indeed, the ancient philosophers seem to be generally held, even by the
least prejudiced of our modern critics, to have lacked that profundity
and thorough knowledge in the exact sciences of which our century is
so boastful. It is even questioned whether they understood that basic
scientific principle: _ex nihilo nihil fit_. If they suspected the
indestructibility of matter at all,—say these commentators—it was not
in consequence of a firmly-established formula but only through an
intuitional reasoning and by analogy.
We hold to the contrary opinion. The speculations of these philosophers
upon matter were open to public criticism: but their teachings in
regard to spiritual things were profoundly esoteric. Being thus sworn
to secrecy and religious silence upon abstruse subjects involving the
relations of spirit and matter, they rivalled each other in their
ingenious methods for concealing their real opinions.
The doctrine of _Metempsychosis_ has been abundantly ridiculed by men
of science and rejected by theologians, yet if it had been properly
understood in its application to the indestructibility of matter and
the immortality of spirit, it would have been perceived that it is
a sublime conception. Should we not first regard the subject from
the standpoint of the ancients before venturing to disparage its
teachers? The solution of the great problem of _eternity_ belongs
neither to religious superstition nor to gross materialism. The harmony
and mathematical equiformity of the double evolution—spiritual and
physical—are elucidated only in the universal numerals of Pythagoras,
who built his system entirely upon the so-called “metrical speech”
of the Hindu _Vedas_. It is but lately that one of the most zealous
Sanskrit scholars, Martin Haug, undertook the translation of the
_Aitareya Brahmana_ of the _Rig-Veda_. It had been till that time
entirely unknown; these explanations indicate beyond dispute the
identity of the Pythagorean and Brahmanical systems. In both, the
esoteric significance is derived from the number: in the former,
from the mystic relation of every number to everything intelligible
to the human mind; in the latter, from the number of syllables
of which each verse in the _Mantras_ consists. Plato, the ardent
disciple of Pythagoras, realized it so fully as to maintain that the
Dodecahedron was the geometrical figure employed by the _Demiurgus_
in constructing the universe. Some of these figures had a peculiarly
solemn significance. For instance _four_, of which the Dodecahedron
is the trine, was held sacred by the Pythagoreans. It is the perfect
square, and neither of the bounding lines exceeds the other in length,
by a single point. It is the emblem of moral justice and divine equity
geometrically expressed. All the powers and great symphonies of
physical and spiritual nature lie inscribed within the perfect square;
and the ineffable name of Him, which name otherwise, would remain
unutterable, was replaced by this sacred number ~4~ the most binding
and solemn oath with the ancient mystics—the _Tetractys_.
If the Pythagorean metempsychosis should be thoroughly explained
and compared with the modern theory of evolution, it would be found
to supply every “missing link” in the chain of the latter. But who
of our scientists would consent to lose his precious time over the
vagaries of the ancients. Notwithstanding proofs to the contrary, they
not only deny that the nations of the archaic periods, but even the
ancient philosophers had any positive knowledge of the Heliocentric
system. The “Venerable Bedes,” the Augustines and Lactantii appear to
have smothered, with their dogmatic ignorance, all faith in the more
ancient theologists of the pre-Christian centuries. But now philology
and a closer acquaintance with Sanskrit literature have partially
enabled us to vindicate them from these unmerited imputations. In the
_Vedas_, for instance, we find positive proof that so long ago as 2000
B.C., the Hindu sages and scholars must have been acquainted with the
rotundity of our globe and the Heliocentric system. Hence, Pythagoras
and Plato knew well this astronomical truth; for Pythagoras obtained
his knowledge in India, or from men who had been there, and Plato
faithfully echoed his teachings. We will quote two passages from the
_Aitareya Brahmana_:
In the “_Serpent-Mantra_,”[57] the _Brahmana_ declares as follows:
that this _Mantra_ is that one which was seen by the Queen of the
Serpents, _Sarpa-râjni_; because the earth (_iyam_) is the Queen of the
Serpents, as she is the mother and queen of all that moves (_sarpat_).
In the beginning she (the earth) was but one head (round), without
hair (_bald_), _i.e._, without vegetation. She then perceived this
_Mantra_ which confers upon him who knows it, the power of assuming
any form which he might desire. She “pronounced the _Mantra_,” _i.e._,
sacrificed to the gods; and, in consequence, immediately obtained a
motley appearance; she became variegated, and able to produce any form
she might like, _changing one form into another_. This _Mantra_ begins
with the words: “_Ayam gaûh pris’nir akramît_” (x., 189).
The description of the earth in the shape of a _round_ and _bald_ head,
which was _soft_ at first, and became _hard_ only from being breathed
upon by the god Vâyu, the lord of the air, forcibly suggests the idea
that the authors of the sacred Vedic books knew the earth to be _round_
or spherical; moreover, that it had been a _gelatinous_ mass at first,
which gradually cooled off under the influence of the air and time. So
much for their knowledge about our globe’s sphericity; and now we will
present the testimony upon which we base our assertion, that the Hindus
were perfectly acquainted with the Heliocentric system, at least 2000
years B.C.
In the same treatise the _Hotar_, (priest), is taught how the
_Shastras_ should be repeated, and how the phenomena of sunrise and
sunset are to be explained. It says: “The Agnishtoma is that one (that
god) who burns. The sun _never sets nor rises_. When people think the
sun is setting, it is _not so_; they are mistaken. For after having
arrived at the end of the day, it produces two opposite effects, making
night to what is below, and day to what is on the other side. When
they (the people) believe it rises in the morning, the sun only does
thus: having reached the end of the night, it makes itself produce two
opposite effects, making day to what is below, and night to what is on
the other side. In fact the sun never sets; nor does it set for him who
has such a knowledge....”[58]
This sentence is so conclusive, that even the translator of the
_Rig-Veda_, Dr. Haug, was forced to remark it. He says this passage
contains “the _denial_ of the existence of sunrise and sunset,”
and that the author supposes the sun “to remain always in its high
position.”[59]
In one of the earliest _Nivids_, Rishi Kutsa, a Hindu sage of the
remotest antiquity, explains the allegory of the first laws given to
the celestial bodies. For doing “what she ought not to do,” Anâhit
(Anaïtis or Nana, the Persian Venus), representing the earth in
the legend, is sentenced to turn round the sun. The _Sattras_, or
sacrificial sessions[60] prove undoubtedly that so early as in the
eighteenth or twentieth century B.C., the Hindus had made considerable
progress in astronomical science. The _Sattras_ lasted one year, and
were “nothing but an imitation of the sun’s yearly course. They were
divided, says Haug, into two distinct parts, each consisting of six
months of thirty days each; in the midst of both was the _Vishuvan_
(equator or central day), cutting the whole _Sattras_ into two halves,
etc.”[61] This scholar, although he ascribes the composition of the
bulk of the _Brahmanas_ to the period 1400-1200 B.C., is of opinion
that the oldest of the hymns may be placed at the very commencement of
Vedic literature, between the years 2400-2000, B.C. He finds no reason
for considering the _Vedas_ less ancient than the sacred books of the
Chinese. As the _Shu-King_ or _Book of History_, and the sacrificial
songs of the _Shi-King_, or _Book of Odes_, have been proved to have
an antiquity as early as 2200, B.C., our philologists may yet be
compelled before long to acknowledge, that in astronomical knowledge,
the antediluvian Hindus were their masters.
At all events, there are facts which prove that certain astronomical
calculations were as correct with the Chaldeans in the days of Julius
Cæsar as they are now. When the calendar was reformed by the Conqueror,
the civil year was found to correspond so little with the seasons, that
summer had merged into the autumn months, and the autumn months into
full winter. It was Sosigenes, the Chaldean astronomer, who restored
order into the confusion, by putting back the 25th of March ninety
days, thus making it correspond with the vernal equinox; and it was
Sosigenes, again, who fixed the lengths of the months _as they now
remain_.
In America, it was found by the Motezuman army, that the calendar of
the Aztecs gave an equal number of days and weeks to each month. The
extreme accuracy of their astronomical calculations was so great,
that _no error_ has been discovered in their reckoning by subsequent
verifications; while the Europeans, who landed in Mexico in 1519, were,
by the Julian calendar, nearly eleven days in advance of the exact time.
It is to the priceless and accurate translations of the Vedic Books,
and to the personal researches of Dr. Haug, that we are indebted for
the corroboration of the claims of the hermetic philosophers. That the
period of Zarathustra Spitama (Zoroaster) was of untold antiquity, can
be easily proved. The _Brahmanas_, to which Haug ascribes four thousand
years, describe the religious contest between the ancient Hindus, who
lived in the pre-Vedic period, and the Iranians. The battles between
the _Devas_ and the _Asuras_—the former representing the _Hindus_ and
the latter the Iranians—are described at length in the sacred books.
As the Iranian prophet was the first to raise himself against what
he called the “idolatry” of the Brahmans, and to designate them as
the _Devas_ (devils), how far back must then have been this religious
crisis?
“This contest,” answers Dr. Haug, “must have appeared to the authors of
the _Brahmanas_ as old as the feats of King Arthur appear to English
writers of the nineteenth century.”
There was not a philosopher of any notoriety who did not hold to this
doctrine of metempsychosis, as taught by the Brahmans, Buddhists, and
later by the Pythagoreans, in its esoteric sense, whether he expressed
it more or less intelligibly. Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus,
Synesius and Chalcidius, all believed in it; and the Gnostics, who are
unhesitatingly proclaimed by history as a body of the most refined,
learned, and enlightened men,[62] were all believers in metempsychosis.
Socrates entertained opinions identical with those of Pythagoras; and
both, as the penalty of their divine philosophy, were put to a violent
death. The rabble has been the same in all ages. Materialism has been,
and will ever be blind to spiritual truths. These philosophers held,
with the Hindus, that God had infused into matter a portion of his own
Divine Spirit, which animates and moves every particle. They taught
that men have _two souls_, of separate and quite different natures:
the one perishable—the Astral Soul, or the inner, fluidic body—the
other incorruptible and immortal—the _Augoeides_, or portion of the
Divine Spirit; that the mortal or Astral Soul perishes at each gradual
change at the threshold of every new sphere, becoming with every
transmigration more purified. The astral man, intangible and invisible
as he might be to our mortal, earthly senses, is still constituted
of matter, though sublimated. Aristotle, notwithstanding that for
political reasons of his own he maintained a prudent silence as to
certain esoteric matters, expressed very clearly his opinion on the
subject. It was his belief that human souls are emanations of God, that
are finally reabsorbed into Divinity. Zeno, the founder of the Stoics,
taught that there are “two eternal qualities throughout nature: the
one active; or male, the other passive, or female: that the former
is pure, subtile ether, or Divine Spirit; the other entirely inert in
itself till united with the active principle. That the Divine Spirit
acting upon matter produced fire, water, earth, and air; and that it is
the sole efficient principle by which all nature is moved. The Stoics,
like the Hindu sages, believed in the final absorption. St. Justin
believed in the emanation of these souls from Divinity, and Tatian,
the Assyrian, his disciple, declared that “man was as immortal as God
himself.”[63]
That profoundly significant verse of the _Genesis_, “And to every beast
of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that
creepeth upon the earth, I gave _a living soul_, ...” should arrest the
attention of every Hebrew scholar capable of reading the Scripture in
its original, instead of following the erroneous translation, in which
the phrase reads, “wherein _there is life_.”[64]
From the first to the last chapters, the translators of the Jewish
Sacred Books misconstrued this meaning. They have even changed the
spelling of the name of God, as Sir W. Drummond proves. Thus _El_,
if written correctly, would read _Al_, for it stands in the original
אל—Al, and, according to Higgins, this word means the god Mithra, the
_Sun_, the preserver and savior. Sir W. Drummond shows that _Beth-El_
means the House of the _Sun_ in its literal translation, and not of
God. “_El_, in the composition of these Canaanite names, does not
signify _Deus_, but _Sol_.”[65] Thus Theology has disfigured ancient
Theosophy, and Science ancient Philosophy.[66]
For lack of comprehension of this great philosophical principle, the
methods of modern science, however exact, must end in nullity. In
no one branch can it demonstrate the origin and ultimate of things.
Instead of tracing the effect from its primal source, its progress is
the reverse. Its higher types, as it teaches, are all evolved from
antecedent lower ones. It starts from the bottom of the cycle, led on
step by step in the great labyrinth of nature by a thread of matter.
As soon as this breaks and the clue is lost, it recoils in affright
from the Incomprehensible, and confesses itself _powerless_. Not
so did Plato and his disciples. With him _the lower types were but
the concrete images of the higher abstract ones_. The soul, which
is immortal, has an arithmetical, as the body has a geometrical,
beginning. This beginning, as the reflection of the great universal
ARCHÆUS, is self-moving, and from the centre diffuses itself over the
whole body of the microcosm.
It was the sad perception of this truth that made Tyndall confess
how powerless is science, even over the world of matter. “The first
marshalling of the atoms, on which all subsequent action depends,
baffles a keener power than that of the microscope.” “Through pure
excess of complexity, and long before observation can have any voice
in the matter, the most highly trained intellect, the most refined
and disciplined imagination, _retires in bewilderment from the
contemplation of the problem_. We are struck dumb by an astonishment
which no microscope can relieve, doubting not only the power of our
instrument, but even whether we ourselves possess the intellectual
elements which will ever enable us to grapple with the ultimate
structural energies of nature.”
The fundamental geometrical figure of the Kabala—that figure which
tradition and the esoteric doctrines tell us was given by the Deity
itself to Moses on Mount Sinai[67]—contains in its grandiose, because
simple combination, the key to the universal problem. This figure
contains in itself all the others. For those who are able to master it,
there is no need to exercise imagination. No earthly microscope can be
compared with the keenness of the spiritual perception.
And even for those who are unacquainted with the GREAT SCIENCE, the
description given by a well-trained child-psychometer of the genesis of
a grain, a fragment of crystal, or any other object—is worth all the
telescopes and microscopes of “exact science.”
There may be more truth in the adventurous pangenesis of Darwin—whom
Tyndall calls a “soaring speculator” than in the cautious, line-bound
hypothesis of the latter; who, in common with other thinkers of his
class, surrounds his imagination “by the firm frontiers of reason.” The
theory of a microscopic germ which contains in itself “a world of minor
germs,” soars in one sense at least into the infinite. It oversteps the
world of matter, and begins unconsciously busying itself in the world
of spirit.
If we accept Darwin’s theory of the development of species, we find
that his starting-point is placed in front of an open door. We are at
liberty with him, to either remain within, or cross the threshold,
beyond which lies the limitless and the incomprehensible, or rather
the _Unutterable_. If our mortal language is inadequate to express what
our spirit dimly foresees in the great “_Beyond_” while on this earth—it
_must_ realize it at some point in the timeless Eternity.
Not so with Professor Huxley’s theory of the “Physical Basis of
Life.” Regardless of the formidable majority of “nays” from his
German brother-scientists, he creates a universal _protoplasm_ and
appoints its cells to become henceforth the sacred founts of the
principle of all _life_. By making the latter identical in living man,
“dead mutton,” a nettle-sting, and a lobster; by shutting in, in the
molecular cell of the protoplasm, the life-principle, and by shutting
out from it the divine influx which comes with subsequent evolution, he
closes every door against any possible escape. Like an able tactician
he converts his “_laws_ and _facts_” into sentries whom he causes to
mount guard over every issue. The standard under which he rallies them
is inscribed with the word “necessity;” but hardly is it unfurled
when he mocks the legend and calls it “an empty shadow of my own
imagination.”[68]
The fundamental doctrines of spiritualism, he says, “lie outside the
limits of philosophical inquiry.” We will be bold enough to contradict
this assertion, and say that they lie a great deal more within such
inquiry than Mr. Huxley’s protoplasm. Insomuch that they present
evident and palpable facts of the existence of _spirit_, and the
protoplasmic cells, _once dead_, present none whatever of being the
originators or the bases of life, as this one of the few “foremost
thinkers of the day” wants us to believe.[69]
The ancient Kabalist rested upon no hypothesis till he could lay its
basis upon the firm rock of recorded experiment.
But the too great dependence upon physical facts led to a growth of
materialism and a decadence of spirituality and faith. At the time of
Aristotle, this was the prevailing tendency of thought. And though the
Delphic commandment was not as yet completely eliminated from Grecian
thought; and some philosophers still held that “in order to know what
man _is_, we ought to know what man _was_”— still materialism had already
begun to gnaw at the root of faith. The Mysteries themselves had
degenerated in a very great degree into mere priestly speculations and
religious fraud. Few were the true adepts and initiates, the heirs and
descendants of those who had been dispersed by the conquering swords of
various invaders of Old Egypt.
The time predicted by the great Hermes in his dialogue with Æsculapius
had indeed come; the time when impious foreigners would accuse Egypt
of adoring monsters, and naught but the letters engraved in stone
upon her monuments would survive—enigmas incredible to posterity.
Their sacred scribes and hierophants were wanderers upon the face of
the earth. Obliged from fear of a profanation of the sacred mysteries
to seek refuge among the Hermetic fraternities—known later as the
_Essenes_—their esoteric knowledge was buried deeper than ever. The
triumphant brand of Aristotle’s pupil swept away from his path of
conquest every vestige of a once pure religion, and Aristotle himself,
the type and child of his epoch, though instructed in the secret
science of the Egyptians, knew but little of this crowning result of
millenniums of esoteric studies.
As well as those who lived in the days of the Psammetics, our
present-day philosophers “lift the Veil of Isis”—for Isis is but the
symbol of nature. But, they see only her physical forms. The soul
within escapes their view; and the Divine Mother has no answer for
them. There are anatomists, who, uncovering to sight no indwelling
spirit under the layers of muscles, the net-work of nerves, or the
cineritious matter, which they lift with the point of the scalpel,
assert that man has no soul. Such are as purblind in sophistry as
the student, who, confining his research to the cold letter of the
Kabala, dares say it has no vivifying spirit. To see the true man who
once inhabited the subject which lies before him, on the dissecting
table, the surgeon must use other eyes than those of his body. So,
the glorious truth covered up in the hieratic writings of the ancient
papyri can be revealed only to him who possesses the faculty of
intuition—which, if we call reason the eye of the mind, may be defined
as the eye of the soul.
Our modern science acknowledges a Supreme Power, an Invisible
Principle, but denies a Supreme Being, or Personal God.[70] Logically,
the difference between the two might be questioned; for in this case
_the Power and the Being are identical_. Human reason can hardly
imagine to itself an Intelligent Supreme Power without associating
it with the idea of an Intelligent Being. The masses can never be
expected to have a clear conception of the omnipotence and omnipresence
of a Supreme God, without investing with those attributes a gigantic
projection of their own personality. But the kabalists have never
looked upon the invisible EN-SOPH otherwise than as a _Power_.
So far our modern positivists have been anticipated by thousands of
ages, in their cautious philosophy. What the hermetic adept claims to
demonstrate is, that simple common sense precludes the possibility
that the universe is the result of mere chance. Such an idea appears
to him more absurd than to think that the problems of Euclid were
unconsciously formed by a monkey playing with geometrical figures.
Very few Christians understand, if indeed they know anything at all,
of the Jewish Theology. The _Talmud_ is the darkest of enigmas even
for most Jews, while those Hebrew scholars who do comprehend it do
not boast of their knowledge. Their kabalistic books are still less
understood by them; for in our days more Christian than Jewish students
are engrossed in the elimination of their great truths. How much less
is definitely known of the Oriental, or the universal Kabala! Its
adepts are few; but these heirs elect of the sages who first discovered
“the starry truths which shone on the great Shemaïa of the Chaldean
lore”[71] have solved the “absolute” and are now resting from their
grand labor. They cannot go beyond that which is given to mortals of
this earth to know; and no one, not even these elect, can trespass
beyond the line drawn by the finger of the Divinity itself. Travellers
have met these adepts on the shores of the sacred Ganges, brushed
against them in the silent ruins of Thebes, and in the mysterious
deserted chambers of Luxor. Within the halls upon whose blue and golden
vaults the weird signs attract attention, but whose secret meaning is
never penetrated by the idle gazers, they have been seen but seldom
recognized. Historical memoirs have recorded their presence in the
brilliantly illuminated _salons_ of European aristocracy. They have
been encountered again on the arid and desolate plains of the Great
Sahara, as in the caves of Elephanta. They may be found everywhere, but
make themselves known only to those who have devoted their lives to
unselfish study, and are not likely to turn back.
Maimonides, the great Jewish theologian and historian, who at one
time was almost deified by his countrymen and afterward treated as a
heretic, remarks, that the more absurd and void of sense the _Talmud_
seems the more sublime is the secret meaning. This learned man has
successfully demonstrated that the Chaldean Magic, the science of Moses
and other learned thaumaturgists was wholly based on an extensive
knowledge of the various and now forgotten branches of natural science.
Thoroughly acquainted with all the resources of the vegetable, animal,
and mineral kingdoms, experts in occult chemistry and physics,
psychologists as well as physiologists, why wonder that the graduates
or adepts instructed in the mysterious sanctuaries of the temples,
could perform wonders, which even in our days of enlightenment would
appear supernatural? It is an insult to human nature to brand magic
and the occult science with the name of imposture. To believe that for
so many thousands of years, one-half of mankind practiced deception and
fraud on the other half, is equivalent to saying that the human race
was composed only of knaves and incurable idiots. Where is the country
in which magic was not practiced? At what age was it wholly forgotten?
In the oldest documents now in our possession—the _Vedas_ and the
older laws of Manu—we find many magical rites practiced and permitted
by the Brahmans.[72] Thibet, Japan and China teach in the present age
that which was taught by the oldest Chaldeans. The clergy of these
respective countries, prove moreover what they teach, namely: that the
practice of moral and physical purity, and of certain austerities,
developes the vital soul power of self-illumination. Affording to man
the control over his own immortal spirit, it gives him truly magical
powers over the elementary spirits inferior to himself. In the West we
find magic of as high an antiquity as in the East. The Druids of Great
Britain practiced it in the silent crypts of their deep caves; and
Pliny devotes many a chapter to the “wisdom”[73] of the leaders of the
Celts. The Semothees,—the Druids of the Gauls, expounded the physical
as well as the spiritual sciences. They taught the secrets of the
universe, the harmonious progress of the heavenly bodies, the formation
of the earth, and above all—the immortality of the soul.[74] Into their
sacred groves—natural academies built by the hand of the Invisible
Architect—the initiates assembled at the still hour of midnight to
learn about what man once was and what he will be.[75] They needed
no artificial illumination, nor life-drawing gas, to light up their
temples, for the chaste goddess of night beamed her most silvery rays
on their oak-crowned heads; and their white-robed sacred bards knew how
to converse with the solitary queen of the starry vault.[76]
On the dead soil of the long bygone past stand their sacred oaks,
now dried up and stripped of their spiritual meaning by the venomous
breath of materialism. But for the student of occult learning, their
vegetation is still as verdant and luxuriant, and as full of deep
and sacred truths, as at that hour when the arch-druid performed his
magical cures, and waving the branch of misletoe, severed with his
golden sickle the green bough from its mother oak-tree. _Magic is as
old as man._ It is as impossible to name the time when it sprang
into existence as to indicate on what day the first man himself was
born. Whenever a writer has started with the idea of connecting its
first foundation in a country with some historical character, further
research has proved his views groundless. Odin, the Scandinavian priest
and monarch, was thought by many to have originated the practice of
magic some seventy years B.C. But it was easily demonstrated that the
mysterious rites of the priestesses called _Voïlers_, _Valas_, were
greatly anterior to his age.[77] Some modern authors were bent on
proving that Zoroaster was the founder of magic, because he was the
founder of the Magian religion. Ammianus Marcellinus, Arnobius, Pliny,
and other ancient historians demonstrated conclusively that he was but
a reformer of Magic as practiced by the Chaldeans and Egyptians.[78]
The greatest teachers of divinity agree that nearly all ancient books
were written symbolically and in a language intelligible only to the
initiated. The biographical sketch of Apollonius of Tyana affords an
example. As every Kabalist knows, it embraces the whole of the Hermetic
philosophy, being a counterpart in many respects of the traditions left
us of King Solomon. It reads like a fairy story, but, as in the case of
the latter, sometimes facts and historical events are presented to the
world under the colors of a fiction. The journey to India represents
allegorically the trials of a neophyte. His long discourses with the
Brahmans, their sage advice, and the dialogues with the Corinthian
Menippus would, if interpreted, give the esoteric catechism. His visit
to the empire of the wise men, and interview with their king Hiarchas,
the oracle of Amphiaraüs, explain symbolically many of the secret
dogmas of Hermes. They would disclose, if understood, some of the
most important secrets of nature. Eliphas Levi points out the great
resemblance which exists between King Hiarchas and the fabulous Hiram,
of whom Solomon procured the cedars of Lebanon and the gold of Ophir.
We would like to know whether modern Masons, even “Grand Lecturers”
and the most intelligent craftsmen belonging to important lodges,
understand who the _Hiram_ is whose death they combine together to
avenge?
Putting aside the purely metaphysical teachings of the _Kabala_, if one
would devote himself but to physical occultism, to the so-called branch
of therapeutics, the results might benefit some of our modern sciences;
such as chemistry and medicine. Says Professor Draper: “Sometimes,
not without surprise, we meet with ideas _which we flatter ourselves
originated in our own times_.” This remark, uttered in relation to the
scientific writings of the Saracens, would apply still better to the
more secret _Treatises_ of the ancients. Modern medicine, while it
has gained largely in anatomy, physiology, and pathology, and even in
therapeutics, has lost immensely by its narrowness of spirit, its rigid
materialism, its sectarian dogmatism. One school in its purblindness
sternly ignores whatever is developed by other schools; and all unite
in ignoring every grand conception of man or nature, developed by
Mesmerism, or by American experiments on the brain—every principle
which does not conform to a stolid materialism. It would require a
convocation of the hostile physicians of the several different schools
to bring together what is now known of medical science, and it too
often happens that after the best practitioners have vainly exhausted
their art upon a patient, a mesmerist or a “healing medium” will effect
a cure! The explorers of old medical literature, from the time of
Hippocrates to that of Paracelsus and Van Helmont, will find a vast
number of well-attested physiological and psychological facts and of
measures or medicines for healing the sick which modern physicians
superciliously refuse to employ.[79] Even with respect to surgery,
modern practitioners have humbly and publicly confessed the total
impossibility of their approximating to anything like the marvellous
skill displayed in the art of bandaging by ancient Egyptians. The many
hundred yards of ligature enveloping a mummy from its ears down to
every separate toe, were studied by the chief surgical operators in
Paris, and, notwithstanding that the models were before their eyes,
they were unable to accomplish anything like it.
In the Abbott Egyptological collection, in New York City, may be seen
numerous evidences of the skill of the ancients in various handicrafts;
among others the art of lace-making; and, as it could hardly be
expected but that the signs of woman’s vanity should go side by side
with those of man’s strength, there are also specimens of artificial
hair, and gold ornaments of different kinds. The New York _Tribune_,
reviewing the contents of the _Ebers Papyrus_, says:—“Verily, there
is no new thing under the sun.... Chapters 65, 66, 79, and 89 show
that hair-invigorators, hair dyes, pain-killers, and flea-powders were
desiderata 3,400 years ago.”
How few of our recent alleged discoveries are in reality new, and how
many belong to the ancients, is again most fairly and eloquently though
but in part stated by our eminent philosophical writer, Professor John
W. Draper. His _Conflict between Religion and Science_—a great book
with a very bad title—swarms with such facts. At page 13, he cites a
few of the achievements of ancient philosophers, which excited the
admiration of Greece. In Babylon was a series of Chaldean astronomical
observations, ranging back through nineteen hundred and three
years, which Callisthenes sent to Aristotle. Ptolemy, the Egyptian
king-astronomer possessed a Babylonian record of eclipses going back
seven hundred and forty-seven years before our era. As Prof. Draper
truly remarks: “Long-continued and close observations were necessary
before some of these astronomical results that have reached our times
could have been ascertained. Thus, the Babylonians had fixed the length
of a tropical year within twenty-five seconds of the truth; their
estimate of the sidereal year was barely two minutes in excess. They
had detected the precession of the equinoxes. They knew the causes of
eclipses, and, by the aid of their cycle, called _saros_, could predict
them. Their estimate of the value of that cycle, which is more than
6,585 days, was within nineteen and a half minutes of the truth.”
“Such facts furnish incontrovertible proof of the patience and skill
with which astronomy had been cultivated in Mesopotamia, and that, with
very inadequate instrumental means, it had reached no inconsiderable
perfection. These old observers had made a catalogue of the stars, had
divided the zodiac into twelve signs; they had parted the day into
twelve hours, the night into twelve. They had, as Aristotle says, for
a long time devoted themselves to observations of star-occultations by
the moon. They had correct views of the structure of the solar system,
and knew the order of emplacement of the planets. They constructed
sundials, clepsydras, astrolabes, gnomons.”
Speaking of the world of eternal truths that lies “within the world
of transient delusions and unrealities,” Professor Draper says: “That
world is not to be discovered through the vain traditions that have
brought down to us the opinion of men who lived in the morning of
civilization, nor in the _dreams of mystics_ who thought that they were
inspired. It is to be discovered by the investigations _of geometry,
and by the practical interrogations of nature_.”
Precisely. The issue could not be better stated. This eloquent writer
tells us a profound truth. He does not, however, tell us _the whole_
truth, because he does not know it. He has not described the nature or
extent of the knowledge imparted in the Mysteries. No subsequent people
has been so proficient in geometry as the builders of the Pyramids and
other Titanic monuments, antediluvian and postdiluvian. On the other
hand, none has ever equalled them in the practical interrogation of
nature.
An undeniable proof of this is the significance of their countless
symbols. _Every one of these symbols is an embodied idea,—combining the
conception of the Divine Invisible with the earthly and visible._ The
former is derived from the latter strictly through analogy according
to the hermetic formula—“as below, so it is above.” Their symbols show
great knowledge of natural sciences and a practical study of cosmical
power.
As to practical results to be obtained by “the investigations of
geometry,” very fortunately for students who are coming upon the
stage of action, we are no longer forced to content ourselves with
mere conjectures. In our own times, an American, Mr. George H. Felt,
of New York, who, if he continues as he has begun, may one day be
recognized as the greatest geometer of the age, has been enabled, by
the sole help of the premises established by the ancient Egyptians, to
arrive at results which we will give in his own language. “Firstly,”
says Mr. Felt, “the fundamental diagram to which all science of
elementary geometry, both plane and solid, is referable; to produce
arithmetical systems of proportion in a geometrical manner; to identify
this figure with all the remains of architecture and sculpture, in
all which it had been followed in a marvellously exact manner; to
determine that the Egyptians had used it as the basis of all their
astronomical calculations, on which their religious symbolism was
almost entirely founded; to find its traces among all the remnants of
art and architecture of the Greeks; to discover its traces so strongly
among the Jewish sacred records, as to prove conclusively that it was
founded thereon; to find that the whole system had been discovered
by the Egyptians after researches of tens of thousands of years into
the laws of nature, and that it might truly be called the science of
the Universe.” Further it enabled him “to determine with precision
problems in physiology heretofore only surmised; to first develop such
a Masonic philosophy as showed it to be conclusively the first science
and religion, as it will be the last;” and we may add, lastly, to prove
by ocular demonstrations that the Egyptian sculptors and architects
obtained the models for the quaint figures which adorn the façades
and vestibules of their temples, not in the disordered fantasies of
their own brains, but from the “viewless races of the air,” and other
kingdoms of nature, whom he, like them, _claims_ to make visible by
resort to their own chemical and kabalistical processes.
Schweigger proves that the symbols of all the mythologies have a
scientific foundation and substance.[80] It is only through recent
discoveries of the physical electro-magnetical powers of nature
that such experts in Mesmerism as Ennemoser, Schweigger and Bart,
in Germany, Baron Du Potet and Regazzoni, in France and Italy, were
enabled to trace with almost faultless accuracy the true relation which
each _Theomythos_ bore to some one of these powers. The Idæic finger,
which had such importance in the magic art of healing, means an iron
finger, which is attracted and repulsed in turn by magnetic, natural
forces. It produced, in Samothrace, wonders of healing by restoring
affected organs to their normal condition.
Bart goes deeper than Schweigger into the significations of the old
myths, and studies the subject from both its spiritual and physical
aspects. He treats at length of the Phrygian Dactyls, those “magicians
and exorcists of sickness,” and of the Cabeirian Theurgists. He says:
“While we treat of the close union of the Dactyls and magnetic forces,
we are not necessarily confined to the magnetic stone, and our views
of nature but take a glance at magnetism in its whole meaning. Then it
is clear how the initiated, who called themselves _Dactyls_, created
astonishment in the people through their magic arts, working as they
did, miracles of a healing nature. To this united themselves many
other things which the priesthood of antiquity was wont to practice;
the cultivation of the land and of morals, the advancement of art and
science, mysteries, and secret consecrations. All this was done by the
priestly Cabeirians, and _wherefore not guided and supported by the
mysterious spirits of nature_?”[81] Schweigger is of the same opinion,
and demonstrates that the phenomena of ancient Theurgy were produced by
magnetic powers “under the guidance of spirits.”
Despite their apparent Polytheism, the ancients—those of the educated
class at all events—were entirely monotheistical; and this, too, ages
upon ages before the days of Moses. In the _Ebers Papyrus_ this fact is
shown conclusively in the following words, translated from the first
four lines of Plate I.: “I came from Heliopolis with the great ones
from Het-aat, the Lords of Protection, the masters of eternity and
salvation. I came from Sais with the Mother-goddesses, who extended
to me protection. _The Lord of the Universe_ told me how to free the
gods from all murderous diseases.” _Eminent men were called gods by
the ancients._ The deification of mortal men and supposititious gods
is no more a proof against their monotheism than the monument-building
of modern Christians, who erect statues to their heroes, is proof of
their polytheism. Americans of the present century would consider
it absurd in their posterity 3,000 years hence to classify them as
idolaters for having built statues to their god Washington. So shrouded
in mystery was the Hermetic Philosophy that Volney asserted that the
ancient peoples worshipped their gross material symbols as divine in
themselves; whereas these were only considered as representing esoteric
principles. Dupuis, also, after devoting many years of study to the
problem, mistook the symbolic circle, and attributed their religion
solely to astronomy. Eberhart (_Berliner Monatschriff_) and many other
German writers of the last and present centuries, dispose of magic
most unceremoniously, and think it due to the Platonic mythos of the
_Timæus_. But how, without possessing a knowledge of the mysteries,
was it possible for these men or any others not endowed with the finer
intuition of a Champollion, to discover the esoteric half of that which
was concealed, behind the veil of Isis, from all except the adepts?
The merit of Champollion as an Egyptologist none will question. He
declares that everything demonstrates the ancient Egyptians to have
been profoundly monotheistical. The accuracy of the writings of the
mysterious Hermes Trismegistus, whose antiquity runs back into the
night of time, is corroborated by him to their minutest details.
Ennemoser also says: “Into Egypt and the East went Herodotus, Thales,
Parmenides, Empedocles, Orpheus, and Pythagoras, to instruct themselves
in Natural Philosophy and Theology.” There, too, Moses acquired his
wisdom, and Jesus passed the earlier years of his life.
Thither gathered the students of all countries before Alexandria was
founded. “How comes it,” Ennemoser goes on to say, “that so little has
become known of these mysteries? through so many ages and amongst so
many different times and people? The answer is that it is owing to the
universally strict silence of the initiated. Another cause may be found
in the destruction and total loss of all the written memorials of the
secret knowledge of the remotest antiquity.” Numa’s books, described by
Livy, consisting of treatises upon natural philosophy, were found in
his tomb; but they were not allowed to be made known, lest they should
reveal the most secret mysteries of the state religion. The senate and
the tribune of the people determined that the books themselves should
be burned, which was done in public.[82]
_Magic was considered a divine science which led to a participation
in the attributes of Divinity itself._ “It unveils the operations
of nature,” says Philo Judæus, “and leads to the contemplation of
celestial powers.”[83] In later periods its abuse and degeneration into
sorcery made it an object of general abhorrence. We must therefore
deal with it only as it was in the remote past, during those ages when
every true religion was based on a knowledge of the occult powers
of nature. It was not the sacerdotal class in ancient Persia that
established magic, as it is commonly thought, but the Magi, who derive
their name from it. The Mobeds, priests of the Parsis—the ancient
Ghebers—are named, even at the present day, _Magoï_, in the dialect of
the Pehlvi.[84] _Magic appeared in the world with the earlier races of
men._ Cassien mentions a treatise, well-known in the fourth and fifth
centuries, which was accredited to Ham, the son of Noah, who in his
turn was reputed to have received it from Jared, the fourth generation
from Seth, the son of Adam.[85]
Moses was indebted for his knowledge to the mother of the Egyptian
princess, Thermuthis, who saved him from the waters of the Nile. The
wife of Pharaoh,[86] Batria, was an initiate herself, and the Jews owe
to her the possession of their prophet, “learned in all the wisdom
of the Egyptians, and mighty in words and deeds.”[87] Justin Martyr,
giving as his authority Trogus Pompeius, shows Joseph as having
acquired a great knowledge in magical arts with the high priests of
Egypt.[88]
_The ancients knew more concerning certain sciences than our modern
savants have yet discovered._ Reluctant as many are to confess as
much, it has been acknowledged by more than one scientist. “The degree
of scientific knowledge existing in an early period of society was
much greater than the moderns are willing to admit;” says Dr. A. Todd
Thomson, the editor of _Occult Sciences_, by Salverte; “but,” he adds,
“it was confined to the temples, carefully veiled from the eyes of the
people and opposed only to the priesthood.” Speaking of the _Kabala_,
the learned Franz von Baader remarks that “not only our salvation and
wisdom, but our science itself came to us from the Jews.” But why not
complete the sentence and tell the reader from whom the Jews got their
wisdom?
Origen, who had belonged to the Alexandrian school of Platonists,
declares that Moses, besides the teachings of the covenant,
communicated some very important secrets “from the hidden depths of the
law” to the seventy elders. These he enjoined them to impart only to
persons whom they found worthy.
St. Jerome names the Jews of Tiberias and Lydda as the only teachers of
the mystical manner of interpretation. Finally, Ennemoser expresses a
strong opinion that “the writings of Dionysius Areopagita have palpably
been grounded on the Jewish _Kabala_.” When we take in consideration
that the Gnostics, or early Christians, were but the followers of the
old Essenes under a new name, this fact is nothing to be wondered at.
Professor Molitor gives the _Kabala_ its just due. He says:
“The age of inconsequence and shallowness, in theology as well as in
sciences, is past, and since that revolutionary rationalism has left
nothing behind but its own emptiness, after having destroyed everything
positive, it seems now to be the time to direct our attention anew
to that mysterious revelation which is the living spring whence our
salvation must come ... the Mysteries of ancient Israel, which contain
all secrets of modern Israel, would be particularly calculated to ...
found the fabric of theology upon its deepest theosophical principles,
and to gain _a firm basis_ to all ideal sciences. It would open a
new path ... to the obscure labyrinth of the myths, mysteries and
constitutions of primitive nations.... In these traditions alone are
contained the system of the schools of the prophets, which the prophet
Samuel did not found, _but only restored_, whose end was no other than
to lead the scholars to wisdom and the highest knowledge, and when they
had been found worthy, to induct them _into deeper mysteries_. Classed
with these mysteries was _magic_, which was of a double nature—divine
magic, and evil magic, or the black art. Each of these is again
divisible into two kinds, the active and seeing; in the first, man
endeavors to place himself _en rapport_ with the world to learn hidden
things; in the latter he endeavors to gain power over spirits; in the
former, to perform _good and beneficial_ acts; in the latter to do all
kinds of diabolical and unnatural deeds.”[89]
The clergy of the three most prominent Christian bodies, the Greek,
Roman Catholic, and Protestant, discountenance every spiritual
phenomenon manifesting itself through the so-called “mediums.” A
very brief period, indeed, has elapsed since both the two latter
ecclesiastical corporations burned, hanged, and otherwise murdered
every helpless victim through whose organism spirits—and sometimes
blind and as yet unexplained forces of nature—manifested themselves.
At the head of these three churches, pre-eminent stands the Church
of Rome. Her hands are scarlet with the innocent blood of countless
victims shed in the name of the Moloch-like divinity at the head of her
creed. She is ready and eager to begin again. But she is bound hand
and foot by that nineteenth century spirit of progress and religious
freedom which she reviles and blasphemes daily. The Græco-Russian
Church is the most amiable and Christ-like in her primitive, simple,
though blind faith. Despite the fact that there has been no practical
union between the Greek and Latin Churches, and that the two parted
company long centuries ago, the Roman Pontiffs seem to invariably
ignore the fact. They have in the most impudent manner possible
arrogated to themselves jurisdiction not only over the countries within
the Greek communion but also over all Protestants as well. “The Church
insists,” says Professor Draper, “that the state has no rights over any
thing which it declares to be within its domain, and that Protestantism
being a mere rebellion, has no rights at all; that even in Protestant
communities the Catholic bishop _is the only lawful_ spiritual
pastor.”[90] Decrees unheeded, encyclical letters unread, invitations
to ecumenical councils unnoticed, excommunications laughed at—all these
have seemed to make no difference. Their persistence has only been
matched by their effrontery. In 1864, the culmination of absurdity
was attained when Pius IX. excommunicated and fulminated publicly his
anathemas against the Russian Emperor, as a “_schismatic_ cast out from
the bosom of the Holy Mother Church.”[91] Neither he nor his ancestors,
nor Russia since it was Christianized, a thousand years ago, have ever
consented to join the Roman Catholics. Why not claim ecclesiastical
jurisdiction over the Buddhists of Thibet, or the shadows of the
ancient Hyk-Sos?
The mediumistic phenomena have manifested themselves at all times in
Russia as well as in other countries. This force ignores religious
differences; it laughs at nationalities; and invades unasked any
individuality, whether of a crowned head or a poor beggar.
Not even the present Vice-God, Pius IX., himself, could avoid the
unwelcome guest. For the last fifty years his Holiness has been known
to be subject to very extraordinary fits. Inside the Vatican they are
termed _Divine visions_; outside, physicians call them epileptic fits;
and popular rumor attributes them to an obsession by the ghosts of
Peruggia, Castelfidardo, and Mentana!
“The lights burn blue: it is now dead midnight,
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh,
Methought the souls of all that I caused to be murdered
Came....”[92]
The Prince of Hohenlohe, so famous during the first quarter of our
century for his healing powers, was himself a great medium. Indeed,
these phenomena and powers belong to no particular age or country. They
form a portion of the psychological attributes of man—the Microcosmos.
For centuries have the _Klikouchy_,[93] the _Yourodevoÿ_,[94] and other
miserable creatures been afflicted with strange disorders, which the
Russian clergy and the populace attribute to possession by the devil.
They throng the entrances of the cathedrals, without daring to trust
themselves inside, lest their self-willed controlling demons might
fling them on the ground. Voroneg, Kiew, Kazan, and all cities which
possess the thaumaturgical relics of canonized saints, abound with such
unconscious mediums. One can always find numbers of them, congregating
in hideous groups, and hanging about the gates and porches. At certain
stages of the celebration of the mass by the officiating clergy, such
as the appearance of the sacraments, or the beginning of the prayer and
chorus, “_Ejey Cherouvim_,” these half-maniacs, half-mediums, begin
crowing like cocks, barking, bellowing and braying, and, finally, fall
down in fearful convulsions. “The _unclean one_ cannot bear the holy
prayer,” is the pious explanation. Moved by pity, some charitable souls
administer restoratives to the “afflicted ones,” and distribute alms
among them. Occasionally, a priest is invited to exorcise, in which
event he either performs the ceremony for the sake of love and charity,
or the alluring prospect of a twenty-copeck silver bit, according
to his Christian impulses. But these miserable creatures—who are
mediums, for they prophesy and see visions sometimes, when the fit is
genuine[95]—are never molested because of their misfortune. Why should
the clergy persecute them, or people hate and denounce them as damnable
witches or wizards? Common sense and justice surely suggest that if
any are to be punished it is certainly not the victims who cannot help
themselves, but the demon who is alleged to control their actions. The
worst that happens to the patient is, that the priest inundates him or
her with holy water, and causes the poor creature to catch cold. This
failing in efficacy, the _Klikoucha_ is left to the will of God, and
taken care of in love and pity. Superstitious and blind as it is, a
faith conducted on such principles certainly deserves some respect, and
can never be offensive, either to man or the _true_ God. Not so with
that of the Roman Catholics; and hence, it is they, and secondarily,
the Protestant clergy—with the exception of some foremost thinkers
among them—that we purpose questioning in this work. We want to know
upon what grounds they base their right to treat Hindus and Chinese
spiritualists and kabalists in the way they do; denouncing them, in
company with the infidels—creatures of their own making—as so many
convicts sentenced to the inextinguishable fires of hell.
Far from us be the thought of the slightest irreverence—let alone
blasphemy—toward the Divine Power which called into being all things,
visible and invisible. Of its majesty and boundless perfection we dare
not even think. It is enough for us to know that _It_ exists and that
_It_ is all wise. Enough that in common with our fellow creatures we
possess a spark of _Its_ essence. The supreme power whom we revere is
the boundless and endless one—the grand “CENTRAL SPIRITUAL SUN” by
whose attributes and the visible effects of whose inaudible WILL we
are surrounded—the God of the ancient and the God of modern seers. His
nature can be studied only in the worlds called forth by his mighty
FIAT. His revelation is traced with his own finger in imperishable
figures of universal harmony upon the face of the Cosmos. It is the
only INFALLIBLE gospel we recognize.
Speaking of ancient geographers, Plutarch remarks in _Theseus_, that
they “crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which
they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that
beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts _full of wild beasts_ and
_unapproachable bogs_.” Do not our theologians and scientists do the
same? While the former people the invisible world with either angels
or devils, our philosophers try to persuade their disciples that where
there is no _matter_ there is _nothing_.
How many of our inveterate skeptics belong, notwithstanding their
materialism, to Masonic Lodges? The brothers of the Rosie-Cross,
mysterious practitioners of the mediæval ages, still live—but in name
only. They may “shed tears at the grave of their respectable Master,
Hiram Abiff;” but vainly will they search for the true locality, “where
the sprig of myrtle was placed.” The dead letter remains alone, the
spirit has fled. They are like the English or German chorus of the
Italian opera, who descend in the fourth act of _Ernani_ into the crypt
of Charlemagne, singing their conspiracy in a tongue utterly unknown
to them. So, our modern knights of the Sacred Arch may descend every
night if they choose “through the nine arches into the bowels of the
earth,“they “will never discover the sacred Delta of Enoch.” The “Sir
Knights in the South Valley” and those in “the North Valley” may try
to assure themselves that “enlightenment dawns upon their minds,” and
that as they progress in Masonry “the veil of superstition, despotism,
tyranny” and so on, no longer obscures the visions of their minds. But
these are all empty words so long as they neglect their mother Magic,
and turn their backs upon its twin sister, Spiritualism. Verily, “Sir
Knights of the Orient,” you may “leave your stations and sit upon the
floor in attitudes of grief, with your heads resting upon your hands,”
for you have cause to bewail and mourn your fate. Since Phillipe le
Bel destroyed the Knights-Templars, not one has appeared to clear up
your doubts notwithstanding all claims to the contrary. Truly, you
are “wanderers from Jerusalem, seeking the lost treasure of the holy
place.” Have you found it? Alas, no! for the holy place is profaned;
the pillars of wisdom, strength and beauty are destroyed. Henceforth,
“you must wander in darkness,” and “travel in humility,” among the
woods and mountains in search of the “lost word.” “Pass on!“you will
never find it so long as you limit your journeys to _seven_ or even
seven times seven; because you are “travelling in darkness,” and this
darkness can only be dispelled by the light of the blazing torch of
truth which alone the right descendants of Ormazd carry. They alone can
teach you the true pronunciation of the name revealed to Enoch, Jacob
and Moses. “Pass on!” Till your R. S. W. shall learn to multiply 333,
and _strike_ instead 666—the number of the Apocalyptic Beast, you may
just as well observe prudence and act “_sub rosa_.”
In order to demonstrate that the notions which the ancients entertained
about dividing human history into cycles were not utterly devoid of a
philosophical basis, we will close this chapter by introducing to the
reader one of the oldest traditions of antiquity as to the evolution of
our planet.
At the close of each “great year,” called by Aristotle—according to
Censorinus—the _greatest_, and which consists of six _sars_[96] our
planet is subjected to a thorough physical revolution. The polar and
equatorial climates gradually exchange places; the former moving slowly
toward the Line, and the tropical zone, with its exuberant vegetation
and swarming animal life, replacing the forbidding wastes of the icy
poles. This change of climate is necessarily attended by cataclysms,
earthquakes, and other cosmical throes.[97] As the beds of the ocean
are displaced, at the end of every decimillennium and about one neros,
a semi-universal deluge like the legendary Noachian flood is brought
about. This year was called the _Heliacal_ by the Greeks; but no one
outside the sanctuary knew anything certain either as to its duration
or particulars. The winter of this year was called the Cataclysm or the
Deluge,—the Summer, the Ecpyrosis. The popular traditions taught that
at these alternate seasons the world was in turn burned and deluged.
This is what we learn at least from the _Astronomical Fragments_
of Censorinus and Seneca. So uncertain were the commentators about
the length of this year, that none except Herodotus and Linus, who
assigned to it, the former 10,800, and the latter 13,984, came near
the truth.[98] According to the claims of the Babylonian priests,
corroborated by Eupolemus,[99] “the city of Babylon, owes its
foundation to those who were saved from the catastrophe of the deluge;
_they were the giants_ and they built the tower which is noticed in
history.”[100] These giants who were great astrologers and had received
moreover from their fathers, “the sons of God,” every instruction
pertaining to secret matters, instructed the priests in their turn, and
left in the temples all the records of the periodical cataclysm that
they had witnessed themselves. This is how the high priests came by
the knowledge of the _great_ years. When we remember, moreover, that
Plato in the _Timæus_ cites the old Egyptian priest rebuking Solon for
his ignorance of the fact that there were several such deluges as the
great one of Ogyges, we can easily ascertain that this belief in the
_Heliakos_ was a doctrine held by the initiated priests the world over.
The Neroses, the Vrihaspati, or the periods called yugas or kalpas,
are life-problems to solve. The Satya-yug and Buddhistic cycles of
chronology would make a mathematician stand aghast at the array of
ciphers. The Maha-kalpa embraces an untold number of periods far back
in the antediluvian ages. Their system comprises a kalpa or grand
period of 4,320,000,000 years, which they divide into four lesser
yugas, running as follows:
1st.—Satya-yug 1,728,000 years.
2d.—Trêtya yug 1,296,000 “
3d.—Dvâpa yug 864,000 “
4th.—Kali yug 432,000 “
———————
Total 4,320,000
which make one divine age or Maha-yug; seventy-one Maha-yugs make
306,720,000 years, to which is added a sandhi (or the time when day and
night border on each other, morning and evening twilight), equal to
a Satya-yug, 1,728,000, make a manwantara of 308,448,000 years;[101]
fourteen manwantaras make 4,318,272,000 years; to which must be added a
sandhi to begin the kalpa, 1,728,000 years, making the kalpa or grand
period of 4,320,000,000 of years. As we are now only in the Kali-yug of
the twenty-eighth age of the seventh manwantara of 308,448,000 years,
we have yet sufficient time before us to wait before we reach even half
of the time allotted to the world.
These ciphers are not fanciful, but founded upon actual astronomical
calculations, as has been demonstrated by S. Davis.[102] Many a
scientist, Higgins among others, notwithstanding their researches,
has been utterly perplexed as to which of these was the _secret_
cycle. Bunsen has demonstrated that the Egyptian priests, who made the
cyclic notations, kept them always in the profoundest mystery.[103]
Perhaps their difficulty arose from the fact that the calculations of
the ancients applied equally to the spiritual progress of humanity
as to the physical. It will not be difficult to understand the close
correspondence drawn by the ancients between the cycles of nature
and of mankind, if we keep in mind their belief in the constant and
all-potent influences of the planets upon the fortunes of humanity.
Higgins justly believed that the cycle of the Indian system, of
432,000, is the true key of the secret cycle. But his failure in trying
to decipher it was made apparent; for as it pertained to the mystery
of the creation, this cycle was the most inviolable of all. It was
repeated in symbolic figures only in the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_,
the original of which, if now extant, is certainly not to be found in
libraries, as it formed one of the most ancient Books of Hermes,[104]
the number of which is at present undetermined.
Calculating by the secret period of the Great Neros and the Hindu
Kalpas, some kabalists, mathematicians and archæologists who knew
naught of the secret computations made the above number of 21,000 years
to be 24,000 years, for the length of the great year, as it was to the
renewal only of our globe that they thought the last period of 6,000
years applied. Higgins gives as a reason for it, that it was anciently
thought that the equinoxes preceded only after the rate of 2,000, not
2,160, years in a sign; for thus it would allow for the length of the
great year four times 6,000 or 24,000 years. “Hence,” he says, “might
arise their immensely-lengthened cycles; because, it would be the same
with this great year as with the common year, till it travelled round
an immensely-lengthened circle, when it would come to the old point
again.” He therefore accounts for the 24,000 in the following manner:
“If the angle which the plane of the ecliptic makes with the plane of
the equator had decreased gradually and regularly, as it was till very
lately supposed to do, the two planes would have coincided in about ten
ages, 6,000 years; in ten ages, 6,000 years more, the sun would have
been situated relatively to the Southern Hemisphere as he is now to the
Northern; in ten ages, 6,000 years more, the two planes would coincide
again; and, in ten ages, 6,000 years more, he would be situated as he
is now, after a lapse of about twenty-four or twenty-five thousand
years in all. When the sun arrived at the equator, the ten ages or six
thousand years would end, and the world would be destroyed _by fire_;
when he arrived at the southern point, it would be destroyed by water.
And thus, it would be destroyed at the end of every 6,000 years, or ten
neroses.”[105]
This method of calculating by the _neroses_, without allowing any
consideration for the secrecy in which the ancient philosophers, who
were exclusively of the sacerdotal order, held their knowledge, gave
rise to the greatest errors. It led the Jews, as well as some of the
Christian Platonists, to maintain that the world would be destroyed
at the end of six thousand years. Gale shows how firmly this belief
was rooted in the Jews. It has also led modern scientists to discredit
entirely the hypothesis of the ancients. It has given rise to the
formation of different religious sects, which, like the Adventists of
our century, are always living in the expectation of the approaching
destruction of the world.
As our planet revolves once every year around the sun and at the same
time turns once in every twenty-four hours upon its own axis, thus
traversing minor circles within a larger one, so is the work of the
smaller cyclic periods accomplished and recommenced, within the Great
Saros.
The revolution of the physical world, according to the ancient
doctrine, is attended by a like revolution in the world of
intellect—the spiritual evolution of the world proceeding in cycles,
like the physical one.
Thus we see in history a regular alternation of ebb and flow in the
tide of human progress. The great kingdoms and empires of the world,
after reaching the culmination of their greatness, descend again, in
accordance with the same law by which they ascended; till, having
reached the lowest point, humanity reasserts itself and mounts up once
more, the height of its attainment being, by this law of ascending
progression by cycles, somewhat higher than the point from which it had
before descended.
The division of the history of mankind into Golden, Silver, Copper and
Iron Ages, is not a fiction. We see the same thing in the literature of
peoples. An age of great inspiration and unconscious productiveness is
invariably followed by an age of criticism and consciousness. The one
affords material for the analyzing and critical intellect of the other.
Thus, all those great characters who tower like giants in the history
of mankind, like Buddha-Siddârtha, and Jesus, in the realm of
spiritual, and Alexander the Macedonian and Napoleon the Great, in
the realm of physical conquests, were but reflexed images of human
types which had existed ten thousand years before, in the preceding
decimillennium, reproduced by the mysterious powers controlling the
destinies of our world. There is no prominent character in all the
annals of sacred or profane history whose prototype we cannot find in
the half-fictitious and half-real traditions of bygone religions and
mythologies. As the star, glimmering at an immeasurable distance above
our heads, in the boundless immensity of the sky, reflects itself
in the smooth waters of a lake, so does the imagery of men of the
antediluvian ages reflect itself in the periods we can embrace in an
historical retrospect.
“_As above, so it is below. That which has been, will return again. As
in heaven, so on earth._”
The world is always ungrateful to its great men. Florence has built
a statue to Galileo, but hardly even mentions Pythagoras. The former
had a ready guide in the treatises of Copernicus, who had been obliged
to contend against the universally established Ptolemaic system. But
neither Galileo nor modern astronomy discovered the emplacement of the
planetary bodies. Thousands of ages before, it was taught by the sages
of Middle Asia, and brought thence by Pythagoras, not as a speculation,
but as a demonstrated science. “The numerals of Pythagoras,” says
Porphyry, “were hieroglyphical symbols, by means whereof he explained
_all_ ideas concerning the nature of all things.”[106]
Verily, then, to antiquity alone have we to look for the origin of all
things. How well Hargrave Jennings expresses himself when speaking
of Pyramids, and how true are his words when he asks: “Is it at all
reasonable to conclude, at a period when knowledge was at the highest,
and when the human powers were, in comparison with ours at the present
time, prodigious, that all these indomitable, _scarcely believable_
physical effects—that such achievements as those of the Egyptians—were
devoted to a mistake? that the myriads of the Nile were fools laboring
in the dark, and that all the magic of their great men was forgery,
and that we, in despising that which we call their superstition and
wasted power, are alone the wise? No! there is much more in these
old religions than probably—in the audacity of modern denial, in the
confidence of these superficial-science times, and in the derision
of these days without faith—is in the least degree supposed. We do
not understand the old time.... Thus we see how classic practice and
heathen teaching may be made to reconcile—how even the Gentile and the
Hebrew, the mythological and the Christian doctrine harmonize in the
general faith founded on Magic. That Magic is indeed possible is the
moral of this book.”[107]
It is possible. Thirty years ago, when the first rappings of Rochester
awakened slumbering attention to the reality of an invisible world;
when the gentle shower of raps gradually became a torrent which
overflowed the whole globe, spiritualists had to contend but against
two potencies—theology and science. But the theosophists have, in
addition to these, to meet the world at large and the spiritualists
first of all.
“There is a _personal_ God, and there is a _personal_ Devil!” thunders
the Christian preacher. “Let him be anathema who dares say nay!”
“There is no personal God, except the gray matter in our brain,”
contemptuously replies the materialist. “And there is no Devil. Let him
be considered thrice an idiot who says aye.” Meanwhile the occultists
and _true_ philosophers heed neither of the two combatants, but keep
perseveringly at their work. None of them believe in the absurd,
passionate, and fickle God of superstition, but all of them believe
in good and evil. Our human reason, the emanation of our finite
mind, is certainly incapable of comprehending a divine intelligence,
an endless and infinite entity; and, according to strict logic,
that which transcends our understanding and would remain thoroughly
incomprehensible to our senses cannot exist for us; hence, it does
_not_ exist. So far finite reason agrees with science, and says: “There
is no God.” But, on the other hand, our _Ego_, that which lives and
thinks and feels independently of us in our mortal casket, does more
than believe. It _knows_ that there exists a God in nature, for the
sole and invincible Artificer of all lives in us as we live in Him.
No dogmatic faith or exact science is able to uproot that intuitional
feeling inherent in man, when he has once fully realized it in himself.
_Human nature is like universal nature in its abhorrence of a vacuum._
It feels an intuitional yearning for a Supreme Power. Without a God,
the cosmos would seem to it but like a soulless corpse. Being forbidden
to search for Him where alone His traces would be found, man filled
the aching void with the personal God whom his spiritual teachers
built up for him from the crumbling ruins of heathen myths and hoary
philosophies of old. How otherwise explain the mushroom growth of new
sects, some of them absurd beyond degree? Mankind have one innate,
irrepressible craving, that _must_ be satisfied in any religion
that would supplant the dogmatic, undemonstrated and undemonstrable
theology of our Christian ages. This is the yearning after the proofs
of immortality. As Sir Thomas Browne has expressed it: ... “it is the
heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him that
he is at the end of his nature, or that there is no future state to
come, unto which this seems progressive, and otherwise made in vain.”
Let any religion offer itself that can supply these proofs in the shape
of scientific facts, and the established system will be driven to the
alternative of fortifying its dogmas with such facts, or of passing out
of the reverence and affection of Christendom. Many a Christian divine
has been forced to acknowledge that there is _no authentic_ source
whence the assurance of a future state could have been derived by man.
How could then such a belief have stood for countless ages, were it not
that among all nations, whether civilized or savage, man _has been_
allowed the demonstrative proof? Is not the very existence of such a
belief an evidence that thinking philosopher and unreasoning savage
have both been compelled to acknowledge the testimony of their senses?
That if, in isolated instances, spectral illusion may have resulted
from physical causes, on the other hand, in thousands of instances,
apparitions of persons have held converse with several individuals at
once, who saw and heard them collectively, and could not all have been
diseased in mind?
The greatest thinkers of Greece and Rome regarded such matters as
demonstrated facts. They distinguished the apparitions by the names of
_manes_, _anima_ and _umbra_: the _manes_ descending after the decease
of the individual into the Underworld; the _anima_, or pure spirit,
ascending to heaven; and the restless _umbra_ (earth-bound spirit),
hovering about its tomb, because the attraction of matter and love of
its earthly body prevailed in it and prevented its ascension to higher
regions.
“Terra legit _carnem_ tumulum circumvolet _umbra_,
Orcus habet _manes_, _spiritus_ astra petit,”
says Ovid, speaking of the threefold constituents of souls.
But all such definitions must be subjected to the careful analysis
of philosophy. Too many of our thinkers do not consider that the
numerous changes in language, the allegorical phraseology and evident
secretiveness of old Mystic writers, who were generally under an
obligation never to divulge the solemn secrets of the sanctuary,
might have sadly misled translators and commentators. The phrases
of the mediæval alchemist they read literally; and even the veiled
symbolology of Plato is commonly misunderstood by the modern scholar.
One day they may learn to know better, and so become aware that the
method of extreme necessarianism was practiced in ancient as well as
in modern philosophy; that from the first ages of man, the fundamental
truths of all that we are permitted to know on earth was in the safe
keeping of the adepts of the sanctuary; that the difference in creeds
and religious practice was only external; and that those guardians of
the primitive divine revelation, who had solved every problem that is
within the grasp of human intellect, were bound together by a universal
freemasonry of science and philosophy, which formed one unbroken chain
around the globe. It is for philology and psychology to find the end of
the thread. That done, it will then be ascertained that, by relaxing
one single loop of the old religious systems, the chain of mystery may
be disentangled.
The neglect and withholding of these proofs have driven such eminent
minds as Hare and Wallace, and other men of power, into the fold
of modern spiritualism. At the same time it has forced others,
congenitally devoid of spiritual intuitions, into a gross materialism
that figures under various names.
But we see no utility in prosecuting the subject further. For, though
in the opinion of most of our contemporaries, there has been but one
day of learning, in whose twilight stood the older philosophers, and
whose noontide brightness is all our own; and though the testimony
of scores of ancient and mediæval thinkers has proved valueless to
modern experimenters, as though the world dated from A.D. 1, and all
knowledge were of recent growth, we will not lose hope or courage. The
moment is more opportune than ever for the review of old philosophies.
Archæologists, philologists, astronomers, chemists and physicists
are getting nearer and nearer to the point where they will be forced
to consider them. Physical science has already reached its limits of
exploration; dogmatic theology sees the springs of its inspiration
dry. Unless we mistake the signs, the day is approaching when the
world will receive the proofs that only ancient religions were in
harmony with nature, and ancient science embraced all that can be
known. Secrets long kept may be revealed; books long forgotten and
arts long time lost may be brought out to light again; papyri and
parchments of inestimable importance will turn up in the hands of men
who pretend to have unrolled them from mummies, or stumbled upon them
in buried crypts; tablets and pillars, whose sculptured revelations
will stagger theologians and confound scientists, may yet be excavated
and interpreted. Who knows the possibilities of the future? An era of
disenchantment and rebuilding will soon begin—nay, has already begun.
The cycle has almost run its course; a new one is about to begin, and
the future pages of history may contain full evidence, and convey full
proof that
“If ancestry can be in aught believed,
Descending spirits have conversed with man,
And told him secrets of the world unknown.”
CHAPTER II.
“Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence
And fills up all the mighty void of sense....”
—POPE.
“But why should the operations of nature be changed? There
may be a deeper philosophy than we dream of—a philosophy that
discovers the secrets of nature, _but does not alter, by
penetrating them, its course_.”—BULWER.
Is it enough for man to know that he exists? Is it enough to be formed
a human being to enable him to deserve the appellation of MAN? It
is our decided impression and conviction, that to become a genuine
spiritual entity, which that designation implies, man must first
_create_ himself anew, so to speak—_i.e._, thoroughly eliminate from
his mind and spirit, not only the dominating influence of selfishness
and other impurity, but also the infection of superstition and
prejudice. The latter is far different from what we commonly term
_antipathy_ or _sympathy_. We are at first irresistibly or unwittingly
drawn within its dark circle by that peculiar influence, that powerful
current of magnetism which emanates from ideas as well as from physical
bodies. By this we are surrounded, and finally prevented through moral
cowardice—fear of public opinion—from stepping out of it. It is rare
that men regard a thing in either its true or false light, accepting
the conclusion by the free action of their own judgment. Quite the
reverse. The conclusion is more commonly reached by blindly adopting
the opinion current at the hour among those with whom they associate.
A church member will not pay an absurdly high price for his pew any
more than a materialist will go twice to listen to Mr. Huxley’s talk
on evolution, because they think that it is right to do so; but merely
because Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so have done it, and these personages are
THE S—AND S—’S.
The same holds good with everything else. If psychology had had its
Darwin, the descent of man as regards moral qualities might have been
found inseparably linked with that of his physical form. Society in
its servile condition suggests to the intelligent observer of its
mimicry a kinship between the Simia and human beings even more striking
than is exhibited in the external marks pointed out by the great
anthropologist. The many varieties of the ape—“mocking presentments of
ourselves” appear to have been evolved on purpose to supply a certain
class of expensively-dressed persons with the material for genealogical
trees.
Science is daily and rapidly moving toward the great discoveries in
chemistry and physics, organology, and anthropology. Learned men ought
to be free from preconceptions and prejudices of every kind; yet,
although thought and opinion are now free, scientists are still the
same men as of old. An Utopian dreamer is he who thinks that man ever
changes with the evolution and development of new ideas. The soil may
be well fertilized and made to yield with every year a greater and
better variety of fruit; but, dig a little deeper than the stratum
required for the crop, and the same earth will be found in the subsoil
as was there before the first furrow was turned.
Not many years ago, the person who questioned the infallibility of some
theological dogma was branded at once an iconoclast and an infidel. _Væ
victis!_ ... Science has conquered. But in its turn the victor claims
the same infallibility, though it equally fails to prove its right.
“_Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis_,” the saying of the good
old Lotharius, applies to the case. Nevertheless, we feel as if we had
some right to question the high-priests of science.
For many years we have watched the development and growth of that
apple of discord—MODERN SPIRITUALISM. Familiar with its literature
both in Europe and America, we have closely and eagerly witnessed its
interminable controversies and compared its contradictory hypotheses.
Many educated men and women—heterodox spiritualists, of course—have
tried to fathom the Protean phenomena. The only result was that they
came to the following conclusion: whatever may be the reason of these
constant failures—whether such are to be laid at the door of the
investigators themselves, or of the secret Force at work—it is at least
proved that, in proportion as the psychological manifestations increase
in frequency and variety, the darkness surrounding their origin becomes
more impenetrable.
_That phenomena are actually witnessed, mysterious in their
nature—generally and perhaps wrongly termed spiritual—it is now idle
to deny._ Allowing a large discount for clever fraud, what remains is
quite serious enough to demand the careful scrutiny of science. “_E
pur se muove_,” the sentence spoken ages since, has passed into the
category of household words. The courage of Galileo is not now required
to fling it into the face of the Academy. Psychological phenomena are
already on the offensive.
The position assumed by modern scientists is that even though the
occurrence of certain mysterious phenomena in the presence of the
mediums be a fact, there is no proof that they are not due to some
abnormal nervous condition of those individuals. The possibility that
they may be produced by returning human spirits need not be considered
until the other question is decided. Little exception can be taken to
this position. Unquestionably, the burden of proof rests upon those
who assert the agency of spirits. If the scientists would grapple
with the subject in good faith, showing an earnest desire to solve
the perplexing mystery, instead of treating it with undignified and
unprofessional contempt, they would be open to no censure. True, the
great majority of “spiritual” communications are calculated to disgust
investigators of even moderate intelligence. Even when genuine they
are trivial, commonplace, and often vulgar. During the past twenty
years we have received through various mediums messages purporting
to be from Shakspere, Byron, Franklin, Peter the Great, Napoleon and
Josephine, and even from Voltaire. The general impression made upon us
was that the French conqueror and his consort seemed to have forgotten
how to spell words correctly; Shakspere and Byron had become chronic
inebriates; and Voltaire had turned an imbecile. Who can blame men
trained to habits of exactitude, or even simply well-educated persons,
for hastily concluding that when so much palpable fraud lies upon
the surface, there could hardly be truth if they should go to the
bottom? The huckstering about of pompous names attached to idiotic
communications has given the scientific stomach such an indigestion
that it cannot assimilate even the great truth which lies on the
telegraphic plateaux of this ocean of psychological phenomena. They
judge by its surface, covered with froth and scum. But they might with
equal propriety deny that there is any clear water in the depths of
the sea when an oily scum was floating upon the surface. Therefore, if
on one hand we cannot very well blame them for stepping back at the
first sight of what seems really repulsive, we do, and have a right to
censure them for their unwillingness to explore deeper. Neither pearls
nor cut diamonds are to be found lying loose on the ground; and these
persons act as unwisely as would a professional diver, who should
reject an oyster on account of its filthy and slimy appearance, when by
opening it he might find a precious pearl inside the shell.
Even the just and severe rebukes of some of their leading men are of
no avail; and the fear on the part of men of science to investigate
such an unpopular subject, seems to have now become a general panic.
“_The phenomena chase the scientists, and the scientists run away from
the phenomena_,” very pointedly remarks M. A. N. Aksakof in an able
article on Mediumism and the St. Petersburg Scientific Committee. The
attitude of this body of professors toward the subject which they had
pledged themselves to investigate was throughout simply disgraceful.
Their premature and _prearranged_ report was so evidently partial and
inconclusive as to call out a scornful protest even from unbelievers.
The inconsistency of the logic of our learned gentlemen against the
philosophy of spiritualism proper is admirably pointed out by Professor
John Fisk—one of their own body. In a recent philosophical work,
_The Unseen World_, while showing that from the very definition of
the terms, _matter_ and _spirit_, the existence of spirit cannot be
demonstrated to the senses, and that thus no theory is amenable to
_scientific tests_, he deals a severe blow at his colleagues in the
following lines:
“The testimony in such a case,” he says, “must, under the conditions
of the present life, be forever inaccessible. It lies wholly outside
the range of experience. However abundant it may be, we cannot expect
to meet it. And, accordingly, our failure to produce it does not raise
even the slightest presumption against our theory. When conceived in
this way, the belief in the future life is without scientific support,
but at the same time it is placed beyond the need of scientific
support and the range of scientific criticism. It is a belief which
no imaginable future advance of physical discovery can in any way
impugn. It is a belief which is in no sense irrational, and which may
be logically entertained without in the least affecting our scientific
habit of mind, or influencing our scientific conclusions.” “If now,”
he adds, “men of science will accept the position that spirit is
not matter, nor governed by the laws of matter, and refrain from
speculations concerning it restricted by their knowledge of material
things, they will withdraw what is to men of religion, at present,
their principal cause of irritation.”
But, they will do no such thing. They feel incensed at the brave,
loyal, and highly commendable surrender of such superior men as
Wallace, and refuse to accept even the prudent and restrictive policy
of Mr. Crookes.
_No other claim is advanced for a hearing of the opinions contained
in the present work than that they are based upon many years’ study
of both ancient magic and its modern form, Spiritualism._ The former,
even now, when phenomena of the same nature have become so familiar
to all, is commonly set down as clever jugglery. The latter, when
overwhelming evidence precludes the possibility of truthfully declaring
it charlatanry, is denominated an universal hallucination.
Many years of wandering among “heathen” and “Christian” magicians,
occultists, mesmerisers and the _tutti quanti_ of white and black
art, ought to be sufficient, we think, to give us a certain right
to feel competent to take a practical view of this doubted and very
complicated question. We have associated with the fakirs, the holy
men of India, and seen them when in intercourse with the _Pitris_. We
have watched the proceedings and _modus operandi_ of the howling and
dancing dervishes; held friendly communications with the marabouts
of European and Asiatic Turkey; and the serpent-charmers of Damascus
and Benares have but few secrets that we have not had the fortune to
study. Therefore, when scientists who have never had an opportunity
of living among these oriental jugglers and can judge at the best but
superficially, tell us that there is naught in their performances but
mere tricks of prestidigitation, we cannot help feeling a profound
regret for such hasty conclusions. That such pretentious claims should
be made to a thorough analysis of the powers of nature, and at the
same time such unpardonable neglect displayed of questions of purely
physiological and psychological character, and astounding phenomena
rejected without either examination or appeal, is an exhibition of
inconsistency, strongly savoring of timidity, if not of moral obliquity.
If, therefore, we should ever receive from some contemporaneous
Faraday the same fling that that gentleman made years since, when,
with more sincerity than good breeding, he said that “many _dogs_
have the power of coming to much more logical conclusions than some
spiritualists,”[108] we fear we must still persist. Abuse is not
argument, least of all, proof. Because such men as Huxley and Tyndall
denominate spiritualism “a degrading belief” and oriental magic
“jugglery,” they cannot thereby take from truth its verity. Skepticism,
whether it proceeds from a scientific or an ignorant brain, is unable
to overturn the immortality of our souls—if such immortality is a
fact—and plunge them into _post-mortem_ annihilation. “Reason is
subject to error,” says Aristotle; so is opinion; and the personal
views of the most learned philosopher are often more liable to be
proved erroneous, than the plain common sense of his own illiterate
cook. In the _Tales of the Impious Khalif_, Barrachias-Hassan-Oglu,
the Arabian sage holds a wise discourse: “Beware, O my son, of
self-incense,” he says. “It is the most dangerous, on account of its
agreeable intoxication. Profit by thy own wisdom, but learn to respect
the wisdom of thy fathers likewise. And remember, O my beloved, that
the light of Allah’s truth will often penetrate much easier an empty
head, than one that is so crammed with learning that many a silver
ray is crowded out for want of space; ... such is the case with our
over-wise Kadi.”
These representatives of modern science in both hemispheres seem never
to have exhibited more scorn, or to have felt more bitterly toward the
unsolvable mystery, than since Mr. Crookes began the investigation of
the phenomena, in London. This courageous gentleman was the first to
introduce to the public one of those alleged “materialized” sentries
that guard the forbidden gates. Following after him, several other
learned members of the scientific body had the rare integrity, combined
with a degree of courage, which, in view of the unpopularity of the
subject, may be deemed heroic, to take the phenomena in hand.
But, alas! although the spirit, indeed, was willing, the mortal flesh
proved weak. Ridicule was more than the majority of them could bear;
and so, the heaviest burden was thrown upon the shoulders of Mr.
Crookes. An account of the benefit this gentleman reaped from his
disinterested investigations, and the thanks he received from his own
brother scientists, can be found in his three pamphlets, entitled,
_Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism_.
After a while, the members appointed on the Committee of the
Dialectical society and Mr. Crookes, who had applied to his mediums
the most crucial tests, were forced by an impatient public to report
in so many plain words what they had seen. But what could they say,
except the truth? Thus, they were compelled to acknowledge: 1st. That
the phenomena which _they_, at least, had witnessed, were genuine,
and impossible to simulate; thus showing that manifestations produced
by some unknown force, could and did happen. 2d. That, whether the
phenomena were produced by disembodied spirits or other analogous
entities, they could not tell; but that manifestations, thoroughly
upsetting many preconceived theories as to natural laws, did happen
and were undeniable. Several of these occurred in their own families.
3d. That, notwithstanding all their combined efforts to the contrary,
beyond the indisputable fact of the reality of the phenomena, “glimpses
of natural action not yet reduced to law,”[109] they, to borrow the
expression of the Count de Gabalis, “could make neither head nor tail
on’t.”
Now this was precisely what a skeptical public had not bargained for.
The discomfiture of the believers in spiritualism had been impatiently
anticipated before the conclusions of Messrs. Crookes, Varley, and
the Dialectical Society were announced. Such a confession on the part
of their brother-scientists was too humiliating for the pride of even
those who had timorously abstained from investigation. It was regarded
as really too much, that such vulgar and repulsive manifestations of
phenomena which had always, by common consent of educated people, been
regarded as nursery tales, fit only to amuse hysterical servant-girls
and afford revenue to professional somnambulists—that manifestations
which had been consigned by the Academy and Institute of Paris to
oblivion, should so impertinently elude detection at the hands of
experts in physical sciences.
A tornado of indignation followed the confession. Mr. Crookes depicts
it in his pamphlet on _Psychic Force_. He heads it very pointedly
with the quotation from Galvani: “I am attacked by two very opposite
sects—the scientists and the _know-nothings_, yet I know that I have
discovered one of the greatest forces in nature....” He then proceeds:
“It was taken for granted that the results of my experiments would
be in accordance with their preconceptions. What they really desired
was not _the truth_, but an additional witness in favor of their
own foregone conclusions. When they found the facts which that
investigation established could not be made to fit those opinions, why,
... so much the worse for the facts. They try to creep out of their
own confident recommendations of the inquiry, by declaring ‘that Mr.
Home is a clever conjurer who has duped us all.’ ‘Mr. Crookes might,
with equal propriety, examine the performances of an Indian juggler.’
‘Mr. Crookes must get better witnesses before he can be believed.’
‘The thing is too absurd to be treated seriously.’ ‘It is impossible,
and therefore can’t be.’ ... (I never said it was impossible, I only
said it was true.) ‘The observers have all been biologized, and fancy
they saw things occur which really _never_ took place,’ etc., etc.,
etc.”[110]
After expending their energy on such puerile theories as “unconscious
cerebration,” “involuntary muscular contraction,” and the sublimely
ridiculous one of the “cracking knee-joints” (_le muscle craqueur_);
after meeting ignominious failures by the obstinate survival of the
new force, and finally, after every desperate effort to compass its
obliteration, these _filii diffidentiæ_—as St. Paul calls their
class—thought best to give up the whole thing in disgust. Sacrificing
their courageously persevering brethren as a holocaust on the altar
of public opinion, they withdrew in dignified silence. Leaving the
arena of investigation to more fearless champions, these unlucky
experimenters are not likely to ever enter it again.[111] It is
easier by far to deny the reality of such manifestations from a
secure distance, than find for them a proper place among the classes
of natural phenomena accepted by exact science. And how can they,
since all such phenomena pertain to psychology, and the latter, with
its occult and mysterious powers, is a _terra incognita_ for modern
science. Thus, powerless to explain that which proceeds directly from
the nature of the human soul itself—the existence of which most of them
deny—unwilling at the same time to confess their ignorance, scientists
retaliate very unjustly on those who believe in the evidence of their
senses without any pretence to science.
“A kick from thee, O Jupiter! is sweet,” says the poet Tretiakowsky,
in an old Russian tragedy. Rude as those Jupiters of science may be
occasionally toward us credulous mortals, their vast learning—in less
abstruse questions, we mean—if not their manners, entitles them to
public respect. But unfortunately it is not the gods who shout the
loudest.
The eloquent Tertullian, speaking of Satan and his imps, whom he
accuses of ever mimicking the Creator’s works, denominates them the
“monkeys of God.” It is fortunate for the philosophicules that we have
no modern Tertullian to consign them to an immortality of contempt as
the “monkeys of science.”
But to return to genuine scientists. “Phenomena of a merely
objective character,” says A. N. Aksakof, “force themselves upon the
representatives of exact sciences for investigation and explanation;
but the high-priests of science, in the face of apparently such a
simple question ... are totally disconcerted! This subject seems to
have the privilege of forcing them to betray, not only the highest code
of morality—truth, but also the supreme law of science—_experiment_!...
They feel that there is something too serious underlying it. The cases
of Hare, Crookes, de Morgan, Varley, Wallace, and Butleroff create a
panic! They fear that as soon as they concede one step, they will have
to yield the whole ground. Time-honored principles, the contemplative
speculations of a whole life, of a long line of generations, are all
staked on a single card!“[112]
In the face of such experience as that of Crookes and the Dialectical
Society, of Wallace and the late Professor Hare, what can we
expect from our luminaries of erudition? Their attitude toward
the undeniable phenomena is in itself another phenomenon. It is
simply incomprehensible, unless we admit the possibility of another
psychological disease, as mysterious and contagious as hydrophobia.
Although we claim no honor for this new discovery, we nevertheless
propose to recognize it under the name of _scientific psychophobia_.
They ought to have learned by this time, in the school of bitter
experience, that they can rely on the self-sufficiency of the positive
sciences only to a certain point; and that, so long as there remains
one single unexplained mystery in nature, the word ”_impossible_” is a
dangerous word for them to pronounce.
In the _Researches on the Phenomena of Spiritualism_, Mr. Crookes
submits to the option of the reader eight theories “to account for the
phenomena observed.”
These theories run as follows:
“_First Theory._—The phenomena are all the result of tricks, clever
mechanical arrangements, or legerdemain; the mediums are impostors, and
the rest of the company fools.
“_Second Theory._—The persons at a seance are the victims of a sort of
mania, or delusion, and imagine phenomena to occur which have no real
objective existence.
“_Third Theory._—The whole is the result of conscious or unconscious
cerebral action.
“_Fourth Theory._—The result of the spirit of the medium, perhaps in
association with the spirits of some or all of the people present.
“_Fifth Theory._—The actions of evil spirits, or devils, personifying
whom or what they please, in order to undermine Christianity, and ruin
men’s souls. (Theory of our theologians.)
“_Sixth Theory._—The actions of a separate order of beings living
on this earth, but invisible and immaterial to us. Able, however,
occasionally to manifest their presence, known in almost all countries
and ages as demons (not necessarily bad), gnomes, fairies, kobolds,
elves, goblins, Puck, etc. (One of the claims of the kabalists.)
“_Seventh Theory._—The actions of departed human beings. (The spiritual
theory par excellence.)
“_Eighth Theory._—(The psychic force) ... an adjunct to the fourth,
fifth, sixth, and seventh theories.“
The first of these theories having been proved valid only in
exceptional, though unfortunately still too frequent cases, must be
ruled out as having no material bearing upon the phenomena themselves.
Theories the _second_ and the _third_ are the last crumbling
entrenchments of the guerilla of skeptics and materialists, and remain,
as lawyers say, ”_Adhuc sub judice lis est_.” Thus, we can deal in this
work but with the four remaining ones, the last, eighth, theory being
according to Mr. Crookes’s opinion, but “a necessary adjunct” of the
others.
How subject even a scientific opinion is to error, we may see, if we
only compare the several articles on spiritual phenomena from the able
pen of that gentleman, which appeared from 1870 to 1875. In one of the
first we read: ... “the increased employment of scientific methods will
promote exact observations and greater love of truths among inquirers,
and will produce a race of observers _who will drive the worthless
residuum of spiritualism hence into the unknown limbo of magic and
necromancy_.” And in 1875, we read, over his own signature, minute
and most interesting descriptions of the materialized spirit—Katie
King![113]
It is hardly possible to suppose that Mr. Crookes could be under
electro-biological influence or hallucination for two or three
consecutive years. The “spirit” appeared in his own house, in his
library, under the most crucial tests, and was seen, felt, and heard by
hundreds of persons.
But Mr. Crookes denies that he ever took Katie King for a disembodied
spirit. What was it then? If it was not Miss Florence Cook, and his
word is our sufficient guarantee for it—then it was either the spirit
of one who had lived on earth, or one of those that come directly under
the sixth theory of the eight the eminent scientist offers to the
public choice. It must have been one of the classes named: “Fairies,
Kobolds, Gnomes, Elves, Goblins, or a Puck.”[114]
Yes; Katie King must have been a fairy—a Titania. For to a fairy only
could be applied with propriety the following poetic effusion which Mr.
Crookes quotes in describing this wonderful spirit:
“Round her she made an atmosphere of life;
The very air seemed lighter from her eyes;
They were so soft and beautiful and rife
With all we can imagine of the skies;
Her overpowering presence makes you feel
It would _not be idolatry to kneel_!”[115]
And thus, after having written, in 1870, his severe sentence against
spiritualism and magic; after saying that even at that moment he
believed “the whole affair a superstition, or, at least, an unexplained
trick—a delusion of the senses;”[116] Mr. Crookes, in 1875, closes
his letter with the following memorable words:—“To imagine, I say,
the Katie King of the last three years to be the result of imposture
does more violence to one’s reason and common sense than to believe
her to be what she herself affirms.”[117] This last remark, moreover,
conclusively proves that: 1. Notwithstanding Mr. Crookes’s full
convictions that the somebody calling herself Katie King was neither
the medium nor some confederate, but on the contrary an unknown
force in nature, which—like love—“laughs at locksmiths;” 2. That
that hitherto unrecognized form of Force, albeit it had become with
him “not a matter of opinion, but of absolute knowledge,“the eminent
investigator still did not abandon to the last his skeptical attitude
toward the question. In short, he firmly believes in the phenomenon,
but cannot accept the idea of its being the human spirit of a departed
_somebody_.
It seems to us, that, as far as _public prejudice goes_, Mr. Crookes
solves one mystery by creating a still deeper one: the _obscurum per
obscurius_. In other words, rejecting “_the worthless residuum of
spiritualism_,” the courageous scientist fearlessly plunges into his
own “_unknown limbo of magic_ and _necromancy_!”
The recognized laws of physical science account for but a few of the
more objective of the so-called spiritual phenomena. While proving the
reality of certain visible effects of an unknown force, they have not
thus far enabled scientists to control at will even this portion of the
phenomena. The truth is that the professors have not yet discovered the
necessary conditions of their occurrence. They must go as deeply into
the study of the triple nature of man—physiological, psychological,
and _divine_—as did their predecessors, the magicians, theurgists,
and thaumaturgists of old. Until the present moment, even those who
have investigated the phenomena as thoroughly and impartially as Mr.
Crookes, have set aside the cause as something not to be discovered
now, if ever. They have troubled themselves no more about that than
about the first cause of the cosmic phenomena of the correlation of
forces, whose endless effects they are at such pains to observe and
classify. Their course has been as unwise as that of a man who should
attempt to discover the sources of a river by exploring toward its
mouth. It has so narrowed their views of the possibilities of natural
law that very simple forms of occult phenomena have necessitated
their denial that they can occur unless miracles were possible; and
this being a scientific absurdity the result has been that physical
science has latterly been losing prestige. If scientists had studied
the so-called “miracles” instead of denying them, many secret laws of
nature comprehended by the ancients would have been again discovered.
“Conviction,” says Bacon, “comes not through arguments but through
experiments.”
The ancients were always distinguished—especially the Chaldean
astrologers and Magians—for their ardent love and pursuit of knowledge
in every branch of science. They tried to penetrate the secrets of
nature in the same way as our modern naturalists, and by the only
method by which this object can be obtained, namely: by experimental
researches and reason. If our modern philosophers cannot apprehend the
fact that they penetrated deeper than themselves into the mysteries of
the universe, this does not constitute a valid reason why the credit
of possessing this knowledge should be denied them or the imputation
of superstition laid at their door. Nothing warrants the charge; and
every new archæological discovery militates against the assumption.
As chemists they were unequalled, and in his famous lecture on _The
Lost Arts_, Wendell Phillips says: “The chemistry of the most ancient
period had reached a point which _we have never even approached_.” The
secret of the malleable glass, which, “if supported by one end by its
own weight, in twenty hours dwindles down to a fine line that you can
curve around your wrist,” would be as difficult to rediscover in our
civilized countries as to fly to the moon.
The fabrication of a cup of glass which was brought by an exile to
Rome in the reign of Tiberius,—a cup “which he dashed upon the marble
pavement, and it was not crushed nor broken by the fall,” and which, as
it got “dented some” was easily brought into shape again with a hammer,
is a historic fact. If it is doubted now it is merely because the
moderns cannot do the same. And yet, in Samarkand and some monasteries
of Thibet such cups and glassware may be found to this day; nay,
there are persons who claim that they can make the same by virtue of
their knowledge of the much-ridiculed and ever-doubted _alkahest_—the
universal solvent. This agent that Paracelsus and Van Helmont maintain
to be a certain fluid in nature, “capable of reducing all sublunary
bodies, as well homogeneous as mixed, into their _ens primum_, or
the original matter of which they are composed; or into an uniform,
equable, and potable liquor, that will unite with water, and the
juices of all bodies, and yet retain its own radical virtues; and, if
again mixed with itself will thereby be converted into pure elementary
water: “what impossibilities prevent our crediting the statement? Why
should it not exist and why the idea be considered Utopian? Is it
again because our modern chemists are unable to produce it? But surely
it may be conceived without any great effort of imagination that all
bodies must have originally come from some first matter, and that this
matter, according to the lessons of astronomy, geology and physics,
must have been a fluid. Why should not gold—of whose genesis our
scientists know so little—have been originally a primitive or _basic
matter of gold_, a ponderous fluid which, as says Van Helmont, “from
its own nature or a strong cohesion between its particles, acquired
afterward a solid form?” There seems to be very little absurdity to
believe in a “universal _ens_ that resolves all bodies into their _ens
genitale_.” Van Helmont calls it “the highest and most successful of
all salts; which having obtained the supreme degree of simplicity,
purity, subtilty, enjoys alone the faculty of remaining unchanged
and unimpaired by the subjects it works upon, and of dissolving the
most stubborn and untractable bodies; as stones, gems, glass, earth,
sulphur, metals, etc., into red salt, equal in weight to the matter
dissolved; and this with as much ease as hot water melts down snow.”
It is into this fluid that the makers of malleable glass claimed,
and now claim, that they immersed common glass for several hours, to
acquire the property of malleability.
We have a ready and palpable proof of such possibilities. A foreign
correspondent of the Theosophical Society, a well-known medical
practitioner, and one who has studied the occult sciences for upward
of thirty years, has succeeded in obtaining what he terms the “true
oil of gold,” _i.e._, the primal element. Chemists and physicists have
seen and examined it, and were driven to confess that they neither knew
_how_ it was obtained nor could they do the same. That he desires his
name to remain unknown is not to be wondered at; ridicule and public
prejudice are more dangerous sometimes than the inquisition of old.
This “Adamic earth” is next-door neighbor to the alkahest, and one of
the most important secrets of the alchemists. No Kabalist will reveal
it to the world, for, as he expresses it in the well-known jargon:
“it would explain _the eagles_ of the alchemists, and how the eagles’
wings are clipped,” a secret that it took Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius
Philalethes) twenty years to learn.
As the dawn of physical science broke into a glaring daylight, the
spiritual sciences merged deeper and deeper into night, and in their
turn they were denied. So, now, these greatest masters in psychology
are looked upon as “ignorant and superstitious ancestors;” as
mountebanks and jugglers, because, forsooth, the sun of modern learning
shines to-day so bright, it has become an axiom that the philosophers
and men of science of the olden time knew nothing, and lived in a night
of superstition. But their traducers forget that the sun of to-day will
seem dark by comparison with the luminary of to-morrow, whether justly
or not; and as the men of our century think their ancestors ignorant,
so will perhaps their descendants count them for _know-nothings_. The
world moves in cycles. The coming races will be but the reproductions
of races long bygone; as we, perhaps, are the images of those who
lived a hundred centuries ago. The time will come when those who
now in public slander the hermetists, but ponder in secret their
dust-covered volumes; who plagiarize their ideas, assimilate and give
them out as their own—will receive their dues. “Who,” honestly exclaims
Pfaff—“what man has ever taken more comprehensive views of nature than
Paracelsus? He was the bold creator of chemical medicines; the founder
of courageous parties; victorious in controversy, belonging to those
spirits who have created amongst us a new mode of thinking on the
natural existence of things. What he scattered through his writings on
the philosopher’s stone, on pigmies and spirits of the mines; on signs,
on homunculi, and the elixir of life, and which are employed by many to
lower his estimation, cannot extinguish our grateful remembrance of his
general works, nor our admiration of his free, bold exertions, and his
noble, intellectual life.”[118]
More than one pathologist, chemist, homoeopathist, and magnetist has
quenched his thirst for knowledge in the books of Paracelsus. Frederick
Hufeland got his theoretical doctrines on infection from this mediæval
“quack,” as Sprengel delights in calling one who was immeasurably
higher than himself. Hemman, who endeavors to vindicate this great
philosopher, and nobly tries to redress his slandered memory, speaks
of him as the “_greatest_ chemist of his time.”[119] So do Professor
Molitor,[120] and Dr. Ennemoser, the eminent German psychologist.[121]
According to their criticisms on the labors of this Hermetist,
Paracelsus is the most “wondrous intellect of his age,” a “noble
genius.” But our modern lights assume to know better, and the ideas
of the Rosicrucians about the elementary spirits, the goblins and the
elves, have sunk into the “limbo of magic” and fairy tales for early
childhood.[122]
We are quite ready to concede to skeptics that one-half, and even
more, of seeming phenomena, are but more or less clever fraud. Recent
exposures, especially of “materializing” mediums, but too well prove
the fact. Unquestionably numerous others are still in store, and this
will continue until tests have become so perfect and spiritualists so
reasonable as no longer to furnish opportunity to mediums or weapons to
adversaries.
What should sensible spiritualists think of the character of _angel_
guides, who after monopolizing, perhaps for years, a poor medium’s
time, health and means, suddenly abandon him when he most needs
their help? None but creatures _without soul or conscience_ would be
guilty of such injustice. Conditions?—Mere sophistry. What sort of
spirits must they be who would not summon if necessary an army of
spirit-friends (if such there be) to snatch the innocent medium from
the pit dug for his feet? Such things happened in the olden time, such
may happen now. _There were apparitions before modern spiritualism, and
phenomena like ours in every previous age._ If modern manifestations
are a reality and palpable facts, so must have been the so-called
“miracles” and thaumaturgic exploits of old; or if the latter are but
fictions of superstition so must be the former, for they rest on no
better testimony.
But, in this daily-increasing torrent of occult phenomena that rushes
from one end of the globe to the other, though two-thirds of the
manifestations are proved spurious, what of those which are proved
genuine beyond doubt or cavil? Among these may be found communications
coming through non-professional as well as professional mediums, which
are sublime and divinely grand. Often, through young children, and
simple-minded ignorant persons, we receive philosophical teachings and
precepts, poetry and inspirational orations, music and paintings that
are fully worthy of the reputations of their alleged authors. Their
prophecies are often verified and their moral disquisitions beneficent,
though the latter is of rarer occurrence. Who are those spirits, what
those powers or intelligences which are evidently _outside_ of the
medium proper and entities _per se_? These _intelligences_ deserve the
appellation; and they differ as widely from the generality of spooks
and goblins that hover around the cabinets for physical manifestations,
as day from night.
We must confess that the situation appears to be very grave. The
control of mediums by such unprincipled and lying “spirits” is
constantly becoming more and more general; and the pernicious effects
of _seeming_ diabolism constantly multiply. Some of the best mediums
are abandoning the public rostrum and retiring from this influence;
and the movement is drifting churchward. We venture the prediction
that unless spiritualists set about the study, of ancient philosophy
so as to learn to discriminate between spirits and to guard themselves
against the baser sort, twenty-five years more will not elapse
before they will have to fly to the Romish communion to escape these
“guides” and “controls” that they have fondled so long. The signs of
this catastrophe already exhibit themselves. At a recent convention
at Philadelphia, it was seriously proposed to organize a sect of
_Christian_ Spiritualists! This is because, having withdrawn from
the church and learned nothing of the philosophy of the phenomena,
or the nature of their spirits, they are drifting about on a sea of
uncertainty like a ship without compass or rudder. They cannot escape
the dilemma; they must choose between Porphyry and Pio Nono.
While men of genuine science, such as Wallace, Crookes, Wagner,
Butlerof, Varley, Buchanan, Hare, Reichenbach, Thury, Perty, de Morgan,
Hoffmann, Goldschmidt, W. Gregory, Flammarion, Sergeant Cox and many
others, firmly believe in the current phenomena, many of the above
named reject the theory of departed spirits. Therefore, it seems but
logical to think that if the London “Katie King,” the only materialized
_something_ which the public is obliged more or less to credit out
of respect to science,—is not the spirit of an ex-mortal, then it
must be the astral solidified shadow of either one of the Rosicrucian
spooks—“fantasies of superstition” or of some as yet unexplained force
in nature. Be it however a “spirit of health or goblin damn’d” it is
of little consequence; for if it be once proved that its organism is
not solid matter, then it must be and is a “spirit,” an apparition,
a _breath_. It is an intelligence which acts outside our organisms
and therefore must belong to some existing even though unseen race
of beings. But what is it? What is this something which thinks and
even speaks but yet is not human; that is impalpable and yet not
a disembodied spirit; that simulates affection, passion, remorse,
fear, joy, but yet feels neither? What is this canting creature which
rejoices in cheating the truthful inquirer and mocking at sacred human
feeling? For, if not Mr. Crookes’s Katie King, other similar creatures
have done all these. Who can fathom the mystery? The true psychologist
alone. And where should he go for his text-books but to the neglected
alcoves of libraries where the works of despised hermetists and
theurgists have been gathering dust these many years.
Says Henry More, the revered English Platonist, in his answer to an
attack on the believers of spiritual and magic phenomena by a skeptic
of that age, named Webster:[123] “As for that other opinion, that the
greater part of the reformed divines hold, that it was the Devil that
appeared in Samuel’s shape, it is beneath contempt; for though I do
not doubt but that in many of these necromantic apparitions, they are
_ludicrous spirits, not the souls of the deceased that appear_, yet I
am clear for the appearing of the soul of Samuel, and as clear that
in other necromancies, it may be such kinds of spirits, as Porphyrius
above describes, ‘that change themselves into omnifarious forms and
shapes, and one while act the parts of dæmons, another while of angels
or gods, and another while _of the souls of the departed_.’ And I
confess such a spirit as this might _personate_ Samuel here, for
anything Webster alleged to the contrary, for his arguments indeed are
wonderfully weak and wooden.”
When such a metaphysician and philosopher as Henry More gives such
testimony as this, we may well assume our point to have been well
taken. Learned investigators, all very skeptical as to spirits in
general and “departed human spirits” in particular, during the last
twenty years have taxed their brains to invent new names for an old
thing. Thus, with Mr. Crookes and Sergeant Cox, it is the “psychic
force.” Professor Thury of Geneva calls it the “psychode” or _ectenic_
force; Professor Balfour Stewart, the “electro-biological power;”
Faraday, the “great master of experimental philosophy in physics,”
but apparently a novice in psychology, superciliously termed it an
“unconscious muscular action,” an “unconscious cerebration,” and what
not? Sir William Hamilton, a “latent thought;” Dr. Carpenter, “the
ideo-motor principle,” etc., etc. So many scientists—so many names.
Years ago the old German philosopher, Schopenhauer, disposed of this
force and matter at the same time; and since the conversion of Mr.
Wallace, the great anthropologist has evidently adopted his ideas.
Schopenhauer’s doctrine is that the universe is but the manifestation
of the will. Every force in nature is also an effect of will,
representing a higher or lower degree of its objectiveness. It is the
teaching of Plato, who stated distinctly that everything visible was
created or evolved out of the invisible and eternal WILL, and after
its fashion. Our Heaven—he says—was produced according to the eternal
pattern of the “Ideal World,” contained, as everything else, in the
dodecahedron, the geometrical model used by the Deity.[124] With Plato,
the Primal Being is an emanation of the Demiurgic Mind (_Nous_), which
contains from the eternity the “_idea_” of the “to be created world”
within itself, and which idea he produces out of himself.[125] The laws
of nature are the established relations of this _idea_ to the forms
of its manifestations; “these forms,” says Schopenhauer, “are time,
space, and causality. Through time and space the idea varies in its
numberless manifestations.”
These ideas are far from being new, and even with Plato they were not
original. This is what we read in the _Chaldean Oracles_:[126] “The
works of nature co-exist with the intellectual [νοέρῳ], spiritual Light
of the Father. For it is the soul [ψυχη] which adorned the great
heaven, and which adorns it after the Father.”
“The incorporeal world then was already completed, having its seat in
the Divine Reason,” says Philo,[127] who is erroneously accused of
deriving his philosophy from Plato’s.
In the _Theogony_ of Mochus, we find Æther first, and then the air;
the two principles from which Ulom, the _intelligible_ [νοήτος] God (the
visible universe of matter) is born.[128]
In the Orphic hymns, the Eros-Phanes evolves from the Spiritual Egg,
which the Æthereal winds impregnate, Wind[129] being “the spirit of
God,” who is said to move in Æther, “brooding over the Chaos” the Divine
“Idea.” In the Hindu _Katakopanisâd_, Purusha, the Divine Spirit,
already stands before the original matter, from whose union springs the
great Soul of the World, “Maha=Atma, Brahm, the Spirit of Life;”[130]
these latter appellations are identical with the Universal Soul, or
_Anima Mundi_, and the Astral Light of the theurgists and kabalists.
Pythagoras brought his doctrines from the eastern sanctuaries, and
Plato compiled them into a form more intelligible than the mysterious
numerals of the sage—whose doctrines he had fully embraced—to the
uninitiated mind. Thus, the _Cosmos_ is “the Son” with Plato, having
for his father and mother the Divine Thought and Matter.[131]
“The Egyptians,” says Dunlap,[132] “distinguish between an older and
younger Horus, the former the _brother_ of Osiris, the latter the _son_
of Osiris and Isis.” The first is the _Idea_ of the world remaining
in the Demiurgic Mind, “born in darkness before the creation of the
world.” The second Horus is this “Idea” going forth from the _Logos_,
becoming clothed with matter, and assuming an actual existence.[133]
“The mundane God, eternal, boundless, young and old, of winding
form,”[134] say the _Chaldean oracles_.
This “winding form” is a figure to express the vibratory motion of
the Astral Light, with which the ancient priests were perfectly well
acquainted, though they may have differed in views of ether, with
modern scientists; for in the Æther they placed the Eternal Idea
pervading the Universe, or the _Will_ which becomes _Force_, and
creates or organizes _matter_.
“The will,” says Van Helmont, “is the first of all powers. For through
the will of the Creator all things were made and put in motion....
The will is the property of all spiritual beings, and displays itself
in them the more actively the more they are freed from matter.” And
Paracelsus, “the divine,” as he was called, adds in the same strain:
“_Faith_ must confirm the imagination, for faith establishes the
_will_.... Determined will is a beginning of all magical operations....
Because men do not perfectly imagine and believe the result, is that
the arts are uncertain, while they might be perfectly certain.”
The opposing power alone of unbelief and skepticism, if projected in a
current of equal force, can check the other, and sometimes completely
neutralize it. Why should spiritualists wonder that the presence of
some strong skeptics, or of those who, feeling bitterly opposed to the
phenomenon, unconsciously exercise their will-power in opposition,
hinders and often stops altogether the manifestations? If there is no
_conscious_ power on earth but sometimes finds another to interfere
with or even counterbalance it, why wonder when the _unconscious_,
passive power of a medium is suddenly paralyzed in its effects by
another opposing one, though it also be as unconsciously exercised?
Professors Faraday and Tyndall boasted that their presence at a circle
would stop at once every manifestation. This fact alone ought to have
proved to the eminent scientists that there was some force in these
phenomena worthy to arrest their attention. As a scientist, Prof.
Tyndall was perhaps pre-eminent in the circle of those who were present
at the seance; as a shrewd observer, one not easily deceived by a
tricking medium, he was perhaps no better, if as clever, as others in
the room, and if the manifestations were but a fraud so ingenious as to
deceive the others, they would not have stopped, even on _his_ account.
What medium can ever boast of such phenomena as were produced by Jesus,
and the apostle Paul after him? Yet even Jesus met with cases where the
unconscious force of resistance overpowered even his so well directed
current of will. “And he did not many mighty works there, because of
their unbelief.”
There is a reflection of every one of these views in Schopenhauer’s
philosophy. Our “investigating” scientists might consult his works
with profit. They will find therein many a strange hypothesis founded
on old ideas, speculations on the “new” phenomena, which may prove
as reasonable as any, and be saved the useless trouble of inventing
new theories. The psychic and ectenic forces, the “ideo-motor” and
“electro-biological powers;” “latent thought” and even “unconscious
cerebration” theories, can be condensed in two words: the kabalistic
ASTRAL LIGHT.
The bold theories and opinions expressed in Schopenhauer’s works
differ widely with those of the majority of our orthodox scientists.
“In reality,” remarks this daring speculator, “there is neither
_matter_ nor _spirit_. The tendency to gravitation in a stone is as
unexplainable as thought in human brain.... If matter can—no one knows
why—fall to the ground, then it can also—no one knows why—think.... As
soon, even in mechanics, as we trespass beyond the purely mathematical,
as soon as we reach the inscrutable, adhesion, gravitation, and so on,
we are faced by phenomena which are to our senses as mysterious as the
WILL and THOUGHT in man—we find ourselves facing the incomprehensible,
for such is every force in nature. Where is then that _matter_ which
you all pretend to know so well; and from which—being so familiar with
it—you draw all your conclusions and explanations, and attribute to
it all things?... That, which can be fully realized by our reason and
senses, is but the superficial: they can never reach the true inner
substance of things. Such was the opinion of Kant. If you consider that
there is in a human head some sort of a _spirit_, then you are obliged
to concede the same to a stone. If your dead and utterly passive matter
can manifest a tendency toward gravitation, or, like electricity,
attract and repel, and send out sparks—then, as well as the brain, it
can also think. In short, every particle of the so-called spirit, we
can replace with an equivalent of matter, and every particle of matter
replace with spirit.... Thus, it is not the Cartesian division of all
things into matter and spirit that can ever be found philosophically
exact; but only if we divide them into _will_ and _manifestation_,
which form of division has naught to do with the former, for it
spiritualizes every thing: all that, which is in the first instance
real and objective—body and matter—it transforms into a representation,
and every manifestation into will.”[135]
These views corroborate what we have expressed about the various names
given to the same thing. The disputants are battling about mere words.
Call the phenomena force, energy, electricity or magnetism, will, or
spirit-power, it will ever be the partial manifestation of the _soul_,
whether disembodied or imprisoned for a while in its body—of a portion
of that intelligent, omnipotent, and individual WILL, pervading all
nature, and known, through the insufficiency of human language to
express correctly psychological images, as—GOD.
The ideas of some of our schoolmen about matter are, from the
kabalistic standing-point, in many a way erroneous. Hartmann calls
their views “an _instinctual_ prejudice.” Furthermore, he demonstrates
that no experimenter can have anything to do with matter properly
termed, but only with the forces into which he divides it. The visible
effects of matter are but the effects of force. He concludes thereby,
that that which is now called matter is nothing but the aggregation of
atomic forces, to express which the word _matter_ is used: outside of
that, for science matter is but a word void of sense. Notwithstanding
many an honest confession on the part of our specialists—physicists,
physiologists and chemists—that they know nothing whatever of
matter,[136] _they deify it_. Every new phenomenon which they find
themselves unable to explain, is triturated, compounded into incense,
and burned on the altar of the goddess who patronizes modern scientists.
No one can better treat his subject than does Schopenhauer in his
_Parerga_. In this work he discusses at length animal magnetism,
clairvoyance, sympathetic cures, seership, magic, omens, ghost-seeing,
and other spiritual matters. “All these manifestations,” he says, “are
branches of one and the same tree, and furnish us with irrefutable
proofs of the existence of a chain of beings which is based on
quite a different order of things than that nature which has at its
foundation laws of space, time and adaptability. This other order of
things is far deeper, for it is the original and the direct one; in
its presence the common laws of nature, which are simply formal, are
unavailing; therefore, under its immediate action neither time nor
space can separate any longer the individuals, and the separation
impendent on these forms presents no more insurmountable barriers for
the intercourse of thoughts and the immediate action of the will. In
this manner changes may be wrought by quite a different course than
the course of physical causality, _i.e._, through an action of the
manifestation of the will exhibited in a peculiar way and outside
the individual himself. Therefore the peculiar character of all the
aforesaid manifestations is the _visioin distante et actio in distante_
(vision and action at a distance) in its relation to time as well as
in its relation to space. Such an action at a distance is just what
constitutes the fundamental character of what is called _magical_; for
such is the immediate action of our will, an action liberated from the
causal conditions of physical action, viz., contact.”
“Besides that,” continues Schopenhauer, “these manifestations present
to us a substantial and perfectly logical contradiction to materialism,
and even to naturalism, because in the light of such manifestations,
that order of things in nature which both these philosophies seek to
present as absolute and the only genuine, appears before us on the
contrary purely phenomenal and superficial, and containing at the
bottom of it a substance of things _à parte_ and perfectly independent
of its own laws. That is why these manifestations—at least from a
purely philosophical point of view—among all the facts which are
presented to us in the domain of experiment, are beyond any comparison
the most important. Therefore, it is the duty of every scientist to
acquaint himself with them.”[137]
To pass from the philosophical speculations of a man like Schopenhauer
to the superficial generalizations of some of the French Academicians,
would be profitless but for the fact that it enables us to estimate
the intellectual grasp of the two schools of learning. What the German
makes of profound psychological questions, we have seen. Compare with
it the best that the astronomer Babinet and the chemist Boussingault
can offer by way of explaining an important spiritualistic phenomenon.
In 1854-5 these distinguished specialists presented to the Academy
a _memoire_, or monograph, whose evident object was to corroborate
and at the same time make clearer Dr. Chevreuil’s too complicated
theory in explanation of the turning-tables, of the commission for the
investigation of which he was a member.
Here it is _verbatim_: “As to the movements and oscillations _alleged_
to happen with certain tables, they can have no cause other than the
_invisible_ and involuntary vibrations of the experimenter’s muscular
system; the extended contraction of the muscles manifesting itself
at such time by a series of vibrations, and becoming thus a _visible
tremor_ which communicates to the object a circumrotary motion. This
rotation is thus enabled to manifest itself with a considerable
energy, by a gradually quickening motion, or by a strong resistance,
whenever it is required to stop. Hence the physical explanation
of the phenomenon becomes clear and does not offer the slightest
difficulty.”[138]
None whatever. This scientific hypothesis—or demonstration shall we
say?—is as clear as one of M. Babinet’s nebulæ examined on a foggy
night.
And still, clear as it may be, it lacks an important feature, _i.e._,
common sense. We are at a loss to decide whether or not Babinet accepts
_en desespoir de cause_ Hartmann’s proposition that “the visible
_effects of matter_ are nothing but the _effects of a force_,” and,
that in order to form a clear conception of matter, one must first form
one of force. The philosophy to the school of which belongs Hartmann,
and which is partly accepted by several of the greatest German
scientists, teaches that the problem of matter can only be solved by
that invisible Force, acquaintance with which Schopenhauer terms the
“magical knowledge,” and “magical effect or action of Will.” Thus,
we must first ascertain whether the “involuntary vibrations of the
experimenter’s muscular system,” which are but “actions of matter,” are
influenced by a will _within_ the experimenter or _without_. In the
former case Babinet makes of him an unconscious epileptic; the latter,
as we will further see, he rejects altogether, and attributes all
intelligent answers of the tipping or rapping tables to “unconscious
ventriloquism.”
We know that every exertion of will results in _force_, and that,
according to the above-named German school, the manifestations
of atomic forces are individual actions of will, resulting in
the unconscious rushing of atoms into the concrete image already
subjectively created by the will. Democritus taught, after his
instructor Leucippus, that the first principles of all things contained
in the universe were atoms and a _vacuum_. In its kabalistic sense, the
_vacuum_ means in this instance the _latent_ Deity, or latent force,
which at its first manifestation became WILL, and thus communicated
the first impulse to these atoms—whose agglomeration, is matter. This
vacuum was but another name for chaos, and an unsatisfactory one, for,
according to the Peripatetics “nature abhors a vacuum.”
That before Democritus the ancients were familiar with the idea of
the indestructibility of matter is proved by their allegories and
numerous other facts. Movers gives a definition of the Phœnician idea
of the ideal sunlight as a spiritual influence issuing from the highest
God, IAO, “the light conceivable only by intellect—the physical and
spiritual Principle of all things; out of which the soul emanates.” It
was the male Essence, or Wisdom, while the primitive matter or _Chaos_
was the female. Thus the two first principles—co-eternal and infinite,
were already with the primitive Phœnicians, spirit and matter.
Therefore the theory is as old as the world; for Democritus was not the
first philosopher who taught it; and intuition existed in man before
the ultimate development of his reason. But it is in the denial of the
boundless and endless Entity, possessor of that invisible Will which
we for lack of a better term call GOD, that lies the powerlessness
of every materialistic science to explain the occult phenomena. It
is in the rejection _a priori_ of everything which might force them
to cross the boundary of exact science and step into the domain of
psychological, or, if we prefer, metaphysical physiology, that we find
the secret cause of their discomfiture by the manifestations, and their
absurd theories to account for them. The ancient philosophy affirmed
that it is in consequence of the manifestation of that Will—termed by
Plato _the Divine Idea_—that everything visible and invisible sprung
into existence. As that Intelligent Idea, which, by directing its
sole will-power toward a centre of localized forces called objective
forms into being, so can man, the microcosm of the great Macrocosm,
do the same in proportion with the development of his will-power.
The imaginary atoms—a figure of speech employed by Democritus, and
gratefully seized upon by the materialists—are like automatic workmen
moved inwardly by the influx of that Universal Will directed upon
them, and which, manifesting itself as force, sets them into activity.
The plan of the structure to be erected is in the brain of the
Architect, and reflects his will; abstract as yet, from the instant of
the conception it becomes concrete through these atoms which follow
faithfully every line, point and figure traced in the imagination of
the Divine Geometer.
As God creates, so man can create. Given a certain intensity of will,
and the shapes created by the mind become subjective. Hallucinations,
they are called, although to their creator they are real as any visible
object is to any one else. Given a more intense and intelligent
concentration of this will, and the form becomes concrete, visible,
objective; the man has learned the secret of secrets; he is a MAGICIAN.
The materialist should not object to this logic, for he regards thought
as matter. Conceding it to be so, the cunning mechanism contrived by
the inventor; the fairy scenes born in the poet’s brain; the gorgeous
painting limned by the artist’s fancy; the peerless statue chiselled
in ether by the sculptor; the palaces and castles built in air by the
architect—all these, though invisible and subjective, must exist, for
they are matter, shaped and moulded. Who shall say, then, that there
are not some men of such imperial will as to be able to drag these
air-drawn fancies into view, enveloped in the hard casing of gross
substance to make them tangible?
If the French scientists reaped no laurels in the new field of
investigation, what more was done in England, until the day when Mr.
Crookes offered himself in atonement for the sins of the learned
body? Why, Mr. Faraday, some twenty years ago, actually condescended
to be spoken to once or twice upon the subject. Faraday, whose name
is pronounced by the anti-spiritualists in every discussion upon
the phenomena, as a sort of scientific charm against the evil-eye
of Spiritualism, Faraday, who “blushed” for having published his
researches upon such a degrading belief, is now proved on good
authority to have never sat at a tipping table himself at all! We
have but to open a few stray numbers of the _Journal des Debats_,
published while a noted Scotch medium was in England, to recall
the past events in all their primitive freshness. In one of these
numbers, Dr. Foucault, of Paris, comes out as a champion for the
eminent English experimenter. “Pray, do not imagine,” says he, “that
the grand physicist had ever himself condescended so far as to sit
prosaically at a jumping table.” Whence, then, came the “blushes”
which suffused the cheeks of the “Father of Experimental Philosophy?”
Remembering this fact, we will now examine the nature of Faraday’s
beautiful “Indicator,” the extraordinary “Medium-Catcher,” invented by
him for the detection of mediumistic fraud. That complicated machine,
the memory of which haunts like a nightmare the dreams of dishonest
mediums, is carefully described in Comte de Mirville’s _Question des
Esprits_.
The better to prove to the experimenters the reality of their own
impulsion, Professor Faraday placed several card-board disks, united to
each other and stuck to the table by a half-soft glue, which, making
the whole adhere for a time together, would, nevertheless, yield to
a continuous pressure. Now, the table having turned—yes, actually
_having dared to turn before Mr. Faraday_, which fact is of some value,
at least—the disks were examined; and, as they were found to have
gradually displaced themselves by slipping in the same direction as the
table, it thus became an unquestionable proof that the experimenters
had _pushed_ the tables themselves.
Another of the so called scientific tests, so useful in a phenomenon
alleged to be either spiritual or psychical, consisted of a small
instrument which immediately warned the witnesses of the slightest
personal impulsion on their part, or rather, according to Mr. Faraday’s
own expression, “it warned them when they changed from the passive to
the active state.” This needle which betrayed the active motion proved
but one thing, viz.: the action of a force which either emanated from
the sitters or controlled them. And who has ever said that there is
no such force? Every one admits so much, whether this force passes
through the operator, as it is generally shown, or acts independently
of him, as is so often the case. “The whole mystery consisted in the
disproportion of the force employed by the operators, who pushed
because they were forced to push, with certain effects of rotation, or
rather, of a really marvellous race. In the presence of such prodigious
effects, how could any one imagine that the Lilliputian experiments
of that kind could have any value in this newly discovered Land of
Giants?”[139]
Professor Agassiz, who occupied in America nearly the same eminent
position as a scientist which Mr. Faraday did in England, acted with a
still greater unfairness. Professor J. R. Buchanan, the distinguished
anthropologist, who has treated Spiritualism in some respects more
scientifically than any one else in America, speaks of Agassiz, in a
recent article, with a very just indignation. For, of all other men,
Professor Agassiz ought to believe in a phenomenon to which he had been
a subject himself. But now that both Faraday and Agassiz are themselves
_disembodied_, we can do better by questioning the living than the dead.
Thus a force whose secret powers were thoroughly familiar to the
ancient theurgists, is denied by modern skeptics. The antediluvian
children—who perhaps played with it, using it as the boys in
Bulwer-Lytton’s _Coming Race_, use the tremendous “_vril_” called it the
“Water of Phtha;” their descendants named it the _Anima Mundi_, the
soul of the universe; and still later the mediæval hermetists termed it
“sidereal light,” or the “Milk of the Celestial Virgin,” the “Magnes,”
and many other names. But our modern learned men will neither accept
nor recognize it under such appellations; for it pertains to _magic_,
and magic is, in their conception, a disgraceful superstition.
Apollonius and Iamblichus held that it was not “in the knowledge of
things _without_, but in the perfection of the soul _within_, that lies
the empire of man, aspiring to be more than men.”[140] Thus they had
arrived at a perfect cognizance of their godlike souls, the powers of
which they used with all the wisdom, outgrowth of esoteric study of
the hermetic lore, inherited by them from their forefathers. But our
philosophers, tightly shutting themselves up in their shells of flesh,
cannot or dare not carry their timid gaze beyond the _comprehensible_.
For them there is no future life; there are no godlike dreams, they
scorn them as unscientific; for them the men of old are but “ignorant
ancestors,” as they express it; and whenever they meet during their
physiological researches with an author who believes that this
mysterious yearning after spiritual knowledge is inherent in every
human being, and cannot have been given us utterly in vain, they regard
him with contemptuous pity.
Says a Persian proverb: “The darker the sky is, the brighter the stars
will shine.” Thus, on the dark firmament of the mediæval ages began
appearing the mysterious Brothers of the Rosie Cross. They formed no
associations, they built no colleges; for, hunted up and down like
so many wild beasts, when caught by the Christian Church, they were
unceremoniously roasted. “As religion forbids it,” says Bayle, “to
spill blood,” therefore, “to elude the maxim, _Ecclesia non novit
sanguinem_, they burned human beings, as burning a man does not _shed
his blood_!”
Many of these mystics, by following what they were taught by some
treatises, secretly preserved from one generation to another, achieved
discoveries which would not be despised even in our modern days of
exact sciences. Roger Bacon, the friar, was laughed at as a quack,
and is now generally numbered among “pretenders” to magic art; but
his discoveries were nevertheless accepted, and are now used by those
who ridicule him the most. Roger Bacon belonged by right if not by
fact to that Brotherhood which includes all those who study the occult
sciences. Living in the thirteenth century, almost a contemporary,
therefore, of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, his discoveries—such
as gunpowder and optical glasses, and his mechanical achievements—were
considered by every one as so many miracles. He was accused of having
made a compact with the Evil One.
In the legendary history of Friar Bacon, as “well as in an old play
written by Robert Green, a dramatist in the days of Queen Elizabeth,
it is recounted, that, having been summoned before the king, the friar
was induced to show” some of his skill before her majesty the queen.
So he waved his hand (_his wand_, says the text), and “presently was
heard such excellent music, that they all said they had never heard the
like.” Then there was heard a still louder music and four apparitions
suddenly presented themselves and danced until they vanished and
disappeared in the air. Then he waved his wand again, and suddenly
there was such a smell “as if all the rich perfumes in the whole world
had been there prepared in the best manner that art could set them
out.” Then Roger Bacon having promised a gentleman to show him his
sweetheart, he pulled a hanging in the king’s apartment aside and every
one in the room saw “a kitchen-maid with a basting-ladle in her hand.”
The proud gentleman, although he recognized the maiden who disappeared
as suddenly as she had appeared, was enraged at the humiliating
spectacle, and threatened the friar with his revenge. What does the
magician do? He simply answers: “Threaten not, lest I do you more
shame; and do you take heed how you give _scholars_ the lie again!”
As a commentary on this, the modern historian[141] remarks: “This may
be taken as a sort of exemplification of the class of exhibitions
which were probably the result of a _superior knowledge_ of natural
sciences.” No one ever doubted that it was the result of precisely such
a knowledge, and the hermetists, magicians, astrologers and alchemists
never claimed anything else. It certainly was not their fault that the
ignorant masses, under the influence of an unscrupulous and fanatical
clergy, should have attributed all such works to the agency of the
devil. In view of the atrocious tortures provided by the Inquisition
for all suspected of either black or white magic, it is not strange
that these philosophers neither boasted nor even acknowledged the fact
of such an intercourse. On the contrary, their own writings prove that
they held that magic is “no more than the application of natural
active causes to passive things or subjects; by means thereof, many
tremendously surprising but yet natural effects are produced.”
The phenomena of the mystic odors and music, exhibited by Roger Bacon,
have been often observed in our own time. To say nothing of our
personal experience, we are informed by English correspondents of the
Theosophical Society that they have heard strains of the most ravishing
music, coming from no visible instrument, and inhaled a succession of
delightful odors produced, as they believed, by spirit-agency. One
correspondent tells us that so powerful was one of these familiar
odors—that of sandal-wood—that the house would be impregnated with
it for weeks after the seance. The medium in this case was a member
of a private family, and the experiments were all made within the
domestic circle. Another describes what he calls a “_musical_ rap.”
The potencies that are now capable of producing these phenomena must
have existed and been equally efficacious in the days of Roger Bacon.
As to the apparitions, it suffices to say that they are evoked now
in spiritualistic circles, and guarantied by scientists, and their
evocation by Roger Bacon is thus made more probable than ever.
Baptista Porta, in his treatise on _Natural Magic_, enumerates a
whole catalogue of secret formulæ for producing extraordinary effects
by employing the occult powers of nature. Although the “magicians”
believed as firmly as our spiritualists in a world of invisible
spirits, none of them claimed to produce his effects under their
control or through their sole help. They knew too well how difficult
it is to keep away the elementary creatures when they have once found
the door wide open. Even the magic of the ancient Chaldeans was but
a profound knowledge of the powers of simples and minerals. It was
only when the theurgist desired _divine_ help in spiritual and earthly
matters that he sought direct communication through religious rites,
with pure spiritual beings. With them, even, those spirits who remain
invisible and communicate with mortals through their awakened inner
senses, as in clairvoyance, clairaudience and trance, could only be
evoked _subjectively_ and as a result of purity of life and prayer. But
all physical phenomena were produced simply by applying a knowledge of
natural forces, although certainly not by the method of legerdemain,
practiced in our days by conjurers.
Men possessed of such knowledge and exercising such powers patiently
toiled for something better than the vain glory of a passing fame.
Seeking it not, they became immortal, as do all who labor for the
good of the race, forgetful of mean self. Illuminated with the light
of eternal truth, these rich-poor alchemists fixed their attention
upon the things that lie beyond the common ken, recognizing nothing
inscrutable but the First Cause, and finding no question unsolvable.
To dare, to know, to will, and REMAIN SILENT, was their constant
rule; to be beneficent, unselfish, and unpretending, were, with them,
spontaneous impulses. Disdaining the rewards of petty traffic, spurning
wealth, luxury, pomp, and worldly power, they aspired to knowledge as
the most satisfying of all acquisitions. They esteemed poverty, hunger,
toil, and the evil report of men, as none too great a price to pay for
its achievement. They, who might have lain on downy, velvet-covered
beds, suffered themselves to die in hospitals and by the wayside,
rather than debase their souls and allow the profane cupidity of those
who tempted them to triumph over their sacred vows. The lives of
Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, and Philalethes are too well known to
repeat the old, sad story.
If spiritualists are anxious to keep strictly dogmatic in their notions
of the “spirit-world,” they must not set _scientists_ to investigate
their phenomena in the true experimental spirit. The attempt would
most surely result in a partial re-discovery of the magic of old—that
of Moses and Paracelsus. Under the deceptive beauty of some of their
apparitions, they might find some day the sylphs and fair Undines of
the Rosicrucians playing in the currents of _psychic_ and _odic_ force.
Already Mr. Crookes, who fully credits the _being_, feels that under
the fair skin of Katie, covering a simulacrum of heart borrowed
partially from the medium and the circle, there is _no soul_! And
the learned authors of _The Unseen Universe_, abandoning their
“electro-biological” theory, begin to perceive in the universal ether
the _possibility_ that it is a photographic album of EN-SOPH—the
Boundless.
We are far from believing that all the spirits that communicate at
circles are of the classes called “Elemental,” and “Elementary.”
Many—especially among those who control the medium subjectively to
speak, write, and otherwise act in various ways—are human, disembodied
spirits. Whether the majority of such spirits are good or _bad_,
largely depends on the private morality of the medium, much on the
circle present, and a great deal on the intensity and object of their
purpose. If this object is merely to gratify curiosity and to pass
the time, it is useless to expect anything serious. But, in any case,
human spirits can _never_ materialize themselves in _propria personâ_.
These can never appear to the investigator clothed with warm, solid
flesh, sweating hands and faces, and grossly-material bodies. The most
they can do is to project their æthereal reflection on the atmospheric
waves, and if the touch of their hands and clothing can become upon
rare occasions objective to the senses of a living mortal, it will
be felt as a passing breeze gently sweeping over the touched spot,
not as a human hand or material body. It is useless to plead that the
“materialized spirits” that have exhibited themselves with beating
hearts and loud voices (with or without a trumpet) are _human_ spirits.
The voices—if such sound can be termed a voice at all—of a spiritual
apparition once heard can hardly be forgotten. That of a pure spirit is
like the tremulous murmur of an Æolian harp echoed from a distance; the
voice of a suffering, hence impure, if not utterly bad spirit, may be
assimilated to a human voice issuing from an empty barrel.
This is not _our_ philosophy, but that of the numberless generations
of theurgists and magicians, and based upon their practical
experience. The testimony of antiquity is positive on this subject:
“Δαιμονιῶν φωναὶ ἄναρθροι εἰσί....”[142] The voices of spirits are not
articulated. The spirit-voice consists of a series of sounds which
conveys the impression of a column of compressed air ascending from
beneath upward, and spreading around the living interlocutor. The
many eye-witnesses who testified in the case of Elizabeth Eslinger,
namely:[143] the deputy-governor of the prison of Weinsberg, Mayer,
Eckhart, Theurer, and Knorr (sworn evidence), Düttenhöfer, and Kapff,
the mathematician, testified that they saw the apparition _like a
pillar of clouds_. For the space of eleven weeks, Doctor Kerner and
his sons, several Lutheran ministers, the advocate Fraas, the engraver
Düttenhöfer, two physicians, Siefer and Sicherer, the judge Heyd, and
the Baron von Hugel, with many others, followed this manifestation
daily. During the time it lasted, the prisoner Elizabeth prayed with
a loud voice uninterruptedly; therefore, as the “spirit” was talking
at the same time, it could be no ventriloquism; and that voice, they
say,“had nothing _human_ in it; no one could imitate its sounds.”
Further on we will give abundant proofs from ancient authors concerning
this neglected truism. We will now only again assert that no spirit
claimed by the spiritualists to be human was ever proved to be such
on sufficient testimony. The influence of the _disembodied_ ones
can be felt, and communicated _subjectively_ by them to sensitives.
They can produce _objective_ manifestations, but they cannot produce
_themselves_ otherwise than as described above. They can control the
body of a medium, and express their desires and ideas in various modes
well known to spiritualists; but not _materialize_ what is matterless
and purely spiritual—their _divine essence_. Thus every so-called
“materialization” when genuine—is either produced (_perhaps_) by the
will of that spirit whom the “appearance” is claimed to be but can
only personate at best, or by the elementary goblins themselves, which
are generally too stupid to deserve the honor of being called devils.
Upon rare occasions the spirits are able to subdue and control these
soulless beings, which are ever ready to assume pompous names if left
to themselves, in such a way that the mischievous spirit “of the air,”
shaped in the real image of the _human_ spirit, will be moved by the
latter like a marionette, and unable to either act or utter other words
than those imposed on him by the “immortal soul.” But this requires
many conditions generally unknown to the circles of even spiritualists
most in the habit of regularly attending seances. Not every one can
attract _human_ spirits who likes. One of the most powerful attractions
of our departed ones is their strong affection for those whom they have
left on earth. It draws them irresistibly, by degrees, into the current
of the Astral Light vibrating between the person sympathetic to them
and the Universal Soul. Another very important condition is harmony,
and the magnetic purity of the persons present.
If this philosophy is wrong, if all the “materialized” forms emerging
in _darkened_ rooms from still _darker_ cabinets, are spirits of men
who once lived upon this earth, why such a difference between them
and the _ghosts_ that appear unexpectedly—_ex abrupto_—without either
cabinet or medium? Who ever heard of the apparitions, unrestful
“souls,” hovering about the spots where they were murdered, or coming
back for some other mysterious reasons of their own, with “warm hands”
feeling _like living flesh_, and but that they are known to be dead and
buried, not distinguishable from living mortals? We have well-attested
facts of such apparitions making themselves suddenly visible, but
never, until the beginning of the era of the “materializations,” did
we see anything like them. In the _Medium and Day Break_, of September
8, 1876, we read a letter from “a lady travelling on the continent,”
narrating a circumstance that happened in a haunted house. She says: “
... A strange sound proceeded from a darkened corner of the library ...
on looking up she perceived a _cloud or column of luminous vapor_; ...
the earth-bound spirit was hovering about the spot rendered accursed by
his evil deed....” As this spirit was doubtless a _genuine_ elementary
apparition, which made itself visible of its own free will—in short,
an _umbra_—it was, as every respectable shadow should be, visible but
impalpable, or if palpable at all, communicating to the feeling of
touch the sensation of a mass of water suddenly clasped in the hand, or
of condensed but cold steam. It was _luminous_ and _vapory_; for aught
we can tell it might have been the real personal umbra of the “spirit,”
persecuted, and earth-bound, either by its own remorse and crimes or
those of another person or spirit. The mysteries of after-death are
many, and modern “materializations” only make them cheap and ridiculous
in the eyes of the indifferent.
To these assertions may be opposed a fact well known among
spiritualists: _The writer has publicly certified to having seen such
materialized forms_. We have most assuredly done so, and are ready to
repeat the testimony. We have recognized such figures as the visible
representations of acquaintances, friends, and even relatives. We have,
in company with many other spectators, heard them pronounce words in
languages unfamiliar not only to the medium and to every one else
in the room, except ourselves, but, in some cases, to almost if not
quite every medium in America and Europe, for they were the tongues
of Eastern tribes and peoples. At the time, these instances were
justly regarded as conclusive proofs of the genuine mediumship of the
uneducated Vermont farmer who sat in the “cabinet.” But, nevertheless,
these figures were _not_ the forms of the persons they appeared to be.
They were simply their portrait statues, constructed, animated and
operated by the elementaries. If we have not previously elucidated this
point, it was because the spiritualistic public was not then ready to
even listen to the fundamental proposition that there are elemental and
elementary spirits. Since that time this subject has been broached and
more or less widely discussed. There is less hazard now in attempting
to launch upon the restless sea of criticism the hoary philosophy of
the ancient sages, for there has been some preparation of the public
mind to consider it with impartiality and deliberation. Two years of
agitation have effected a marked change for the better.
Pausanias writes that four hundred years after the battle of Marathon,
there were still heard in the place where it was fought, the _neighing
of horses_ and the shouts of shadowy soldiers. Supposing that the
spectres of the slaughtered soldiers were their genuine spirits, they
looked like “shadows,” not materialized men. Who, then, or what,
produced the neighing of horses? _Equine_ “spirits?” And if it be
pronounced untrue that horses have spirits—which assuredly no one among
zoölogists, physiologists or psychologists, or even spiritualists, can
either prove or disprove—then must we take it for granted that it was
the “immortal souls” of men which produced the neighing at Marathon to
make the historical battle scene more vivid and dramatic? The phantoms
of dogs, cats, and various other animals have been repeatedly seen,
and the world-wide testimony is as trustworthy upon this point as
that with respect to human apparitions. Who or _what_ personates, if
we are allowed such an expression, the ghosts of departed animals? Is
it, again, human spirits? As the matter now stands, there is no side
issue; we have either to admit that animals have surviving spirits and
souls as well as ourselves, or hold with Porphyry that there are in the
_invisible_ world a kind of tricky and malicious demons, intermediary
beings between living men and “gods,” spirits that delight in appearing
under every imaginable shape, beginning with the human form, and ending
with those of multifarious animals.[144]
Before venturing to decide the question whether the spectral animal
forms so frequently seen and attested are the returning spirits of dead
beasts, we must carefully consider their reported behavior. Do these
spectres act according to the habits and display the same instincts, as
the animals during life? Do the spectral beasts of prey lie in wait for
victims, and timid animals flee before the presence of man; or do the
latter show a malevolence and disposition to annoy, quite foreign to
their natures? Many victims of these obsessions—notably, the afflicted
persons of Salem and other historical witchcrafts—testify to having
seen dogs, cats, pigs, and other animals, entering their rooms, biting
them, trampling upon their sleeping bodies, and _talking_ to them;
_often inciting them to suicide and other crimes_. In the well-attested
case of Elizabeth Eslinger, mentioned by Dr. Kerner, the apparition of
the ancient priest of Wimmenthal[145] was accompanied by a large black
dog, which he called _his father_, and which dog in the presence of
numerous witnesses jumped on all the beds of the prisoners. At another
time the priest appeared with a lamb, and sometimes with two lambs.
Most of those accused at Salem were charged by the seeresses with
consulting and plotting mischief with yellow birds, which would sit on
their shoulder or on the beams overhead.[146] And unless we discredit
the testimony of thousands of witnesses, in all parts of the world,
and in all ages, and allow a monopoly of seership to modern mediums,
spectre-animals do appear and manifest all the worst traits of depraved
human nature, without themselves being human. What, then, can they be
but elementals?
Descartes was one of the few who believed and dared say that to occult
medicine we shall owe discoveries “destined to extend the domain of
philosophy;” and Brierre de Boismont not only shared in these hopes but
openly avowed his sympathy with “supernaturalism,” which he considered
the universal “grand creed” “ ... We think with Guizot,” he says,
“that the existence of society is bound up in it. It _is in vain_ that
modern reason, which, notwithstanding its _positivism_, cannot explain
the intimate cause of any phenomena, _rejects the supernatural_; it is
universal, and at the root of all hearts. The most elevated minds are
frequently its most ardent disciples.”[147]
Christopher Columbus discovered America, and Americus Vespucius reaped
the glory and usurped his dues. Theophrastus Paracelsus rediscovered
the occult properties of the magnet—“the bone of Horus” which, twelve
centuries before his time, had played such an important part in the
theurgic mysteries—and he very naturally became the founder of the
school of magnetism and of mediæval magico-theurgy. But Mesmer, who
lived nearly three hundred years after him, and as a disciple of his
school brought the magnetic wonders before the public, reaped the glory
that was due to the fire-philosopher, while the great master died in a
hospital!
So goes the world: new discoveries, evolving from old sciences; new
men—the same old nature!
CHAPTER III.
“The mirror of the soul cannot reflect both earth and heaven;
and the one vanishes from its surface, as the other is glassed
upon its deep.”
ZANONI.
“Qui, donc, t’a donné la mission d’annoncer au peuple que la
Divinité n’existe pas—quel avantage trouves tu à persuader à
l’homme qu’une force aveugle préside à ses destinées et frappe
au hazard le crime et la vertu?”
ROBESPIERRE (Discours), May 7, 1794.
We believe that few of those physical phenomena which are genuine
are caused by disembodied human spirits. Still, even those that
are produced by occult forces of nature, such as happen through a
few genuine mediums, and are consciously employed by the so-called
“jugglers” of India and Egypt, deserve a careful and serious
investigation by science; especially now that a number of respected
authorities have testified that in many cases the hypothesis of
fraud does not hold. No doubt, there are professed “conjurors” who
can perform cleverer tricks than all the American and English “John
Kings” together. Robert Houdin unquestionably could, but this did not
prevent his laughing outright in the face of the academicians, when
they desired him to assert in the newspapers, that he could make a
table move, or rap answers to questions, _without contact of hands_,
unless the table was a prepared one.[148] The fact alone, that a now
notorious London juggler refused to accept a challenge for £1,000
offered him by Mr. Algernon Joy,[149] to produce such manifestations
as are usually obtained through mediums, unless he was left _unbound_
and _free_ from the hands of a committee, negatives his _exposé_ of
the occult phenomena. Clever as he may be, we defy and challenge him
to reproduce, under the _same conditions_, the “tricks” exhibited
even by a common Indian _juggler_. For instance, the spot to be
chosen by the investigators at the moment of the performance, and the
juggler to know nothing of the choice; the experiment to be made in
broad daylight, without the least preparations for it; without any
confederate but a boy absolutely naked, and the juggler to be in a
condition of semi-nudity. After that, we should select out of a variety
three _tricks_, the most common among such public jugglers, and that
were recently exhibited to some gentlemen belonging to the suite of
the Prince of Wales: I. To transform a rupee—firmly clasped in the
hand of a skeptic—into a living cobra, the bite of which would prove
fatal, as an examination of its fangs would show. 2. To cause a seed
chosen at random by the spectators, and planted in the first semblance
of a flower-pot, furnished by the same skeptics, to grow, mature, and
bear fruit in less than a quarter of an hour. 3. To stretch himself
on three swords, stuck perpendicularly in the ground at their hilts,
the sharp points upward; after that, to have removed first one of the
swords, then the other, and, after an interval of a few seconds, the
last one, the juggler remaining, finally, lying on _nothing_—on the
air, miraculously suspended at about one yard from the ground. When any
prestidigitateur, to begin with Houdin and end with the last trickster
who has secured gratuitous advertisement by attacking spiritualism,
does _the same_, then—but only then—we will train ourselves to believe
that mankind has been evolved out of the hind-toe of Mr. Huxley’s
Eocene _Orohippus_.
We assert again, in full confidence, that there does not exist a
professional wizard, either of the North, South or West, who can
compete with anything approaching success, with these untutored,
naked sons of the East. These require no Egyptian Hall for their
performances, nor any preparations or rehearsals; but are ever ready,
at a moment’s notice, to evoke to their help the hidden powers
of nature, which, for European prestidigitateurs as well as for
scientists, are a closed book. Verily, as Elihu puts it, “great men
are not always wise; neither do the aged understand judgment.”[150]
To repeat the remark of the English divine, Dr. Henry More, we may
well say: “ ... indeed, if there were any modesty left in mankind, the
histories of the Bible might abundantly assure men of the existence
of angels and spirits.” The same eminent man adds, “I look upon it as
a special piece of Providence that ... fresh examples of apparitions
may awaken our benumbed and lethargic minds into an assurance that
there are other intelligent beings besides those that are clothed in
heavy earth or clay ... for this evidence, showing that there are bad
spirits, will necessarily open a door to the belief that there are
good ones, and lastly, that there is a God.” The instance above given
carries a moral with it, not only to scientists, but theologians. Men
who have made their mark in the pulpit and in professors’ chairs, are
continually showing the lay public that they really know so little of
psychology, as to take up with any plausible schemer who comes their
way, and so make themselves ridiculous in the eyes of the thoughtful
student. Public opinion upon this subject has been manufactured by
jugglers and self-styled savants, unworthy of respectful consideration.
The development of psychological science has been retarded far more
by the ridicule of this class of pretenders, than by the inherent
difficulties of its study. The empty laugh of the scientific nursling
or of the fools of fashion, has done more to keep man ignorant of his
imperial psychical powers, than the obscurities, the obstacles and the
dangers that cluster about the subject. This is especially the case
with spiritualistic phenomena. That their investigation has been so
largely confined to incapables, is due to the fact that men of science,
who might and would have studied them, have been frightened off by the
boasted exposures, the paltry jokes, and the impertinent clamor of
those who are not worthy to tie their shoes. There are moral cowards
even in university chairs. The inherent vitality of modern spiritualism
is proven in its survival of the neglect of the scientific body, and
of the obstreperous boasting of its pretended exposers. If we begin
with the contemptuous sneers of the patriarchs of science, such as
Faraday and Brewster, and end with the professional (?) _exposés_ of
the successful mimicker of the phenomena,——, of London, we will not
find them furnishing one single, well-established argument against
the occurrence of spiritual manifestations. “My theory is,” says this
individual, in his recent _soi-disant “exposé,”_ “that Mr. Williams
dressed up and personified John King and Peter. Nobody can prove that
it wasn’t so.” Thus it appears that, notwithstanding the bold tone of
assertion, it is but a theory after all, and spiritualists might well
retort upon the exposer, and demand that he should prove that it is so.
But the most inveterate, uncompromising enemies of Spiritualism are a
class very fortunately composed of but few members, who, nevertheless,
declaim the louder and assert their views with a clamorousness worthy
of a better cause. These are the _pretenders_ to science of young
America—a mongrel class of pseudo-philosophers, mentioned at the
opening of this chapter, with sometimes no better right to be regarded
as scholars than the possession of an electrical machine, or the
delivery of a puerile lecture on insanity and mediomania. Such men
are—if you believe them—profound thinkers and physiologists; there is
none of your metaphysical nonsense about them; they are Positivists—the
mental sucklings of Auguste Comte, whose bosoms swell at the thought
of plucking deluded humanity from the dark abyss of superstition, and
rebuilding the cosmos on improved principles. Irascible psychophobists,
no more cutting insult can be offered them than to suggest that they
may be endowed with immortal spirits. To hear them, one would fancy
that there can be no other souls in men and women than “scientific” or
“unscientific souls;” whatever that kind of soul may be.[151]
Some thirty or forty years ago, in France, Auguste Comte—a pupil
of the _Ecole Polytechnique_, who had remained for years at that
establishment as a _repetiteur_ of Transcendant Analysis and
Rationalistic Mechanics—awoke one fine morning with the very irrational
idea of becoming a prophet. In America, prophets can be met with at
every street-corner; in Europe, they are as rare as black swans. But
France is the land of novelties. Auguste Comte became a prophet; and
so infectious is fashion, sometimes, that even in sober England he was
considered, for a certain time, the Newton of the nineteenth century.
The epidemic extended, and for the time being, it spread like wildfire
over Germany, England, and America. It found adepts in France, but the
excitement did not last long with these. The prophet needed money: the
disciples were unwilling to furnish it. The fever of admiration for a
religion without a God cooled off as quickly as it had come on; of all
the enthusiastic apostles of the prophet, there remained but one worthy
any attention. It was the famous philologist Littré, a member of the
French Institute, and a _would-be_ member of the Imperial Academy of
Sciences, but whom the archbishop of Orleans maliciously prevented from
becoming one of the “Immortals.”[152]
The philosopher-mathematician—the high-priest of the “religion of the
future” taught his doctrine as do all his brother-prophets of our modern
days. He deified “woman,” and furnished her with an altar; but the
goddess had to pay for its use. The rationalists had laughed at the
mental aberration of Fourier; they had laughed at the St. Simonists;
and their scorn for Spiritualism knew no bounds. The same rationalists
and materialists were caught, like so many empty-headed sparrows, by
the bird-lime of the new prophet’s rhetoric. A longing for some kind of
divinity, a craving for the “unknown,” is a feeling congenital in man;
hence the worst atheists seem not to be exempt from it. Deceived by the
outward brilliancy of this _ignus fatuus_, the disciples followed it
until they found themselves floundering in a bottomless morass.
Covering themselves with the mask of a pretended erudition, the
Positivists of this country have organized themselves into clubs and
committees with the design of uprooting Spiritualism, while pretending
to impartially investigate it.
Too timid to openly challenge the churches and the Christian doctrine,
they endeavor to sap that upon which all religion is based—man’s faith
in God and his own immortality. Their policy is to ridicule that which
affords an unusual basis for such a faith—phenomenal Spiritualism.
Attacking it at its weakest side, they make the most of its lack of
an inductive method, and of the exaggerations that are to be found in
the transcendental doctrines of its propagandists. Taking advantage
of its unpopularity, and displaying a courage as furious and out of
place as that of the errant knight of La Mancha, they claim recognition
as philanthropists and benefactors who would crush out a monstrous
superstition.
Let us see in what degree Comte’s boasted religion of the future is
superior to Spiritualism, and how much less likely its advocates are
to need the refuge of those lunatic asylums which they officiously
recommend for the mediums whom they have been so solicitous
about. Before beginning, let us call attention to the fact that
three-fourths of the disgraceful features exhibited in modern
Spiritualism are directly traceable to the materialistic adventurers
pretending to be spiritualists. Comte has fulsomely depicted the
“artificially-fecundated” woman of the future. She is but elder sister
to the Cyprian ideal of the free-lovers. The immunity against the
future offered by the teachings of his moon-struck disciples, has
inoculated some pseudo-spiritualists to such an extent as to lead
them to form communistic associations. None, however, have proved
long-lived. Their leading feature being generally a materialistic
animalism, gilded over with a thin leaf of Dutch-metal philosophy and
tricked out with a combination of hard Greek names, the community could
not prove anything else than a failure.
Plato, in the fifth book of the _Republic_, suggests a method for
improving the human race by the elimination of the unhealthy or
deformed individuals, and by coupling the better specimens of both
sexes. It was not to be expected that the “genius of our century,” even
were he a prophet, would squeeze out of his brain anything entirely new.
Comte was a mathematician. Cleverly combining several old utopias, he
colored the whole, and, improving on Plato’s idea, materialized it, and
presented the world with the greatest monstrosity that ever emanated
from a human mind!
We beg the reader to keep in view, that we do not attack Comte as a
philosopher, but as a professed reformer. In the irremediable darkness
of his political, philosophical and religious views, we often meet
with isolated observations and remarks in which profound logic and
judiciousness of thought rival the brilliancy of their interpretation.
But then, these dazzle you like flashes of lightning on a gloomy
night, to leave you, the next moment, more in the dark than ever. If
condensed and repunctuated, his several works might produce, on the
whole, a volume of very original aphorisms, giving a very clear and
really clever definition of most of our social evils; but it would be
vain to seek, either through the tedious circumlocution of the six
volumes of his _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, or in that parody on
priesthood, in the form of a dialogue—_The Catechism of the Religion
of Positivism_—any idea suggestive of even provisional remedies for
such evils. His disciples suggest that the sublime doctrines of their
prophet were not intended _for the vulgar_. Comparing the dogmas
preached by Positivism with their practical exemplifications by its
apostles, we must confess the possibility of some very achromatic
doctrine being at the bottom of it. While the “high-priest” preaches
that “woman must cease to be the _female_ of the man;”[153] while
the theory of the positivist legislators on marriage and the family,
chiefly consists in making the woman the “mere companion of man by
ridding her of every maternal function;”[154] and while they are
preparing against the future a substitute for that function by applying
“to the _chaste_ woman” “a _latent force_,”[155] some of its lay
priests openly preach polygamy, and others affirm that their doctrines
are the quintessence of spiritual philosophy.
In the opinion of the Romish clergy, who labor under a chronic
nightmare of the devil, Comte offers his “woman of the future” to
the possession of the “incubi.”[156] In the opinion of more prosaic
persons, the _Divinity_ of Positivism, must henceforth be regarded as a
biped broodmare. Even Littré made prudent restrictions while accepting
the apostleship of this marvellous religion. This is what he wrote in
1859:
“M. Comte not only thought that he found the principles, traced the
outlines, and furnished the method, but that he had deduced the
consequences and constructed the social and religious edifice of the
future. It is in this _second_ division that we make our reservations,
declaring, at the same time, that we accept as an inheritance, the
whole of the first.”[157]
Further, he says: “M. Comte, in a grand work entitled the _System
of the Positive Philosophy_, established the basis of a philosophy
[?] which must finally supplant every theology and the whole of
metaphysics. Such a work necessarily contains a direct application
to the government of societies; as it _has nothing arbitrary in it_
[?] and as we find therein a _real science_ [?], my adhesion to the
principles involves my adhesion to the essential consequences.”
M. Littré has shown himself in the light of a true son of his prophet.
Indeed the whole system of Comte appears to us to have been built on
a play of words. When they say “_Positivism_” read _Nihilism_; when
you hear the word _chastity_, know that it means _impudicity_; and so
on. Being a religion based on a theory of negation, its adherents can
hardly carry it out practically without saying white when meaning black!
“Positive Philosophy,” continues Littré, “does not accept atheism, for
the atheist is not a really-emancipated mind, but is, in his own way, a
theologian still; he gives his explanation about the essence of things;
_he knows_ how they begun!... Atheism is Pantheism; this system is
quite theological yet, and thus belongs to the ancient party.”[158]
It really would be losing time to quote any more of these paradoxical
dissertations. Comte attained to the apotheosis of absurdity and
inconsistency when, after inventing his philosophy, he named it a
“Religion.” And, as is usually the case, the disciples have surpassed
the reformer—in absurdity. Supposititious philosophers, who shine in
the American academies of Comte, like a _lampyris noctiluca_ beside a
planet, leave us in no doubt as to their belief, and contrast “that
system of thought and life” elaborated by the French apostle with the
“idiocy” of Spiritualism; of course to the advantage of the former.
“To destroy, you must replace;” exclaims the author of the _Cathechism
of the Religion of Positivism_, quoting Cassaudiere, by the way,
without crediting him with the thought; and his disciples proceed to
show by what sort of a loathsome system they are anxious to replace
Christianity, Spiritualism, and even Science.
“Positivism,” perorates one of them, “is an _integral_ doctrine. It
rejects completely all forms of theological and metaphysical belief;
all forms of supernaturalism, and thus—Spiritualism. The true positive
spirit consists in substituting the study of the invariable laws of
phenomena for that of their so-called causes, whether proximate or
primary. On this ground it equally rejects atheism; _for the atheist is
at bottom a theologian_,” he adds, plagiarizing sentences from Littré’s
works: “the atheist does not reject the problems of theology, only the
solution of these, and so he is illogical. We _Positivists_ reject the
problem in our turn on the ground that it is utterly inaccessible to
the intellect, and we would only waste our strength in a vain search
for first and final causes. As you see, Positivism gives a complete
explanation [?] of the world, of man, his duty and destiny....”![159]
Very brilliant this; and now, by way of contrast, we will quote what a
really great scientist, Professor Hare, thinks of this system. “Comte’s
positive philosophy,” he says, “after all, is merely negative. It is
admitted by Comte, that he knows nothing of _the sources_ and _causes_
of nature’s laws; that their origination is so perfectly inscrutable as
to make it idle to take up time in any scrutiny for that purpose....
Of course his doctrine makes him avowedly a thorough ignoramus, as to
the causes of laws, or the means by which they are established, and can
have no basis but the _negative_ argument above stated, in objecting
to the facts ascertained in relation to the spiritual creation. Thus,
while allowing the atheist his material dominion, Spiritualism will
erect within and above the same space a dominion of an importance as
much greater as eternity is to the average duration of human life, and
as the boundless regions of the fixed stars are to the habitable area
of this globe.”[160]
In short, Positivism proposes to itself to destroy Theology,
Metaphysics, Spiritualism, Atheism, Materialism, Pantheism, and
Science, and it must finally end in destroying itself. De Mirville
thinks that according to Positivism, “order will begin to reign in
the human mind only on the day when psychology will become a sort of
_cerebral physics_, and history a kind of social physics.” The modern
Mohammed first disburdens man and woman of God and their own soul, and
then unwittingly disembowels his own doctrine with the too sharp sword
of metaphysics, which all the time he thought he was avoiding, thus
letting out every vestige of philosophy.
In 1864, M. Paul Janet, a member of the Institute, pronounced a
discourse upon Positivism, in which occur the following remarkable
words:
“There are some minds which were brought up and fed on exact and
positive sciences, but which feel nevertheless, a sort of instinctive
impulse for philosophy. They can satisfy this instinct but with
elements that they have already on hand. Ignorant in psychological
sciences, having studied only the rudiments of metaphysics, they
nevertheless are determined to fight these same metaphysics as well as
psychology, of which they know as little as of the other. After this is
done, they will imagine themselves to have founded a Positive Science,
while the truth is that they have only built up a new mutilated and
incomplete metaphysical theory. They arrogate to themselves the
authority and infallibility properly belonging alone to the true
sciences, those which are based on experience and calculations; but
they lack such an authority, for their ideas, defective as they may be,
nevertheless belong to the same class as those which they attack. Hence
the weakness of their situation, the final ruin of their ideas, which
are soon scattered to the four winds.”[161]
The Positivists of America have joined hands in their untiring efforts
to overthrow Spiritualism. To show their impartiality, though, they
propound such novel queries as follows: “ ... how much rationality
is there in the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception, the Trinity
and Transubstantiation, if submitted to the tests of physiology,
mathematics, and chemistry?” and they “undertake to say, that the
vagaries of Spiritualism do not surpass in absurdity these eminently
respectable beliefs.” Very well. But there is neither theological
absurdity nor spiritualistic delusion that can match in depravity
and imbecility that positivist notion of “artificial fecundation.”
Denying to themselves all thought on primal and final causes, they
apply their insane theories to the construction of an impossible woman
for the worship of future generations; the living, immortal companion
of man they would replace with the Indian female fetich of the Obeah,
the wooden idol that is stuffed every day with serpents’ eggs, to be
hatched by the heat of the sun!
And now, if we are permitted to ask in the name of common-sense, why
should Christian mystics be taxed with credulity or the spiritualists
be consigned to Bedlam, when a _religion_ embodying such revolting
absurdity finds disciples even among Academicians?—when such insane
rhapsodies as the following can be uttered by the mouth of Comte and
admired by his followers: “My eyes are dazzled;—they open each day more
and more to the increasing coincidence between the social advent of
the _feminine mystery_, and the mental decadence of the eucharistical
sacrament. Already the Virgin has dethroned God in the minds of
Southern Catholics! Positivism realizes the Utopia of the mediæval
ages, by representing all the members of the great family as the issue
of a _virgin mother without a husband_....” And again, after giving
the _modus operandi_: “The development of the _new process_ would soon
cause to spring up a caste without heredity, better adapted than vulgar
procreation to the recruitment of spiritual chiefs, or even temporal
ones, whose authority would then rest upon an origin truly superior,
which would not _shrink from an investigation_.”[162]
To this we might inquire with propriety, whether there has ever
been found in the “vagaries of Spiritualism,” or the mysteries of
Christianity, anything more preposterous than this ideal “coming race.”
If the tendency of materialism is not grossly belied by the behavior
of some of its advocates, those who publicly preach polygamy, we fancy
that whether or not there will ever be a sacerdotal stirp so begotten,
we shall see no end of progeny,—the offspring of “mothers without
husbands.”
How natural that a philosophy which could engender such a caste of
didactic incubi, should express through the pen of one of its most
garrulous essayists, the following sentiments: “This is a sad, a very
sad age,[163] full of dead and dying faiths; full of idle prayers sent
out in vain search for the departing gods. But oh! it is a glorious
age, full of the golden light which streams from the ascending sun
of science! What shall we do for those who are shipwrecked in faith,
_bankrupt in intellect_, but ... who seek comfort in the _mirage of
spiritualism_, the delusions of transcendentalism, or the _will o’ the
wisp_ of mesmerism?...”
The _ignis fatuus_, now so favorite an image with many dwarf
philosophers, had itself to struggle for recognition. It is not so long
since the now familiar phenomenon was stoutly denied by a correspondent
of the London _Times_, whose assertions carried weight, till the work
of Dr. Phipson, supported by the testimony of Beccaria, Humboldt, and
other naturalists, set the question at rest.[164] The Positivists
should choose some happier expression, and follow the discoveries of
science at the same time. As to mesmerism, it has been adopted in many
parts of Germany, and is publicly used with undeniable success in more
than one hospital; its occult properties have been proved and are
believed in by physicians, whose eminence, learning, and merited fame,
the self-complacent lecturer on mediums and insanity cannot well hope
to equal.
We have to add but a few more words before we drop this unpleasant
subject. We have found Positivists particularly happy in the delusion
that the _greatest scientists_ of Europe were Comtists. How far their
claims may be just, as regards other _savants_, we do not know, but
Huxley, whom all Europe considers one of her greatest scientists,
most decidedly declines that honor, and Dr. Maudsley, of London,
follows suit. In a lecture delivered by the former gentleman in 1868,
in Edinburg, on _The Physical Basis of Life_, he even appears to be
very much shocked at the liberty taken by the Archbishop of York, in
identifying him with Comte’s philosophy. “So far as I am concerned,”
says Mr. Huxley, “the most reverend prelate might dialectically hew
Mr. Comte in pieces, as a modern Agag, and I would not attempt to stay
his hand. In so far as my study of what specially characterizes the
positive philosophy has led me, I find, therein, little or nothing
of any scientific value, and a great deal which is _as thoroughly
antagonistic to the very essence of science as anything in ultramontane
Catholicism_. In fact, Comte’s philosophy in practice might be
compendiously described as _Catholicism minus Christianity_.” Further,
Huxley even becomes wrathful, and falls to accusing Scotchmen of
ingratitude for having allowed the Bishop to mistake Comte for the
founder of a philosophy which belonged by right to Hume. “It was
enough,” exclaims the professor, “to make David Hume turn in his
grave, that here, almost within earshot of his house, an interested
audience should have listened, without a murmur, whilst his most
characteristic doctrines were attributed to a French writer of fifty
years later date, in whose _dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the
vigor of thought and the clearness of style_....”[165]
Poor Comte! It appears that the highest representatives of his
philosophy are now reduced, at least in this country, to “one
physicist, one physician who has made a specialty of nervous diseases,
and one lawyer.” A very witty critic nicknamed this desperate trio,
“_an anomalistic triad_, which, amid its arduous labors, finds no time
to acquaint itself with the principles and laws of their language.”[166]
To close the question, the Positivists neglect no means to overthrow
Spiritualism in favor of their _religion_. Their high priests are
made to blow their trumpets untiringly; and though the walls of no
modern Jericho are ever likely to tumble down in dust before their
blast, still they neglect no means to attain the desired object. Their
paradoxes are unique, and their accusations against spiritualists
irresistible in logic. In a recent lecture, for instance, it was
remarked that: “The exclusive exercise of _religious_ instinct is
productive of sexual immorality. Priests, monks, nuns, saints, _media_,
ecstatics, and devotees are famous for their impurities.”[167]
We are happy to remark that, while Positivism loudly proclaims itself
a religion, Spiritualism has never pretended to be anything more than
a science, a growing philosophy, or rather a research in hidden and
as yet unexplained forces in nature. The objectiveness of its various
phenomena has been demonstrated by more than one genuine representative
of science, and as ineffectually denied by her “monkeys.”
Finally, it may be remarked of our Positivists who deal so
unceremoniously with every psychological phenomenon, that they are like
Samuel Butler’s rhetorician, who
“ ... could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew a _trope_.”
We would there were no occasion to extend the critic’s glance beyond
the circle of triflers and pedants who improperly wear the title of
men of science. But it is also undeniable that the treatment of new
subjects by those whose rank is high in the scientific world but
too often passes unchallenged, when it is amenable to censure. The
cautiousness bred of a fixed habit of experimental research, the
tentative advance from opinion to opinion, the weight accorded to
recognized authorities—all foster a conservatism of thought which
naturally runs into dogmatism. The price of scientific progress is too
commonly the martyrdom or ostracism of the innovator. The reformer
of the laboratory must, so to speak, carry the citadel of custom
and prejudice at the point of the bayonet. It is rare that even a
postern-door is left ajar by a friendly hand. The noisy protests and
impertinent criticisms of the little people of the antechamber of
science, he can afford to let pass unnoticed; the hostility of the
other class is a real peril that the innovator must face and overcome.
Knowledge does increase apace, but the great body of scientists are not
entitled to the credit. In every instance they have done their best to
shipwreck the new discovery, together with the discoverer. The palm
is to him who has won it by individual courage, intuitiveness, and
persistency. Few are the forces in nature which, when first announced,
were not laughed at, and then set aside as absurd and unscientific.
Humbling the pride of those who had not discovered anything, the just
claims of those who have been denied a hearing until negation was no
longer prudent, and then—alas for poor, selfish humanity! these very
discoverers too often became the opponents and oppressors, in their
turn, of still more recent explorers in the domain of natural law!
So, step by step, mankind move around their circumscribed circle of
knowledge, science constantly correcting its mistakes, and readjusting
on the following day the erroneous theories of the preceding one. This
has been the case, not merely with questions pertaining to psychology,
such as mesmerism, in its dual sense of a physical and spiritual
phenomenon, but even with such discoveries as directly related to exact
sciences, and have been easy to demonstrate.
What can we do? Shall we recall the disagreeable past? Shall we point
to mediæval scholars conniving with the clergy to deny the Heliocentric
theory, for fear of hurting an ecclesiastical dogma? Must we recall
how learned conchologists once denied that the fossil shells, found
scattered over the face of the earth, were ever inhabited by living
animals at all? How the naturalists of the eighteenth century declared
these but mere _fac-similes_ of animals? And how these naturalists
fought and quarrelled and battled and called each other names, over
these venerable mummies of the ancient ages for nearly a century,
until Buffon settled the question by proving to the negators that they
were mistaken? Surely an oyster-shell is anything but transcendental,
and ought to be quite a palpable subject for any exact study; and if
the scientists could not agree on that, we can hardly expect them to
believe at all that evanescent forms,—of hands, faces, and whole bodies
sometimes—appear at the seances of spiritual mediums, when the latter
are honest.
There exists a certain work which might afford very profitable reading
for the leisure hours of skeptical men of science. It is a book
published by Flourens, the Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy,
called _Histoire des Recherches de Buffon_. The author shows in it how
the great naturalist combated and finally conquered the advocates of
the _fac-simile_ theory; and how they still went on denying everything
under the sun, until at times the learned body fell into a fury, an
epidemic of negation. It denied Franklin and his refined electricity;
laughed at Fulton and his concentrated steam; voted the engineer
Perdonnet a strait-jacket for his offer to build railroads; stared
Harvey out of countenance; and proclaimed Bernard de Palissy “as stupid
as one of his own pots!”
In his oft-quoted work, _Conflict between Religion and Science_,
Professor Draper shows a decided propensity to kick the beam of the
scales of justice, and lay all such impediments to the progress
of science at the door of the clergy alone. With all respect and
admiration due to this eloquent writer and scientist, we must protest
and give every one his just due. Many of the above-enumerated
discoveries are mentioned by the author of the _Conflict_. In every
case he denounces the bitter resistance on the part of the clergy, and
keeps silent on the like opposition invariably experienced by every new
discoverer at the hands of science. His claim on behalf of science that
“knowledge is power” is undoubtedly just. But abuse of power, whether
it proceeds from excess of wisdom or ignorance is alike obnoxious in
its effects. Besides, the clergy are silenced now. Their protests
would at this day be scarcely noticed in the world of science. But
while theology is kept in the background, the scientists have seized
the sceptre of despotism with both hands, and they use it, like the
cherubim and flaming sword of Eden, to keep the people away from the
tree of immortal life and within this world of perishable matter.
The editor of the London _Spiritualist_, in answer to Dr. Gully’s
criticism of Mr. Tyndall’s fire-mist theory, remarks that if the entire
body of spiritualists are not roasting alive at Smithfield in the
present century, it is to science alone that we are indebted for this
crowning mercy. Well, let us admit that the scientists are indirectly
public benefactors in this case, to the extent that the burning of
erudite scholars is no longer fashionable. But is it unfair to ask
whether the disposition manifested toward the spiritualistic doctrine
by Faraday, Tyndall, Huxley, Agassiz, and others, does not warrant the
suspicion that if these learned gentlemen and their following had the
unlimited power once held by the Inquisition, spiritualists would not
have reason to feel as easy as they do now? Even supposing that they
should not roast believers in the existence of a spirit-world—it being
unlawful to cremate people alive—would they not send every spiritualist
they could to Bedlam? Do they not call us “incurable monomaniacs,”
“hallucinated fools,” “fetich-worshippers,” and like characteristic
names? Really, we cannot see what should have stimulated to such extent
the gratitude of the editor of the London _Spiritualist_, for the
benevolent tutelage of the men of science. We believe that the recent
Lankester-Donkin-Slade prosecution in London ought at last to open the
eyes of hopeful spiritualists, and show them that stubborn materialism
is often more stupidly bigoted than religious fanaticism itself.
One of the cleverest productions of Professor Tyndall’s pen is his
caustic essay upon _Martineau and Materialism_. At the same time it
is one which in future years the author will doubtless be only too
ready to trim of certain unpardonable grossnesses of expression. For
the moment, however, we will not deal with these, but consider what he
has to say of the phenomenon of consciousness. He quotes this question
from Mr. Martineau: “A man can say ‘I feel, I think, I love;’ but how
does consciousness infuse itself into the problem?” And thus answers:
“The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts
of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a
molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess
the intellectual organ nor apparently any rudiments of the organ, which
would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from one to the
other. They appear together, but _we do not know why_. Were our minds
and senses so expanded, strengthened and illuminated, as to enable us
to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of
following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric
discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with
the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far
as ever from the solution of the problem, ‘How are these physical
processes connected with the facts of consciousness?’ The chasm
between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually
impassable.”[168]
This chasm, as impassable to Professor Tyndall as the fire-mist where
the scientist is confronted with his unknowable cause, is a barrier
only to men without spiritual intuitions. Professor Buchanan’s
_Outlines of Lectures on the Neurological System of Anthropology_,
a work written so far back as 1854, contains suggestions that, if
the sciolists would only heed them, would show how a bridge can be
thrown across this dreadful abyss. It is one of the bins in which the
thought-seed of future harvests is stored up by a frugal present.
But the edifice of materialism is based entirely upon that gross
sub-structure—the reason. _When they have stretched its capabilities
to their utmost limits, its teachers can at best only disclose to
us an universe of molecules animated by an occult impulse._ What
better diagnosis of the ailment of our scientists could be asked
than can be derived from Professor Tyndall’s analysis of the mental
state of the Ultramontane clergy by a very slight change of names.
For “spiritual guides” read “scientists,” for “prescientific past”
substitute “materialistic present,” say “spirit” for “science,” and in
the following paragraph we have a life portrait of the modern man of
science drawn by the hand of a master:
“ ... Their spiritual guides live so exclusively in the prescientific
past, that even the really strong intellects among them are reduced to
atrophy as regards scientific truth. Eyes they have and see not; ears
they have and hear not; for both eyes and ears are taken possession
of by the sights and sounds of another age. In relation to science,
the Ultramontane brain, through lack of exercise, is virtually the
undeveloped brain of the child. And thus it is that as children in
scientific knowledge, but as potent wielders of spiritual power among
the ignorant, they countenance and enforce practices sufficient to
bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of the more intelligent among
themselves.”[169] The Occultist holds this mirror up to science that it
may see how it looks itself.
Since history recorded the first laws established by man, there never
was yet a people, whose code did not hang the issues of the life and
death of its citizens upon the testimony of two or three credible
witnesses. “At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall
he that is worthy of death be put to death,”[170] says Moses, the
first legislator we meet in ancient history. “The laws which put to
death a man on the deposition of one witness are fatal to freedom” says
Montesquieu. “Reason claims there should be two witnesses.”[171]
Thus the value of evidence has been tacitly agreed upon and accepted
in every country. But the scientists will not accept the evidence
of the million against one. In vain do hundreds of thousands of men
testify to facts. _Oculos habent et non vident!_ They are determined
to remain blind and deaf. Thirty years of practical demonstrations and
the testimony of some millions of believers in America and Europe are
certainly entitled to some degree of respect and attention. Especially
so, when the verdict of twelve spiritualists, influenced by the
evidence testified to by any two others, is competent to send even
a scientist to swing on the gallows for a crime, perhaps committed
under the impulse supplied by a commotion among the cerebral molecules
unrestrained by a consciousness of future moral RETRIBUTION.
Toward science as a whole, as a divine goal, the whole civilized world
ought to look with respect and veneration; for science alone can enable
man to understand the Deity by the true appreciation of his works.
“Science _is the understanding of truth or facts_,” says Webster; “it
is an investigation of truth _for its own sake_ and a pursuit of pure
knowledge.” If the definition be correct, then the majority of our
modern scholars have proved false to their goddess. “Truth for its own
sake!” And where should the keys to every truth in nature be searched
for, unless in the hitherto unexplored mystery of psychology? Alas!
that in questioning nature so many men of science should daintily sort
over her facts and choose only such for study as best bolster their
prejudices.
Psychology has no worse enemies than the medical school denominated
_allopathists_. It is in vain to remind them that of the so-called
exact sciences, medicine, confessedly, least deserves the name.
Although of all branches of medical knowledge, psychology ought more
than any other to be studied by physicians, since without its help
their practice degenerates into mere guess-work and chance-intuitions,
they almost wholly neglect it. The least dissent from their promulgated
doctrines is resented as a heresy, and though an unpopular and
unrecognized curative method should be shown to save thousands,
they seem, as a body, disposed to cling to accepted hypotheses and
prescriptions, and decry both innovator and innovation until they get
the mint-stamp of _regularity_. Thousands of unlucky patients may die
meanwhile, but so long as professional honor is vindicated, this is a
matter of secondary importance.
Theoretically the most benignant, at the same time no other school of
science exhibits so many instances of petty prejudice, materialism,
atheism, and malicious stubbornness as medicine. The predilections
and patronage of the leading physicians are scarcely ever measured
by the usefulness of a discovery. Bleeding, by leeching, cupping,
and the lancet, had its epidemic of popularity, but at last fell
into merited disgrace; water, now freely given to fevered patients,
was once denied them, warm baths were superseded by cold water, and
for a while hydropathy was a mania. Peruvian bark—which a modern
defender of biblical authority seriously endeavors to identify with
the paradisiacal “Tree of Life,”[172] and which was brought to Spain
in 1632—was neglected for years. The Church, for once, showed more
discrimination than science. At the request of Cardinal de Lugo,
Innocent X. gave it the prestige of his powerful name.
In an old book entitled _Demonologia_, the author cites many instances
of important remedies which being neglected at first afterward rose
into notice through mere accident. He also shows that most of the new
discoveries in medicine have turned out to be no more than “the revival
and reädoption of very ancient practices.” During the last century,
the root of the male fern was sold and widely advertised as a secret
nostrum by a Madame Nouffleur, a female quack, for the effective cure
of the tapeworm. The secret was bought by Louis XV. for a large sum of
money; after which the physicians discovered that it was recommended
and administered in that disease by Galen. The famous powder of the
Duke of Portland for the gout, was the _diacentaureon_ of Cælius
Aurelianus. Later it was ascertained that it had been used by the
earliest medical writers, who had found it in the writings of the old
Greek philosophers. So with the _eau medicinale_ of Dr. Husson, whose
name it bears. This famous remedy for the gout was recognized under
its new mask to be the _Colchicum autumnale_, or meadow saffron, which
is identical with a plant called _Hermodactylus_, whose merits as a
certain antidote to gout were recognized and defended by Oribasius,
a great physician of the fourth century, and Ætius Amidenus, another
eminent physician of Alexandria (fifth century). Subsequently it was
abandoned and fell into disfavor only because it was _too old_ to be
considered good by the members of the medical faculties that flourished
toward the end of the last century!
Even the great Magendie, the wise physiologist, was not above
discovering that which had already been discovered and found good
by the oldest physicians. His proposed remedy against consumption,
namely, the use of prussic acid, may be found in the works of Lumæus,
_Amenitates Academicæ_, vol. iv., in which he shows distilled laurel
water to have been used with great profit in pulmonary consumption.
Pliny also assures us that the extract of almonds and cherry-pits had
cured the most obstinate coughs. As the author of _Demonologia_ well
remarks, it may be asserted with perfect safety that “all the various
secret preparations of opium which have been lauded as the discovery of
modern times, may be recognized in the works of ancient authors,” who
see themselves so discredited in our days.
It is admitted on all hands that from time immemorial the distant
East was the land of knowledge. Not even in Egypt were botany and
mineralogy so extensively studied as by the savants of archaic Middle
Asia. Sprengel, unjust and prejudiced as he shows himself in everything
else, confesses this much in his _Histoire de la Médecine_. And yet,
notwithstanding this, whenever the subject of magic is discussed, that
of India has rarely suggested itself to any one, for of its general
practice in that country less is known than among any other ancient
people. With the Hindus it was and is more esoteric, if possible,
than it was even among the Egyptian priests. So sacred was it deemed
that its existence was only half admitted, and it was only practiced
in public emergencies. _It was more than a religious matter, for it
was considered divine._ The Egyptian hierophants, notwithstanding the
practice of a stern and pure morality, could not be compared for one
moment with the ascetical Gymnosophists, either in holiness of life
or miraculous powers developed in them by the supernatural adjuration
of everything earthly. By those who knew them well they were held in
still greater reverence than the magians of Chaldea. Denying themselves
the simplest comforts of life, they dwelt in woods, and led the life
of the most secluded hermits,[173] while their Egyptian brothers at
least congregated together. Notwithstanding the slur thrown by history
on all who practiced magic and divination, it has proclaimed them as
possessing the greatest secrets in medical knowledge and unsurpassed
skill in its practice. Numerous are the volumes preserved in Hindu
convents, in which are recorded the proofs of their learning. To
attempt to say whether these Gymnosophists were the real founders of
magic in India, or whether they only practiced what had passed to them
as an inheritance from the earliest Rishis[174]—the seven primeval
sages—would be regarded as a mere speculation by exact scholars. “The
care which they took in educating youth, in familiarizing it with
generous and virtuous sentiments, did them peculiar honor, and their
maxims and discourses, as recorded by historians, prove that they were
expert in matters of philosophy, metaphysics, astronomy, morality, and
religion,” says a modern writer. They preserved their dignity under the
sway of the most powerful princes, whom they would _not_ condescend to
visit, or to trouble for the slightest favor. If the latter desired
the advice or the prayers of the holy men, they were either obliged
to go themselves, or to send messengers. To these men no secret power
of either plant or mineral was unknown. They had fathomed nature to
its depths, while psychology and physiology were to them open books,
and the result was that science or machagiotia that is now termed, so
superciliously, _magic_.
While the miracles recorded in the Bible have become accepted facts
with the Christians, to disbelieve which is regarded as infidelity, the
narratives of wonders and prodigies found in the _Atharva-Veda_,[175]
either provoke their contempt or are viewed as evidences of
diabolism. And yet, in more than one respect, and notwithstanding the
unwillingness of certain Sanscrit scholars, we can show the identity
between the two. Moreover, as the Vedas have now been proved by
scholars to antedate the Jewish _Bible_ by many ages, the inference is
an easy one that if one of them has borrowed from the other, the Hindu
sacred books are not to be charged with plagiarism.
First of all, their cosmogony shows how erroneous has been the opinion
prevalent among the civilized nations that Brahma was ever considered
by the Hindus their chief or Supreme God. Brahma is a secondary deity,
and like Jehovah is “a _mover of the waters_.” He is the _creating_
god, and has in his allegorical representations four heads, answering
to the four cardinal points. He is the demiurgos, the _architect_ of
the world. “In the primordiate state of the creation,” says Polier’s
_Mythologie des Indous_, “the rudimental universe, submerged in water,
reposed in the bosom of the Eternal. Sprang from this chaos and
darkness, Brahma, the architect of the world, poised on a lotus-leaf
floated (moved?) upon the waters, unable to discern anything but water
and darkness.” This is as identical as possible with the Egyptian
cosmogony, which shows in its opening sentences Athtor[176] or Mother
Night (which represents illimitable darkness) as the primeval element
which covered the infinite abyss, animated by water and the universal
spirit of the Eternal, dwelling alone in Chaos. As in the Jewish
Scriptures, the history of the creation opens with the spirit of God
and his creative emanation—another Deity.[177] Perceiving such a
dismal state of things, Brahma soliloquizes in consternation: “Who
am I? Whence came I?” Then he hears a voice: “Direct your prayer to
Bhagavant—the Eternal, known, also, as Parabrahma.” Brahma, rising from
his natatory position, seats himself upon the lotus in an attitude
of contemplation, and reflects upon the Eternal, who, pleased with
this evidence of piety, disperses the primeval darkness and opens
his understanding. “After this Brahma issues from the universal
egg—(infinite chaos) as _light_, for his understanding is now opened,
and he sets himself to work; he _moves_ on the eternal waters, with the
spirit of God within himself; in his capacity of _mover_ of the waters
he is _Narayana_.”
The lotus, the sacred flower of the Egyptians, as well as the Hindus,
is the symbol of Horus as it is that of Brahma. No temples in Thibet
or Nepaul are found without it; and the meaning of this symbol is
extremely suggestive. The sprig of _lilies_ placed in the hand of the
archangel, who offers them to the Virgin Mary, in the pictures of
the “Annunciation,” have in their esoteric symbolism precisely the
same meaning. We refer the reader to Sir William Jones.[178] With the
Hindus, the lotus is the emblem of the productive power of nature,
through the agency of fire and water (spirit and matter). “Eternal!”
says a verse in the _Bhagaveda Gita_, “I see Brahma the creator
enthroned in _thee_ above the lotus!” and Sir W. Jones shows that the
seeds of the lotus contain—even before they germinate—perfectly-formed
leaves, the miniature shapes of what one day, as perfected plants,
they will become; or, as the author of _The Heathen Religion_,
has it—“nature thus giving us a specimen of _preformation_ of its
productions;” adding further that “the seed of all _phœnogamous_
plants bearing _proper_ flowers, contain _an embryo plantlet ready
formed_.”[179]
With the Buddhists, it has the same signification. Maha-Maya, or
Maha-Deva, the mother of Gautama Bhudda, had the birth of her son
announced to her by Bhôdisât (the spirit of Buddha), who appeared
beside her couch with a _lotus_ in his hand. Thus, also, Osiris and
Horus are represented by the Egyptians constantly in association with
the lotus-flower.
These facts all go to show the identical parentage of this idea in
the three religious systems, Hindu, Egyptian and Judaico-Christian.
Wherever the mystic water-lily (lotus) is employed, it signifies the
emanation of the objective from the concealed, or subjective—the
eternal thought of the ever-invisible Deity passing from the abstract
into the concrete or visible form. For as soon as darkness was
dispersed and “there was light,” Brahma’s understanding was opened, and
he saw in the ideal world (which had hitherto lain eternally concealed
in the Divine thought) the archetypal forms of all the infinite future
things that would be called into existence, and hence become visible.
At this first stage of action, Brahma had not yet become the architect,
the builder of the universe, for he had, like the architect, to first
acquaint himself with the plan, and realize the ideal forms which were
buried in the bosom of the Eternal One, as the future lotus-leaves
are concealed within the seed of that plant. And it is in this idea
that we must look for the origin and explanation of the verse in the
Jewish cosmogony, which reads: “And God said, Let the earth bring
forth ... the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, _whose seed is
in itself_.” In all the primitive religions, the “Son of the Father”
is the creative God—_i.e._, His thought made visible; and before the
Christian era, from the Trimurti of the Hindus down to the three
kabalistic heads of the Jewish-explained scriptures, the triune godhead
of each nation was fully defined and substantiated in its allegories.
In the Christian creed we see but the artificial engrafting of a new
branch upon the old trunk; and the adoption by the Greek and Roman
churches of the lily-symbol held by the archangel at the moment of
the Annunciation, shows a thought of precisely the same metaphysical
significance.
The lotus is the product of fire (heat) and water, hence the dual
symbol of spirit and matter. The God Brahma is the second person of the
Trinity, as are Jehovah (Adam-Kadmon) and Osiris, or rather Pimander,
or the Power of the Thought Divine, of Hermes; for it is Pimander who
represents the root of all the Egyptian Sun-gods. The Eternal is the
Spirit of Fire, which stirs up and fructifies and develops into a
concrete form everything that is born of water or the primordial earth,
evolved out of Brahma; but the universe is itself Brahma, and he is the
universe. This is the philosophy of Spinoza, which he derived from that
of Pythagoras; and it is the same for which Bruno died a martyr. How
much Christian theology has gone astray from its point of departure,
is demonstrated in this historical fact. Bruno was slaughtered for the
exegesis of a symbol that was adopted by the earliest Christians, and
expounded by the apostles! The sprig of water-lilies of Bhôdisât, and
later of Gabriel, typifying fire and water, or the idea of creation
and generation, is worked into the earliest dogma of the baptismal
sacrament.
Bruno’s and Spinoza’s doctrines are nearly identical, though the words
of the latter are more veiled, and far more cautiously chosen than
those to be found in the theories of the author of the _Causa Principio
et Uno_, or the _Infinito Universo e Mondi_. Both Bruno, who confesses
that the source of his information was Pythagoras, and Spinoza, who,
without acknowledging it as frankly, allows his philosophy to betray
the secret, view the First Cause from the same standpoint. With them,
God is an Entity totally _per se_, an Infinite Spirit, and the only
Being utterly free and independent of either effects or other causes;
who, through that same Will which produced all things and gave the
first impulse to every cosmic law, perpetually keeps in existence and
order everything in the universe. As well as the Hindu Swâbhávikas,
erroneously called Atheists, who assume that all things, men as well as
gods and spirits, were born from Swabhâva, or their own nature,[180]
both Spinoza and Bruno were led to the conclusion that _God is to
be sought for within nature and not without_. For, creation being
proportional to the power of the Creator, the universe as well as its
Creator must be infinite and eternal, one form emanating from its own
essence, and creating in its turn another. The modern commentators
affirm that Bruno, “_unsustained by the hope of another and better
world_, still surrendered his life rather than his convictions;”
thereby allowing it to be inferred that Giordano Bruno had no belief in
the continued existence of man after death. Professor Draper asserts
most positively that Bruno did not believe in the immortality of the
soul. Speaking of the countless victims of the religious intolerance
of the Popish Church, he remarks: “The passage from this life to the
next, though through a hard trial, was the passage from a transient
trouble to eternal happiness.... On his way through the dark valley,
the martyr believed that there was an invisible hand that would
lead him.... For Bruno there was no such support. The philosophical
opinions, for the sake of which he surrendered his life, could give him
no consolation.”[181]
But Professor Draper seems to have a very superficial knowledge of
the true belief of the philosophers. We can leave Spinoza out of the
question, and even allow him to remain in the eyes of his critics an
utter atheist and materialist; for the cautious reserve which he placed
upon himself in his writings makes it extremely difficult for one who
does not read him between the lines, and is not thoroughly acquainted
with the hidden meaning of the Pythagorean metaphysics, to ascertain
what his real sentiments were. But as for Giordano Bruno, if he adhered
to the doctrines of Pythagoras he must have believed in another life,
hence, he could not have been an atheist whose philosophy offered him
no such “consolation.” His accusation and subsequent confession, as
given by Professor Domenico Berti, in his _Life of Bruno_, and compiled
from original documents recently published, prove beyond doubt what
were his _real_ philosophy, creed and doctrines. In common with the
Alexandrian Platonists, and the later Kabalists, he held that Jesus
was a magician in the sense given to this appellation by Porphyry and
Cicero, who call it the _divina sapientia_ (divine knowledge), and by
Philo Judæus, who described the Magi as the most wonderful inquirers
into the hidden mysteries of nature, not in the degrading sense given
to the word magic in our century. In his noble conception, _the Magi
were holy men, who, setting themselves apart from everything else on
this earth, contemplated the divine virtues and understood the divine
nature of the gods and spirits, the more clearly; and so, initiated
others into the same mysteries, which consist in one holding an
uninterrupted intercourse with these invisible beings during life_. But
we will show Bruno’s inmost philosophical convictions better by quoting
fragments from the _accusation_ and his _own confession_.
The charges in the denunciation of Mocenigo, his accuser, are expressed
in the following terms:
“I, Zuane Mocenigo, son of the most illustrious Ser Marcantonio,
denounce to your very reverend fathership, by constraint of my
conscience and by order of my confessor, that I have heard say by
Giordano Bruno, several times when he discoursed with me in my
house, that it is great blasphemy in Catholics to say that the bread
transubstantiates itself into flesh; that he is opposed to the Mass;
that no religion pleases him; that Christ was a wretch (_un tristo_),
and that if he did wicked works to seduce the people he might well
predict that He ought to be impaled; that there is no distinction of
persons in God, and that it would be imperfection in God; that the
world is eternal, and that there are infinite worlds, and that God
makes them continually, because, he says, He desires all He can; that
Christ did apparent miracles and was _a magician_, and so were the
apostles, and that he had a mind to do as much and more than they did;
that Christ showed an unwillingness to die, and shunned death all He
could; that there is no punishment of sin, and that souls created by
the operation of nature pass from one animal to another, and that as
the brute animals are born of corruption, so also are men when after
dissolution they come to be born again.”
Perfidious as they are, the above words plainly indicate the belief of
Bruno in the Pythagorean metempsychosis, which, misunderstood as it is,
still shows a belief in the _survival_ of man in one shape or another.
Further, the accuser says:
“He has shown indications of wishing to make himself the author of a
new sect, under the name of ‘_New Philosophy_.’ He has said that the
Virgin could not have brought forth, and that our Catholic faith is all
full of blasphemies against the majesty of God; that the monks ought
to be deprived of the right of disputation and their revenues, because
they pollute the world; that they are all asses, and that our opinions
are doctrines of asses; that we have no proof that our faith has merit
with God, and that not to do to others what we would not have done to
ourselves suffices for a good life, and that he laughs at all other
sins, and wonders how God can endure so many heresies in Catholics. He
says that he means to apply himself to the art of divination, and make
all the world run after him; that St. Thomas and all the Doctors knew
nothing to compare with him, and that he could ask questions of all the
first theologians of the world that they could not answer.”
To this, the accused philosopher answered by the following profession
of faith, which is that of every disciple of the ancient masters:
“I hold, in brief, to an infinite universe, that is, an effect of
infinite divine power, because I esteemed it a thing unworthy of divine
goodness and power, that, being able to produce besides this world
another and infinite others, it should produce a finite world. Thus I
have declared that there are infinite particular worlds similar to this
of the earth, which, with Pythagoras, I understand to be a star similar
in nature with the moon, the other planets, and the other stars, which
are infinite; and that all those bodies are worlds, and without number,
which thus constitute the infinite universality in an infinite space,
and this is called the infinite universe, in which are innumerable
worlds, so that there is a double kind of infinite greatness in the
universe, and of a multitude of worlds. Indirectly, this may be
understood to be repugnant to the truth according to the true faith.
“Moreover, I place in this universe a universal Providence, by virtue
of which everything lives, vegetates and moves, and stands in its
perfection, and I understand it in two ways; one, in the mode in which
the whole soul is present in the whole and every part of the body, and
this I call nature, the shadow and footprint of divinity; the other,
the ineffable mode in which God, by essence, presence, and power, is in
all and above all, not as part, not as soul, but in mode inexplicable.
“Moreover, I understand all the attributes in divinity to be one and
the same thing. Together with the theologians and great philosophers,
I apprehend three attributes, power, wisdom, and goodness, or, rather,
mind, intellect, love, with which things have first, being, through
the mind; next, ordered and distinct being, through the intellect; and
third, concord and symmetry, through love. Thus I understand being in
all and over all, as there is nothing without participation in being,
and there is no being without essence, just as nothing is beautiful
without beauty being present; thus nothing can be free from the divine
presence, and thus by way of reason, and not by way of substantial
truth, do I understand distinction in divinity.
“Assuming then the world caused and produced, I understand that,
according to all its being, it is dependent upon the first cause, so
that it did not reject the name of creation, which I understand that
Aristotle also has expressed, saying, ‘God is that upon whom the world
and all nature depends,’ so that according to the explanation of St.
Thomas, whether it be eternal or in time, it is, according to all its
being, dependent on the first cause, and nothing in it is independent.
“Next, in regard to what belongs to the true faith, not speaking
philosophically, to come to individuality about the divine persons,
the wisdom and the son of the mind, called by philosophers intellect,
and by theologians the word, which ought to be believed to have taken
on human flesh. But I, abiding in the phrases of philosophy, have not
understood it, but have doubted and held it with inconstant faith, not
that I remember to have shown marks of it in writing nor in speech,
except indirectly from other things, something of it may be gathered as
by way of ingenuity and profession in regard to what may be proved by
reason and concluded from natural light. Thus, in regard to the Holy
Spirit in a third person, I have not been able to comprehend, as ought
to be believed, but, according to the Pythagoric manner, in conformity
to the manner shown by Solomon, I have understood it as the soul of
the universe, or adjoined to the universe according to the saying of
the wisdom of Solomon: ‘The spirit of God filled all the earth, and
that which contains all things,’ all which conforms equally to the
Pythagoric doctrine explained by Virgil in the text of the _Æneid_”:
Principio cœlum ac terras camposque liquentes,
Lucentemque globum Lunæ, Titaniaque astra
Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem;
and the lines following.
“From this spirit, then, which is called the life of the universe, I
understand, in my philosophy, proceeds life and soul to everything
which has life and soul, which, moreover, I understand to be immortal,
as also to bodies, which, as to their substance, are all immortal,
there being no other death than division and congregation, which
doctrine seems expressed in _Ecclesiastes_, where it is said that
‘there is nothing new under the sun; that which is is that which was.’”
Furthermore, Bruno confesses his inability to comprehend the doctrine
of three persons in the godhead, and his doubts of the incarnation
of God in Jesus, but firmly pronounces his belief in the _miracles_
of Christ. How could he, being a Pythagorean philosopher, discredit
them? If, under the merciless constraint of the Inquisition, he, like
Galileo, subsequently recanted, and threw himself upon the clemency of
his ecclesiastical persecutors, we must remember that he spoke like a
man standing between the rack and the fagot, and human nature cannot
always be heroic when the corporeal frame is debilitated by torture and
imprisonment.
But for the opportune appearance of Berti’s authoritative work, we
would have continued to revere Bruno as a martyr, whose bust was
deservedly set high in the Pantheon of Exact Science, crowned with
laurel by the hand of Draper. But now we see that their hero of an
hour is neither atheist, materialist, nor positivist, but simply
a Pythagorean who taught the philosophy of Upper Asia, and claimed
to possess the powers of the magicians, so despised by Draper’s own
school! Nothing more amusing than this _contretemps_ has happened
since the supposed statue of St. Peter was discovered by irreverent
archæologists to be nothing else than the Jupiter of the Capitol, and
Buddha’s identity with the Catholic St. Josaphat was satisfactorily
proven.
Thus, search where we may through the archives of history, we find that
there is no fragment of modern philosophy—whether Newtonian, Cartesian,
Huxleyian or any other—but has been dug from the Oriental mines. Even
Positivism and Nihilism find their prototype in the exoteric portion
of Kapila’s philosophy, as is well remarked by Max Müller. It was the
inspiration of the Hindu sages that penetrated the mysteries of Praguâ
Pâramitâ (perfect wisdom); their hands that rocked the cradle of the
first ancestor of that feeble but noisy child that we have christened
MODERN SCIENCE.
CHAPTER IV.
“I choose the nobler part of Emerson, when, after various
disenchantments, he exclaimed, ‘I covet Truth.’ The gladness of
true heroism visits the heart of him who is really competent to
say this.”
—TYNDALL.
“A testimony is sufficient when it rests on:
1st. A great number of very sensible witnesses who agree in having
seen well.
2d. Who are sane, bodily and mentally.
3d. Who are impartial and disinterested.
4th. Who unanimously agree.
5th. Who solemnly certify to the fact.”—VOLTAIRE, _Dictionnaire
Philosophique_.
The Count Agenor de Gasparin is a devoted Protestant. His battle with
des Mousseaux, de Mirville and other fanatics who laid the whole of
the spiritual phenomena at the door of Satan, was long and fierce.
Two volumes of over fifteen hundred pages are the result, proving the
_effects_, denying the _cause_, and employing superhuman efforts to
invent every other possible explanation that could be suggested rather
than the true one.
The severe rebuke received by the _Journal des Débats_ from M. de
Gasparin, was read by all civilized Europe.[182] After that gentleman
had minutely described numerous manifestations that he had witnessed
himself, this journal very impertinently proposed to the authorities
in France to send all those who, after having read the _fine_ analysis
of the “spiritual hallucinations” published by Faraday, should insist
on crediting this delusion, to the lunatic asylum for _Incurables_.
“Take care,” wrote de Gasparin in answer, “the representatives of the
exact sciences are on their way to become ... the _Inquisitors_ of our
days.... Facts are stronger than Academies. Rejected, denied, mocked,
they nevertheless are facts, and _do_ exist.”[183]
The following affirmations of physical phenomena, as witnessed by
himself and Professor Thury, may be found in de Gasparin’s voluminous
work.
“The experimenters have often seen the legs of the table _glued_, so
to say, to the floor, and, notwithstanding the excitement of those
present, refuse to be moved from their place. On other occasions
they have seen the tables levitated in quite an energetic way. They
heard, with their own ears, loud as well as gentle raps, the former
threatening to shatter the table to pieces on account of their
violence, the latter so soft as to become hardly perceptible.... As to
LEVITATIONS WITHOUT CONTACT, we found means to produce them easily,
and with success.... And such levitations do not pertain to isolated
results. We have reproduced them over THIRTY times.[184] ... One day
the table will turn, and lift its legs successively, its weight being
augmented by a man weighing eighty-seven _kilogrammes_ seated on it;
another time it will remain motionless and _immovable_, notwithstanding
that the person placed on it weighs but sixty.[185] ... On one occasion
we willed it to turn upside down, and it turned over, with its legs in
the air, notwithstanding that our fingers _never touched it once_.”[186]
“It is certain,” remarks de Mirville, “that a man who had repeatedly
witnessed such a phenomenon, could not accept the _fine_ analysis of
the English physicist.”[187]
Since 1850, des Mousseaux and de Mirville, uncompromising Roman
Catholics, have published many volumes whose titles are cleverly
contrived to attract public attention. They betray on the part of the
authors a very serious alarm, which, moreover, they take no pains to
conceal. Were it possible to consider the phenomena spurious, the
church of Rome would never have gone so much out of her way to repress
them.
Both sides having agreed upon the facts, leaving skeptics out of the
question, people could divide themselves into but two parties: the
believers in the direct agency of the devil, and the believers in
disembodied and other spirits. The fact alone, that theology dreaded
a great deal more the revelations which might come through this
mysterious agency than all the threatening “conflicts” with Science
and the categorical denials of the latter, ought to have opened the
eyes of the most skeptical. The church of Rome has never been either
credulous or cowardly, as is abundantly proved by the Machiavellism
which marks her policy. Moreover, she has never troubled herself much
about the clever prestidigitateurs whom she _knew_ to be simply adepts
in juggling. Robert Houdin, Comte, Hamilton and Bosco, slept secure in
their beds, while she persecuted such men as Paracelsus, Cagliostro,
and Mesmer, the Hermetic philosophers and mystics—and effectually
stopped every genuine manifestation of an occult nature by killing the
mediums.
Those who are unable to believe in a personal devil and the dogmas of
the church must nevertheless accord to the clergy enough of shrewdness
to prevent the compromising of her reputation for infallibility by
making so much of manifestations which, if fraudulent, must inevitably
be some day exposed.
But the best testimony to the reality of this force was given by Robert
Houdin himself, the king of jugglers, who, upon being called as an
expert by the Academy to witness the wonderful _clairvoyant_ powers and
occasional mistakes of a table, said: “We jugglers never make mistakes,
and my second-sight never failed me yet.”
The learned astronomer Babinet was not more fortunate in his selection
of Comte, the celebrated ventriloquist, as an expert to testify
against the phenomena of direct voices and the rappings. Comte, if
we may believe the witnesses, laughed in the face of Babinet at
the bare suggestion that the raps were produced by “_unconscious
ventriloquism_!” The latter theory, worthy twin-sister of “_unconscious
cerebration_,” caused many of the most skeptical academicians to blush.
Its absurdity was too apparent.
“The problem of the supernatural,” says de Gasparin, “such as it was
presented by the middle ages, and as it stands now, is not among the
number of those which we are permitted to despise; its breadth and
grandeur escape the notice of no one.... Everything is profoundly
serious in it, both the evil and the remedy, the superstitious
recrudescency, and the physical fact which is destined to conquer the
latter.”[188]
Further, he pronounces the following decisive opinion, to which he
came, conquered by the various manifestations, as he says himself—“The
number of facts which claim their place in the broad daylight of
truth, has so much increased of late, that of two consequences one
is henceforth inevitable: either the domain of natural sciences must
consent to expand itself, or the domain of the supernatural will become
so enlarged as to have no bounds.”[189]
Among the multitude of books against spiritualism emanating from
Catholic and Protestant sources, none have produced a more appalling
effect than the works of de Mirville and des Mousseaux: _La Magie
au XIXme Siecle_—_Mœurs et Pratiques des Demons_—_Hauts Phénomènes
de la Magie_—_Les Mediateurs de la Magie_—_Des Esprits et de leurs
Manifestations_, etc. They comprise the most cyclopædic biography of
the devil and his imps that has appeared for the private delectation of
good Catholics since the middle ages.
According to the authors, _he_ who was “a liar and murderer from the
beginning,” was also the principal motor of spiritual phenomena. He had
been for thousands of years at the head of pagan theurgy; and it was
he, again, who, encouraged by the increase of heresies, infidelity, and
atheism, had reappeared in our century. The French Academy lifted up
its voice in a general outcry of indignation, and M. de Gasparin even
took it for a personal insult. “This is a declaration of war, a ‘levée
of shields’”—wrote he in his voluminous book of refutations. “The work
of M. de Mirville is a real _manifesto_.... I would be glad to see in
it the expression of a strictly individual opinion, but, in truth, it
is _impossible_. The success of the work, these solemn adhesions, the
faithful reproduction of its theses by the journals and writers of
the party, the solidarity established throughout between them and the
whole body of catholicity ... everything goes to show a work which _is
essentially an act, and has the value of a collective labor_. As it is,
I felt that I had a duty to perform.... I felt obliged to pick up the
glove, ... and lift high the Protestant flag against the Ultramontane
banner.”[190]
The medical faculties, as might have been expected, assuming the part
of the Greek chorus, echoed the various expostulations against the
demonological authors. The _Medico-Psychological Annals_, edited by
Drs. Brierre de Boismont and Cerise, published the following: “Outside
these controversies of antagonistical parties, never in our country
did a writer dare to face, with a more aggressive serenity, ... the
sarcasms, the scorn of what we term common sense; and, as if to defy
and challenge at the same time thundering peals of laughter and
shrugging of shoulders, the author strikes an attitude, and placing
himself with effrontery before the members of the Academy ... addresses
to them what he modestly terms his _Mémoire on the Devil_!”[191]
That was a cutting insult to the Academicians, to be sure; but ever
since 1850 they seem to have been doomed to suffer in their pride
more than most of them can bear. The idea of asking the attention of
the forty “Immortals” to the pranks of the Devil! They vowed revenge,
and, leaguing themselves together, propounded a theory which exceeded
in absurdity even de Mirville’s demonolatry! Dr. Royer and Jobart de
Lamballe—both celebrities in their way—formed an alliance and presented
to the Institute a German whose cleverness afforded, according to
his statement, the key to all the knockings and rappings of both
hemispheres. “We blush” remarks the Marquis de Mirville—“to say that
the whole of the trick consisted simply in the reiterated displacement
of one of the muscular tendons of the legs. Great demonstration of the
system in full sitting of the Institute—and on the spot ... expressions
of Academical gratitude for this _interesting_ communication, and, a
few days later, a full assurance given to the public by a professor of
the medical faculty, that, scientists having pronounced their opinion,
the mystery was at last unravelled!“[192]
But such _scientific_ explanations neither prevented the phenomenon
from quietly following its course, nor the two writers on demonology
from proceeding to expound their strictly orthodox theories.
Denying that the Church had anything to do with his books, des
Mousseaux gravely gave the Academy, in addition to his _Mémoire_, the
following interesting and profoundly philosophical thoughts on Satan:
“_The Devil is the chief pillar of Faith._ He is one of the grand
personages whose life is closely allied to that of the church; and
without his speech which issued out so triumphantly from the mouth of
the Serpent, _his medium_, the fall of man could not have taken place.
Thus, if it was not for him, the Saviour, the Crucified, the Redeemer,
would be but the most ridiculous of supernumeraries, and the Cross an
insult to good sense!”[193]
This writer, be it remembered, is only the faithful echo of the church,
which anathematizes equally the one who denies God and him who doubts
the objective existence of Satan.
But the Marquis de Mirville carries this idea of God’s partnership with
the Devil still further. According to him it is a regular commercial
affair, in which the senior “silent partner” suffers the active
business of the firm to be transacted as it may please his junior
associate, by whose audacity and industry he profits. Who could be of
any other opinion, upon reading the following?
“At the moment of this spiritual invasion of 1853, so slightingly
regarded, we had dared to pronounce the word of a ‘threatening
catastrophe.’ The world was nevertheless at peace, but history showing
us the same symptoms at all disastrous epochs, we had a presentiment of
the sad effects of a law which Goërres has formulated thus: [vol. v.,
p. 356.] ‘These mysterious apparitions have invariably indicated the
chastening hand of God on earth.’”[194]
These guerilla-skirmishes between the champions of the clergy and the
materialistic Academy of Science, prove abundantly how little the
latter has done toward uprooting blind fanaticism from the minds of
even very educated persons. _Evidently science has neither completely
conquered nor muzzled theology._ She will master her only on that day
when she will condescend to see in the spiritual phenomenon something
besides mere hallucination and charlatanry. But how can she do it
without investigating it thoroughly? Let us suppose that before the
time when electro-magnetism was publicly acknowledged, the Copenhagen
Professor Oersted, its discoverer, had been suffering from an attack
of what we call _psychophobia_, or _pneumatophobia_. He notices that
the wire along which a voltaic current is passing shows a tendency to
turn the magnetic needle from its natural position to one perpendicular
to the direction of the current. Suppose, moreover, that the professor
had heard much of certain superstitious people who used that kind of
magnetized needles to converse with unseen intelligences. That they
received signals and even held correct conversations with them by means
of the tippings of such a needle, and that in consequence he suddenly
felt a scientific horror and disgust for such an ignorant belief, and
refused, point-blank, to have anything to do with such a needle. What
would have been the result? Electro-magnetism might not have been
discovered till now, and our experimentalists would have been the
principal losers thereby.
Babinet, Royer, and Jobert de Lamballe, all three members of the
Institute, particularly distinguished themselves in this struggle
between skepticism and supernaturalism, and most assuredly have reaped
no laurels. The famous astronomer had imprudently risked himself on the
battlefield of the phenomenon. He had _explained_ scientifically the
manifestations. But, emboldened by the fond belief among scientists
that the new epidemic could not stand close investigation nor outlive
the year, he had the still greater imprudence to publish two articles
on them. As M. de Mirville very wittily remarks, if both of the
articles had but a poor success in the scientific press, they had, on
the other hand, none at all in the daily one.
M. Babinet began by accepting _a priori_, the rotation and movements of
the furniture, which fact he declared to be ”_hors de doute_.” “This
rotation,” he said, “being able to manifest itself with a considerable
energy, either by a very great speed, or by a strong resistance when it
is desired that it should stop.”[195]
Now comes the explanation of the eminent scientist. “Gently pushed
by little concordant impulsions of the hands laid upon it, the table
begins to oscillate from right to left.... At the moment when, after
more or less delay, a nervous trepidation is established in the hands
and the little individual impulsions of all the experimenters have
become harmonized, the table is set in motion.”[196]
He finds it very simple, for “all muscular movements are determined
over bodies by levers of the third order, in which the fulcrum is
very near to the point where the force acts. This, consequently,
communicates a great speed to the mobile parts for the very
little distance which the motor force has to run.... Some persons
are astonished to see a table subjected to the action of several
well-disposed individuals in a fair way to _conquer powerful
obstacles_, even break its legs, when suddenly stopped; but that is
_very simple_ if we consider the power of the _little concordant
actions_.... Once more, the physical explanation offers no
difficulty.”[197]
In this dissertation, two results are clearly shown: the reality of the
phenomena proved, and the scientific explanation made ridiculous. But
M. Babinet can well afford to be laughed at a little; he knows, as an
astronomer, that dark spots are to be found even in the sun.
There is one thing, though, that Babinet has always stoutly denied,
viz.: the levitation of furniture without contact. De Mirville
catches him proclaiming that such levitation is impossible: “simply
_impossible_,” he says, “as impossible as perpetual motion.”[198]
Who can take upon himself, after such a declaration, to maintain that
the word _impossible_ pronounced by science is infallible?
But the tables, after having waltzed, oscillated and turned,
began tipping and rapping. The raps were sometimes as powerful
as pistol-detonations. What of this? Listen: “The witnesses and
investigators are _ventriloquists_!”
De Mirville refers us to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, in which is
published a very interesting dialogue, invented by M. Babinet speaking
of himself to himself, like the Chaldean En-Soph of the Kabalists:
“What can we finally say of all these facts brought under our
observation? Are there such raps produced? Yes. Do such raps answer
questions? Yes. Who produces these sounds? The mediums. By what means?
_By the ordinary acoustic method of the ventriloquists._ But we were
given to suppose that these sounds might result from the _cracking of
the toes and fingers_? No; for then they would always proceed from the
same point, and such is not the fact.”[199]
“Now,” asks de Mirville, “what are we to believe of the Americans, and
their _thousands of mediums_ who produce the same raps before millions
of witnesses?” “_Ventriloquism_, to be sure,” answers Babinet. “But how
can you explain such an impossibility?” The easiest thing in the world;
listen only: “All that was necessary to produce the first manifestation
in the _first house_ in America was, a street-boy knocking at the door
of a mystified citizen, perhaps with a leaden ball attached to a
string, and if Mr. Weekman (the first believer in America) (?)[200]
when he watched for the third time, heard no shouts of laughter in the
street, it is because of the essential difference which exists between
a French street-Arab, and an English or Trans-Atlantic one, the latter
being amply provided with what we call a _sad merriment_, ”_gaité
triste_.”[201]
Truly says de Mirville in his famous reply to the attacks of de
Gasparin, Babinet, and other scientists: “and thus according to our
great physicist, _the tables turn_ very quickly, very energetically,
resist likewise, and, as M. de Gasparin has proved, they _levitate
without contact_. Said a minister: ‘With three words of a man’s
handwriting, I take upon myself to have him hung.’ With the above three
lines, we take upon ourselves, in our turn, to throw into the greatest
confusion the physicists of all the globe, or rather to revolutionize
the world—if at least, M. de Babinet had taken the precaution of
suggesting, like M. de Gasparin, some yet unknown law or force. For
this would cover the whole ground.”[C]
But it is in the notes embracing the “facts and physical theories,”
that we find the acme of the consistency and logic of Babinet as an
expert investigator on the field of Spiritualism.
It would appear, that M. de Mirville in his narrative of the wonders
manifested at the _Presbytere de Cideville_,[202] was much struck
by the marvellousness of some facts. Though authenticated before
the inquest and magistrates, they were of so miraculous a nature
as to force the demonological author himself to shrink from the
responsibility of publishing them.
These facts were as follows: “At the precise moment _predicted_ by
a _sorcerer_” a case of revenge—“a violent clap of thunder was heard
above one of the chimneys of the presbytery, after which the _fluid_
descended with a formidable noise through that passage, threw down
believers as well as skeptics (as to the power of the sorcerer) who
were warming themselves by the fire; and, having filled the room with a
multitude of _fantastic animals_, returned to the chimney, and having
reascended it, disappeared, after producing the same terrible noise.”
“As,” adds de Mirville, “we were already but too rich in facts, we
recoiled before this new enormity added to so many others.”[203]
But Babinet, who in common with his learned colleagues had made such
fun of the two writers on demonology, and who was determined, moreover,
to prove the absurdity of all like stories, felt himself obliged to
discredit the above-mentioned fact of the Cideville phenomena, by
presenting one still more incredible. We yield the floor to M. Babinet,
himself.
The following circumstance which he gave to the Academy of Sciences, on
July 5, 1852, can be found _without further commentary_, and merely as
an instance of a _sphere-like lightning_, in the “Œuvres de F. Arago,”
vol. i. p. 52. We offer it _verbatim_.
“After a strong clap of thunder,” says M. Babinet, “but not immediately
following it, a tailor apprentice, living in the Rue St. Jacques, was
just finishing his dinner, when he saw the paper-screen which shut
the fireplace fall down as if pushed out of its place by a moderate
gust of wind. Immediately after that he perceived a globe of fire, as
large as the head of a child, come out _quietly_ and _softly_ from
within the grate and slowly move about the room, without touching the
bricks of the floor. The aspect of this fire-globe was that of a _young
cat_, of middle size ... moving itself without the use of its paws.
The fire-globe was rather brilliant and luminous than hot or inflamed,
and the tailor had no sensation of warmth. This globe approached his
feet like a young cat which wishes to play and rub itself against the
legs, as is habitual to these animals; but the apprentice withdrew
his feet from it, and moving with great caution, avoided contact with
the _meteor_. The latter remained for a few seconds moving about his
legs, the tailor examining it with great curiosity and bending over
it. After having tried several excursions in opposite directions, but
without leaving the centre of the room, the fire-globe elevated itself
vertically to the level of the man’s head, who to avoid its contact
with his face, threw himself backward on his chair. Arrived at about a
yard from the floor the fire-globe slightly lengthened, took an oblique
direction toward a hole in the wall over the fireplace, at about the
height of a _metre_ above the mantelpiece.” This hole had been made for
the purpose of admitting the pipe of a stove in winter; but, according
to the expression of the tailor, “_the thunder could not see it_, for
it was papered over like the rest of the wall. The fire-globe went
directly to that hole, _unglued the paper without damaging it_, and
reascended the chimney ... when it arrived at the top, which it did
very slowly ... at least sixty feet above ground ... it produced a most
frightful explosion, which partly destroyed the chimney, ...” etc.
“It seems,” remarks de Mirville in his review, “that we could apply to
M. Babinet the following remark made by a very witty woman to Raynal,
‘If you are not a Christian, it is not for lack of faith.’”[204]
It was not alone believers who wondered at the credulity displayed by
M. Babinet, in persisting to call the manifestation a _meteor_; for Dr.
Boudin mentions it very seriously in a work on _lightning_ he was just
then publishing. “If these details are exact,” says the doctor, “as
they seem to be, since they are admitted by MM. Babinet and Arago, it
appears very difficult for the phenomenon to retain its appellation of
_sphere-shaped lightning_. However, we leave it to others to explain,
if they can, the _essence of a fire-globe emitting no sensation of
heat, having the aspect of a cat, slowly promenading in a room, which
finds means to escape by reascending the chimney through an aperture in
the wall covered over with a paper which it unglues without damaging
it_!”[205]
“We are of the same opinion,” adds the marquis, “as the learned doctor,
on the difficulty of an exact definition, and we do not see why we
should not have in future lightning in the shape of a dog, of a monkey,
etc., etc. One shudders at the bare idea of a whole meteorological
_menagerie_, which, thanks to _thunder_, might come down to our rooms
to promenade themselves at will.”
Says de Gasparin, in his monster volume of refutations: “In questions
of testimony, certitude must absolutely cease the moment we cross the
borders of the supernatural.”[206]
The line of demarcation not being sufficiently fixed and determined,
which of the opponents is best fitted to take upon himself the
difficult task? Which of the two is better entitled to become the
public arbiter? Is it the party of superstition, which is supported
in its testimony by the evidence of many thousands of people? For
nearly two years they crowded the country where were daily manifested
the unprecedented miracles of Cideville, now nearly forgotten among
other countless spiritual phenomena; shall we believe them, or shall
we bow to science, represented by Babinet, who, on the testimony of
_one_ man (the tailor), accepts the manifestation of the fire-globe,
or the _meteor-cat_, and henceforth claims for it a place among the
established facts of _natural_ phenomena?
Mr. Crookes, in his first article in the _Quarterly Journal of
Science_, October 1, 1871, mentions de Gasparin and his work _Science_
v. _Spiritualism_. He remarks that “the author finally arrived at
the conclusion that all these phenomena are to be accounted for by
the action of natural causes, and do not require the supposition of
miracles, nor the intervention of spirits and diabolical influences!
Gasparin considers it as a fact fully established by his experiments,
that _the will, in certain states of organism, can act at a distance
on inert matter_, and most of his work is devoted to ascertaining the
laws and conditions under which this action manifests itself.”[207]
Precisely; but as the work of de Gasparin called forth numberless
_Answers_, _Defenses_, and _Memoirs_, it was then demonstrated by his
own work that as he was a Protestant, in point of religious fanaticism,
he was as little to be relied upon as des Mousseaux and de Mirville.
The former is a profoundly pious Calvinist, while the two latter are
fanatical Roman Catholics. Moreover, the very words of de Gasparin
betray the spirit of partisanship:—“I feel I have a duty to perform....
I lift high the Protestant flag against the Ultramontane banner!”
etc.[208] In such matters as the nature of the so-called spiritual
phenomena, no evidence can be relied upon, except the disinterested
testimony of cold _unprejudiced_ witnesses and science. Truth is one,
and Legion is the name for religious sects; every one of which claims
to have found the unadulterated truth; as “the Devil is the chief
pillar of the (Catholic) Church,” so all supernaturalism and miracles
ceased, in de Gasparin’s opinion, “with apostleship.”
But Mr. Crookes mentioned another eminent scholar, Thury, of Geneva,
professor of natural history, who was a brother-investigator with
Gasparin in the phenomena of Valleyres. This professor contradicts
point-blank the assertions of his colleague. “The first and
most necessary condition,” says Gasparin, “is the _will_ of the
experimenter; without the will, one would obtain nothing; you can form
the chain (the circle) for twenty-four hours consecutively, without
obtaining the least movement.”[209]
The above proves only that de Gasparin makes no difference between
phenomena purely magnetic, produced by the persevering will of the
sitters among whom there may be not even a single medium, developed
or undeveloped, and the so-called spiritual ones. While the first can
be produced _consciously_ by nearly every person, who has a firm and
determined will, the latter overpowers the sensitive very often against
his own consent, and always acts independently of him. _The mesmerizer
wills a thing, and if he is powerful enough, that thing is done. The
medium_, even if he had an honest purpose to succeed, _may get no
manifestations at all; the less he exercises his will, the better the
phenomena: the more he feels anxious, the less he is likely to get
anything_; to mesmerize requires a positive nature, to be a medium a
perfectly passive one. This is the Alphabet of Spiritualism, and no
medium is ignorant of it.
The opinion of Thury, as we have said, disagrees entirely with
Gasparin’s theories of will-power. He states it in so many plain words,
in a letter, in answer to the invitation of the count to modify the
last article of his _mémoire_. As the book of Thury is not at hand, we
translate the letter as it is found in the _résumé_ of de Mirville’s
_Defense_. Thury’s article which so shocked his religious friend,
related to the possibility of the existence and intervention in those
manifestations “of _wills_ other than those of men and animals.”
“I feel, sir, the justness of your observations in relation to
the last pages of this _mémoire_: they may provoke a very bad
feeling for me on the part of scientists in general. I regret
it the more as my determination seems _to affect you so much_;
nevertheless, I persist in my resolution, because I think it a
duty, to shirk which would be a kind of treason.
“If, _against all expectations_, there were some truth in
Spiritualism, by abstaining from saying on the part of science,
as I conceive it to be, _that the absurdity of the belief
in the intervention of spirits is not as yet demonstrated
scientifically_ (for such is the _résumé_, and the thesis of
the past pages of my _mémoire_), by abstaining from saying it
to those who, after having read my work, will feel inclined
to experiment with the phenomena, I might risk to entice such
persons on a path many issues of which are very _equivocal_.
”_Without leaving the domain of science_, as I esteem it, I
will pursue my duty to the end, without any reticence to the
profit of my own glory, and, to use your own words, ‘as the
great scandal lies there,’ I do not wish to assume the shame
of it. I, moreover, insist that ‘_this is as scientific as
anything else_.’ If I wanted to sustain now the theory of the
intervention of disembodied spirits, I would have no power
for it, for the facts which are made known are not sufficient
for the demonstration of such a hypothesis. As it is, and in
the position I have assumed, I feel I am strong against every
one. Willingly or not, all the scientists must learn, through
experience and their own errors, to suspend their judgment as
to things which they have not sufficiently examined. The lesson
you gave them in this direction cannot be lost.
“GENEVA, _21 December, 1854_.”
Let us analyze the above letter, and try to discover what the writer
thinks, or rather what he does not think of this new force. One thing
is certain, at least: Professor Thury, a distinguished physicist
and naturalist, admits, and even scientifically proves that various
manifestations take place. Like Mr. Crookes, he does not believe that
they are produced by the interference of spirits or disembodied men who
have lived and died on earth; for he says in his letter that nothing
has demonstrated this theory. He certainly believes no more in the
Catholic devils or demons, for de Mirville, who quotes this letter as
a triumphant proof against de Gasparin’s naturalistic theory, once
arrived at the above sentence, hastens to emphasize it by a foot-note,
which runs thus: “At Valleyres—_perhaps_, but everywhere else!”[210]
showing himself anxious to convey the idea that the professor only
meant the manifestations of Valleyres, when denying their being
produced by demons.
The contradictions, and we are sorry to say, the absurdities in
which de Gasparin allows himself to be caught, are numerous. While
bitterly criticizing the pretensions of the learned Faradaysiacs, he
attributes things which he declares _magical_, to causes perfectly
natural. “If,” he says, “we had to deal but with such phenomena (as
witnessed and explained (?) by the great physicist), we might as well
hold our tongues; but we have passed _beyond_, and what good can
they do now, I would ask, these apparatus which demonstrate that an
_unconscious pressure_ explains the whole? It explains _all_, and the
table resists pressure and guidance! It explains _all_, and a piece of
furniture which _nobody touches_ follows the fingers pointed at it; it
_levitates_ (without contact), and it turns itself _upside down_!”[211]
But for all that, he takes upon himself to _explain_ the phenomena.
“People will be advocating miracles, you say—magic! Every new law
appears to them as a prodigy. Calm yourselves; I take upon myself the
task to quiet those who are alarmed. In the face of such phenomena, we
do not cross at all the boundaries of natural law.”[212]
Most assuredly, we do not. But can the scientists assert that they have
in their possession the keys to such law? M. de Gasparin thinks he has.
Let us see.
“I do not risk myself to explain anything; _it is no business of
mine_.(?) To authenticate simple facts, and maintain a truth which
science desires to smother, is all I pretend to do. Nevertheless, I
cannot resist the temptation to point out to those who would treat
us as so many _illuminati_ or sorcerers, that the manifestation in
question affords an interpretation which agrees with _the ordinary laws
of science_.
“Suppose a fluid, emanating from the experimenters, and chiefly from
_some of them_; suppose that the will determined the direction taken by
the fluid, and you will readily understand the rotation and levitation
of that one of the legs of the table toward which is ejected with every
action of the will an excess of fluid. Suppose that the glass causes
the fluid to escape, and you will understand how a tumbler placed on
the table can interrupt its rotation, and that the tumbler, placed on
one of its sides, causes the accumulation of the fluid in the opposite
side, which, in consequence of that, _is lifted_!”
If every one of the experimenters were clever mesmerizers, the
explanation, _minus_ certain important details, might be acceptable. So
much for the power of _human will_ on inanimate matter, according to
the learned minister of Louis Philippe. But how about the intelligence
exhibited by the table? What explanation does he give as to answers
obtained through the agency of this table to questions? answers which
could not possibly have been the “reflections of the brain” of those
present (one of the favorite theories of de Gasparin), for their own
ideas were quite the reverse of the very _liberal_ philosophy given by
this wonderful table? On this he is silent. Anything but _spirits_,
whether human, satanic, or elemental.
Thus, the “simultaneous concentration of thought,” and the
“accumulation of fluid,” will be found no better than “the unconscious
cerebration” and “psychic force” of other scientists. We must try
again; and we may predict beforehand that the thousand and one theories
of science will prove of no avail until they will confess that this
force, far from being a projection of the accumulated wills of the
circle, is, on the contrary, a force which is abnormal, foreign to
themselves, and _supra-intelligent_.
Professor Thury, who denies the theory of departed human spirits,
rejects the Christian devil-doctrine, and shows himself unwilling
to pronounce in favor of Crookes’s theory (the 6th), that of the
hermetists and ancient theurgists, adopts the one, which, he says in
his letter, is “_the most prudent_, and makes him feel strong against
every one.” Moreover, he accepts as little of de Gasparin’s hypothesis
of “unconscious will-power.” This is what he says in his work:
“As to the announced phenomena, such as the _levitation without
contact_, and the displacement of furniture by invisible hands—unable
to demonstrate their impossibility, _a priori_, no one has the right to
treat as absurd the serious evidences which affirm their occurrence”
(p. 9).
As to the theory proposed by M. de Gasparin, Thury judges it very
severely. “While admitting that in the experiments of Valleyres,”
says de Mirville, “the seat of the _force_ might have been in the
_individual_—and we say that it was intrinsic and extrinsic at the
same time—and that the will might be generally necessary (p. 20), he
repeats but what he had said in his preface, to wit: ‘M. de Gasparin
presents us with crude facts, and the explanations following he offers
for what they are worth. _Breathe on them_, and not many will be found
standing after this. No, very little, if anything, will remain of his
explanations. As to facts, they are _henceforth demonstrated_’” (p. 10).
As Mr. Crookes tells us, Professor Thury refutes “all these
explanations, and considers the effects due to a peculiar substance,
fluid, or agent, pervading in a manner similar to the luminiferous
ether of the scientists, all matter, nervous, organic or inorganic,
which he terms _psychode_. He enters into full discussion as to the
properties of this state, or form, or matter, and proposes the term
_ectenic_ force ... for the power exerted when the mind acts at a
distance through the influence of the psychode.”[213]
Mr. Crookes remarks further, that “Professor Thury’s _ectenic_ force,
and his own ‘psychic force’ are evidently equivalent terms.”
We certainly could very easily demonstrate that the two forces are
identical, moreover, the astral or _sidereal_ light as explained by
the alchemists and Eliphas Levi, in his _Dogme et Rituel de la Haute
Magie_; and that, under the name of AKASA, or life-principle, this
all-pervading force was known to the gymnosophists, Hindu magicians,
and adepts of all countries, thousands of years ago; and, that it is
still known to them, and used at present by the Thibetan lamas, fakirs,
thaumaturgists of all nationalities, and even by many of the Hindu
“jugglers.”
In many cases of trance, artificially induced by mesmerization, it
is also quite possible, even quite probable, that it is the “spirit”
of the subject which acts under the guidance of the operator’s will.
But, if the medium remains conscious, and psycho-physical phenomena
occur which indicate a directing intelligence, then, unless it be
conceded that he is a “magician,” and can project his double, physical
exhaustion can signify nothing more than nervous prostration. The
proof that he is the passive instrument of unseen entities controlling
occult potencies, seems conclusive. Even if Thury’s _ectenic_ and
Crookes’s _psychic_ force are substantially of the same derivation,
the respective discoverers seem to differ widely as to the properties
and potencies of this force; while Professor Thury candidly admits
that the phenomena are often produced by “wills _not_ human,” and so,
of course, gives a qualified endorsement to Mr. Crookes’s theory No.
6, the latter, admitting the genuineness of the phenomena, has as yet
pronounced no definite opinion as to their cause.
Thus, we find that neither M. Thury, who investigated these
manifestations with de Gasparin in 1854, nor Mr. Crookes, who conceded
their undeniable genuineness in 1874, have reached anything definite.
Both are chemists, physicists, and very learned men. Both have given
all their attention to the puzzling question; and besides these two
scientists there were many others who, while coming to the same
conclusion, have hitherto been as unable to furnish the world with
a final solution. It follows then, that in twenty years none of the
scientists have made a single step toward the unravelling of the
mystery, which remains as immovable and impregnable as the walls of an
enchanted castle in a fairy tale.
Would it be too impertinent to surmise that perhaps our modern
scientists have got in what the French term _un cercle vicieux_? That,
hampered by the weight of their materialism, and the insufficiency of
what they name “the exact sciences” to demonstrate to them tangibly the
existence of a spiritual universe, peopled and inhabited much more than
our visible one, they are doomed forever to creep around _inside_ that
circle, unwilling rather than unable to penetrate beyond its enchanted
ring, and explore it in its length and breadth? It is but prejudice
which keeps them from making a compromise with well-established facts
and seek alliance with such expert magnetists and mesmerizers as were
Du Potet and Regazzoni.
“What, then, is produced from death?” inquired Socrates of Cebes.
“_Life_,” was the reply.[214] ... Can the soul, since it is immortal,
be anything else than imperishable?[215] The “seed cannot develop
unless it is in part consumed,” says Prof. Lecomte; “it is not
quickened unless it die,” says St. Paul.
A flower blossoms; then withers and dies. It leaves a fragrance behind,
which, long after its delicate petals are but a little dust, still
lingers in the air. Our material sense may not be cognizant of it, but
it nevertheless exists. Let a note be struck on an instrument, and the
faintest sound produces an eternal echo. A disturbance is created on
the invisible waves of the shoreless ocean of space, and the vibration
is never wholly lost. Its energy being once carried from the world of
matter into the immaterial world will live for ever. And man, we are
asked to believe, man, the living, thinking, reasoning entity, the
indwelling deity of our nature’s crowning masterpiece, will evacuate
his casket and be no more! Would the principle of continuity which
exists even for the so-called _inorganic_ matter, for a floating atom,
be denied to the spirit, whose attributes are consciousness, memory,
mind, LOVE! Really, the very idea is preposterous. The more we think
and the more we learn, the more difficult it becomes for us to account
for the atheism of the scientist. We may readily understand that a
man ignorant of the laws of nature, unlearned in either chemistry
or physics, may be fatally drawn into materialism through his very
ignorance; his incapacity of understanding the philosophy of the exact
sciences, or drawing any inference by analogy from the _visible_ to
the _invisible_. A natural-born metaphysician, an ignorant dreamer,
may awake abruptly and say to himself: “I dreamed it; I have no
tangible proof of that which I imagined; it is all illusion,” etc.
But for a man of science, acquainted with the characteristics of the
universal energy, to maintain that _life_ is merely a phenomenon of
matter, a species of energy, amounts simply to a confession of his own
incapability of analyzing and properly understanding the alpha and the
omega even of that—matter.
Sincere skepticism as to the immortality of man’s soul is a malady; a
malformation of the physical brain, and has existed in every age. As
there are infants born with a caul upon their heads, so there are men
who are incapable to their last hour of ridding themselves of that
kind of caul evidently enveloping their organs of spirituality. But
it is quite another feeling which makes them reject the possibility
of spiritual and magical phenomena. The true name for that feeling
is—_vanity_. “We can neither produce nor explain it—hence, it _does
not_ exist, and moreover, could _never_ have existed.” Such is the
irrefutable argument of our present-day philosophers. Some thirty years
ago, E. Salverte startled the world of the “credulous” by his work,
_The Philosophy of Magic_. The book claimed to unveil the whole of the
miracles of the Bible as well as those of the Pagan sanctuaries. Its
_resumé_ ran thus: Long ages of observation; a great knowledge (for
those days of ignorance) of natural sciences and philosophy; imposture;
legerdemain; optics; phantasmagoria; exaggeration. Final and logical
conclusion: Thaumaturgists, prophets, magicians, rascals, and knaves;
the rest of the world, fools.
Among many other conclusive proofs, the reader can find him offering
the following: “The enthusiastic disciples of Iamblichus affirmed that
when he prayed, he was raised to the height of ten cubits from the
ground; and _dupes_ to the same metaphor, although Christians, have had
the simplicity to attribute a similar miracle to St. Clare, and St.
Francis of Assisi.”[216]
Hundreds of travellers claimed to have seen fakirs produce the same
phenomena, and they were all thought either liars or hallucinated.
But it was but yesterday that the same phenomenon was witnessed
and endorsed by a well-known scientist; it was produced under test
conditions; declared by Mr. Crookes to be genuine, and to be _beyond_
the possibility of an illusion or a trick. And so was it manifested
many a time before and attested by numerous witnesses, though the
latter are now invariably disbelieved.
Peace to thy scientific ashes, O credulous Eusebe Salverte! Who knows
but before the close of the present century popular wisdom will have
invented a new proverb: “As incredibly credulous as a scientist.”
Why should it appear so impossible that when the spirit is once
separated from its body, it may have the power to animate some
evanescent form, created out of that magical “psychic” or “ectenic” or
“ethereal” force, with the help of the elementaries who furnish it with
the sublimated matter of their own bodies? The only difficulty is, to
realize the fact that surrounding space is not an empty void, but a
reservoir filled to repletion with the models of all things that ever
were, that are, and that will be; and with beings of countless races,
unlike our own. Seemingly supernatural facts—supernatural in that they
openly contradict the demonstrated natural laws of gravitation, as
in the above-mentioned instance of levitation—are recognized by many
scientists. Every one who has dared to investigate with thoroughness
has found himself compelled to admit their existence; only in their
unsuccessful efforts to account for the phenomena on theories based
on the laws of such forces as were already known, some of the highest
representatives of science have involved themselves in inextricable
difficulties!
In his _Resumé_ de Mirville describes the argumentation of these
adversaries of spiritualism as consisting of five paradoxes, which he
terms _distractions_.
_First distraction_: that of Faraday, who explains the table
phenomenon, by the table which _pushes_ you “in consequence of the
resistance which _pushes it back_.”
_Second distraction_: that of Babinet, explaining all the
communications (by raps) which are produced, as he says, “in good faith
and with perfect conscientiousness, correct in every way and sense—by
_ventriloquism_,” the use of which faculty implies of necessity—_bad
faith_.
_Third distraction_: That of Dr. Chevreuil, explaining the faculty of
moving furniture _without_ contact, by the preliminary acquisition of
that faculty.
_Fourth distraction_: that of the French Institute and its members, who
consent to accept the miracles, on condition that the latter will not
contradict in any way those natural laws with which they are acquainted.
_Fifth distraction_: that of M. de Gasparin, introducing as a very
_simple_ and perfectly _elementary_ phenomenon that which every one
rejects, precisely because no one ever saw the like of it.[217]
While the great, world-known scientists indulge in such fantastic
theories, some less known neurologists find an explanation for occult
phenomena of every kind in an abnormal effluvium resulting from
epilepsy.[218] Another would treat mediums—and poets, too, we may
infer—with assafœtida and ammonia,[219] and declare every one of the
believers in spiritual manifestations lunatics and hallucinated mystics.
To the latter lecturer and professed pathologist is commended that
sensible bit of advice to be found in the New Testament: “Physician,
heal thyself.” Truly, no sane man would so sweepingly charge insanity
upon four hundred and forty-six millions of people in various parts of
the world, who believe in the intercourse of spirits with ourselves!
Considering all this, it remains to us but to wonder at the
preposterous presumption of these men, who claim to be regarded
by right of learning as the high priests of science, to classify
a phenomenon they know nothing about. Surely, several millions of
their countrymen and women, if deluded, deserve at least as much
attention as potato-bugs or grasshoppers! But, instead of that, what
do we find? The Congress of the United States, at the demand of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, enacts statutes
for organization of National Insect Commissions; chemists are busying
themselves in boiling frogs and bugs; geologists amuse their leisure
by osteological surveys of armor-plated _ganoids_, and discuss the
odontology of the various species of _dinichtys_; and entomologists
suffer their enthusiasm to carry them to the length of supping on
grasshoppers boiled, fried, and in soup.[220] Meanwhile, millions
of Americans are either losing themselves in the maze of “crazy
delusions,” according to the opinion of some of these very learned
encyclopædists, or perishing physically from “nervous disorders,”
brought on or brought out by mediumistic diathesis.
At one time, there was reason to hope that Russian scientists would
have undertaken the task of giving the phenomena a careful and
impartial study. A commission was appointed by the Imperial University
of St. Petersburg, with Professor Mendeleyeff, the great physicist,
at its head. The advertised programme provided for a series of
forty seances to test mediums, and invitations were extended to all
of this class who chose to come to the Russian capital and submit
their powers to examination. As a rule they refused—doubtless from
a prevision of the trap that had been laid for them. After _eight_
sittings, upon a shallow pretext, and just when the manifestations
were becoming interesting, the commission prejudged the case, and
published a decision adverse to the claims of mediumism. Instead of
pursuing dignified, scientific methods, they set spies to peep through
key-holes. Professor Mendeleyeff declared in a public lecture that
spiritualism, or any such belief in our souls’ immortality, was a
mixture of _superstition_, _delusion_, and _fraud_; adding that every
“manifestation” of such nature—including mind-reading, trance, and
other psychological phenomena, we must suppose—could be, and _was_
produced by means of clever apparatus and machinery concealed under the
clothing of mediums!
After such a public exhibition of ignorance and prejudice, Mr.
Butlerof, Professor of Chemistry at the St. Petersburg University, and
Mr. Aksakof, Counsellor of State in the same city, who had been invited
to assist on the committee for mediums, became so disgusted that they
withdrew. Having published their protests in the Russian papers, they
were supported by the majority of the press, who did not spare either
Mendeleyeff or his officious committee with their sarcasms. The public
acted fairly in that case. One hundred and thirty names, of the most
influential persons of the best society of St. Petersburg, many of
them no spiritualists at all, but simply investigators, added their
signatures to the well-deserved protest.
The inevitable result of such a procedure followed; universal attention
was drawn to the question of spiritualism; private circles were
organized throughout the empire; some of the most liberal journals
began to discuss the subject; and, as we write, a new commission is
being organized to finish the interrupted task.
But now—as a matter of course—they will do their duty less than ever.
They have a better pretext than they ever had in the pretended _exposé_
of the medium Slade, by Professor Lankester, of London. True, to
the evidence of one scientist and his friend,—Messrs. Lankester and
Donkin—the accused opposed the testimony of Wallace, Crookes, and a
host of others, which totally nullifies an accusation based merely on
circumstantial evidence and prejudice. As the _London Spectator_ very
pertinently observes:
“It is really a pure superstition and nothing else to assume that we
are so fully acquainted with the laws of nature, that even carefully
examined facts, attested by an experienced observer, ought to be cast
aside as utterly unworthy of credit, only because they do not, at
first sight, seem to be in keeping with what is most clearly known
already. To assume, as Professor Lankester appears to do, that because
there are fraud and credulity in plenty to be found in connection with
these facts—as there is, no doubt, in connection with all nervous
diseases—fraud and credulity will account for all the carefully
attested statements of accurate and conscientious observers, is to saw
away at the very branch of the tree of knowledge on which inductive
science necessarily rests, and to bring the whole structure toppling to
the ground.”
But what matters all this to scientists? The torrent of superstition,
which, according to them, sweeps away millions of bright intellects
in its impetuous course, cannot reach them. The modern deluge called
spiritualism is unable to affect their strong minds; and the muddy
waves of the flood must expend their raging fury without wetting
even the soles of their boots. Surely it must be but traditional
stubbornness on the part of the Creator that prevents him from
confessing what a poor chance his miracles have in our day in blinding
professed scientists. By this time even He ought to know and take
notice that long ago they decided to write on the porticoes of their
universities and colleges:
Science commands that God shall not
Do miracles upon this spot![221]
Both the infidel spiritualists and the orthodox Roman Catholics
seem to have leagued themselves this year against the iconoclastic
pretensions of materialism. Increase of skepticism has developed of
late a like increase of credulity. The champions of the Bible “divine”
miracles rival the panegyrist’s mediumistic phenomena, and the middle
ages revive in the nineteenth century. Once more we see the Virgin
Mary resume her epistolary correspondence with the faithful children
of her church; and while the “angel friends” scribble messages to
spiritualists through their mediums, the “mother of God” drops letters
direct from heaven to earth. The shrine of Notre Dame de Lourdes has
turned into a spiritualistic cabinet for “materializations,” while
the cabinets of popular American mediums are transformed into sacred
shrines, into which Mohammed, Bishop Polk, Joan of Arc and other
aristocratic spirits from over the “dark river,” having descended,
“materialize” in full light. And if the Virgin Mary is seen taking
her daily walk in the woods about Lourdes in full human form, why
not the Apostle of Islam, and the late Bishop of Louisiana? Either
both “miracles” are possible, or both kinds of these manifestations,
the “divine” as well as the “spiritual,” are arrant impostures. Time
alone will prove which; but meanwhile, as science refuses the loan of
her magic lamp to illuminate these mysteries, common people must go
stumbling on whether they be mired or not.
The recent “miracles” at Lourdes having been unfavorably discussed in
the London papers, Monsignor Capel communicates to the _Times_ the
views of the Roman Church in the following terms:
“As to the miraculous cures which are effected, I would refer your
readers to the calm, judicious work, _La Grotte de Lourdes_, written
by Dr. Dozous, an eminent resident practitioner, inspector of epidemic
diseases for the district, and medical assistant of the Court of
Justice. He prefaces a number of detailed cases of miraculous cures,
which he says he has studied with great care and perseverance, with
these words: ‘I declare that these cures effected at the Sanctuary of
Lourdes by means of the water of the fountain, have established their
supernatural character in the eyes of men of good faith. I ought to
confess that without these cures, my mind, little prone to listen to
miraculous explanations of any kind, would have had great difficulty
in accepting even this fact (the apparition), remarkable as it is from
so many points of view. But the cures, of which I have been so often
an ocular witness, have given to my mind a light which does not permit
me to ignore the importance of the visits of Bernadette to the Grotto,
and the reality of the apparitions with which she was favored.’ The
testimony of a distinguished medical man, who has carefully watched
from the beginning Bernadette, and the miraculous cures at the Grotto,
is at least worthy of respectful consideration. I may add, that the
vast number of those who come to the Grotto do so to repent of their
sins, to increase their piety, to pray for the regeneration of their
country, to profess publicly their belief in the Son of God and his
Immaculate Mother. Many come to be cured of bodily ailments; and on
the testimony of eye-witnesses several return home freed from their
sickness. To upbraid with non-belief, as does your article, those who
use also the waters of the Pyrenees, is as reasonable as to charge
with unbelief the magistrates who inflict punishment on the peculiar
people for neglecting to have medical aid. Health obliged me to pass
the winters of 1860 to 1867 at Pau. This gave me the opportunity of
making the most minute inquiry into the apparition at Lourdes. After
frequent and lengthened examinations of Bernadette and of some of the
miracles effected, I am convinced that, _if facts are to be received
on human testimony, then has the apparition at Lourdes every claim to
be received as an undeniable fact_. It is, however, no part of the
Catholic faith, and may be accepted or rejected by any Catholic without
the least praise or condemnation.”
Let the reader observe the sentence we have italicized. This makes
it clear that the Catholic Church, despite her infallibility and her
liberal postage convention with the Kingdom of Heaven, is content to
accept even the validity of _divine_ miracles upon human testimony. Now
when we turn to the report of Mr. Huxley’s recent New York lectures
on evolution, we find him saying that it is upon “human historical
evidence that we depend for the greater part of our knowledge for the
doings of the past.” In a lecture on Biology, he has said “ ... every
man who has the interest of truth at heart must earnestly desire that
every well-founded and just criticism that can be made should be made;
but it is essential ... that the critic should know what he is talking
about.” An aphorism that its author should recall when he undertakes
to pronounce upon psychological subjects. Add this to his views, as
expressed above, and who could ask a better platform upon which to meet
him?
Here we have a representative materialist, and a representative
Catholic prelate, enunciating an identical view of the sufficiency
of _human testimony_ to prove facts that it suits the prejudices of
each to believe. After this, what need for either the student of
occultism, or even the spiritualist, to hunt about for endorsements
of the argument they have so long and so persistently advanced, that
the psychological phenomena of ancient and modern thaumaturgists being
superabundantly proven upon human testimony must be accepted as facts?
Church and College having appealed to the tribunal of human evidence,
they cannot deny the rest of mankind an equal privilege. One of the
fruits of the recent agitation in London of the subject of mediumistic
phenomena, is the expression of some remarkably liberal views on
the part of the secular press. “In any case, we are for admitting
spiritualism to a place among tolerated beliefs, and letting it alone
accordingly,” says the London _Daily News_, in 1876. “It has many
votaries who are as intelligent as most of us, and to whom any obvious
and palpable defect in the evidence meant to convince must have been
obvious and palpable long ago. Some of _the wisest men in the world
believed in ghosts_, and would have continued to do so even though
half-a-dozen persons in succession had been convicted of frightening
people with sham goblins.”
It is not for the first time in the history of the world, that the
invisible world has to contend against the materialistic skepticism of
soul-blind Sadducees. Plato deplores such an unbelief, and refers to
this pernicious tendency more than once in his works.
From Kapila, the Hindu philosopher, who many centuries before Christ
demurred to the claim of the mystic Yogins, that in ecstasy a man
has the power of seeing Deity face to face and conversing with the
“highest” beings, down to the Voltaireans of the eighteenth century,
who laughed at everything that was held sacred by other people, each
age had its unbelieving Thomases. Did they ever succeed in checking the
progress of truth? No more than the ignorant bigots who sat in judgment
over Galileo checked the progress of the earth’s rotation. No exposures
whatever are able to vitally affect the stability or instability of a
belief which humanity inherited from the first races of men, those,
who—if we can believe in the evolution of spiritual man as in that of
the physical one—had the great truth from the lips of their ancestors,
the _gods of their fathers_, “that were on the other side of the
flood.” The identity of the Bible with the legends of the Hindu sacred
books and the cosmogonies of other nations, must be demonstrated at
some future day. _The fables of the mythopœic ages will be found to
have but allegorized the greatest truths of geology and anthropology._
It is in these ridiculously expressed fables that science will have to
look for her “missing links.”
Otherwise, whence such strange “coincidences” in the respective
histories of nations and peoples so widely thrown apart? Whence
that identity of primitive conceptions which, fables and legends
though they are termed now, contain in them nevertheless the kernel
of historical facts, of a truth thickly overgrown with the husks of
popular embellishment, but still a truth? Compare only this verse of
_Genesis_ vi.: “And it came to pass, when _men began to multiply_ on
the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the
sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they
took them wives of all which they chose.... There were _giants in the
earth in those days_,” etc., with this part of the Hindu cosmogony, in
the _Vedas_, which speaks of the descent of the Brahmans. The first
Brahman complains of being _alone_ among all his brethren without a
wife. Notwithstanding that the Eternal advises him to devote his days
solely to the study of the Sacred Knowledge (_Veda_), the _first-born_
of mankind insists. Provoked at such ingratitude, the eternal gave
Brahman a wife of the race of the _Daints_, or _giants_, from whom
all the Brahmans maternally descend. Thus the entire Hindu priesthood
is descended, on the one hand, from the _superior_ spirits (the sons
of God), and from _Daintany_, a daughter of the earthly giants, the
primitive men.[222] “And they bare children to them; the same became
mighty men which were of old; men of renown.”[223]
The same is found in the Scandinavian cosmogonical fragment. In
the _Edda_ is given the description to Gangler by Har, one of the
three informants (Har, Jafuhar, and Tredi) of the first man, called
Bur, “the father of Bör, who took for wife Besla, a daughter of the
giant Bölthara, of the race of the primitive giants.” The full and
interesting narrative may be found in the _Prose Edda_, sects. 4-8, in
Mallett’s _Northern Antiquities_.[224]
The same groundwork underlies the Grecian fables about the Titans; and
may be found in the legend of the Mexicans—the four successive races
of _Popol-Vuh_. It constitutes one of the many ends to be found in
the entangled and seemingly inextricable skein of mankind, viewed as a
psychological phenomenon. Belief in supernaturalism would be otherwise
inexplicable. To say that it sprang up, and grew and developed
throughout the countless ages, without either cause or the least firm
basis to rest upon, but merely as an empty fancy, would be to utter as
great an absurdity as the theological doctrine that the universe sprang
into creation out of nothing.
It is too late now to kick against an evidence which manifests itself
as in the full glare of noon. Liberal, as well as Christian papers,
and the organs of the most advanced scientific authorities, begin to
protest unanimously against the dogmatism and narrow prejudices of
sciolism. The _Christian World_, a religious paper, adds its voice to
that of the unbelieving London press. Following is a good specimen of
its common sense:
“If a medium,” it says,[225] “can be shown ever so conclusively to
be an impostor, we shall still object to the disposition manifested
by persons of some authority in scientific matters, to pooh-pooh and
knock on the head all careful inquiry into those subjects of which Mr.
Barrett took note in his paper before the British Association. Because
spiritualists have committed themselves to many absurdities, that is
no reason why the phenomena to which they appeal should be scouted
as unworthy of examination. They may be mesmeric, or clairvoyant, or
something else. But let our wise men tell us what they are, and not
snub us, as ignorant people too often snub inquiring youth, by the easy
but unsatisfactory apothegm, “Little children should not ask questions.”
Thus the time has come when the scientists have lost all right to be
addressed with the Miltonian verse, “O thou who, for the testimony
of truth, hast borne universal reproach!” Sad degeneration, and one
that recalls the exclamation of that “doctor of physic” mentioned one
hundred and eighty years ago by Dr. Henry More, and who, upon hearing
the story told of the drummer of Tedworth and of Ann Walker, “_cryed_
out presently, _If this be true, I have been in a wrong box all this
time, and must begin my account anew_.”[226]
But in our century, notwithstanding Huxley’s endorsement of the value
of “human testimony,” even Dr. Henry More has become “an enthusiast and
a visionary, both of which, united in the same person, constitute a
_canting madman_.”[227]
What psychology has long lacked to make its mysterious laws better
understood and applied to the ordinary as well as extraordinary affairs
of life, is not facts. These it has had in abundance. The need has
been for their recording and classification—for trained observers and
competent analysts. From the scientific body these ought to have been
supplied. If error has prevailed and superstition run riot these many
centuries throughout Christendom, it is the misfortune of the common
people, the reproach of science. The generations have come and gone,
each furnishing its quota of martyrs to conscience and moral courage,
and psychology is little better understood in our day than it was when
the heavy hand of the Vatican sent those brave unfortunates to their
untimely doom and branded their memories with the stigma of heresy and
sorcery.
CHAPTER V.
“Ich bin der geist der stets verneint.”
(I am the spirit which still denies.)
—(_Mephisto_ in FAUST.)
“The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it
seeth Him not; neither knoweth Him.”—_Gospel according to John_,
xiv. 17.
“Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.”
—MILTON.
“Mere intellectual enlightenment cannot recognize the
spiritual. As the sun puts out a fire, so spirit puts out the
eyes of mere intellect.”—W. HOWITT.
There has been an infinite confusion of names to express one and the
same thing.
The chaos of the ancients; the Zoroastrian sacred fire, or the
_Antusbyrum_ of the Parsees; the Hermes-fire; the Elmes-fire of
the ancient Germans; the lightning of Cybelè; the burning torch of
Apollo; the flame on the altar of Pan; the inextinguishable fire in
the temple on the Acropolis, and in that of Vesta; the fire-flame of
Pluto’s helm; the brilliant sparks on the hats of the Dioscuri, on the
Gorgon head, the helm of Pallas, and the staff of Mercury; the πύρ
ἄσβεστος; the Egyptian Phtha, or Ra; the Grecian _Zeus Cataibates_
(the descending);[228] the pentacostal fire-tongues; the burning
bush of Moses; the pillar of fire of the _Exodus_, and the “burning
lamp” of Abram; the eternal fire of the “bottomless pit;” the Delphic
oracular vapors; the Sidereal light of the Rosicrucians; the AKASA of
the Hindu adepts; the Astral light of Eliphas Levi; the nerve-aura and
the fluid of the magnetists; the _od_ of Reichenbach; the fire-globe,
or meteor-_cat_ of Babinet; the _Psychod_ and ectenic force of Thury;
the psychic force of Sergeant Cox and Mr. Crookes; the atmospheric
magnetism of some naturalists; galvanism; and finally, electricity, are
but various names for many different manifestations, or effects of the
same mysterious, all-pervading cause—the Greek _Archeus_, or Αρχαῖος.
Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton, in his _Coming Race_, describes it as the
VRIL,[229] used by the subterranean populations, and allowed his
readers to take it for a fiction. “These people,” he says, “consider
that in the vril they had arrived at the unity in natural energic
agencies;” and proceeds to show that Faraday intimated them “under the
more cautious term of correlation,” thus:
“I have long held an opinion, almost amounting to a conviction, in
common, I believe, with many other lovers of natural knowledge, that
the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest,
HAVE ONE COMMON ORIGIN; or, in other words, are so directly related and
naturally dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, into one
another, and possess equivalents of power in their action.”
Absurd and unscientific as may appear our comparison of a fictitious
_vril_ invented by the great novelist, and the primal force of the
equally great experimentalist, with the kabalistic astral light, it
is nevertheless the true definition of this force. Discoveries are
constantly being made to corroborate the statement thus boldly put
forth. Since we began to write this part of our book, an announcement
has been made in a number of papers of the supposed discovery of a new
force by Mr. Edison, the electrician, of Newark, New Jersey, which
force seems to have little in common with electricity, or galvanism,
except the principle of conductivity. If demonstrated, it may remain
for a long time under some pseudonymous scientific name; but,
nevertheless, it will be but one of the numerous family of children
brought forth from the commencement of time by our kabalistic mother,
the _Astral Virgin_. In fact, the discoverer says that, “it is as
distinct, and has as regular laws as heat, magnetism, or electricity.”
The journal which contains the first account of the discovery adds
that, “Mr. Edison thinks that it exists in connection with heat, and
that it can also be generated by independent and _as yet undiscovered
means_.”
Another of the most startling of recent discoveries, is the possibility
of annihilating distance between human voices—by means of the
_telephone_ (distance-sounder), an instrument invented by Professor A.
Graham Bell. This possibility, first suggested by the little “lovers’
telegraph,” consisting of small tin cups with vellum and drug-twine
apparatus, by which a conversation can be carried on at a distance of
two hundred feet, has developed into the telephone, which will become
the wonder of this age. A long conversation has taken place between
Boston and Cambridgeport by telegraph; “every word being distinctly
heard and perfectly understood, and the modulations of voices being
quite distinguishable,” according to the official report. _The voice
is seized upon_, so to say, _and held in form by a magnet, and the
sound-wave transmitted by electricity acting in unison and co-operating
with the magnet_. The whole success depends upon a perfect control of
the electric currents and the power of the magnets used, with which
the former must co-operate. “The invention,” reports the paper, “may
be rudely described as a sort of trumpet, over the bell-mouth of which
is drawn a delicate membrane, which, when the voice is thrown into the
tube, swells outward in proportion to the force of the sound-wave. To
the outer side of the membrane is attached a piece of metal, which, as
the membrane swells outward, connects with a magnet, and this, with the
electric circuit, is controlled by the operator. By some principle, not
yet fully understood, the electric current transmits the sound-wave
just as delivered by the voice in the trumpet, and the listener at the
other end of the line, with a twin or fac-simile trumpet at his ear,
hears every word distinctly, and readily detects the modulations of the
speaker’s voice.”
Thus, in the presence of such wonderful discoveries of our age, and
the further magical possibilities lying latent and yet undiscovered
in the boundless realm of nature, and further, in view of the great
probability that Edison’s Force and Professor Graham Bell’s Telephone
may unsettle, if not utterly upset all our ideas of the imponderable
fluids, would it not be well for such persons as may be tempted
to traverse our statements, to wait and see whether they will be
corroborated or refuted by further discoveries.
Only in connection with these _discoveries_, we may, perhaps, well
remind our readers of the many hints to be found in the ancient
histories as to a certain secret in the possession of the Egyptian
priesthood, who could instantly communicate, during the celebration of
the Mysteries, from one temple to another, even though the former were
at Thebes and the latter at the other end of the country; the legends
attributing it, as a matter of course, to the “invisible tribes” of
the air, which carry messages for mortals. The author of _Pre-Adamite
Man_ quotes an instance, which being given merely on his own authority,
and he seeming uncertain whether the story comes from Macrinus or
some other writer, may be taken for what it is worth. He found
good evidence, he says, during his stay in Egypt, that “one of the
Cleopatras (?) sent news by a wire to all the cities, from Heliopolis
to Elephantine, on the Upper Nile.”[230]
It is not so long since Professor Tyndall ushered us into a new world,
peopled with airy shapes of the most ravishing beauty.
“The discovery consists,” he says, “in subjecting the vapors of
volatile liquids to the action of concentrated sunlight, or to the
concentrated beam of the electric light.” The vapors of certain
nitrites, iodides, and acids are subjected to the action of the light
in an _experimental tube_, lying horizontally, and so arranged that
the axis of the tube and that of the parallel beams issuing from the
lamp are coincident. The vapors form clouds of gorgeous tints, and
arrange themselves into the shapes of vases, of bottles and cones, in
nests of six or more; of shells, of tulips, roses, sunflowers, leaves,
and of involved scrolls. “In one case,” he tells us, “the cloud-bud
grew rapidly into a serpent’s head; a mouth was formed, and from the
cloud, a cord of cloud resembling a tongue was discharged.” Finally, to
cap the climax of marvels, “once it positively assumed the form of a
fish, with eyes, gills, and feelers. The twoness of the animal form was
displayed throughout, and no _disk, coil, or speck existed on one side
that did not exist on the other_.”
These phenomena may possibly be explained in part by the mechanical
action of a beam of light, which Mr. Crookes has recently demonstrated.
For instance, it is a supposable case, that the beams of light may have
constituted a horizontal axis, about which the disturbed molecules
of the vapors gathered into the forms of globes and spindles. But
how account for the fish, the serpent’s head, the vases, the flowers
of different varieties, the shells? This seems to offer a dilemma to
science as baffling as the meteor-cat of Babinet. We do not learn
that Tyndall ventured as absurd an explanation of his extraordinary
phenomena as that of the Frenchman about his.
Those who have not given attention to the subject may be surprised to
find how much was known in former days of that all-pervading, subtile
principle which has recently been baptized THE UNIVERSAL ETHER.
Before proceeding, we desire once more to enunciate in two categorical
propositions, what was hinted at before. These propositions were
demonstrated laws with the ancient theurgists.
I. The so-called miracles, to begin with Moses and end with Cagliostro,
when genuine, were as de Gasparin very justly insinuates in his
work on the phenomena, “perfectly in accordance with natural law;”
hence—no miracles. Electricity and magnetism were unquestionably
used in the production of some of the prodigies; but now, the same
as then, they are put in requisition by every sensitive, who is made
to use _unconsciously_ these powers by the peculiar nature of his
or her organization, which serves as a conductor for some of these
imponderable fluids, as yet so imperfectly known to science. This force
is the prolific parent of numberless attributes and properties, many,
or rather, most of which, are as yet unknown to modern physics.
II. The phenomena of natural magic to be witnessed in Siam, India,
Egypt, and other Oriental countries, bear no relationship whatever to
sleight of hand; the one being an absolute physical effect, due to the
action of occult natural forces, the other, a mere deceptive result
obtained by dexterous manipulations supplemented with confederacy.[231]
The thaumaturgists of all periods, schools, and countries, produced
their wonders, because they were perfectly familiar with the
imponderable—in their effects—but otherwise perfectly tangible waves
of the astral light. They controlled the currents by guiding them with
their will-power. The wonders were both of physical and psychological
character; the former embracing effects produced upon material objects,
the latter the mental phenomena of Mesmer and his successors. This
class has been represented in our time by two illustrious men, Du Potet
and Regazzoni, whose wonderful powers were well attested in France and
other countries. Mesmerism is the most important branch of magic; and
its phenomena are the effects of the universal agent which underlies
all magic and has produced at all ages the so-called miracles.
The ancients called it _Chaos_; Plato and the Pythagoreans named
it _the Soul of the World_. According to the Hindus, the Deity in
the shape of Æther pervades all things. It is the invisible, but,
as we have said before, too tangible Fluid. Among other names this
universal Proteus—or “the nebulous Almighty,” as de Mirville calls
it in derision—was termed by the theurgists “the living fire,”[232]
the “Spirit of Light,” and _Magnes_. This last appellation indicates
its magnetic properties and shows its magical nature. For, as truly
expressed by one of its enemies—μάγος and μάγνης are two branches
growing from the same trunk, and shooting forth the same resultants.
Magnetism is a word for the derivation of which we have to look to an
incredibly early epoch. The stone called _magnet_ is believed by many
to owe its name to Magnesia, a city or district in Thessaly, where
these stones were found in quantity. We believe, however, the opinion
of the Hermetists to be the correct one. The word _Magh_, _magus_,
is derived from the Sanskrit _Mahaji_, the _great_ or _wise_ (the
anointed by the divine wisdom). “Eumolpus is the _mythic_ founder
of the Eumolpidæ (priests); the priests traced their own wisdom to
the Divine Intelligence.”[233] The various cosmogonies show that the
Archæal Universal Soul was held by every nation as the “mind” of the
Demiurgic Creator, the _Sophia_ of the Gnostics, or _the Holy Ghost as
a female principle_. As the Magi derived their name from it, so the
Magnesian stone or Magnet was called in their honor, for they were
the first to discover its wonderful properties. Their temples dotted
the country in all directions, and among these were some temples of
Hercules,[234]—hence the stone, when it once became known that the
priests used it for their curative and magical purposes, received
the name of the Magnesian or Heraclean stone. Socrates, speaking of
it, remarks: “Euripides calls it the Magnesian stone, but the common
people, the Heraclean.[235]” It was the country and stone which were
called after the Magi, not the Magi after one or the other. Pliny
informs us that the wedding-ring among the Romans was magnetized by the
priests before the ceremony. The old Pagan historians are careful to
keep silent on certain Mysteries of the “wise” (Magi) and Pausanias was
warned in a dream, he says, not to unveil the holy rites of the temple
of Demeter and Persephoneia at Athens.[236]
Modern science, after having ineffectually denied _animal magnetism_,
has found herself forced to accept it as a fact. It is now a recognized
property of human and animal organization; as to its psychological,
occult influence, the Academies battle with it, in our century, more
ferociously than ever. It is the more to be regretted and even wondered
at, as the representatives of “exact science” are unable to either
explain or even offer us anything like a reasonable hypothesis for the
undeniable mysterious potency contained in a simple magnet. We begin to
have daily proofs that these potencies underlie the theurgic mysteries,
and therefore might perhaps explain the occult faculties possessed by
ancient and modern thaumaturgists as well as a good many of their most
astounding achievements. Such were the gifts transmitted by Jesus to
some of his disciples. At the moment of his miraculous cures, the
Nazarene felt a _power_ issuing from him. Socrates, in his dialogue
with Theages,[237] telling him of his familiar god (demon), and his
power of either imparting his (Socrates’) wisdom to his disciples or
preventing it from benefiting those he associates with, brings the
following instance in corroboration of his words: “I will tell you,
Socrates,” says Aristides, “a thing incredible, indeed, by the gods,
but true. I made a proficiency when I associated with you, even if
I was only in the same house, though not in the same room; but more
so, when I _was in the same room_ ... and much more when I _looked at
you_.... But I made by far the greatest proficiency when I sat near you
and _touched you_.”
This is the modern magnetism and mesmerism of Du Potet and other
masters, who, when they have subjected a person to their _fluidic_
influence, can impart to them all their thoughts even at a distance,
and with an irresistible power force their subject to obey their
_mental_ orders. But how far better was this psychic force known
to the ancient philosophers! We can glean some information on that
subject from the earliest sources. Pythagoras taught his disciples
that God is the universal _mind_ diffused through all things, and
that this mind by the sole virtue of its universal sameness could be
communicated from one object to another and be made to create all
things by the sole will-power of man. With the ancient Greeks, _Kurios_
was the god-Mind (_Nous_). “Now Koros (Kurios) signifies the pure
and unmixed nature of intellect—wisdom,” says Plato.[238] Kurios is
Mercury, the Divine Wisdom, and “Mercury is the Sol” (Sun),[239] from
whom Thaut—Hermes—received this divine wisdom, which, in his turn,
he imparted to the world in his books. Hercules is also the Sun—the
celestial storehouse of the universal magnetism;[240] or rather
Hercules is the magnetic light which, when having made its way through
the “opened eye of heaven,” enters into the regions of our planet and
thus becomes the Creator. Hercules passes through the twelve labors,
the valiant Titan! He is called “Father of All” and “self-born”
“(_autophues_).”[241] Hercules, the Sun, is killed by the Devil,
Typhon,[242] and so is Osiris, who is the father and brother of Horus,
and at the same time is identical with him; and we must not forget
that the magnet was called the “bone of Horus,” and iron the “bone of
Typhon.” He is called “Hercules _Invictus_,” only when he descends to
Hades (the subterranean garden), and plucking the “golden apples” from
the “tree of life,” slays the dragon.[243] The rough Titanic power, the
“lining” of every sun-god, opposes its force of blind matter to the
divine magnetic spirit, which tries to harmonize everything in nature.
All the sun-gods, with their symbol, the visible sun, are the
creators of _physical_ nature only. The _spiritual_ is the work of
the Highest God—the Concealed, the Central, Spiritual SUN, and of his
Demiurge—the Divine Mind of Plato, and the Divine Wisdom of Hermes
Trismegistus[244]—the wisdom effused from Oulom or Kronos.
“After the distribution of pure Fire, in the Samothracian Mysteries,
a new life began.”[245] This was the “new birth,” that is alluded to
by Jesus, in his nocturnal conversation with Nicodemus. “Initiated
into the most blessed of all Mysteries, being ourselves pure ... we
become just and holy with wisdom.”[246] “He _breathed_ on them and
saith unto them, ‘Take the Holy Pneuma.’”[247] And this simple act of
will-power was sufficient to impart vaticination in its nobler and most
perfect form if both the initiator and the initiated were worthy of
it. To deride this gift, even in its present aspect, “as the corrupt
offspring and lingering remains of an ignorant age of superstition,
and hastily to condemn it as unworthy of sober investigation, would
be as unphilosophical as it is wrong,” remarks the Rev. J. B. Gross.
“To remove the veil which hides our vision from the future, has been
attempted—in all ages of the world; and therefore the propensity to pry
into the lap of time, contemplated as one of the faculties of human
mind, comes recommended to us under the sanction of God.... Zuinglius,
the Swiss reformer, attested the comprehensiveness of his faith in the
providence of the Supreme Being, in the cosmopolitan doctrine that the
Holy Ghost was not entirely excluded from the more worthy portion of
the heathen world. Admitting its truth, we cannot easily conceive a
valid reason why a heathen, thus favored, should not be capable of true
prophecy.”[248]
Now, what is this mystic, primordial substance? In the book of
_Genesis_, at the beginning of the first chapter, it is termed the
“face of the waters,” said to have been incubated by the “Spirit of
God.” Job mentions, in chap. xxvi., 5, that “dead things are formed
from under the waters, and inhabitants thereof.” In the original text,
instead of “dead things,” it is written dead _Rephaim_ (giants, or
mighty primitive men), from whom “Evolution” may one day trace our
present race. In the Egyptian mythology, Kneph the Eternal _unrevealed_
God is represented by a snake-emblem of eternity encircling a
water-urn, with his head hovering over the waters, which it incubates
with his breath. In this case the serpent is the Agathodaimon, the
good spirit; in its opposite aspect it is the Kakothodaimon—the bad
one. In the Scandinavian _Eddas_, the honey-dew—the food of the gods
and of the creative, busy Yggdrasill—bees—falls during the hours of
night, when the atmosphere is impregnated with humidity; and in the
Northern mythologies, as the passive principle of creation, it typifies
the creation of the universe _out of water_; this dew is the astral
light in one of its combinations and possesses creative as well as
destructive properties. In the Chaldean legend of Berosus, Oännes or
Dagon, the man-fish, instructing the people, shows the infant world
created out of _water_ and all beings originating from this _prima
materia_. Moses teaches that only earth and _water_ can bring a living
soul; and we read in the Scriptures that herbs could not grow until
the Eternal caused it to _rain_ upon earth. In the Mexican _Popol-Vuh_
man is created out of _mud_ or clay (_terre glaise_), taken from under
the water. Brahma creates Lomus, the great Muni (or first man), seated
on his lotus, only after having called into being, _spirits_, who
thus enjoyed among mortals a priority of existence, and he creates
him out of water, air, and earth. Alchemists claim that primordial
or pre-Adamic earth when reduced to its first substance is in its
_second_ stage of transformation like clear-water, the first being the
_alkahest_[249] proper. This primordial substance is said to contain
within itself the essence of all that goes to make up man; it has not
only all the elements of his physical being, but even the “breath of
life” itself in a latent state, ready to be awakened. This it derives
from the “incubation” of the Spirit of God upon the face of the
waters—chaos; in fact, this substance is chaos itself. From this it was
that Paracelsus claimed to be able to make his “homunculi;” and this
is why Thales, the great natural philosopher, maintained that _water_
was the principle of all things in nature.
What is the primordial Chaos but Æther? The _modern_ Ether; not such
as is recognized by our scientists, but such as it _was_ known to the
ancient philosophers, long before the time of Moses; Ether, with all
its mysterious and occult properties, containing in itself the germs
of universal creation; Ether, the celestial virgin, the spiritual
mother of every existing form and being, from whose bosom as soon as
“incubated” by the Divine Spirit, are called into existence Matter
and Life, Force and Action. Electricity, magnetism, heat, light, and
chemical action are so little understood even now that fresh facts
are constantly widening the range of our knowledge. Who knows where
ends the power of this protean giant—Ether; or whence its mysterious
origin?—Who, we mean, that denies the spirit that works in it and
evolves out of it all visible forms?
It is an easy task to show that the cosmogonical legends all over
the world are based on a knowledge by the ancients of those sciences
which have allied themselves in our days to support the doctrine of
evolution; and that further research may demonstrate that they were
far better acquainted with the fact of evolution itself, embracing
both its physical and spiritual aspects, than we are now. With the
old philosophers, evolution was a universal theorem, a doctrine
embracing the _whole_, and an established principle; while our modern
evolutionists are enabled to present us merely with speculative
theoretics; with _particular_, if not wholly _negative_ theorems. It is
idle for the representatives of our modern wisdom to close the debate
and pretend that the question is settled, merely because the obscure
phraseology of the Mosaic account clashes with the definite exegesis of
“exact science.”
One fact at least is proved: there is not a cosmogonical fragment, to
whatever nation it may belong, but proves by this universal allegory
of water and the spirit brooding over it, that no more than our modern
physicists did any of them hold the universe to have sprung into
existence out of nothing; for all their legends begin with that period
when nascent vapors and Cimmerian darkness lay brooding over a fluid
mass ready to start on its journey of activity at the first flutter
of the breath of Him, who is the Unrevealed One. Him they felt, if
they saw Him not. Their spiritual intuitions were not so darkened by
the subtile sophistry of the forecoming ages as ours are now. If they
talked less of the Silurian age slowly developing into the Mammalian,
and if the Cenozoic time was only recorded by various allegories of the
primitive man—the Adam of _our_ race—it is but a negative proof after
all that their “wise men” and leaders did not know of these successive
periods as well as we do now. In the days of Democritus and Aristotle,
the cycle had already begun to enter on its downward path of progress.
And if these two philosophers could discuss so well the atomic theory
and trace the atom to its material or physical _point_, their ancestors
may have gone further still and followed its genesis far beyond that
limit where Mr. Tyndall and others seem rooted to the spot, not daring
to cross the line of the “Incomprehensible.” The _lost arts_ are a
sufficient proof that if even their achievements in physiography are
now doubted, because of the unsatisfactory writings of their physicists
and naturalists,—on the other hand their practical knowledge in
phytochemistry and mineralogy far exceeded our own. Furthermore, they
might have been perfectly acquainted with the physical history of our
globe without publishing their knowledge to the ignorant masses in
those ages of religious Mysteries.
[Illustration: Possibly a _fac-simile_ of some amulets ]
Therefore, it is not only from the Mosaic books that we mean to adduce
proof for our further arguments. The ancient Jews got all their
knowledge—religious as well as profane—from the nations with which
we see them mixed up from the earliest periods. Even the oldest of
all sciences, their kabalistic “secret doctrine,” may be traced in
each detail to its primeval source, Upper India, or Turkestan, far
before the time of a distinct separation between the Aryan and Semitic
nations. The King Solomon so celebrated by posterity, as Josephus the
historian says,[250] for his magical skill, got his secret learning
from India through Hiram, the king of Ophir, and perhaps Sheba. His
ring, commonly known as “Solomon’s seal,” so celebrated for the potency
of its sway over the various kinds of genii and demons, in all the
popular legends, is equally of Hindu origin. Writing on the pretentious
and abominable skill of the “devil-worshippers” of Travancore, the Rev.
Samuel Mateer, of the London Missionary Society, claims at the same
time to be in possession of a very old manuscript volume of magical
incantations and spells in the Malayâlim language, giving directions
for effecting a great variety of purposes. Of course he adds, that
“many of these are _fearful_ in their malignity and obscenity,”
and gives in his work the _fac-simile_ of some amulets bearing the
magical figures and designs on them. We find among them one with
the following legend: “To remove trembling arising from demoniacal
possession—write this figure on a plant that has milky juice, and drive
a nail through it; the trembling will cease.”[251] The figure is the
identical Solomon’s _seal_, or double triangle of the Kabalists. Did
the Hindu get it from the Jewish kabalist, or the latter from India, by
inheritance from their great king-kabalist, the wise Solomon?[252] But
we will leave this trifling dispute to continue the more interesting
question of the astral light, and its unknown properties.
Admitting, then, that this mythical agent is Ether, we will proceed to
see what and how much of it is known to science.
With respect to the various effects of the different solar rays, Robert
Hunt, F.R.S., remarks, in his _Researches on Light in its Chemical
Relations_, that:
“Those rays which give the _most_ light—the yellow and the orange
rays—will not produce change of color in the chloride of silver;” while
“those rays which have the _least_ illuminating power—the blue and
violet—produce the greatest change, and in exceedingly short time....
The yellow glasses obstruct scarcely any light; the blue glasses may
be so dark as to admit of the permeation of a very small quantity.”
And still we see that under the _blue_ ray both vegetable and animal
life manifest an inordinate development, while under the yellow ray it
is proportionately arrested. How is it possible to account for this
satisfactorily upon any other hypothesis than that both animal and
vegetable life are differently modified electrico-magnetic phenomena,
as yet unknown in their fundamental principles?
Mr. Hunt finds that the undulatory theory does not account for the
results of his experiments. Sir David Brewster, in his _Treatise on
Optics_, showing that “the colors of vegetable life arise ... from a
specific attraction which the particles of these bodies exercise over
the differently-colored rays of light,” and that “it is by the light
of the sun that the colored juices of plants are elaborated, that the
colors of bodies are changed, etc....” remarks that it is not easy
to allow “that such effects can be produced by the mere vibration of
an ethereal medium.” And he is _forced_, he says, “by this class of
facts, to reason as if light was _material_(?).” Professor Josiah P.
Cooke, of Harvard University, says that he “cannot agree ... with those
who regard the wave-theory of light as an established principle of
science.”[253] Herschel’s doctrine, that the intensity of light, in
effect of each undulation, “is inversely as the square of the distance
from the luminous body,” if correct, damages a good deal if it does not
kill the undulatory theory. That he is right, was proved repeatedly by
experiments with photometers; and, though it begins to be much doubted,
the undulatory theory is still alive.
As General Pleasanton, of Philadelphia, has undertaken to combat this
anti-Pythagorean hypothesis, and has devoted to it a whole volume, we
cannot do any better than refer the reader to his recent work on the
_Blue Ray_, etc. We leave the theory of Thomas Young, who, according to
Tyndall, “placed on an immovable basis the undulatory theory of light,”
to hold its own if it can, with the Philadelphia experimenter.
Eliphas Levi, the modern magician, describes the astral light in the
following sentence: “We have said that to acquire magical power, two
things are necessary: to disengage the will from all servitude, and to
exercise it in control.”
“The sovereign will is represented in our symbols by the woman who
crushes the serpent’s head, and by the resplendent angel who represses
the dragon, and holds him under his foot and spear; the great magical
agent, the dual current of light, the living and astral _fire_ of the
earth, has been represented in the ancient theogonies by the serpent
with the head of a bull, a ram, or a dog. It is the double serpent of
the _caduceus_, it is the Old Serpent of the _Genesis_, but it is also
the _brazen serpent of Moses_ entwined around the _tau_, that is to
say, the generative _lingha_. It is also the goat of the witch-sabbath,
and the Baphomet of the Templars; it is the _Hylé_ of the Gnostics; it
is the double-tail of serpent which forms the legs of the solar cock of
the Abraxas; finally, it is the Devil of M. Eudes de Mirville. But in
very fact it is the blind force which souls have to conquer to liberate
themselves from the bonds of the earth; for if their will does not
free “them from this _fatal attraction_, they will be absorbed in the
current by the force which has produced them, and _will return to the
central and eternal fire_.”
This last kabalistic figure of speech, notwithstanding its strange
phraseology, is precisely the one used by Jesus; and in his mind it
could have had no other significance than the one attributed to it
by the Gnostics and the Kabalists. Later the Christian theologians
interpreted it differently, and with them it became the doctrine of
Hell. Literally, though, it simply means what it says—the astral light,
or the generator and destroyer of all forms.
“All the magical operations,” continues Levi, “consist in freeing one’s
self from the coils of the Ancient Serpent; then to place the foot on
its head, and lead it according to the operator’s will. ‘I will give
unto thee,’ says the Serpent, in the Gospel myth, ‘all the kingdoms
of the earth, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’ The initiate
should reply to him, ‘I will not fall down, but thou shalt crouch at
my feet; thou wilt give me nothing, but I will make use of thee and
take whatever I wish. For _I am thy Lord and Master_!’ This is the real
meaning of the ambiguous response made by Jesus to the tempter....
Thus, the Devil is not an Entity. It is an errant force, as the name
signifies. An _odic or magnetic current_ formed by a chain (a circle)
of pernicious wills must create this evil spirit which the Gospel
calls _legion_, and which forces into the sea a herd of swine—another
evangelical allegory showing how base natures can be driven headlong by
the blind forces set in motion by error and sin.”[254]
In his extensive work on the mystical manifestations of human nature,
the German naturalist and philosopher, Maximilian Perty, has devoted
a whole chapter to the _Modern forms of Magic_. “The manifestations
of magical life,” he says in his Preface, “partially repose on quite
another order of things than the nature in which we are acquainted with
time, space, and causality; these manifestations can be experimented
with but little; they cannot be called out at our bidding, but may be
observed and carefully followed whenever they occur in our presence;
we can only group them by analogy under certain divisions, and deduce
from them general principles and laws.” Thus, for Professor Perty,
who evidently belongs to the school of Schopenhauer, the possibility
and _naturalness_ of the phenomena which took place in the presence
of Kavindasami, the fakir, and are described by Louis Jacolliot, the
Orientalist, are fully demonstrated on that principle. The fakir was a
man who, through the entire subjugation of the matter of his corporeal
system has attained to that state of purification at which the spirit
becomes nearly freed from its prison,[255] and can produce wonders.
His _will_, nay, a simple desire of his has become creative force,
and he can command the elements and powers of nature. His body is no
more an impediment to him; hence he can converse “spirit to spirit,
breath to breath.” Under his extended palms, a seed, unknown to him
(for Jacolliot has chosen it at random among a variety of seeds, from a
bag, and planted it himself, after _marking_ it, in a flower pot), will
germinate instantly, and push its way through the soil. Developing in
less than two hours’ time to a size and height which, perhaps, under
ordinary circumstances, would require several days or weeks, it grows
miraculously under the very eyes of the perplexed experimenter, and
mockingly upsets every accepted formula in Botany. Is this a miracle?
By no means; it may be one, perhaps, if we take Webster’s definition,
that a miracle is “every event contrary to the _established_
constitution and course of things—a deviation from the _known_ laws of
nature.” But are our naturalists prepared to support the claim that
what they have once _established_ on observation is infallible? Or that
_every_ law of nature is known to them? In this instance, the “miracle”
is but a little _more_ prominent than the now well-known experiments
of General Pleasanton, of Philadelphia. While the vegetation and
fruitage of his vines were stimulated to an incredible activity by the
artificial violet light, the magnetic fluid emanating from the hands
of the fakir effected still more intense and rapid changes in the
vital function of the Indian plants. It attracted and concentrated the
_akasa_, or life-principle, on the germ.[256] His magnetism, obeying
his will, drew up the _akasa_ in a concentrated current through the
plant towards his hands, and by keeping up an unintermitted flow for
the requisite space of time, the life-principle of the plant built
up cell after cell, layer after layer, with preternatural activity,
until the work was done. The life-principle is but a blind force
obeying a controlling influence. In the ordinary course of nature the
plant-protoplasm would have concentrated and directed it at a certain
established rate. This rate would have been controlled by the prevalent
atmospheric conditions; its growth being rapid or slow, and, in stalk
or head, in proportion to the amount of light, heat, and moisture
of the season. But the fakir, coming to the help of nature with his
powerful will and spirit purified from the contact with matter,[257]
condenses, so to speak, the essence of plant-life into its germ,
and forces it to maturity ahead of its time. This blind force being
totally submissive to his will, obeys it with servility. If he chose
to _imagine_ the plant as a monster, it would as surely become such,
as ordinarily it would grow in its natural shape; for the concrete
image—slave to the subjective model outlined in the imagination of the
fakir—is forced to follow the original in its least detail, as the hand
and brush of the painter follow the image which they copy from his
mind. The will of the fakir-conjurer forms an invisible but yet, to it,
perfectly objective matrix, in which the vegetable matter is caused to
deposit itself and assume the fixed shape. The will creates; for the
will in motion is _force_, and force produces _matter_.
If some persons object to the explanation on the ground that the fakir
could by no means create the model in his imagination, since he was
kept ignorant by Jacolliot of the kind of seed he had selected for the
experiment; to these we will answer that the spirit of man is like that
of his Creator—omniscient in its essence. While in his natural state
the fakir did _not_, and _could not_ know whether it was a melon-seed,
or seed of any other plant; once entranced, _i.e._, bodily dead to all
outward appearance—the spirit, for which there exist neither distance,
material obstacle, nor space of time, experienced no difficulty in
perceiving the melon-seed, whether as it lay deeply buried in the
mud of the flower-pot, or reflected in the faithful picture-gallery
of Jacolliot’s brain. Our visions, portents, and other psychological
phenomena, all of which exist in nature, are corroborative of the above
fact.
And now, perhaps, we might as well meet at once another impending
objection. Indian _jugglers_, they will tell us, do the same, and
as well as the fakir, if we can believe newspapers and travellers’
narratives. Undoubtedly so; and moreover these strolling jugglers are
neither pure in their modes of living nor considered holy by any one;
neither by foreigners nor their own people. _They are generally_ FEARED
_and despised by the natives_, for they are _sorcerers_; men practising
the _black art_. While such a holy man as Kavindasami requires but the
help of his own divine soul, closely united with the astral spirit, and
the help of a few familiar _pitris_—pure, ethereal beings, who rally
around their elect brother in flesh—the sorcerer can summon to his
help but that class of spirits which we know as the elementals. Like
attracts like; and greed for money, impure purposes, and selfish views,
cannot attract any other spirits than those that the Hebrew kabalists
know as the _klippoth_, dwellers of _Asiah_, the fourth world, and the
Eastern magicians as the _afrits_, or elementary spirits of error, or
the _devs_.
This is how an English paper describes the astounding _trick_ of
plant-growth, as performed by Indian _jugglers_:
“An empty flower-pot was now placed upon the floor by the juggler, who
requested that his comrades might be allowed to bring up some garden
mould from the little plot of ground below. Permission being accorded,
the man went, and in two minutes returned with a small quantity of
fresh earth tied up in a corner of his chudder, which was deposited
in the flower-pot and lightly pressed down. Taking from his basket a
dry mango-stone, and handing it round to the company that they might
examine it, and satisfy themselves that it was really what it seemed
to be, the juggler scooped out a little earth from the centre of the
flower-pot and placed the stone in the cavity. He then turned the earth
lightly over it, and, having poured a little water over the surface,
shut the flower-pot out of view by means of a sheet thrown over a
small triangle. And now, amid a full chorus of voices and rat-tat-tat
accompaniment of the tabor, the stone germinated; presently a section
of the cloth was drawn aside, and gave to view the tender shoot,
characterized by two long leaves of a blackish-brown color. The cloth
was readjusted, and the incantation resumed. Not long was it, however,
before the cloth was a second time drawn aside, and it was then seen
that the two first leaves had given place to several green ones, and
that the plant now stood nine or ten inches high. A third time, and the
foliage was much thicker, the sapling being about thirteen to fourteen
inches in height. A fourth time, and the little miniature tree, now
about eighteen inches in height, had ten or twelve mangoes about the
size of walnuts hanging about its branches. Finally, after the lapse of
three of four minutes, the cloth was altogether removed, and the fruit,
having the perfection of size, though not of maturity, was plucked
and handed to the spectators, and, on being tasted, was found to be
approaching ripeness, being sweetly acid.”
We may add to this, that we have witnessed the same experiment in
India and Thibet, and that more than once we provided the flower-pot
ourselves, by emptying an old tin box of some Liebig extracts. We
filled it with earth with our own hands, and planted in it a small root
handed to us by the conjurer, and until the experiment was ended never
once removed our eyes from the pot, which was placed _in our own room_.
The result was invariably the same as above described. Does the reader
imagine that any prestidigitator could produce the same manifestation
under the same conditions?
The learned Orioli, Corresponding Member of the Institute of France,
gives a number of instances which show the marvellous effects produced
by the will-power acting upon the invisible Proteus of the mesmerists.
“I have seen,” says he, “certain persons, who simply by pronouncing
certain words, arrest wild bulls and horses at headlong speed, and
suspend in its flight the arrow which cleaves the air.” Thomas
Bartholini affirms the same.
Says Du Potet: “When I trace upon the floor with chalk or charcoal this
figure ... a _fire_, a _light_ fixes itself on it. Soon it attracts to
itself the person who approaches it; it detains and fascinates him ...
and it is useless for him to try to cross the line. A _magic_ power
compels him to stand still. At the end of a few moments he yields,
uttering sobs.... _The cause is not in me_, it is in this entirely
kabalistic sign; in vain would you employ violence.”[258]
In a series of remarkable experiments made by Regazzoni in the
presence of certain well-known French physicians, at Paris, on the 18th
of May, 1856, they assembled on one night together, and Regazzoni,
with his finger, traced an imaginary kabalistic line upon the floor,
over which he made a few rapid passes. It was agreed that the mesmeric
subjects, selected by the investigators and the committee for the
experiments, and all strangers to him, should be brought blindfold into
the room, and caused to walk toward the line, without a word being
spoken to indicate what was expected of them. The subjects moved along
unsuspiciously till they came to the invisible barrier, when, as it
is described, “their feet, _as if they had been suddenly seized and
riveted_, adhere to the ground, while their bodies, carried forward by
the rapid impulse of the motion, fall and strike the floor. The sudden
rigidity of their limbs was like that of a frozen corpse, and their
heels were rooted with mathematical precision upon the fatal line!”[259]
In another experiment it was agreed that upon one of the physicians
giving a certain signal by a glance of the eye, the blindfolded girl
should be made to fall on the ground, as if struck by lightning, by
the magnetic fluid emitted by Regazzoni’s will. She was placed at a
distance from the magnetizer; the signal was given, and instantly
the subject was felled to the earth, without a word being spoken or
a gesture made. Involuntarily one of the spectators stretched out
his hand as if to catch her; but Regazzoni, in a voice of thunder,
exclaimed, “Do not touch her! Let her fall; a magnetized subject is
never hurt by falling.” Des Mousseaux, who tells the story, says that
“marble is not more rigid than was her body; her head did not touch the
ground; one of her arms remained stretched in the air; one of her legs
was raised and the other horizontal. She remained in this unnatural
posture an indefinite time. Less rigid is a statue of bronze.”[260]
All the effects witnessed in the experiments of public lecturers upon
mesmerism, were produced by Regazzoni in perfection, and without one
spoken word to indicate what the subject was to do. He even by his
silent will produced the most surprising effects upon the physical
systems of persons totally unknown to him. Directions whispered by the
committee in Regazzoni’s ear were immediately obeyed by the subjects,
whose ears were stuffed with cotton, and whose eyes were bandaged.
Nay, in some cases it was not even necessary for them to express to
the magnetizer what they desired, for their own mental requests were
complied with with perfect fidelity.
Experiments of a similar character were made by Regazzoni in England,
at a distance of three hundred paces from the subject brought to him.
The _jettatura_, or evil eye, is nothing but the direction of this
invisible fluid, charged with malicious will and hatred, from one
person to another, and sent out with the intention of harming him. It
may equally be employed for a good or evil purpose. _In the former case
it is magic; in the latter, sorcery._
What is the WILL? Can “exact science” tell? What is the nature of that
intelligent, intangible, and powerful something which reigns supreme
over all inert matter? The great Universal Idea willed, and the cosmos
sprang into existence. I _will_, and my limbs obey. I _will_, and, my
thought traversing space, which does not exist for it, envelops the
body of another individual who is not a part of myself, penetrates
through his pores, and, superseding his own faculties, if they are
weaker, forces him to a predetermined action. It acts like the fluid
of a galvanic battery on the limbs of a corpse. The mysterious effects
of attraction and repulsion are the _unconscious_ agents of that will;
fascination, such as we see exercised by some animals, by serpents over
birds, for instance, is a _conscious_ action of it, and the result
of thought. Sealing-wax, glass, and amber, when rubbed, _i.e._, when
the latent heat which exists in every substance is awakened, attract
light bodies; they exercise unconsciously, _will_; for inorganic as
well as organic matter possesses a particle of the _divine_ essence in
itself, however infinitesimally small it may be. And how could it be
otherwise? Notwithstanding that in the progress of its evolution it may
from beginning to end have passed through millions of various forms,
it must ever retain its germ-point of that _preëxistent matter_, which
is the first manifestation and emanation of the Deity itself. What is
then this inexplicable power of attraction but an atomical portion of
that essence that scientists and kabalists equally recognize as the
“principle of life” the _akasa_? Granted that the attraction exercised
by such bodies may be blind; but as we ascend higher the scale of the
organic beings in nature, we find this principle of life developing
attributes and faculties which become more determined and marked with
every rung of the endless ladder. Man, the most perfect of organized
beings on earth, in whom matter and spirit—_i.e._, _will_—are the most
developed and powerful, is alone allowed to give a conscious impulse to
that principle which emanates from him; and only he can impart to the
magnetic fluid opposite and various impulses without limit as to the
direction. “He wills,” says Du Potet, “and _organized_ matter obeys. It
has _no poles_.”
Dr. Brierre de Boismont, in his volume on _Hallucinations_, reviews a
wonderful variety of visions, apparitions, and ecstasies, generally
termed hallucinations. “We cannot deny,” he says, “that in certain
diseases we see developed a great surexcitation of sensibility, which
lends to the senses a prodigious acuteness of perception. Thus, some
individuals will perceive at considerable distances, others will
announce the approach of persons who are really on their way, although
those present can neither hear nor see them coming.”[261]
A lucid patient, lying in his bed, announces the arrival of persons
to see whom he must possess _transmural vision_, and this faculty is
termed by Brierre de Boismont—_hallucination_. In our ignorance, we
have hitherto innocently supposed that in order to be rightly termed a
_hallucination_, a vision must be subjective. It must have an existence
only in the delirious brain of the patient. But if the latter announces
the visit of a person, miles away, and this person arrives at the very
moment predicted by the _seer_, then his vision was no more subjective,
but on the contrary perfectly _objective_, for he saw that person in
the act of coming. And how could the patient see, through solid bodies
and space, an object shut out from the reach of our mortal sight, if he
had not exercised his _spiritual_ eyes on that occasion? Coincidence?
Cabanis speaks of certain nervous disorders in which the patients
easily distinguished with the naked eye infusoria and other
microscopical beings which others could only perceive through powerful
lenses. “I have met subjects,” he says, “who saw in Cimmerian darkness
as well as in a lighted room; ...” others “who followed persons,
tracing them out like dogs, and recognizing by the smell objects
belonging to such persons or even such as had been only touched by
them, with a sagacity which was hitherto observed only in animals.”[262]
Exactly; because reason, which, as Cabanis says, develops only at the
expense and loss of natural instinct, is a Chinese wall slowly rising
on the soil of sophistry, and which finally shuts out man’s spiritual
perceptions of which the instinct is one of the most important
examples. Arrived at certain stages of physical prostration, when mind
and the reasoning faculties seem paralyzed through weakness and bodily
exhaustion, instinct—the spiritual _unity_ of the five senses—sees,
hears, feels, tastes, and smells, unimpaired by either time or space.
What do we know of the exact limits of mental action? How can a
physician take upon himself to distinguish the imaginary from the
real senses in a man who may be living a spiritual life, in a body so
exhausted of its usual vitality that it actually is unable to prevent
the soul from _oozing_ out from its prison?
The divine light through which, unimpeded by matter, the soul
perceives things past, present, and to come, as though their rays
were focused in a mirror; the death-dealing bolt projected in an
instant of fierce anger or at the climax of long-festering hate; the
blessing wafted from a grateful or benevolent heart; and the curse
hurled at an object—offender or victim—all have to pass through that
universal agent, which under one impulse is the breath of God, and
under another—the venom of the devil. It was _discovered_ (?) by Baron
Reichenbach and called OD, whether intentionally or otherwise we cannot
say, but it is singular that a name should have been chosen which is
mentioned in the most ancient books of the Kabala.
Our readers will certainly inquire what then is this invisible _all_?
How is it that our scientific methods, however perfected, have never
discovered any of the magical properties contained in it? To this we
can answer, that it is no reason because modern scientists are ignorant
of them that it should not possess all the properties with which the
ancient philosophers endowed it. Science rejects many a thing to-day
which she may find herself forced to accept to-morrow. A little less
than a century ago the Academy denied Franklin’s electricity, and, at
the present day, we can hardly find a house without a conductor on its
roof. Shooting at the barn-door, the Academy missed the barn itself.
Modern scientists, by their wilful skepticism and learned ignorance, do
this very frequently.
Emepht, the supreme, first principle, produced an egg; by brooding
over which, and permeating the substance of it with its own vivifying
essence, the germ contained within was developed; and _Phtha_, the
active creative principle proceeded from it, and began his work.
From the boundless expanse of cosmic matter, which had formed itself
under his breath, or _will_, this cosmic matter—astral light, æther,
fire-mist, principle of life—it matters not how we may call it, this
creative principle, or, as our modern philosophy terms it, law of
evolution, by setting in motion the potencies latent in it, formed
suns and stars, and satellites; controlled their emplacement by the
immutable law of harmony, and peopled them “with every form and
quality of life.” In the ancient Eastern mythologies, the cosmogonic
myth states that there was but water (the father) and the prolific
slime (the mother, _Ilus_ or _Hylè_), from which crept forth the
mundane snake-_matter_. It was the god _Phanes_, the revealed one,
the Word, or _logos_. How willingly this myth was accepted, even by
the Christians who compiled the New Testament, may be easily inferred
from the following fact: Phanes, the revealed god, is represented in
this snake-symbol as a _protogonos_, a being furnished with the heads
of a _man_, a hawk or an eagle, a bull—_taurus_, and a lion, with
wings on both sides. The heads relate to the zodiac, and typify the
four seasons of the year, for the _mundane_ serpent is the _mundane_
year, while the serpent itself is the symbol of Kneph, the hidden,
or _unrevealed_ deity—God the Father. Time is winged, therefore the
serpent is represented with wings. If we remember that each of the four
evangelists is represented as having near him one of the described
animals—grouped together in Solomon’s triangle in the pentacle of
Ezekiel, and to be found in the four cherubs or sphinxes of the sacred
arch—we will perhaps understand the secret meaning, as well as the
reason why the early Christians adopted this symbol; and how it is
that the present Roman Catholics and the Greeks of the Oriental Church
still represent these animals in the pictures of their evangelists
which sometimes accompany the four _Gospels_. We will also understand
why Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, had so insisted upon the necessity of
the _fourth_ gospel; giving as a reason that there could not be less
than four of them, as there were _four_ zones in the world, and four
principal winds coming from the four cardinal points, etc.[263]
According to one of the Egyptian myths, the phantom-form of the isle of
Chemmis (_Chemi_, ancient Egypt), which floats on the ethereal waves
of the empyrean sphere, was called into being by Horus-Apollo, the
sun-god, who caused it to evolve out of the mundane egg.
In the cosmogonical poem of _Völuspa_ (the song of the prophetess),
which contains the Scandinavian legends of the very dawn of ages,
the phantom-germ of the universe is represented as lying in the
_Ginnunga-gap_—or the cup of illusion, a boundless and void abyss.
In this world’s matrix, formerly a region of night and desolation,
_Nebelheim_ (the Mist-place) dropped a ray of cold light (æther),
which overflowed this cup and froze in it. Then the Invisible blew a
scorching wind which dissolved the frozen waters and cleared the mist.
These waters, called the streams of _Elivâgar_, distilled in vivifying
drops which, falling down, created the earth and the giant _Ymir_, who
only had “the semblance of man” (male principle). With him was created
the cow, _Audhumla_[264] (female principle), from whose udder flowed
_four_ streams of milk,[265] which diffused themselves throughout space
(the astral light in its purest emanation). The cow Audhumla produces a
_superior_ being, called _Bur_, handsome and powerful, by licking the
stones that were covered with _mineral salt_.
Now, if we take into consideration that this mineral was universally
regarded by ancient philosophers as one of the chief formative
principles in organic creation; by the alchemists as the universal
menstruum, which, they said, was to be wrought from water; and by every
one else, even as it is regarded now by science as well as in the
popular ideas, to be an indispensable ingredient for man and beast;
we may readily comprehend the hidden wisdom of this allegory of the
creation of man. Paracelsus calls salt “the centre of water, wherein
metals ought to die,” etc., and Van Helmont terms the _Alkahest_,
“_summum et felicissimum omnium salium_,” the most successful of all
salts.
In the _Gospel according to Matthew_, Jesus says: “Ye are the _salt of
the earth_: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it
be salted?” and following the parable he adds: “Ye are _the light_ of
the world” (v. 14). This is more than an allegory; these words point
to a direct and unequivocal meaning in relation to the spiritual and
physical organisms of man in his dual nature, and show, moreover, a
knowledge of the “secret doctrine,” the direct traces of which we find
equally in the oldest ancient and current popular traditions, in both
the Old and New Testaments, and in the writings of the ancient and
mediæval mystics and philosophers.
But to return to our _Edda_-legend. Ymir, the giant, falls asleep, and
sweats profusely. This perspiration causes the pit of his left arm to
generate out of that place a man and a woman, while his foot produces
a son for them. Thus, while the mythic “cow” gives being to a race
of superior spiritual men, the giant Ymir begets a race of evil and
depraved men, the Hrimthursen, or frost-giants. Comparing notes with
the Hindu _Vedas_, we find it then, with slight modifications, the
same cosmogonic legend in substance and details. Brahma, as soon as
Bhagaveda, the Supreme God, endows him with creative powers, produces
animated beings, wholly spiritual at first. The Dejotas, inhabitants
of the Surg’s (the celestial) region, are unfit to live on earth,
therefore Brahma creates the Daints (giants, who become the dwellers of
the Patals, the lower regions of space), who are also unfit to inhabit
Mirtlok (the earth). To palliate the evil, the creative power evolves
_from his mouth_ the first Brahman, who thus becomes the progenitor
of our race; from his right arm Brahma creates Raettris, the warrior,
and from his left Shaterany, the wife of Raettris. Then their son
Bais springs from the right foot of the creator, and his wife Basany
from the left. While in the Scandinavian legend Bur (the son of the
cow Audhumla), a _superior_ being, marries Besla, a daughter of the
depraved race of giants, in the Hindu tradition the first Brahman
marries Daintary, also a daughter of the race of the giants; and in
_Genesis_ we see the sons of God taking for wives the daughters of men,
and likewise producing mighty men of old; the whole establishing an
unquestionable identity of origin between the Christian inspired Book,
and the heathen “fables” of Scandinavia and Hindustan. The traditions
of nearly every other nation, if examined, will yield a like result.
What modern cosmogonist could compress within so simple a symbol as the
Egyptian serpent in a circle such a world of meaning? Here we have, in
this creature, the whole philosophy of the universe: matter vivified by
spirit, and the two conjointly evolving out of chaos (Force) everything
that was to be. To signify that the elements are fast bound in this
cosmic matter, which the serpent symbolizes, the Egyptians tied its
tail _into a knot_.
There is one more important emblem connected with the sloughing of
the serpent’s skin, which, so far as we are aware, has never been
heretofore noticed by our symbolists. As the reptile upon casting
his coat becomes freed from a casing of gross matter, which cramped
a body grown too large for it, and resumes its existence with
renewed activity, so _man, by casting off the gross material body,
enters upon the next stage of his existence with enlarged powers and
quickened vitality_. Inversely, the Chaldean Kabalists tell us that
primeval man, who, contrary to the Darwinian theory was purer, wiser,
and far more spiritual, as shown by the myths of the Scandinavian
Bur, the Hindu Dejotas, and the Mosaic “sons of God,“in short, of a
far higher nature than the man of the present Adamic race, became
_despiritualized_ or tainted with matter, and then, for the first
time, was given the _fleshly body_, which is typified in _Genesis_ in
that profoundly-significant verse: “Unto Adam also and to his wife did
the Lord God _make coats of skin_, and clothed them.”[266] Unless the
commentators would make of the First Cause a _celestial tailor_, what
else can the apparently absurd words mean, but that the spiritual man
had reached, through the progress of involution, to that point where
matter, predominating over and conquering spirit, had transformed him
into the physical man, or the second Adam, of the second chapter of
_Genesis_?
This kabalistical doctrine is much more elaborated in the _Book of
Jasher_.[267] In chapter vii., these garments of skin are taken by Noah
into the ark, he having obtained them by inheritance from Methuselah
and Enoch, who had them from Adam and his wife. Ham steals them from
his father Noah; gives them “in secret” to Cush, who conceals them from
his sons and brothers, and passes them to Nimrod.
While some Kabalists, and even archæologists say that “Adam, Enoch,
and Noah might, in outward appearance, be different men, but they were
really the self-same divine person.”[268] Others explain that between
Adam and Noah there intervened several cycles. That is to say, that
every one of the antediluvian patriarchs stood as the representative of
a race which had its place in a succession of cycles; and each of which
races was less spiritual than its predecessor. Thus Noah, though a good
man, could not have borne comparison with his ancestor, Enoch, who
“walked with God and did not die.” Hence the allegorical interpretation
which makes Noah have this coat of skin by inheritance from the second
Adam and Enoch, but not wear it himself, for if otherwise, Ham could
not have stolen it. But Noah and his children bridged the flood; and
while the former belonged to the old and still spiritual antediluvian
generation, insomuch as he was selected from all mankind for his
purity, his children were _post_-diluvian. The coat of skin worn by
Cush “in secret,“_i. e._, when his spiritual nature began to be tainted
by the material—is placed on Nimrod, the most powerful and strongest
of physical men on this side of the flood—the last remnant of the
antediluvian giants.[269]
In the Scandinavian legend, Ymir, the giant, is slain by the sons of
Bur, and the streams of blood flowing from his wounds were so copious
that the flood drowned the whole race of ice and frost giants, and
Bergelmir alone of that race was saved, with his wife, by taking refuge
in a bark; which fact permitted him to transmit a new branch of giants
from the old stock. But all the sons of Bur remained untouched by the
flood.[270]
When the symbolism of this diluvian legend is unravelled, one perceives
at once the real meaning of the allegory. The giant Ymir typifies
the primitive rude organic _matter_, the blind cosmical forces, in
their chaotic state, before they received the intelligent impulse of
the Divine Spirit which set them into a regular motion dependent on
immovable laws. The progeny of Bur are the “sons of God,” or the minor
gods mentioned by Plato in the _Timæus_, and who were intrusted, as
he expresses it, with the creation of men; for we see them taking the
mangled remains of Ymir to the Ginnunga-gap, the chaotic abyss, and
employing them for the creation of our world. His blood goes to form
oceans and rivers; his bones, the mountains; his teeth, the rocks and
cliffs; his hair, the trees, etc.; while his skull forms the heavenly
vault, supported by four pillars representing the four cardinal points.
From the eyebrows of Ymir was created the future abode of man—Midgard.
This abode (the earth), says the _Edda_, in order to be correctly
described in all its minute particulars, must be conceived as _round
as a ring_, or as a disk, floating in the midst of the Celestial
Ocean (Ether). It is encircled by Yörmungand, the gigantic Midgard
or Earth Serpent, holding its tail in its mouth. This is the mundane
snake, matter and spirit, combined product and emanation of Ymir, the
gross rudimental matter, and of the spirit of the “sons of God,” who
fashioned and created all forms. This emanation is the astral light of
the Kabalists, and the as yet problematical, and hardly known, æther,
or the “hypothetical agent of great elasticity” of our physicists.
How sure the ancients were of this doctrine of man’s trinitarian nature
may be inferred from the same Scandinavian legend of the creation
of mankind. According to the _Völuspa_, Odin, Hönir, and Lodur, who
are the progenitors of our race, found in one of their walks on the
ocean-beach, two sticks floating on the waves, “powerless and without
destiny.” Odin breathed in them the breath of life; Hönir endowed
them with soul and motion; and Lodur with beauty, speech, sight,
and hearing. The man they called _Askr_—the ash,[271] and the woman
_Embla_—the alder. These first men are placed in Midgard (mid-garden,
or Eden) and thus inherit, from their creators, matter or inorganic
life; mind, or soul; and pure spirit; the first corresponding to that
part of their organism which sprung from the remains of Ymir, the
giant-matter, the second from the _Æsir_, or gods, the descendants
of Bur, and the third from the _Vanr_, or the representative of pure
spirit.
Another version of the _Edda_ makes our visible universe spring from
beneath the luxuriant branches of the mundane tree—the Yggdrasill, the
tree with the _three_ roots. Under the first root runs the fountain
of life, Urdar; under the second is the famous well of Mimer, in
which lie deeply buried Wit and Wisdom. Odin, the Alfadir, asks for
a draught of this water; he gets it, but finds himself obliged to
pledge one of his eyes for it; the eye being in this case the symbol
of the Deity revealing itself in the wisdom of its own creation; for
Odin leaves it at the bottom of the deep well. The care of the mundane
tree is intrusted to three maidens (the Norns or Parcæ), Urdhr,
Verdandi, and Skuld—or the Present, the Past, and the Future. Every
morning, while fixing the term of human life, they draw water from the
Urdar-fountain, and sprinkle with it the roots of the mundane tree,
that it may live. The exhalations of the ash, Yggdrasill, condense,
and falling down upon our earth call into existence and change of
form every portion of the inanimate matter. This tree is the symbol
of the _universal_ Life, organic as well as inorganic; its emanations
represent the spirit which vivifies every form of creation; and of
its three roots, one extends to heaven, the second to the dwelling of
the magicians—giants, inhabitants of the _lofty mountains_—and at the
third, under which is the spring Hvergelmir, gnaws the monster Nidhögg,
who constantly leads mankind into evil. The Thibetans have also their
mundane tree, and the legend is of an untold antiquity. With them
it is called _Zampun_. The first of its three roots also extends to
heaven, to the top of the highest mountains; the second passes down to
the lower region; the third remains midway, and reaches the east. The
mundane tree of the Hindus is the _Aswatha_.[272] Its branches are the
components of the visible world; and its leaves the _Mantras_ of the
Vedas, symbols of the universe in its intellectual or moral character.
Who can study carefully the ancient religious and cosmogonic myths
without perceiving that this striking similitude of conceptions, in
their exoteric form and esoteric spirit, is the result of no mere
coincidence, but manifests a concurrent design? It shows that already
in those ages which are shut out from our sight by the impenetrable
mist of tradition, human religious thought developed in uniform
sympathy in every portion of the globe. Christians call this adoration
of nature in her most concealed verities—Pantheism. But if the latter,
which worships and reveals to us God in space in His only possible
objective form—that of visible nature—perpetually reminds humanity of
Him who created it, and a religion of theological dogmatism only serves
to conceal Him the more from our sight, which is the better adapted to
the needs of mankind?
Modern science insists upon the doctrine of evolution; so do human
reason and the “secret doctrine,” and the idea is corroborated by
the ancient legends and myths, and even by the Bible itself when it
is read between the lines. We see a flower slowly developing from
a bud, and the bud from its seed. But whence the latter, with all
its predetermined programme of physical transformation, and its
invisible, therefore _spiritual_ forces which gradually develop its
form, color, and odor? The word _evolution_ speaks for itself. The
germ of the present human race must have preëxisted in the parent
of this race, as the seed, in which lies hidden the flower of next
summer, was developed in the capsule of its parent-flower; the parent
may be but _slightly_ different, but it still differs from its future
progeny. The antediluvian ancestors of the present elephant and lizard
were, perhaps, the mammoth and the plesiosaurus; why should not the
progenitors of our human race have been the “giants” of the _Vedas_,
the _Völuspa_, and the Book of _Genesis_? While it is positively
absurd to believe the “transformation of species” to have taken place
according to some of the more materialistic views of the evolutionists,
it is but natural to think that each genus, beginning with the mollusks
and ending with monkey-man, has modified from its own primordial
and distinctive form. Supposing that we concede that “animals have
descended from at most only four or five progenitors;”[273] and that
even _à la rigueur_ “all the organic beings which have ever lived
on _this earth_ have descended from some one primordial form;”[274]
still no one but a stone-blind materialist, one utterly devoid of
intuitiveness, can seriously expect to see “in the distant future ...
psychology based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement
of each mental power and capacity by gradation.”[275]
Physical man, as a product of evolution, may be left in the hands
of the man of exact science. None but he can throw light upon the
_physical_ origin of the race. But, we must positively deny the
materialist the same privilege as to the question of man’s psychical
and spiritual evolution, for he and his highest faculties _cannot_ be
proved on any conclusive evidence to be “as much products of evolution
as the humblest plant or the lowest worm.”[276]
Having said so much, we will now proceed to show the
evolution-hypothesis of the old Brahmans, as embodied by them in the
allegory of the mundane tree. The Hindus represent their mythical
tree, which they call _Aswatha_, in a way which differs from that of
the Scandinavians. It is described by them as growing in a reversed
position, the branches extending downward and the roots upward; the
former typifying the external world of sense, _i.e._, the visible
cosmical universe, and the latter the invisible world of spirit,
because the roots have their _genesis_ in the heavenly regions where,
from the world’s creation, humanity has placed its invisible deity.
The creative energy having originated in the primordial point, the
religious symbols of every people are so many illustrations of this
metaphysical hypothesis expounded by Pythagoras, Plato, and other
philosophers. “These Chaldeans,” says Philo,[277] “were of opinion that
the Kosmos, among the things that exist, is a single point, either
being itself God (Theos) or that in it is God, comprehending the soul
of all the things.”
The Egyptian Pyramid also symbolically represents this idea of the
mundane tree. Its apex is the mystic link between heaven and earth, and
stands for the root, while the base represents the spreading branches,
extending to the four cardinal points of the universe of matter. It
conveys the idea that all things had their origin in spirit—evolution
having originally begun from above and proceeded downward, instead
of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian theory. In other words,
there has been a gradual materialization of forms until a fixed
ultimate of debasement is reached. This point is that at which the
doctrine of modern evolution enters into the arena of speculative
hypothesis. Arrived at this period we will find it easier to understand
Haeckel’s _Anthropogeny_, which traces the pedigree of man “from its
protoplasmic root, sodden in the mud of seas which existed before
the oldest of the fossiliferous rocks were deposited,” according to
Professor Huxley’s exposition. We may believe man evolved “by gradual
modification of a mammal of ape-like organization” still easier when we
remember that (though in a more condensed and less elegant, but still
as comprehensible, phraseology) the same theory was said by Berosus
to have been taught many thousands of years before his time by the
man-fish Oannes or Dagon, the semi-demon of Babylonia.[278] We may add,
as a fact of interest, that this ancient theory of evolution is not
only embalmed in allegory and legend, but also depicted upon the walls
of certain temples in India, and, in a fragmentary form, has been found
in those of Egypt and on the slabs of Nimroud and Nineveh, excavated by
Layard.
But what lies back of the Darwinian line of descent? So far as he is
concerned nothing but “unverifiable hypotheses.” For, as he puts it,
he views all beings “as the lineal descendants of some few beings
which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was
deposited.”[279] He does not attempt to show us who these “few beings”
were. But it answers our purpose quite as well, for in the admission of
their existence at all, resort to the ancients for corroboration and
elaboration of the idea receives the stamp of scientific approbation.
With all the changes that our globe has passed through as regards
temperature, climate, soil, and—if we may be pardoned, in view of
recent developments—its electro-magnetic condition, he would be bold
indeed who dare say that anything in present science contradicts the
ancient hypothesis of ante-Silurian man. The flint-axes first found by
Boucher de Perthes, in the valley of the Sômme, prove that men must
have existed at a period so remote as to be beyond calculation. If we
believe Büchner, man must have lived even during and before the glacial
epoch, a subdivision of the quaternary or diluvial period probably
extending very far back in it. But who can tell what the next discovery
has in store for us?
Now, if we have indisputable proof that man has existed so long as
this, there must have been wonderful modifications of his physical
system, corresponding with the changes of climate and atmosphere. Does
not this seem to show by analogy that, tracing backward, there may have
been other modifications, which fitted the most remote progenitors of
the “frost-giants” to live even contemporaneously with the Devonian
fishes or the Silurian mollusks? True, they left no flint-hatchets
behind them, nor any bones or cave-deposits; but, if the ancients are
correct, the races at that time were composed not only of giants,
or “mighty men of renown,” but also of “sons of God.” If those who
believe in the evolution of _spirit_ as firmly as the materialists
believe in that of _matter_ are charged with teaching “unverifiable
hypotheses,” how readily can they retort upon their accusers by saying
that, by _their_ own confession, their physical evolution is still
“an unverified, if not actually an unverifiable hypothesis.”[280] The
former have at least the inferential proof of legendary myth, the vast
antiquity of which is admitted by both philologists and archæologists;
while their antagonists have nothing of a similar nature, _unless they
help themselves to a portion of the ancient picture-writings, and
suppress the rest_.
It is more than fortunate that, while the works of some men of
science—who have justly won their great reputations—will flatly
contradict our hypotheses, the researches and labors of others not
less eminent seem to fully confirm our views. In the recent work of
Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, _The Geographical Distribution of Animals_, we
find the author seriously favoring the idea of “some slow process of
development” of the present species from others which have preceded
them, his idea extending back over an innumerable series of cycles.
And if animals, why not animal man, preceded still farther back by a
thoroughly “spiritual” one—a “son of God”?
And now, we may once more return to the symbolology of the olden times,
and their physico-religious myths. Before we close this work, we hope
to demonstrate more or less successfully how closely the conceptions of
the latter were allied with many of the achievements of modern science
in physics and natural philosophy. Under the emblematical devices and
peculiar phraseology of the priesthood of old lie latent hints of
sciences as yet undiscovered during the present cycle. Well acquainted
as may be a scholar with the hieratic writing and hieroglyphical
system of the Egyptians, he must first of all learn to sift their
records. He has to assure himself, compasses and rule in hand, that
the picture-writing he is examining fits, to a line, certain fixed
geometrical figures which are the hidden keys to such records, before
he ventures on an interpretation.
But there are myths which speak for themselves. In this class we may
include the double-sexed first creators, of every cosmogony. The Greek
Zeus-Zēn (æther), and Chthonia (the chaotic earth) and Metis (the
water), his wives; Osiris and Isis-Latona—the former god representing
also ether—the first emanation of the Supreme Deity, Amun, the primeval
source of light; the goddess earth and water again; Mithras,[281] the
rock-born god, the symbol of the male mundane-fire, or the personified
primordial light, and Mithra, the fire-goddess, at once his mother and
his wife; the pure element of fire (the active, or male principle)
regarded as light and heat, in conjunction with earth and water, or
matter (female or passive elements of cosmical generation). Mithras
is the son of Bordj, the Persian mundane mountain,[282] from which he
flashes out as a radiant ray of light. Brahma, the fire-god, and his
prolific consort; and the Hindu _Unghi_, the refulgent deity, from
whose body issue a thousand streams of glory and _seven_ tongues of
flame, and in whose honor the Sagniku Brahmans preserve to this day
a _perpetual_ fire; Siva, personated by the mundane mountain of the
Hindus—the _Meru_ (Himalaya). This terrific fire-god, who is said in
the legend to have descended from heaven, like the Jewish Jehovah, _in
a pillar of fire_, and a dozen of other archaic, double-sexed deities,
all loudly proclaim their hidden meaning. And what can these dual
myths mean but the physico-chemical principle of primordial creation?
The first revelation of the Supreme Cause in its triple manifestation
of spirit, force, and matter; the divine _correlation_, at its
starting-point of evolution, allegorized as the marriage of _fire_
and water, products of electrifying spirit, union of the male active
principle with the female passive element, which become the parents of
their tellurian child, cosmic matter, the _prima materia_, whose spirit
is ether, the ASTRAL LIGHT!
Thus all the world-mountains and mundane eggs, the mundane trees, and
the mundane snakes and pillars, may be shown to embody scientifically
demonstrated truths of natural philosophy. All of these mountains
contain, with very trifling variations, the allegorically-expressed
description of primal cosmogony; the mundane trees, that of subsequent
evolution of spirit and matter; the mundane snakes and pillars,
symbolical memorials of the various attributes of this double evolution
in its endless correlation of cosmic forces. Within the mysterious
recesses of the mountain—the matrix of the universe—the gods (powers)
prepare the atomic germs of organic life, and at the same time the
life-drink, which, when tasted, awakens in man-matter the man-_spirit_.
The soma, the sacrificial drink of the Hindus, is that sacred beverage.
For, at the creation of the _prima materia_, while the grossest
portions of it were used for the physical embryo-world, the more
divine essence of it pervaded the universe, invisibly permeating and
enclosing within its ethereal waves the newly-born infant, developing
and stimulating it to activity as it slowly evolved out of the eternal
chaos.
From the poetry of abstract conception, these mundane myths gradually
passed into the concrete images of cosmic symbols, as archæology now
finds them. The snake, which plays such a prominent part in the imagery
of the ancients, was degraded by the absurd interpretation of the
serpent of the Book of _Genesis_ into a synonym of Satan, the Prince
of Darkness, whereas it is the most ingenious of all the myths in its
various symbolisms. For one, as _agathodaimon_, it is the emblem of
the healing art and of the immortality of man. It encircles the images
of most of the sanitary or hygienic gods. The _cup of health_, in the
Egyptian Mysteries, was entwined by serpents. As evil can only arise
from an extreme in good, the serpent, under some other aspects, became
typical of matter; which, the more it recedes from its primal spiritual
source, the more it becomes subject of evil. In the oldest Egyptian
imagery, as in the cosmogonic allegories of Kneph, the mundane snake,
when typifying matter, is usually represented as contained within a
circle; he lies straight across its equator, thus indicating that the
universe of astral light, out of which the physical world evolved,
while bounding the latter, is itself bound by Emepht, or the Supreme
First Cause. _Phtha_ producing _Ra_, and the myriad forms to which he
gives life, are shown as creeping out of the mundane egg, because it
is the most familiar form of that in which is deposited and developed
the germ of every living being. When the serpent represents eternity
and immortality, it encircles the world, biting its tail, and thus
offering no solution of continuity. It then becomes the astral light.
The disciples of the school of Pherecydes taught that ether (Zeus or
Zēn) is the highest empyrean heaven, which encloses the supernal world,
and its light (the astral) is the concentrated primordial element.
Such is the origin of the serpent, metamorphosed in Christian ages
into Satan. It is the _Od_, the _Ob_, and the _Aour_ of Moses and the
Kabalists. When in its passive state, when it acts on those who are
unwittingly drawn within its current, the astral light is the _Ob_, or
Python. Moses was determined to exterminate all those who, sensitive
to its influence, allowed themselves to fall under the easy control
of the vicious beings which move in the astral waves like fish in the
water; beings who surround us, and whom Bulwer-Lytton calls in _Zanoni_
“the dwellers of the threshold.” It becomes the _Od_, as soon as it is
vivified by the _conscious efflux_ of an immortal soul; for then the
astral currents are acting under the guidance of either an adept, a
pure spirit, or an able mesmerizer, who is pure himself and knows how
to direct the blind forces. In such cases even a high Planetary Spirit,
one of the class of beings that have never been embodied (though there
are many among these hierarchies who have lived on our earth), descends
occasionally to our sphere, and purifying the surrounding atmosphere
enables the _subject_ to see, and opens in him the springs of true
divine prophecy. As to the term _Aoûr_, the word is used to designate
certain occult properties of the universal agent. It pertains more
directly to the domain of the alchemist, and is of no interest to the
general public.
The author of the _Homoiomerian_ system of philosophy, Anaxagoras
of Clazomenè, firmly believed that the spiritual prototypes of all
things, as well as their elements, were to be found in the boundless
ether, where they were generated, whence they evolved, and whither they
returned from earth. In common with the Hindus who had personified
their Akas’a (sky or ether) and made of it a deific entity, the Greeks
and Latins had deified Æther. Virgil calls Zeus, _pater omnipotens
æther_;[283] _Magnus_, the great god, Ether.
These beings above alluded to are the elemental spirits of the
Kabalists,[284] whom the Christian clergy denounce as “devils,” the
enemies of mankind.
“Already Tertullian,” gravely remarks Des Mousseaux, in his chapter on
the devils, “has _formally_ discovered the secret of their cunning.”
A priceless discovery, that. And now that we have learned so much of
the mental labors of the holy fathers and their achievements in astral
anthropology, need we be surprised at all, if, in the zeal of their
spiritual explorations, they have so far neglected their own planet as
at times to deny not only its right to motion but even its sphericity?
And this is what we find in Langhorne, the translator of _Plutarch_:
“Dionysius of Halicarnassus [L. ii.] is of opinion that Numa built
the temple of Vesta in a _round_ form, to represent the figure of the
earth, for by Vesta they meant the earth.” Moreover, Philolaüs, in
common with all other Pythagoreans, held that the element of fire was
placed in the centre of the universe; and Plutarch, speaking on the
subject, remarks of the Pythagoreans that “the earth they suppose not
to be without motion, _nor_ situated in the centre of the world, but to
make its revolution round the sphere of fire, being neither one of the
most valuable, nor principal parts of the great machine.” Plato, too,
is reported to have been of the same opinion. It appears, therefore,
that the Pythagoreans anticipated Galileo’s _discovery_.
The existence of such an invisible universe being once admitted—as
seems likely to be the fact if the speculations of the authors of the
_Unseen Universe_ are ever accepted by their colleagues—many of the
phenomena, hitherto mysterious and inexplicable, become plain. It acts
on the organism of the magnetized mediums, it penetrates and saturates
them through and through, either directed by the powerful will of a
mesmerizer, or by unseen beings who achieve the same result. Once that
the silent operation is performed, the astral or sidereal phantom of
the mesmerized subject quits its paralyzed, earthly casket, and, after
having roamed in the boundless space, alights at the threshold of the
mysterious “bourne.” For it, the gates of the portal which marks the
entrance to the “silent land,” are now but partially ajar; they will
fly wide open before the soul of the entranced somnambulist only on
that day when, united with its higher immortal essence, it will have
quitted forever its mortal frame. Until then, the seer or seeress
can look but through a chink; it depends on the acuteness of the
clairvoyant’s spiritual sight to see more or less through it.
The trinity in unity is an idea which all the ancient nations held in
common. The three Dejotas—the Hindu Trimurti; the _Three Heads_ of the
Jewish Kabala.[285] “Three heads are hewn in one another and over one
another.” The trinity of the Egyptians and that of the mythological
Greeks were alike representations of the first triple emanation
containing two male and one female principles. It is the union of
the male _Logos_, or wisdom, the revealed Deity, with the female
_Aura_ or _Anima Mundi_—“the holy _Pneuma_,” which is the _Sephira_
of the Kabalists and the _Sophia_ of the refined Gnostics—that
produced all things visible and invisible. While the true metaphysical
interpretation of this universal dogma remained within the sanctuaries,
the Greeks, with their poetical instincts, impersonated it in many
charming myths. In the _Dionysiacs_ of Nonnus, the god Bacchus, among
other allegories, is represented as in love with the soft, genial
breeze (the Holy Pneuma), under the name of _Aura Placida_.[286] And
now we will leave Godfrey Higgins to speak: “When the _ignorant_
Fathers were constructing their calendar, they made out of this gentle
zephyr two Roman Catholic saints!!” SS. Aura and Placida;—nay, they
even went so far as to transfer the jolly god into St. Bacchus, and
actually _show his coffin and relics at Rome_. The festival of the two
“blessed saints,” Aura and Placida, occurs on the 5th of October, close
to the festival of St. Bacchus.[287]
How far more poetical, and how much greater the religious spirit to
be found in the “heathen” Norse legends of creation! In the boundless
abyss of the mundane pit, the Ginnunga-gap, where rage in blind fury
and conflict cosmic matter and the primordial forces, suddenly blows
the thaw-wind. It is the “unrevealed God,” who sends his beneficent
breath from Muspellheim, the sphere of empyreal fire, within whose
glowing rays dwells this great Being, far beyond the limits of the
world of matter; and the _animus_ of the Unseen, the Spirit brooding
over the dark, abysmal waters, calls order out of chaos, and once
having given the impulse to all creation the FIRST CAUSE retires, and
remains for evermore in _statu abscondito_![288]
There is both religion and science in these Scandinavian songs of
heathendom. As an example of the latter, take the conception of Thor,
the son of Odin. Whenever this Hercules of the North would grasp the
handle of his terrible weapon, the thunderbolt or electric hammer,
he is obliged to put on his _iron_ gantlets. He also wears a magical
belt known as the “_girdle of strength_,” which, whenever girded about
his person, greatly augments his celestial power. He rides upon a car
drawn by two rams with silver bridles, and his awful brow is encircled
by a wreath of stars. His chariot has a pointed iron pole, and the
spark-scattering wheels continually roll over rumbling thunder-clouds.
He hurls his hammer with resistless force against the rebellious
frost-giants, whom he dissolves and annihilates. When he repairs to the
Urdar fountain, where the gods meet in conclave to decide the destinies
of humanity, he alone goes on foot, the rest of the deities being
mounted. He walks, for fear that in crossing Bifrost (the rainbow), the
many-hued Æsir-bridge, he might set it on fire with his thunder-car, at
the same time causing the Urdar waters to boil.
Rendered into plain English, how can this myth be interpreted but as
showing that the Norse legend-makers were thoroughly acquainted with
electricity? Thor, the euhemerization of electricity, handles his
peculiar element only when protected by gloves of _iron_, which is its
natural conductor. His belt of strength is a closed circuit, around
which the isolated current is compelled to run instead of diffusing
itself through space. When he rushes with his car through the clouds,
he is electricity in its _active_ condition, as the sparks scattering
from his wheels and the rumbling thunder of the clouds testify. The
pointed iron pole of the chariot is suggestive of the lightning-rod;
the two rams which serve as his coursers are the familiar ancient
symbols of the male or generative power; their silver bridles typify
the female principle, for silver is the metal of Luna, Astartè, Diana.
Therefore in the ram and his bridle we see combined the active and
passive principles of nature in opposition, one rushing forward,
and the other restraining, while both are in subordination to the
world-permeating, electrical principle, which gives them their impulse.
With the electricity supplying the impulse, and the male and female
principles combining and recombining in endless correlation, the
result is—evolution of visible nature, the crown-glory of which is
the planetary system, which in the mythic Thor is allegorized by the
circlet of glittering orbs which bedeck his brow. When in his active
condition, his awful thunderbolts destroy everything, even the lesser
other Titanic forces. But he goes afoot over the rainbow bridge,
Bifrost, because to mingle with other less powerful gods than himself,
he is obliged to be in a _latent_ state, which he could not be in his
car; otherwise he would set on fire and annihilate all. The meaning of
the Urdar-fountain, that Thor is afraid to make boil, and the cause
of his reluctance, will only be comprehended by our physicists when
the reciprocal electro-magnetic relations of the innumerable members
of the planetary system, now just suspected, shall be thoroughly
determined. Glimpses of the truth are given in the recent scientific
essays of Professors Mayer and Sterry Hunt. The ancient philosophers
believed that not only volcanos, but boiling springs were caused by
concentrations of underground electric currents, and that this same
cause produced mineral deposits of various natures, which form curative
springs. If it be objected that this fact is not distinctly stated by
the ancient authors, who, in the opinion of our century were hardly
acquainted with electricity, we may simply answer that not all the
works embodying ancient wisdom are now extant among our scientists. The
clear and cool waters of Urdar were required for the daily irrigation
of the mystical mundane tree; and if they had been disturbed by Thor,
or active electricity, they would have been converted into mineral
springs unsuited for the purpose. Such examples as the above will
support the ancient claim of the philosophers that _there is a logos in
every mythos_, or a groundwork of truth in every fiction.
CHAPTER VI.
“Hermes, who is of my ordinances ever the bearer ...
Then taking his staff, with which he the eyelids of mortals
Closes at will, and the sleeper, at will, reawakens.”—_Odyssey_,
Book V.
“I saw the Samothracian rings
Leap, and steel-filings boil in a brass dish
So soon as underneath it there was placed
The magnet-stone; and with wild terror seemed
The iron to flee from it in stern hate....”—_Lucretius_, Book VI.
“But that which especially distinguishes the Brotherhood is
their marvellous knowledge of the resources of the medical art.
They work not by charms but by simples.”
(_MS. Account of the Origin and Attributes of the True
Rosicrucians._)
One of the truest things ever said by a man of science is the remark
made by Professor Cooke in his _New Chemistry_. “The history of Science
shows that the age must be prepared before scientific truths can take
root and grow. The barren premonitions of science have been barren
because these seeds of truth fell upon unfruitful soil; and, as soon as
the fulness of the time has come, the seed has taken root and the fruit
has ripened ... every student is surprised to find how very little is
the share of new truth which even the greatest genius has added to the
previous stock.”
The revolution through which chemistry has recently passed, is well
calculated to concentrate the attention of chemists upon this fact;
and it would not be strange, if, in less time than it has required
to effect it, the claims of the alchemists would be examined with
impartiality, and studied from a rational point of view. To bridge over
the narrow gulf which now separates the _new_ chemistry from _old_
alchemy, is little, if any harder than what they have done in going
from dualism to the law of Avogadro.
As Ampère served to introduce Avogadro to our contemporary chemists, so
Reichenbach will perhaps one day be found to have paved the way with
his OD for the just appreciation of Paracelsus. It was more than fifty
years before molecules were accepted as units of chemical calculations;
it may require less than half that time to cause the superlative merits
of the Swiss mystic to be acknowledged. The warning paragraph about
healing mediums,[289] which will be found elsewhere, might have been
written by one who had read his works. “You must understand,” he says,
“that the magnet is that spirit of life in man which the infected
seeks, as both unite themselves with chaos from without. And thus the
healthy are infected by the unhealthy through magnetic attraction.”
The primal causes of the diseases afflicting mankind; the secret
relations between physiology and psychology, vainly tortured by men
of modern science for some clew to base their speculations upon; the
specifics and remedies for every ailment of the human body—all are
described and accounted for in his voluminous works. Electro-magnetism,
the so-called _discovery_ of Professor Oersted, had been used by
Paracelsus three centuries before. This may be demonstrated by
examining critically his mode of curing disease. Upon his achievements
in chemistry there is no need to enlarge, for it is admitted by fair
and unprejudiced writers that he was one of the greatest chemists of
his time.[290] Brierre de Boismont terms him a “genius” and agrees with
Deleuze that he created a new epoch in the history of medicine. The
secret of his successful and, as they were called, magic cures lies in
his sovereign contempt for the so-called learned “authorities” of his
age. “Seeking for truth,” says Paracelsus, “I considered with myself
that if there were no teachers of medicine in this world, how would
I set to learn the art? No otherwise than in the great open book of
nature, written with the finger of God.... I am accused and denounced
for not having entered in at the right door of art. But which is the
right one? Galen, Avicenna, Mesue, Rhasis, or honest nature? I believe,
the last! Through this door I entered, and the light of nature, and no
apothecary’s lamp directed me on my way.”
This utter scorn for established laws and scientific formulas, this
aspiration of mortal clay to commingle with the spirit of nature, and
look to it alone for health, and help, and the light of truth, was the
cause of the inveterate hatred shown by the contemporary pigmies to
the fire-philosopher and alchemist. No wonder that he was accused of
charlatanry and even drunkenness. Of the latter charge, Hemmann boldly
and fearlessly exonerates him, and proves that the foul accusation
proceeded from “Oporinus, who lived with him some time in order to
learn his secrets, but his object was defeated; hence, the evil reports
of his disciples and apothecaries.” He was the founder of the School
of Animal Magnetism and the discoverer of the occult properties of the
magnet. He was branded by his age as a sorcerer, because the cures
he made were marvellous. Three centuries later, Baron Du Potet was
also accused of sorcery and demonolatry by the Church of Rome, and of
charlatanry by the academicians of Europe. As the fire-philosophers
say, it is not the chemist who will condescend to look upon the “living
fire” otherwise than his colleagues do. “Thou hast forgotten what thy
fathers taught thee about it—or rather, thou hast never known ... it is
_too loud_ for thee!”[291]
A work upon magico-spiritual philosophy and occult science would
be incomplete without a particular notice of the history of animal
magnetism, as it stands since Paracelsus staggered with it the
schoolmen of the latter half of the sixteenth century.
We will observe briefly its appearance in Paris when imported from
Germany by Anton Mesmer. Let us peruse with care and caution the old
papers now mouldering in the Academy of Sciences of that capital,
for there we will find that, after having rejected in its turn every
discovery that was ever made since Galileo, the _Immortals_ capped
the climax by turning their backs upon magnetism and mesmerism. They
voluntarily shut the doors before themselves, the doors which led to
those greatest mysteries of nature, which lie hid in the dark regions
of the psychical as well as the physical world. The great universal
solvent, the Alkahest, was within their reach—they passed it by; and
now, after nearly a hundred years have elapsed, we read the following
confession:
“Still it is true that, beyond the limits of direct observation, our
science (chemistry) is not infallible, and our theories and systems,
although they _may_ all contain a kernel of truth, undergo frequent
changes, and are often revolutionized.”[292]
To assert so dogmatically that mesmerism and animal magnetism are
but hallucinations, implies that it can be proved. But where are
these proofs, which alone ought to have authority in science?
Thousands of times the chance was given to the academicians to assure
themselves of its truth; but, they have invariably declined. Vainly
do mesmerists and healers invoke the testimony of the deaf, the lame,
the diseased, the dying, who were cured or restored to life by simple
manipulations and the apostolic “laying on of hands.” “Coincidence”
is the usual reply, when the fact is too evident to be absolutely
denied; “will-o’-the-wisp,” “exaggeration,” “quackery,” are favorite
expressions, with our but too numerous Thomases. Newton, the well-known
American healer, has performed more instantaneous cures than many a
famous physician of New York City has had patients in all his life;
Jacob, the Zouave, has had a like success in France. Must we then
consider the accumulated testimony of the last forty years upon this
subject to be all illusion, confederacy with clever charlatans, and
lunacy? Even to breathe such a stupendous fallacy would be equivalent
to a self-accusation of lunacy.
Notwithstanding the recent sentence of Leymarie, the scoffs of the
skeptics and of a vast majority of physicians and scientists, the
unpopularity of the subject, and, above all, the indefatigable
persecutions of the Roman Catholic clergy, fighting in mesmerism
woman’s traditional enemy, so evident and unconquerable is the truth
of its phenomena that even the French magistrature was forced tacitly,
though very reluctantly, to admit the same. The famous _clairvoyante_,
Madame Roger, was charged with obtaining money under false pretenses,
in company with her mesmerist, Dr. Fortin. On May 18th, 1876, she
was arraigned before the _Tribunal Correctionnel_ of the Seine.
Her witness was Baron Du Potet, the grand master of mesmerism in
France for the last fifty years; her advocate, the no less famous
Jules Favre. Truth for once triumphed—the accusation was abandoned.
Was it the extraordinary eloquence of the orator, or bare facts
incontrovertible and unimpeachable that won the day? But Leymarie,
the editor of the _Revue Spirite_, had also facts in his favor; and,
moreover, the evidence of over a hundred respectable witnesses,
among whom were the first names of Europe. To this there is but one
answer—the magistrates dared not question the facts of mesmerism.
Spirit-photography, spirit-rapping, writing, moving, talking, and even
spirit-materializations can be simulated; there is hardly a physical
phenomenon now in Europe and America but could be imitated—with
apparatus—by a clever juggler. The wonders of mesmerism and subjective
phenomena alone defy tricksters, skepticism, stern science, and
dishonest mediums; _the cataleptic state it is impossible to feign_.
Spiritualists who are anxious to have their truths proclaimed and
forced on science, cultivate the mesmeric phenomena. Place on the stage
of Egyptian Hall a somnambulist plunged in a deep mesmeric sleep. Let
her mesmerist send her freed spirit to all the places the public may
suggest; test her clairvoyance and clairaudience; stick pins into any
part of her body which the mesmerist may have made his passes over;
thrust needles through the skin below her eyelids; burn her flesh and
lacerate it with a sharp instrument. “Do not fear!” exclaim Regazzoni
and Du Potet, Teste and Pierrard, Puysegur and Dolgorouky—“a mesmerized
or entranced subject _is never hurt_!” And when all this is performed,
invite any popular wizard of the day who thirsts for puffery, and is,
or pretends to be, clever at mimicking every spiritual phenomenon, to
submit _his_ body to the same tests![293]
The speech of Jules Favre is reported to have lasted an hour and a
half, and to have held the judges and the public spellbound by its
eloquence. We who have heard Jules Favre believe it most readily;
only the statement embodied in the last sentence of his argument was
unfortunately premature and erroneous at the same time. “We are in the
presence of a phenomenon which _science admits_ without attempting
to explain. _The public may smile at_ it, but our most illustrious
physicians regard it with gravity. Justice can no longer ignore what
_science has acknowledged_!”
Were this sweeping declaration based upon fact and had mesmerism
been impartially investigated by many instead of a few true men of
science, more desirous of questioning nature than mere expediency, the
public would _never_ smile. The public is a docile and pious child,
and readily goes whither the nurse leads it. It chooses its idols and
fetishes, and worships them in proportion to the noise they make; and
then turns round with a timid look of adulation to see whether the
nurse, old Mrs. Public Opinion, is satisfied.
Lactantius, the old Christian father, is said to have remarked that
no skeptic in his days would have dared to maintain before a magician
that the soul did not survive the body, but died together with it; “for
he would refute them on the spot by calling up the souls of the dead,
rendering them visible to human eyes, and making them foretell future
events.”[294] So with the magistrates and bench in Madame Roger’s
case. Baron Du Potet was there, and they were _afraid_ to see him
mesmerize the somnambulist, and so force them not only to believe in
the phenomenon, but to acknowledge it—which was far worse.
And now to the doctrine of Paracelsus. His incomprehensible, though
lively style must be read like the biblio-rolls of Ezekiel, “_within
and without_.” The peril of propounding heterodox theories was great
in those days; the Church was powerful, and sorcerers were burnt by
the dozens. For this reason, we find Paracelsus, Agrippa, and Eugenius
Philalethes as notable for their pious declarations as they were
famous for their achievements in alchemy and magic. The full views
of Paracelsus on the occult properties of the magnet are explained
partially in his famous book, _Archidaxarum_, in which he describes the
wonderful tincture, a medicine extracted from the magnet and called
_Magisterium Magnetis_, and partially in the _De Ente Dei_, and _De
Ente Astrorum_, Lib. I. But the explanations are all given in a diction
unintelligible to the profane. “Every peasant sees,” said he, “that a
magnet will attract iron, but a wise man must inquire for himself....
I have discovered that the magnet, besides this visible power, that of
attracting iron, possesses another _and concealed_ power.”
He demonstrates further that in man lies hidden a “_sidereal_ force,”
which is that emanation from the stars and celestial bodies of which
the spiritual form of man—the astral spirit—is composed. This identity
of essence, which we may term the spirit of cometary matter, always
stands in direct relation with the stars from which it was drawn, and
thus there exists a mutual attraction between the two, both being
magnets. The identical composition of the earth and all other planetary
bodies and man’s terrestrial body was a fundamental idea in his
philosophy. “The body comes from the elements, the [astral] spirit from
the stars.... Man eats and drinks of the elements, for the sustenance
of his blood and flesh; from the stars are the intellect and thoughts
sustained in his spirit.” _The spectroscope has made good his theory
as to the identical composition of man and stars; the physicists now
lecture to their classes upon the magnetic attractions of the sun and
planets._[295]
Of the substances known to compose the body of man, there have been
discovered in the stars already, hydrogen, sodium, calcium, magnesium
and iron. In all the stars observed, numbering many hundreds, hydrogen
was found, except in two. Now, if we recollect how they have deprecated
Paracelsus and his theory of man and the stars being composed of like
substances; how ridiculed he was by astronomers and physicists, for his
ideas of chemical affinity and attraction between the two; and then
realize that the spectroscope has vindicated one of his assertions at
least, is it so absurd to prophesy that in time all the rest of his
theories will be substantiated?
And now, a very natural question is suggested. How did Paracelsus
come to learn anything of the composition of the stars, when, till a
very recent period—till the discovery of the spectroscope in fact—the
constituents of the heavenly bodies were utterly unknown to our learned
academies? And even now, notwithstanding tele-spectroscope and other
very important modern improvements, except a few elements and a
hypothetical chromosphere, everything is yet a mystery for them in the
stars. Could Paracelsus have been so sure of the nature of the starry
host, unless he had means of which science knows nothing? Yet knowing
nothing she will not even hear pronounced the very names of these
means, which are—hermetic philosophy and alchemy.
We must bear in mind, moreover, that _Paracelsus was the discoverer
of hydrogen, and knew well all its properties and composition_ long
before any of the orthodox academicians ever thought of it; that he had
studied astrology and astronomy, as all the fire-philosophers did; and
that, if he did assert that man is in a direct affinity with the stars,
he knew well what he asserted.
The next point for the physiologists to verify is his proposition that
the nourishment of the body comes not merely through the stomach,
“but also imperceptibly through the magnetic force, which resides in
all nature and by which every individual member draws its specific
nourishment to itself.” Man, he further says, draws not only health
from the elements when in equilibrium, but also disease when they are
disturbed. Living bodies are subject to the laws of attraction and
chemical affinity, as science admits; the most remarkable physical
property of organic tissues, according to physiologists, is the
property of _imbibition_. What more natural, then, than this theory
of Paracelsus, that this absorbent, attractive, and chemical body of
ours gathers into itself the astral or sidereal influences? “The sun
and the stars attract from us to themselves, and we again from them to
us.” What objection can science offer to this? What it is that we give
off, is shown in Baron Reichenbach’s discovery of the odic emanations
of man, which are identical with flames from magnets, crystals, and in
fact from all vegetable organisms.
The unity of the universe was asserted by Paracelsus, who says that
“the human body is possessed of primeval stuff (or cosmic matter); the
spectroscope has proved the assertion by showing that the same chemical
elements which exist upon earth and in the sun, are also found in all
the stars. The spectroscope does more: it shows that all the stars are
_suns_, similar in constitution to our own;[296] and as we are told by
Professor Mayer,[297] that the magnetic condition of the earth changes
with every variation upon the sun’s surface, and is said to be “in
subjection to _emanations_ from the sun,” the stars being suns must
also give off emanations which affect us in proportionate degrees.
“In our dreams,” says Paracelsus, “we are like the plants, which have
also the elementary and vital body, but possess not the spirit. In our
sleep the astral body is free and can, by the elasticity of its nature,
either hover round in proximity with its sleeping vehicle, or soar
higher to hold converse with its starry parents, or even communicate
with its brothers at great distances. Dreams of a prophetic character,
prescience, and present wants, are the faculties of the astral spirit.
To our elementary and grosser body, these gifts are not imparted, for
at death it descends into the bosom of the earth and is reunited to the
physical elements, while the several spirits return to the stars. The
animals,” he adds, “have also their presentiments, for they too have an
astral body.”
Van Helmont, who was a disciple of Paracelsus, says much the same,
though his theories on magnetism are more largely developed, and still
more carefully elaborated. The _Magnale Magnum_, the means by which
the secret magnetic property “enables one person to affect another
mutually, is attributed by him to that universal sympathy which exists
between all things in nature. The cause produces the effect, the
effect refers itself back to the cause, and both are reciprocated.
“Magnetism,” he says, “is an unknown property of a heavenly nature;
very much resembling the stars, and not at all impeded by any
boundaries of space or time.... Every created being possesses his own
celestial power and is closely allied with heaven. This magic power of
man, which thus can operate externally, lies, as it were, hidden in
the inner man. This magical wisdom and strength thus sleeps, but, by
a mere suggestion is roused into activity, and becomes more living,
the more the outer man of flesh and the darkness is repressed ... and
this, I say, the kabalistic art effects; it brings back to the soul
that magical yet natural strength which like a startled sleep had left
it.”[298]
Both Van Helmont and Paracelsus agree as to the great potency of the
will in the state of ecstasy; they say that “the spirit is everywhere
diffused; and the spirit is the medium of magnetism;” that pure
primeval magic does not consist in superstitious practices and vain
ceremonies but in the imperial will of man. “It is not the spirits of
heaven and of hell which are the masters over physical nature, but
the soul and spirit of man which are concealed in him as the fire is
concealed in the flint.”
The theory of the sidereal influence on man was enunciated by all the
mediæval philosophers. “The stars consist equally of the elements
of earthly bodies,” says Cornelius Agrippa, “and therefore the ideas
attract each other.... Influences only go forth through the help of the
spirit; but this spirit is diffused through the whole universe and is
in full accord with the human spirits. The magician who would acquire
supernatural powers must possess _faith_, _love_, and _hope_.... In
all things there is a secret power concealed, and thence come the
miraculous powers of magic.”
The modern theory of General Pleasanton[299] singularly coincides
with the views of the fire-philosophers. His view of the positive and
negative electricities of man and woman, and the mutual attraction
and repulsion of everything in nature seems to be copied from that
of Robert Fludd, the Grand Master of the Rosicrucians of England.
“When two men approach each other,” says the fire-philosopher, “their
magnetism is either passive or active; that is, positive or negative.
If the emanations which they send out are broken or thrown back, there
arises antipathy. But when the emanations pass through each other from
both sides, then there is positive magnetism, for the rays proceed from
the centre to the circumference. In this case they not only affect
sicknesses but also moral sentiments. This magnetism or sympathy is
found not only among animals but also in plants and in animals.”[300]
And now we will notice how, when Mesmer had imported into France his
“baquet” and system based entirely on the philosophy and doctrines of
the Paracelsites—the great psychological and physiological discovery
was treated by the physicians. It will demonstrate how much ignorance,
superficiality, and prejudice can be displayed by a scientific body,
when the subject clashes with their own cherished theories. It is the
more important because, to the neglect of the committee of the French
Academy of 1784 is probably due the present materialistic drift of the
public mind; and certainly the gaps in the atomic philosophy which we
have seen its most devoted teachers confessing to exist. The committee
of 1784 comprised men of such eminence as Borie, Sallin, d’Arcet,
and the famous Guillotin, to whom were subsequently added, Franklin,
Leroi, Bailly, De Borg and Lavoisier. Borie died shortly afterward
and Magault succeeded him. There can be no doubt of two things, viz.:
that the committee began their work under strong prejudices and only
because peremptorily ordered to do it by the king; and that their
manner of observing the delicate facts of mesmerism was injudicious
and illiberal. Their report, drawn by Bailly, was intended to be a
death-blow to the new science. It was spread ostentatiously throughout
all the schools and ranks of society, arousing the bitterest feelings
among a large portion of the aristocracy and rich commercial class,
who had patronized Mesmer and had been eye-witnesses of his cures.
Ant. L. de Jussieu, an academician of the highest rank, who had
thoroughly investigated the subject with the eminent court-physician,
d’Eslon, published a counter-report drawn with minute exactness, in
which he advocated the careful observation by the medical faculty of
the therapeutic effects of the magnetic fluid and insisted upon the
immediate publication of their discoveries and observations. His demand
was met by the appearance of a great number of memoirs, polemical
works, and dogmatical books developing new facts; and Thouret’s works
entitled _Recherches et Doutes sur le Magnetisme Animal_, displaying
a vast erudition, stimulated research into the records of the past,
and the magnetic phenomena of successive nations from the remotest
antiquity were laid before the public.
The doctrine of Mesmer was simply a restatement of the doctrines of
Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Santanelli, and Maxwell, the Scotchman; and
he was even guilty of copying texts from the work of Bertrand, and
enunciating them as his own principles.[301] In Professor Stewart’s
work,[302] the author regards our universe as composed of atoms with
some sort of medium between them as the machine, and the laws of energy
as the laws working this machine. Professor Youmans calls this “a
modern doctrine,” but we find among the twenty-seven propositions laid
down by Mesmer, in 1775, just one century earlier, in his _Letter to a
Foreign Physician_, the following:
_1st. There exists a mutual influence between the heavenly bodies, the
earth, and living bodies._
_2d. A fluid, universally diffused and continued, so as to admit no
vacuum, whose subtility is beyond all comparison, and which, from its
nature, is capable of receiving, propagating, and communicating all the
impressions of motion, is the medium of this influence._
It would appear from this, that the theory is not so modern after all.
Professor Balfour Stewart says, “We may regard the universe in the
light of a vast physical machine.” And Mesmer:
_3d. This reciprocal action is subject to mechanical laws, unknown up
to the present time._
Professor Mayer, reaffirming Gilbert’s doctrine that the earth is a
great magnet, remarks that the mysterious variations in the intensity
of its force seem to be in subjection to emanations from the sun,
“changing with the apparent daily and yearly revolutions of that orb,
and pulsating in sympathy with the huge waves of fire which sweep over
its surface.” He speaks of “the constant fluctuation, the ebb and flow
of the earth’s directive influence.” And Mesmer:
_4th._ “_From this action result alternate effects which may be
considered a flux and reflux._”
_6th. It is by this operation (the most universal of those presented to
us by nature) that the relations of activity occur between the heavenly
bodies, the earth, and its constituent parts._
There are two more which will be interesting reading to our modern
scientists:
_7th. The properties of matter, and of organized body, depend on this
operation._
_8th. The animal body experiences the alternate effects of this agent;
and it is by insinuating itself into the substance of the nerves, that
it immediately affects them._
Among other important works which appeared between 1798 and 1824, when
the French Academy appointed its second commission to investigate
mesmerism, the _Annales du Magnetisme Animal_, by the Baron d’Henin
de Cuvillier, Lieutenant-General, Chevalier of St. Louis, member of
the Academy of Sciences, and correspondent of many of the learned
societies of Europe, may be consulted with great advantage. In 1820
the Prussian government instructed the Academy of Berlin to offer a
prize of three hundred ducats in gold for the best thesis on mesmerism.
The Royal Scientific Society of Paris, under the presidency of His
Royal Highness the Duc d’Angoulême, offered a gold medal for the
same purpose. The Marquis de la Place, peer of France, one of the
_Forty_ of the Academy of Sciences, and honorary member of the learned
societies of all the principal European governments, issued a work
entitled _Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités_, in which this
eminent scientist says: “Of all the instruments that we can employ
to know the imperceptible agents of nature, the most sensitive are
the nerves, especially when exceptional influences increase their
sensibility.... The singular phenomena which result from this extreme
nervous sensitiveness of certain individuals, have given birth to
diverse opinions as to the existence of a new agent, which has
been named animal magnetism.... We are so far from knowing all the
agents of nature and their various modes of action that it would be
hardly philosophical to deny the phenomena, simply because they are
inexplicable, in the actual state of our information. It is simply our
duty to examine them with an attention as much more scrupulous as it
seems difficult to admit them.”
The experiments of Mesmer were vastly improved upon by the Marquis
de Puysegur, who entirely dispensed with apparatus and produced
remarkable cures among the tenants of his estate at Busancy. These
being given to the public, many other educated men experimented with
like success, and in 1825 M. Foissac proposed to the Academy of
Medicine to institute a new inquiry. A special committee, consisting of
Adelon, Parisey, Marc, Burdin, sen., with Husson as reporter, united
in a recommendation that the suggestion should be adopted. They make
the manly avowal that “in science no decision whatever is absolute
and irrevocable,” and afford us the means to estimate the value which
should be attached to the conclusions of the Franklin committee of
1784, by saying that “the experiments on which this judgment was
founded appeared to have been conducted without the simultaneous and
necessary assembling together of all the commissioners, and _also with
moral predispositions_, which, according to the principles of the
fact which they were appointed to examine, _must cause their complete
failure_.”
What they say concerning magnetism as a secret remedy, has been said
many times by the most respected writers upon modern Spiritualism,
namely: “It is the duty of the Academy to study it, to subject it to
trials; finally, to take away the use and practice of it from persons
quite strangers to the art, who abuse this means, and make it an object
of lucre and speculation.”
This report provoked long debates, but in May, 1826, the Academy
appointed a commission which comprised the following illustrious
names: Leroux, Bourdois de la Motte, Double, Magendie, Guersant,
Husson, Thillaye, Marc, Itard, Fouquier, and Guénau de Mussy. They
began their labors immediately, and continued them five years,
communicating, through Monsieur Husson, to the Academy the results
of their observations. The report embraces accounts of phenomena
classified under thirty-four different paragraphs, but as this work is
not specially devoted to the science of magnetism, we must be content
with a few brief extracts. They assert that neither contact of the
hands, frictions, nor passes are invariably needed, since, on several
occasions, the will, fixedness of stare, have sufficed to produce
magnetic phenomena, even without the knowledge of the magnetized.
“Well-attested and therapeutical phenomena” depend on magnetism alone,
and are not reproduced without it. The state of somnambulism exists
and “occasions the development of new faculties, which have received
the denominations of _clairvoyance_, intuition, internal prevision.”
Sleep (the magnetic) has “been excited under circumstances where those
magnetized could not see, and were entirely ignorant of the means
employed to occasion it. The magnetizer, having once controlled his
subject, may “put him completely into somnambulism, take him out of
it without his knowledge, out of his sight, at a certain distance,
and through closed doors.” The external senses of the sleeper seem
to be completely paralyzed, and a duplicate set to be brought into
action. “Most of the time they are entirely strangers to the external
and unexpected noise made in their ears, such as the sound of copper
vessels, forcibly struck, the fall of any heavy substance, and so
forth.... One may make them respire hydrochloric acid or ammonia
without inconveniencing them by it, or without even a suspicion on
their part.” The committee could “tickle their feet, nostrils, and the
angles of the eyes by the approach of a feather, pinch their skin so
as to produce ecchymosis, prick it under the nails with pins plunged
to a considerable depth, without the evincing of any pain, or by sign
of being at all aware of it.” In a word, we have seen one person who
was insensible to one of the most painful operations of surgery, and
whose countenance, pulse, or respiration did not manifest the slightest
emotion.”
So much for the external senses; now let us see what they have to say
about the internal ones, which may fairly be considered as proving a
marked difference between man and a mutton-protoplasm. “Whilst they
are in this state of somnambulism,” say the committee, “the magnetized
persons we have observed, retain the exercise of the faculties which
they have whilst awake. Their memory even appears to be more faithful
and more extensive.... We have seen two somnambulists distinguish,
with their eyes shut, the objects placed before them; they have told,
without touching them, the color and value of the cards; they have
read words traced with the hand, or some lines of books opened by
mere chance. This phenomenon took place, even when the opening of the
eyelids was accurately closed, by means of the fingers. We met, in two
somnambulists, the power of foreseeing acts more or less complicated of
the organism. One of them announced several days, nay, several months
beforehand, the day, the hour, and the minute when epileptic fits would
come on and return; the other declared the time of the cure. Their
previsions were realized with remarkable exactness.”
The commission say that “it has collected and communicated facts
sufficiently important to induce it to think that the Academy should
encourage the researches on magnetism as a very curious branch of
psychology and natural history.” The committee conclude by saying that
the facts _are so extraordinary_ that they scarcely imagine that the
Academy will concede their reality, but protest that they have been
throughout animated by motives of a lofty character, “the love of
science and by the necessity of justifying the hopes which the Academy
had entertained of our zeal and our devotion.”
Their fears were fully justified by the conduct of at least one
member of their own number, who had absented himself from the
experiments, and, as M. Husson tells us, “did not deem it right to
sign the report.” This was Magendie, the physiologist, who, despite
the fact stated by the official report that he had not “been present
at the experiments,” did not hesitate to devote four pages of his
famous work on _Human Physiology_ to the subject of mesmerism, and
after summarizing its alleged phenomena, without endorsing them as
unreservedly as the erudition and scientific acquirements of his fellow
committee-men would seem to have exacted, says: “Self-respect and the
dignity of the profession demand circumspection on these points. He
(the well-informed physician) will remember how readily mystery glides
into charlatanry, and how apt the profession is to become degraded even
by its semblance when countenanced by respectable practitioners.” No
word in the context lets his readers into the secret that he had been
duly appointed by the Academy to serve on the commission of 1826; had
absented himself from its sittings; had so failed to learn the truth
about mesmeric phenomena, and was now pronouncing judgment ex parte.
“Self-respect and the dignity of the profession” probably exacted
silence!
Thirty-eight years later, an English scientist, whose specialty is
the investigation of physics, and whose reputation is even greater
than that of Magendie, stooped to as unfair a course of conduct. When
the opportunity offered to investigate the spiritualistic phenomena,
and aid in taking it out of the hands of ignorant or dishonest
investigators, Professor John Tyndall avoided the subject; but in his
_Fragments of Science_, he was guilty of the ungentlemanly expressions
which we have quoted in another place.
But we are wrong; he made one attempt, and that sufficed. He tells
us, in the _Fragments_, that he once got under a table, to see how
the raps were made, and arose with a despair for humanity, such as he
never felt before! Israel Putnam, crawling on hand and knee to kill the
she-wolf in her den, partially affords a parallel by which to estimate
the chemist’s courage in groping in the dark after the ugly truth; but
Putnam killed his wolf, and Tyndall was devoured by his! “_Sub mensa
desperatio_” should be the motto on his shield.
Speaking of the report of the committee of 1824, Dr. Alphonse Teste, a
distinguished contemporaneous scientist, says that it produced a great
impression on the Academy, but few convictions: “No one could question
the veracity of the commissioners, whose good faith as well as great
knowledge were undeniable, but they were suspected of having been
dupes. In fact, _there are certain unfortunate truths which compromise
those who believe in them, and those especially who are so candid as
to avow them publicly_.” How true this is, let the records of history,
from the earliest times to this very day, attest. When Professor
Robert Hare announced the preliminary results of his spiritualistic
investigations, he, albeit one of the most eminent chemists and
physicists in the world, was, nevertheless, regarded as a dupe. When he
proved that he was not, he was charged with having fallen into dotage;
the Harvard professors denouncing “his insane adherence to the gigantic
humbug.”
When the professor began his investigations in 1853, he announced that
he “felt called upon, as an act of duty to his fellow-creatures, to
bring whatever influence he possessed to the attempt to stem the tide
of popular madness, which, in defiance of reason and science, was fast
setting in favor of the _gross delusion_ called Spiritualism.” Though,
according to his declaration, he “entirely coincided with Faraday’s
theory of table-turning,” he had the true greatness which characterizes
the princes of science to make his investigation thorough, and then
tell the truth. How he was rewarded by his life-long associates, let
his own words tell. In an address delivered in New York, in September,
1854, he says that “he had been engaged in scientific pursuits for
upwards of half a century, and his accuracy and precision had never
been questioned, until he had become a spiritualist; while his
integrity as a man had never in his life been assailed, until the
Harvard professors fulminated their report against that which _he knew_
to be true, and which they _did not know_ to be false.”
How much mournful pathos is expressed in these few words! An old man
of seventy-six—a scientist of half a century, deserted for telling the
truth! And now Mr. A. R. Wallace, who had previously been esteemed
among the most illustrious of British scientists, having proclaimed
his belief in spiritualism and mesmerism, is spoken of in terms of
compassion. Professor Nicholas Wagner, of St. Petersburg, whose
reputation as a zöologist is one of the most conspicuous, in his turn
pays the penalty of his exceptional candor, in his outrageous treatment
by the Russian scientists!
There are scientists and _scientists_; and if the occult sciences
suffer in the instance of modern spiritualism from the malice of one
class, nevertheless, they have had their defenders at all times among
men whose names have shed lustre upon science itself. In the first
rank stands Isaac Newton, “the light of science,” who was a thorough
believer in magnetism, as taught by Paracelsus, Van Helmont, and by
the fire-philosophers in general. No one will presume to deny that
his doctrine of universal space and attraction is purely a theory of
magnetism. If his own words mean anything at all, they mean that he
based all his speculations upon the “soul of the world,” the great
universal, magnetic agent, which he called the _divine sensorium_.[303]
“Here,” he says, “the question is of a very subtile spirit which
penetrates through all, even the hardest bodies, and which is concealed
in their substance. Through the strength and activity of this
spirit, bodies attract each other, and adhere together when brought
into contact. Through it, electrical bodies operate at the remotest
distance, as well as near at hand, attracting and repelling; through
this spirit the light also flows, and is refracted and reflected, and
warms bodies. All senses are excited by this spirit, and through it the
animals move their limbs. But these things cannot be explained in few
words, and we have not yet sufficient experience to determine fully the
laws by which this universal spirit operates.”
There are two kinds of magnetization; the first is purely _animal_,
the other transcendent, and depending on the will and knowledge of the
mesmerizer, as well as on the degree of spirituality of the subject,
and his capacity to receive the impressions of the astral light. But
now it is next to ascertain that clairvoyance depends a great deal more
on the former than on the latter. To the power of an adept, like Du
Potet, the most _positive_ subject will have to submit. If his sight
is ably directed by the mesmerizer, magician, or spirit, the light
must yield up its most secret records to our scrutiny; for, if it is a
book which is ever closed to those “who see and do not perceive,” on
the other hand it is ever opened for one who _wills_ to see it opened.
It keeps an unmutilated record of all that was, that is, or ever will
be. The minutest acts of our lives are imprinted on it, and even our
thoughts rest photographed on its eternal tablets. It is the book which
we see opened by the angel in the _Revelation_, “which is the Book of
life, and out of which the dead are judged according to their works.”
It is, in short, the MEMORY of GOD!
“The oracles assert that the impression of thoughts, characters, men,
and other divine visions, appear in the æther.... In this the things
without figure are figured,” says an ancient fragment of the _Chaldean
Oracles_ of Zoroaster.[304]
Thus, ancient as well as modern wisdom, vaticination and science,
agree in corroborating the claims of the kabalists. It is on the
indestructible tablets of the astral light that is stamped the
impression of every thought we think, and every act we perform; and
that future events—effects of long-forgotten causes—are already
delineated as a vivid picture for the eye of the seer and prophet
to follow. Memory—the despair of the materialist, the enigma of
the psychologist, the sphinx of science—is to the student of
old philosophies merely a name to express that power which man
unconsciously exerts, and shares with many of the inferior animals—to
look with inner sight into the astral light, and there behold the
images of past sensations and incidents. Instead of searching the
cerebral ganglia for “micrographs of the living and the dead, of scenes
that we have visited, of incidents in which we have borne a part,”[305]
they went to the vast repository where the records of every man’s life
as well as every pulsation of the visible cosmos are stored up for all
Eternity!
That flash of memory which is traditionally supposed to show a drowning
man every long-forgotten scene of his mortal life—as the landscape
is revealed to the traveller by intermittent flashes of lightning—is
simply the sudden glimpse which the struggling soul gets into the
silent galleries where his history is depicted in imperishable colors.
The well-known fact—one corroborated by the personal experience of
nine persons out of ten—that we often recognize as familiar to us,
scenes, and landscapes, and conversations, which we see or hear for
the first time, and sometimes in countries never visited before, is a
result of the same causes. Believers in reïncarnation adduce this as
an additional proof of our antecedent existence in other bodies. This
recognition of men, countries, and things that we have never seen, is
attributed by them to flashes of soul-memory of anterior experiences.
But the men of old, in common with mediæval philosophers, firmly held
to a contrary opinion.
They affirmed that though this psychological phenomenon was one of the
greatest arguments in favor of immortality and the soul’s preëxistence,
yet the latter being endowed with an individual memory apart from that
of our physical brain, it is no proof of reïncarnation. As Eliphas Levi
beautifully expresses it, “nature shuts the door after everything that
passes, and pushes life onward” in more perfected forms. The chrysalis
becomes a butterfly; the latter can never become again a grub. In the
stillness of the night-hours, when our bodily senses are fast locked
in the fetters of sleep, and our elementary body rests, the astral
form becomes free. It then _oozes_ out of its earthly prison, and as
Paracelsus has it—“confabulates with the outward world,” and travels
round the visible as well as the invisible worlds. “In sleep,” he
says, “the astral body (soul) is in freer motion; then it soars to
its parents, and holds converse with the stars.” Dreams, forebodings,
prescience, prognostications and presentiments are impressions left
by our astral spirit on our brain, which receives them more or less
distinctly, according to the proportion of blood with which it is
supplied during the hours of sleep. The more the body is exhausted, the
freer is the spiritual man, and the more vivid the impressions of our
soul’s memory. In heavy and robust sleep, dreamless and uninterrupted,
upon awakening to outward consciousness, men may sometimes remember
nothing. But the impressions of scenes and landscapes which the astral
body saw in its peregrinations are still there, though lying latent
under the pressure of matter. They may be awakened at any moment,
and then, during such flashes of man’s inner memory, there is an
instantaneous interchange of energies between the visible and the
invisible universes. Between the “micrographs” of the cerebral ganglia
and the photo-scenographic galleries of the astral light, a current is
established. And a man who knows that he has never visited in body,
nor seen the landscape and person that he recognizes may well assert
that still has he seen and knows them, for the acquaintance was formed
while travelling in “spirit.” To this the physiologists can have but
one objection. They will answer that in natural sleep—perfect and
deep, “half of our nature which is volitional is in the condition of
inertia;” hence unable to travel; the more so as the existence of any
such individual astral body or soul is considered by them little else
than a poetical myth. Blumenbach assures us that in the state of sleep,
all intercourse between mind and body is suspended; an assertion which
is denied by Dr. Richardson, F. R. S., who honestly reminds the German
scientist that “the precise limits and connections of mind and body
being unknown” it is more than should be said. This confession, added
to those of the French physiologist, Fournié, and the still more recent
one of Dr. Allchin, an eminent London physician, who frankly avowed,
in an address to students, that “of all scientific pursuits which
practically concern the community, there is none perhaps which rests
upon so uncertain and insecure a basis as medicine,” gives us a certain
right to offset the hypotheses of ancient scientists against those of
the modern ones.
No man, however gross and material he may be, can avoid leading a
double existence; one in the visible universe, the other in the
invisible. The life-principle which animates his physical frame is
chiefly in the astral body; and while the more animal portions of
him rest, the more spiritual ones know neither limits nor obstacles.
We are perfectly aware that many learned, as well as the unlearned,
will object to such a novel theory of the distribution of the
life-principle. They would prefer remaining in blissful ignorance and
go on confessing that no one knows or can pretend to tell whence and
whither this mysterious agent appears and disappears, than to give one
moment’s attention to what they consider old and exploded theories.
Some might object on the ground taken by theology, that dumb brutes
have no immortal souls, and hence, can have no astral spirits; for
_theologians as well as laymen labor under the erroneous impression
that soul and spirit are one and the same thing_. But if we study
Plato and other philosophers of old, we may readily perceive that while
the “_irrational_ soul,” by which Plato meant our astral body, or the
more ethereal representation of ourselves, can have at best only a more
or less prolonged continuity of existence beyond the grave; the divine
spirit—wrongly termed _soul_, by the Church—is immortal by its very
essence. (Any Hebrew scholar will readily appreciate the distinction
who comprehends the difference between the two words רוח _ruah_ and נפש
_nephesh_.) If the life-principle is something apart from the astral
spirit and in no way connected with it, why is it that the intensity of
the clairvoyant powers depends so much on the bodily prostration of the
subject? The deeper the trance, the less signs of life the body shows,
the clearer become the spiritual perceptions, and the more powerful are
the soul’s visions. The soul, disburdened of the bodily senses, shows
activity of power in a far greater degree of intensity than it can in a
strong, healthy body. Brierre de Boismont gives repeated instances of
this fact. The organs of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing are
proved to become far acuter in a mesmerized subject deprived of the
possibility of exercising them bodily, than while he uses them in his
normal state.
Such facts alone, once proved, ought to stand as invincible
demonstrations of the continuity of individual life, at least for a
certain period after the body has been left by us, either by reason
of its being worn out or by accident. But though during its brief
sojourn on earth our soul may be assimilated to a light hidden
under a bushel, it still shines more or less bright and attracts
to itself the influences of kindred spirits; and when a thought
of good or evil import is begotten in our brain, it draws to it
_impulses_ of like nature as irresistibly as the magnet attracts
iron filings. This attraction is also proportionate to the intensity
with which the thought-impulse makes itself felt in the ether; and
so it will be understood how one man may impress himself upon his
own epoch so forcibly, that the influence may be carried—through the
ever-interchanging currents of energy between the two worlds, the
visible and the invisible—from one succeeding age to another, until it
affects a large portion of mankind.
How much the authors of the famous work entitled the _Unseen Universe_
may have allowed themselves to think in this direction, it would be
difficult to say; but that they have not told _all_ they might will be
inferred from the following language:
“Regard it as you please, there can be no doubt that the properties of
the ether are of a much higher order in the arena of nature _than those
of tangible matter_. And, as even the high priests of science still
find the latter _far beyond_ their comprehension, except in numerous
but minute and often isolated particulars, it would not become us to
speculate further. It is sufficient for our purpose to know from what
the ether certainly does, that _it is capable of vastly more than any
has yet ventured to say_.”
One of the most interesting discoveries of modern times, is that of the
faculty which enables a certain class of sensitive persons to receive
from any object held in the hand or against the forehead impressions
of the character or appearance of the individual, or any other object
with which it has previously been in contact. Thus a manuscript,
painting, article of clothing, or jewelry—no matter how ancient—conveys
to the sensitive, a vivid picture of the writer, painter, or wearer;
even though he lived in the days of Ptolemy or Enoch. Nay, more; a
fragment of an ancient building will recall its history and even the
scenes which transpired within or about it. A bit of ore will carry
the soul-vision back to the time when it was in process of formation.
This faculty is called by its discoverer—Professor J. R. Buchanan,
of Louisville, Kentucky—_psychometry_. To him, the world is indebted
for this most important addition to Psychological Sciences; and to
him, perhaps, when skepticism is found felled to the ground by such
accumulation of facts, posterity will have to elevate a statue. In
announcing to the public his great discovery, Professor Buchanan,
confining himself to the power of psychometry to delineate human
character, says: “The mental and physiological influence imparted to
writing appears to be imperishable, as the oldest specimens I have
investigated gave their impressions with a distinctness and force,
little impaired by time. Old manuscripts, requiring an antiquary to
decipher their strange old penmanship, were easily interpreted by the
psychometric power.... The property of retaining the impress of mind
is not limited to writing. Drawings, paintings, everything upon which
human contact, thought, and volition have been expended, may become
linked with that thought and life, so as to recall them to the mind of
another when in contact.”
Without, perhaps, really knowing, at the early time of the grand
discovery, the significance of his own prophetic words, the Professor
adds: “This discovery, in its application to the arts and to history,
will open a mine of interesting knowledge.”[306]
The existence of this faculty was first experimentally demonstrated
in 1841. It has since been verified by a thousand psychometers in
different parts of the world. It proves that every occurrence in
nature—no matter how minute or unimportant—leaves its indelible impress
upon physical nature; and, as there has been no appreciable molecular
disturbance, the only inference possible is, that these images have
been produced by that invisible, universal force—Ether, or astral light.
In his charming work, entitled _The Soul of Things_, Professor Denton
the geologist,[307] enters at great length into a discussion of this
subject. He gives a multitude of examples of the psychometrical power,
which Mrs. Denton possesses in a marked degree. A fragment of Cicero’s
house, at Tusculum, enabled her to describe, without the slightest
intimation as to the nature of the object placed on her forehead, not
only the great orator’s surroundings, but also the previous owner of
the building, Cornelius Sulla Felix, or, as he is usually called, Sulla
the Dictator. A fragment of marble from the ancient Christian Church of
Smyrna, brought before her its congregation and officiating priests.
Specimens from Nineveh, China, Jerusalem, Greece, Ararat, and other
places all over the world brought up scenes in the life of various
personages, whose ashes had been scattered thousands of years ago.
In many cases Professor Denton verified the statements by reference
to historical records. More than this, a bit of the skeleton, or a
fragment of the tooth of some antediluvian animal, caused the seeress
to perceive the creature as it was when alive, and even live for a
few brief moments its life, and experience its sensations. Before the
eager quest of the psychometer, the most hidden recesses of the domain
of nature yield up their secrets; and the events of the most remote
epochs rival in vividness of impression the flitting circumstances of
yesterday.
Says the author, in the same work: “Not a leaf waves, not an insect
crawls, not a ripple moves, but each motion is recorded by a thousand
faithful scribes in infallible and indelible scripture. This is just as
true of all past time. From the dawn of light upon this infant globe,
when round its cradle the steamy curtains hung, to this moment, nature
has been busy photographing everything. What a picture-gallery is hers!”
It appears to us the height of impossibility to imagine that scenes
in ancient Thebes, or in some temple of prehistoric times should be
photographed only upon the substance of certain atoms. The images
of the events are imbedded in that all-permeating, universal, and
ever-retaining medium, which the philosophers call the “Soul of the
World,” and Mr. Denton “the Soul of Things.” The psychometer, by
applying the fragment of a substance to his forehead, brings his
_inner-self_ into relations with the inner soul of the object he
handles. It is now admitted that the universal æther pervades all
things in nature, even the most solid. It is beginning to be admitted,
also, that this preserves the images of all things which transpire.
When the psychometer examines his specimen, he is brought in contact
with the current of the astral light, connected with that specimen,
and which retains pictures of the events associated with its history.
These, according to Denton, pass before his vision with the swiftness
of light; scene after scene crowding upon each other so rapidly, that
it is only by the supreme exercise of the will that he is able to hold
any one in the field of vision long enough to describe it.
The psychometer is clairvoyant; that is, he sees with the inner
eye. Unless his will-power is very strong, unless he has thoroughly
trained himself to that particular phenomenon, and his knowledge of
the capabilities of his sight are profound, his perceptions of places,
persons, and events, must necessarily be very confused. But in the case
of mesmerization, in which this same clairvoyant faculty is developed,
the operator, whose will holds that of the subject under control, can
force him to concentrate his attention upon a given picture long enough
to observe all its minute details. Moreover, under the guidance of an
experienced mesmerizer, the seer would excel the natural psychometer in
having a prevision of future events, more distinct and clear than the
latter. And to those who might object to the possibility of perceiving
that which “yet is not,” we may put the question: Why is it more
impossible to see that which will be, than to bring back to sight that
which is gone, and is no more? According to the kabalistic doctrine,
the future exists in the astral light in embryo, as the present existed
in embryo in the past. While man is free to act as he pleases, the
manner in which he _will_ act was foreknown from all time; not on
the ground of fatalism or destiny, but simply on the principle of
universal, unchangeable harmony; and, as it may be foreknown that, when
a musical note is struck, its vibrations will not, and cannot change
into those of another note. Besides, eternity can have neither past
nor future, but only the present; as boundless space, in its strictly
literal sense, can have neither distant nor proximate places. Our
conceptions, limited to the narrow area of our experience, attempt to
fit if not an end, at least a beginning of time and space; but neither
of these exist in reality; for in such case time would not be eternal,
nor space boundless. The past no more exists than the future, as we
have said, only our memories survive; and our memories are but the
glimpses that we catch of the reflections of this past in the currents
of the astral light, as the psychometer catches them from the astral
emanations of the object held by him.
Says Professor E. Hitchcock, when speaking of the influences of light
upon bodies, and of the formation of pictures upon them by means of
it: “It seems, then, that this photographic influence pervades all
nature; nor can we say where it stops. We do not know but it may
imprint upon the world around us our features, as they are modified by
various passions, and thus fill nature with daguerreotype impressions
of all our actions; ... it may be, too, that there are tests by which
nature, more skilful than any photographist, can bring out and fix
these portraits, so that _acuter_ senses than ours shall see them as
on a great canvas, spread over the material universe. _Perhaps_, too,
they may never fade from that canvas, but become specimens in the great
picture-gallery of eternity.”[308]
The “perhaps” of Professor Hitchcock is henceforth changed by the
demonstration of psychometry into a triumphant certitude. Those who
understand these psychological and clairvoyant faculties will take
exception to Professor Hitchcock’s idea, that acuter senses than ours
are needed to see these pictures upon his supposed cosmic canvas, and
maintain that he should have confined his limitations to the external
senses of the body. _The human spirit, being of the Divine, immortal
Spirit, appreciates neither past nor future, but sees all things as in
the present._ These daguerreotypes referred to in the above quotation
are imprinted upon the astral light, where, as we said before—and,
according to the Hermetic teaching, the first portion of which is
already accepted and demonstrated by science—is kept the record of all
that was, is, or ever will be.
Of late, some of our learned men have given a particular attention
to a subject hitherto branded with the mark of “superstition.” They
begin speculating on hypothetical and invisible worlds. The authors
of the _Unseen Universe_ were the first to boldly take the lead, and
already they find a follower in Professor Fiske, whose speculations
are given in the _Unseen World_. Evidently the scientists are probing
the insecure ground of materialism, and, feeling it trembling under
their feet, are preparing for a less dishonorable surrender of arms in
case of defeat. Jevons confirms Babbage, and both firmly believe that
every thought, displacing the particles of the brain and setting them
in motion, scatters them throughout the universe, and think that “each
particle of the existing matter must be a register of all that has
happened.”[309] On the other hand, Dr. Thomas Young, in his lectures
on natural philosophy, most positively invites us to “speculate with
freedom on the possibility of independent worlds; some existing in
different parts, others _pervading each other, unseen and unknown_, in
the same space, and others again to which space may not be a necessary
mode of existence.”
If scientists, proceeding from a strictly scientific point of
view, such as the possibility of energy being transferred into the
invisible universe—and on the principle of continuity, indulge in such
speculations, why should occultists and spiritualists be refused the
same privilege? Ganglionic impressions on the surface of polished
metal, are registered and may be preserved for an indefinite space
of time, according to science; and Professor Draper illustrates the
fact most poetically. “A shadow,” says he, “never falls upon a wall
without leaving thereupon a permanent trace, a trace which might be
made visible by resorting to proper processes.... The portraits of our
friends, or landscape-views, may be hidden on the sensitive surface
from the eye, but they are ready to make their appearance, as soon as
proper developers are resorted to. A spectre is concealed on a silver
or glassy surface, until, by our necromancy, we make it come forth
into the visible world. Upon the walls of our most private apartments,
where we think the eye of intrusion is altogether shut out, and our
retirement can never be profaned, there exist the vestiges of all our
acts, silhouettes of whatever we have done.”[310]
If an indelible impression may be thus obtained on inorganic matter,
and if nothing is lost or passes completely out of existence in the
universe, why such a scientific levee of arms against the authors
of the _Unseen Universe_? And on what ground can they reject the
hypothesis that “_Thought, conceived to affect the matter of another
universe simultaneously with this, may explain a future state_?”[311]
In our opinion, if psychometry is one of the grandest proofs of the
indestructibility of matter, retaining eternally the impressions of
the outward world, the possession of that faculty by our inner sight
is a still greater one in favor of the immortality of man’s individual
spirit. Capable of discerning events which took place hundreds of
thousands of years ago, why would it not apply the same faculty to a
future lost in the eternity, in which there can be neither past nor
future, but only one boundless present?
Notwithstanding the confessions of stupendous ignorance in some things,
made by the scientists themselves, they still deny the existence of
that mysterious spiritual force, lying beyond the grasp of the ordinary
physical laws. They still hope to be able to apply to living beings the
same laws which they have found to answer in reference to dead matter.
And, having discovered what the kabalists term “the gross purgations”
of Ether—light, heat, electricity, and motion—they have rejoiced over
their good fortune, counted its vibrations in producing the colors
of the spectrum; and, proud of their achievements, refuse to see any
further. Several men of science have pondered more or less over its
protean essence, and unable to measure it with their photometers,
called it “an _hypothetical_ medium of great elasticity and extreme
tenuity, _supposed_ to pervade all space, the interior of solid bodies
not excepted;” and, “to be the medium of transmission of light and
heat” (Dictionary). Others, whom we will name “the will-o’-the-wisps”
of science—her pseudo-sons—examined it also, and even went to the
trouble of scrutinizing it “through powerful glasses,” they tell us.
But perceiving neither spirits nor ghosts in it, and failing equally
to discover in its treacherous waves anything of a more scientific
character, they turned round and called all believers in immortality in
general, and spiritualists in particular, “insane fools” and “visionary
lunatics;”[312] the whole, in doleful accents, perfectly appropriate to
the circumstance of such a sad failure.
Say the authors of the _Unseen Universe_:
“We have driven the operation of that mystery called _Life_ out of
the objective universe. The mistake made, lies in imagining that by
this process they completely get rid of a thing so driven before them,
and that it disappears from the universe altogether. It does no such
thing. It only disappears from that _small circle_ of light which we
may call the universe of _scientific perception_. Call it the trinity
of mystery: mystery of matter, the mystery of life and—the mystery of
God—and these three are _One_.”[313]
Taking the ground that “the visible universe must _certainly, in
transformable energy, and probably in matter_, come to an end,” and
“the principle of continuity ... still demanding a continuance of the
universe...” the authors of this remarkable work find themselves forced
to believe “that there is something _beyond_ that which is visible[314]
... and that the visible system is not the whole universe but only, it
may be, a very small part of it.” Furthermore, looking back as well
as forward to the origin of this visible universe, the authors urge
that “if the visible universe is _all_ that exists then the first
abrupt manifestation of it is as truly a break of continuity as its
final overthrow” (Art. 85). Therefore, as such a break is against
the accepted law of continuity, the authors come to the following
conclusion:—
“Now, is it not natural to imagine, that a universe of this nature,
_which we have reason to think exists_, and is connected by bonds of
energy with the visible universe, is also capable of receiving energy
from it?... May we not regard Ether, or the medium, as not merely a
bridge[315] between one order of things and another, forming as it
were a species of cement, in virtue of which the various orders of
the universe are welded together and made into one? In fine, what we
generally called Ether, may be not a mere medium, but a medium _plus_
the invisible order of things, so that when the motions of the visible
universe are transferred into Ether, part of them are conveyed as by
a _bridge_ into the invisible universe, and are there made use of and
stored up. Nay, is it even necessary to retain the conception of a
bridge? May we not at once say that when energy is carried from matter
into Ether, it is carried from the visible into the invisible; and
that when it is carried from Ether to matter it is carried from the
invisible into the visible?“(Art. 198, _Unseen Universe_.)
Precisely; and were Science to take a few more steps in that direction
and fathom more seriously the “hypothetical medium” who knows but
Tyndall’s impassable chasm between the physical processes of the brain
and _consciousness_, might be—at least intellectually—passed with
surprising ease and safety.
So far back as 1856, a man considered a savant in his days—Dr. Jobard
of Paris,—had certainly the same ideas as the authors of the _Unseen
Universe_, on ether, when he startled the press and the world of
science by the following declaration: “I hold a discovery which
frightens me. There are two kinds of electricity; one, brute and blind,
is produced by the contact of metals and acids;” (the gross purgation)
... “the other is intelligent and CLAIRVOYANT!... Electricity has
bifurcated itself in the hands of Galvani, Nobili, and Matteuci. The
brute force of the current has followed Jacobi, Bonelli, and Moncal,
while the intellectual one was following Bois-Robert, Thilorier, and
the Chevalier Duplanty. The electric ball or globular electricity
contains a thought which disobeys Newton and Mariotte to follow its own
freaks.... We have, in the annals of the Academy, thousands of proofs
_of the_ INTELLIGENCE _of the electric bolt_.... But I remark that I
am permitting myself to become indiscreet. A little more and _I should
have disclosed_ to you the key which is about to discover to us the
universal spirit.”[316]
The foregoing, added to the wonderful confessions of science and what
we have just quoted from the _Unseen Universe_, throw an additional
lustre on the wisdom of the long departed ages. In one of the preceding
chapters we have alluded to a quotation from Cory’s translation of
_Ancient Fragments_, in which it appears that one of the _Chaldean
Oracles_ expresses this self-same idea about ether, and in language
singularly like that of the authors of the _Unseen Universe_. It
states that from æther have come all things, and to it all will
return; that the images of all things are indelibly impressed upon it;
and that it is the storehouse of the germs or of the remains of all
visible forms, and even ideas. It appears as if this case strangely
corroborates our assertion that whatever discoveries may be made in our
days will be found to have been anticipated by many thousand years by
our “simple-minded ancestors.”
At the point at which we are now arrived, the attitude assumed by the
materialists toward psychical phenomena being perfectly defined, we may
assert with safety that were this key lying loose on the threshold of
the “chasm” not one of our Tyndalls would stoop to pick it up.
How timid would appear to some kabalists these tentative efforts to
solve the GREAT MYSTERY of the universal ether! Although so far in
advance of anything propounded by contemporary philosophers, what the
intelligent explorers of the _Unseen Universe_ speculate upon, was to
the masters of hermetic philosophy familiar science. To them ether
was not merely a bridge connecting the seen and unseen sides of the
universe, but across its span their daring feet followed the road that
led through the mysterious gates which modern speculators either will
not or _cannot_ unlock.
The deeper the research of the modern explorer, the more often he
comes face to face with the discoveries of the ancients. Does Elie
de Beaumont, the great French geologist, venture a hint upon the
terrestrial circulation, in relation to some elements in the earth’s
crust, he finds himself anticipated by the old philosophers. Do we
demand of distinguished technologists, what are the most recent
discoveries in regard to the origin of the metalliferous deposits?
We hear one of them, Professor Sterry Hunt, in showing us how water
is a _universal solvent_, enunciating the doctrine held and taught
by the old Thales, more than two dozen centuries ago, that water was
the principle of all things. We listen to the same professor, with de
Beaumont as authority, expounding the terrestrial circulation, and
the chemical and physical phenomena of the material world. While we
read with pleasure that he is “not prepared to concede that we have in
chemical and physical processes _the whole secret of organic life_,” we
note with a still greater delight the following honest confession on
his part: “Still we are, in many respects, approximating the phenomena
of the organic world to those of the mineral kingdom; and we at the
same time learn that these so far interest and depend upon each other
that _we begin to see a certain truth_ underlying the notion of those
old philosophers, who extended to the mineral world the notion of a
vital force, which led them to speak of the earth as a great _living_
organism, and to look upon the various changes of its air, its waters,
and its rocky depths, as processes belonging to the life of our
planet.”
Everything in this world must have a beginning. Things have latterly
gone so far with scientists in the matter of prejudice, that it is
quite a wonder that even so much as this should be conceded to ancient
philosophy. The poor, honest primordial elements have long been exiled,
and our ambitious men of science run races to determine who shall add
one more to the fledgling brood of the sixty-three or more elementary
substances. Meanwhile there rages a war in modern chemistry about
terms. We are denied the right to call these substances “chemical
elements,” for they are not “primordial principles or self-existing
essences out of which the universe was fashioned.”[317] Such ideas
associated with the word _element_ were good enough for the “old Greek
philosophy,” but modern science rejects them; for, as Professor Cooke
says, “they are unfortunate terms,” and experimental science will have
“nothing to do with any kind of essences except those which it can see,
smell, or taste.” It must have those that can be put in the eye, the
nose, or the mouth! It leaves others to the metaphysicians.
Therefore, when Van Helmont tells us that, “though a homogeneal part of
elementary earth may be artfully (artificially) converted into water,”
though he still denies “that the same can be done by nature alone;
for no natural agent is able to transmute one element into another,”
offering as a reason that the elements always remain the same, we
must believe him, if not quite an ignoramus, at least an unprogressed
disciple of the mouldy “old Greek philosophy.” Living and dying in
blissful ignorance of the future sixty-three _substances_, what could
either he or his old master, Paracelsus, achieve? Nothing, of course,
but _metaphysical_ and crazy speculations, clothed in a meaningless
jargon common to all mediæval and ancient alchemists. Nevertheless,
in comparing notes, we find in the latest of all works upon modern
chemistry, the following: “The study of chemistry has revealed a
remarkable class of substances, from no one of which a second substance
has ever been produced by any chemical process which weighs less
than the original substance ... by no chemical process whatever can
we obtain from iron a substance weighing less than the metal used in
its production. In a word, we can _extract_ from iron nothing but
iron.”[318] Moreover, it appears, according to Professor Cooke, that
“_seventy-five years ago_ men did not know there was any difference”
between elementary and compound substances, for in old times alchemists
_had never conceived_ “that _weight is the measure of material_, and
that, as thus measured, no material is ever lost; but, on the contrary,
they imagined that in such experiments[319] as these the substances
involved underwent a _mysterious transformation_.... Centuries,” in
short, “were wasted in vain attempts to transform the baser metals
into gold.”
Is Professor Cooke, so eminent in modern chemistry, equally proficient
in the knowledge of what the alchemists did or did not know? Is he
quite sure that he understands the meaning of the alchemical diction?
We are not. But let us compare his views as above expressed with but
sentences written in plain and good, albeit old English, from the
translations of Van Helmont and Paracelsus. We learn from their own
admissions that the alkahest induces the following changes:
“(1.) The alkahest never destroys the _seminal virtues_ of the bodies
thereby dissolved: for instance, gold, by its action, is reduced to
a _salt_ of gold, antimony to _a salt of antimony_, etc., of the
same seminal virtues, or characters with the original concrete. (2.)
The _subject exposed_ to its operation is converted into its three
principles, salt, sulphur, and mercury, and afterwards into salt alone,
which then becomes volatile, and at length is wholly turned into
clear water. (3.) Whatever it dissolves may be rendered volatile by
a sand-heat; and if, after volatilizing the solvent, it be distilled
therefrom, the body is left pure, insipid water, but always _equal in
quantity to its original self_.” Further, we find Van Helmont, the
elder, saying of this salt that it will dissolve the most untractable
bodies into substances of the same seminal virtues, “_equal in weight
to the matter dissolved_;” and he adds, “This salt, by being several
times cohobated with Paracelsus, _sal circulatum_, loses all its
fixedness, and at length becomes an insipid water, _equal in quantity_
to the salt it was made from.”[320]
The objection that might be made by Professor Cooke, in behalf of
modern science, to the hermetic expressions, would equally apply to
the Egyptian hieratic writings—they hide that which was meant to be
concealed. If he would profit by the labors of the past, he must employ
the cryptographer, and not the satirist. Paracelsus, like the rest,
exhausted his ingenuity in transpositions of letters and abbreviations
of words and sentences. For example, when he wrote _sutratur_ he meant
tartar, and _mutrin_ meant nitrum, and so on. There was no end to the
pretended explanations of the meaning of the alkahest. Some imagined
that it was an alkaline of salt of tartar salatilized; others that it
meant _algeist_, a German word which means all-spirit, or spirituous.
Paracelsus usually termed salt “the centre of water wherein metals
ought to die.” This gave rise to the most absurd suppositions, and
some persons—such as Glauber—thought that the alkahest was the spirit
of salt. It requires no little hardihood to assert that Paracelsus and
his colleagues were ignorant of the natures of elementary and compound
substances; they may not be called by the same names as are now in
fashion, but that they were known is proved by the results attained.
What matters it by what name the gas given off when iron is dissolved
in sulphuric acid was called by Paracelsus, since he is recognized,
even by our standard authorities, as the discoverer of _hydrogen_?[321]
His merit is the same; and though Van Helmont may have concealed, under
the name “seminal virtues,” his knowledge of the fact that elementary
substances have their original properties, which the entering into
compounds only temporarily modifies—never destroys—he was none the less
the greatest chemist of his age, and the peer of modern scientists. He
affirmed that the _aurum potabile_ could be obtained with the alkahest,
by converting the whole body of gold into salt, retaining its seminal
virtues, and being soluble in water. When chemists learn what he meant
by _aurum potabile_, alkahest, salt, and seminal virtues—what he really
meant, not what he said he meant, nor what was thought he meant—then,
and not before, can our chemists safely assume such airs toward the
fire-philosophers and those ancient masters whose mystic teachings
they reverently studied. One thing is clear, at any rate. Taken merely
in its exoteric form, this language of Van Helmont shows that he
understood the solubility of metallic substances in water, which Sterry
Hunt makes the basis of his theory of metalliferous deposits. We would
like to see what sort of terms would be invented by our scientific
contempories to conceal and yet half-reveal their audacious proposition
that man’s “only God is the cineritious matter of his brain,” if in the
basement of the new Court House or the cathedral on Fifth Avenue there
were a torture-chamber, to which judge or cardinal could send them at
will.
Professor Sterry Hunt says in one of his lectures:[322] “The alchemists
sought in vain for a universal solvent; but we now know that water,
aided in some cases by heat, pressure, and the presence of certain
widely-distributed substances, such as carbonic acid and alkaline
carbonates and sulphides, will dissolve the most insoluble bodies; so
that it may, after all, be looked upon as the long-sought for alkahest
or universal menstruum.”
This reads almost like a paraphrase of Van Helmont, or Paracelsus
himself! They knew the properties of water as a solvent as well
as modern chemists, and what is more, made no concealment of the
fact; which shows that this was not _their_ universal solvent. Many
commentaries and criticisms of their works are still extant, and one
can hardly take up a book on the subject without finding at least one
of their speculations of which they never thought of making a mystery.
This is what we find in an old work on alchemists—a satire, moreover—of
1820, written at the beginning of our century when the new theories on
the chemical potency of water were hardly in their embryonic state.
“It may throw some light to observe, that Van Helmont, as well as
Paracelsus, _took water for the universal instrument (agent?) of
chymistry_ and natural philosophy; and earth for the unchangeable basis
of all things—that fire was assigned as the sufficient cause of all
things—that seminal impressions were lodged in the mechanism of the
earth—that water, by dissolving and fermenting with this earth, as
it does by means of fire, brings forth everything; whence originally
proceeded animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms.”[323]
The alchemists understand well this universal potency of water. In the
works of Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Philalethes, Pantatem, Tachenius, and
even Boyle, “the great characteristic of the alkahest,” “to dissolve
and change all sublunary bodies—_water alone excepted_,” is explicitly
stated. And is it possible to believe that Van Helmont, whose private
character was unimpeachable, and whose great learning was universally
recognized, should most solemnly declare himself possessed of the
secret, were it but a vain boast![324]
In a recent address at Nashville, Tennessee, Professor Huxley laid
down a certain rule with respect to the validity of human testimony
as a basis of history and science, which we are quite ready to
apply to the present case. “It is impossible,” he says, “that one’s
practical life should not be more or less influenced by the views
which we may hold as to what has been the past history of things.
One of them is _human testimony_ in its various shapes—all testimony
of eye-witnesses, traditional testimony from the lips of _those who
have been eye-witnesses_, and the testimony of those who have put
their impressions into writing and into print.... If you read Cæsar’s
_Commentaries_, wherever he gives an account of his battles with the
Gauls, you place a certain amount of confidence in his statements. You
take his testimony upon this. _You feel that Cæsar would not have made
these statements unless he had believed them to be true._”
Now, we cannot in logic permit Mr. Huxley’s philosophical rule to be
applied in a one-sided manner to Cæsar. Either that personage was
naturally truthful or a natural liar; and since Mr. Huxley has settled
that point to his own satisfaction as regards the facts of military
history in his favor, we insist that Cæsar is also a competent witness
as to augurs, diviners, and psychological facts. So with Herodotus,
and all other ancient authorities, unless they were by nature men
of truth, they should not be believed even about civil or military
affairs. _Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus._ And equally, if they are
credible as to physical things, they must be regarded as equally so as
to spiritual things; for as Professor Huxley tells us, human nature was
of old just as it is now. Men of intellect and conscience did not lie
for the pleasure of bewildering or disgusting posterity.
The probabilities of falsification by such men having been defined
so clearly by a man of science, we feel free from the necessity of
discussing the question in connection with the names of Van Helmont
and his illustrious but unfortunate master, the much-slandered
Paracelsus. Deleuze, though finding in the works of the former many
“mythic, illusory ideas” perhaps only because he could not understand
them—credits him nevertheless with a vast knowledge, “an acute
judgment,” and at the same time with having given to the world “great
truths.” “He was the first,” he adds, “to give the name of _gas_ to
aerial fluids. Without him it is probable that steel would have given
no new impulse to science.”[325] By what application of the doctrine
of chances could we discover the likelihood that experimentalists,
capable of resolving and recombining chemical substances, as they
are admitted to have done, were ignorant of the nature of elementary
substances, their combining energies, and the solvent or solvents, that
would disintegrate them when wanted? If they had the reputation only of
theorists the case would stand differently and our argument would lose
its force, but the chemical discoveries grudgingly accorded to them,
by their worst enemies, form the basis for much stronger language than
we have permitted ourselves, from a fear of being deemed over partial.
And, as this work, moreover, is based on the idea that there is a
higher nature of man, that his moral and intellectual faculties should
be judged _psychologically_, we do not hesitate to reaffirm that since
Van Helmont asserted, “most solemnly,” that he was possessed of the
secret of the alkahest, no modern critic has a right to set him down
as either a liar or a visionary, until something more certain is known
about the nature of this alleged _universal menstruum_.
“Facts are stubborn things,” remarks Mr. A. R. Wallace, in his preface
to _Miracles and Modern Spiritualism_. Therefore,[326] as facts must
be our strongest allies, we will bring as many of these forward as
the “miracles” of antiquity and those of our modern times will furnish
us with. The authors of the _Unseen Universe_ have _scientifically_
demonstrated the possibility of certain alleged psychological
phenomena through the medium of the universal ether. Mr. Wallace has
as scientifically proved that the whole catalogue of assumptions to
the contrary, including the sophisms of Hume, are untenable if brought
face to face with strict logic. Mr. Crookes has given to the world
of skepticism his own experiments, which lasted above three years
before he was conquered by the most undeniable of evidence—that of his
own senses. A whole list could be made up of men of science who have
recorded their testimony to that effect; and Camille Flammarion, the
well-known French astronomer, and author of many works which, in the
eyes of the skeptical, should send him to the ranks of the “deluded,”
in company with Wallace, Crookes, and Hare, corroborates our words in
the following lines:
“I do not hesitate to affirm my conviction, based on a personal
examination of the subject, that any scientific man who declares the
phenomena denominated ‘magnetic,’ ‘somnambulic,‘ ‘mediumic,’ and others
not yet explained by science, to be impossible, is one who speaks
without knowing what he is talking about, and also any man accustomed,
by his professional avocations, to scientific observations—provided
that his mind be not biassed by preconceived opinions, nor his mental
vision blinded by that opposite kind of illusion, unhappily too common
in the learned world, which consists in _imagining that the laws of
Nature are already known to us_, and that everything which appears to
overstep the limit of our present formulas is impossible, may require a
radical and absolute certainty of the reality of the facts alluded to.”
In Mr. Crookes’ _Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena called
Spiritual_, on p. 101, this gentleman quotes Mr. Sergeant Cox, who
having named this unknown force, _psychic_, explains it thus: “As
the organism is itself moved and directed within the structure by a
force—which either is, or is not controlled by—the soul, spirit, or
mind ... which constitutes the individual being we term ‘the man,’ it
is an equally reasonable conclusion that the force which causes the
motions beyond the limits of the body _is the same force that produces
motion within the limits of the body_. And, as the external force is
often directed by intelligence, it is an equally reasonable conclusion
that the directing intelligence of the external force is the same
intelligence that directs the force internally.”
In order to comprehend this theory the better, we may as well divide it
in four propositions and show that Mr. Sergeant Cox believes:
1. That the force which produces physical phenomena proceeds _from_
(consequently is generated _in_) the medium.
2. That the intelligence directing the force for the production of the
phenomena (_a_) _may_ sometimes be other than the intelligence of the
medium; but of this the “proof” is “insufficient;” therefore, (_b_) the
directing intelligence is probably that of the medium himself. This Mr.
Cox calls “a reasonable conclusion.”
3. He assumes that the force which moves the table is identical with
the force which moves the medium’s body itself.
4. He strongly disputes the spiritualistic theory, or rather assertion,
that “spirits of the dead are the _sole_ agents in the production of
_all_ the phenomena.”
Before we fairly proceed on our analysis of such views we must remind
the reader that we find ourselves placed between two extreme opposites
represented by two parties—the believers and unbelievers in this agency
of human spirits. Neither seem capable of deciding the point raised
by Mr. Cox; for while the spiritualists are so omnivorous in their
credulity as to believe every sound and movement in a _circle_ to be
produced by _disembodied_ human beings, their antagonists dogmatically
deny that anything can be produced by “spirits,” for there are none.
Hence, neither class is in a position to examine the subject without
bias.
If they consider that force which “produces motion within the body” and
the one “which causes the motion beyond the limits of the body” to be
of _the same essence_, they may be right. But the identity of these two
forces stops here. The life-principle which animates Mr. Cox’s body is
of the same nature as that of his medium; nevertheless he is not the
medium, nor is the latter Mr. Cox.
This force, which, to please Mr. Cox and Mr. Crookes we may just as
well call _psychic_ as anything else, proceeds _through_ not _from_ the
individual medium. In the latter case this force would be generated in
the medium and we are ready to show that it cannot be so; neither in
the instances of levitation of human bodies, the moving of furniture
and other objects without contact, nor in such cases in which the force
shows reason and intelligence. It is a well-known fact to both mediums
and spiritualists, that the more the former is passive, the better
the manifestations; and every one of the above-mentioned phenomena
requires a _conscious_ predetermined _will_. In cases of levitation,
we should have to believe that this self-generated force would raise
the inert mass off the ground, direct it through the air, and lower it
down again, avoiding obstacles and thereby showing intelligence, and
still act automatically, the medium remaining all the while _passive_.
If such were the fact, the medium would be a conscious magician, and
all pretence for being a passive instrument in the hands of invisible
intelligences would become useless. As well plead that a quantity of
steam sufficient to fill, without bursting, a boiler, will raise the
boiler; or a Leyden jar, full of electricity, overcome the inertia of
the jar, as such a mechanical absurdity. All analogy would seem to
indicate that the force which operates in the presence of a medium upon
external objects comes from a source back of the medium himself. We may
rather compare it with the hydrogen which overcomes the inertia of the
balloon. The gas, under the control of an intelligence, is accumulated
in the receiver in sufficient volume to overcome the attraction of
its combined mass. On the same principle this force moves articles of
furniture, and performs other manifestations; and though identical
in its essence with the astral spirit of the medium, it cannot be
his spirit only, for the latter remains all the while in a kind of
cataleptic torpor, when the mediumship is genuine. Mr. Cox’s first
point seems, therefore, not well taken; it is based upon an hypothesis
mechanically untenable. Of course our argument proceeds upon the
supposition that levitation is an observed fact. The theory of psychic
force, to be perfect, must account for all “visible motions ... in
solid substances,” and among these is levitation.
As to his second point, we deny that “the proof is insufficient” that
the force which produces the phenomena is sometimes directed by other
intelligences than the mind of the “psychic.” On the contrary there is
such an abundance of testimony to show that the mind of the medium,
in a majority of cases, has nothing to do with the phenomena, that we
cannot be content to let Mr. Cox’s bold assertion go unchallenged.
Equally illogical do we conceive to be his third proposition; for if
the medium’s body be not the generator but simply the channel of the
force which produces the phenomena—a question upon which Mr. Cox’s
researches throw no light whatever—then it does not follow that because
the medium’s “soul, spirit, or mind” directs the medium’s organism,
therefore this “soul, spirit, or mind,” lifts a chair or raps at the
call of the alphabet.
As to the fourth proposition, namely, that “spirits of the dead are
the sole agents in the production of all the phenomena,” we need not
join issue at the present moment, inasmuch as the nature of the spirits
producing mediumistic manifestations is treated at length in other
chapters.
The philosophers, and especially those who were initiated into the
Mysteries, held that the astral soul is the impalpable duplicate of
the gross external form which we call body. It is the _perisprit_
of the Kardecists and the _spirit-form_ of the spiritualists. Above
this internal duplicate, and illuminating it as the warm ray of the
sun illuminates the earth, fructifying the germ and calling out to
spiritual vivification the latent qualities dormant in it, hovers the
divine spirit. The astral _perisprit_ is contained and confined within
the physical body as ether in a bottle, or magnetism in magnetized
iron. It is a centre and engine of force, fed from the universal supply
of force, and moved by the same general laws which pervade all nature
and produce all cosmical phenomena. Its inherent activity causes the
incessant physical operations of the animal organism and ultimately
results in the destruction of the latter by overuse and its own
escape. It is the prisoner, not the voluntary tenant, of the body. It
has an attraction so powerful to the external universal force, that
after wearing out its casing it finally escapes to it. The stronger,
grosser, more material its encasing body, the longer is the term of its
imprisonment. Some persons are born with organizations so exceptional,
that the door which shuts other people in from communication with the
world of the astral light, can be easily unbarred and opened, and their
souls can look into, or even pass into that world, and return again.
Those who do this consciously, and at will, are termed magicians,
hierophants, seers, adepts; those who are made to do it, either through
the fluid of the mesmerizer or of “spirits,” are “mediums.” The astral
soul, when the barriers are once opened, is so powerfully attracted by
the universal, astral magnet, that it sometimes lifts its encasement
with it and keeps it suspended in mid-air, until the gravity of matter
reässerts its supremacy, and the body redescends again to earth.
Every objective manifestation, whether it be the motion of a living
limb, or the movement of some inorganic body, requires two conditions:
will and force—plus _matter_, or that which makes the object so moved
visible to our eye; and these three are all convertible forces, or the
force-correlation of the scientists. In their turn they are directed
or rather overshadowed by the Divine intelligence which these men so
studiously leave out of the account, but without which not even the
crawling of the smallest earth-worm could ever take place. The simplest
as the most common of all natural phenomena,—the rustling of the
leaves which tremble under the gentle contact of the breeze—requires
a constant exercise of these faculties. Scientists may well call them
cosmic laws, immutable and unchangeable. Behind these laws we must
search for the intelligent cause, which once having created and set
these laws in motion, has infused into them the essence of its own
consciousness. Whether we call this the first cause, the universal
will, or God, it must always bear intelligence.
And now we may ask, how can a will manifest itself intelligently and
unconsciously at the same time? It is difficult, if not impossible, to
conceive of intellection apart from consciousness. By consciousness
we do not necessarily imply physical or corporeal consciousness.
_Consciousness is a quality of the sentient principle, or, in other
words, the soul; and the latter often displays activity even while the
body is asleep or paralyzed._ When we lift our arm mechanically, we
may imagine that we do it unconsciously because our superficial senses
cannot appreciate the interval between the formulation of the purpose
and its execution. Latent as it seemed to us, our vigilant will evolved
force, and set our matter in motion. There is nothing in the nature
of the most trivial of mediumistic phenomena to make Mr. Cox’s theory
plausible. If the intelligence manifested by this force is no proof
that it belongs to a disembodied spirit, still less is it evidence that
it is unconsciously given out by the medium; Mr. Crookes himself tells
us of cases where the intelligence could not have emanated from any
one in the room; as in the instance where the word “however,” covered
by his finger and unknown even to himself, was correctly written by
planchette.[327] No explanation whatever can account for this case; the
only hypothesis tenable—if we exclude the agency of a spirit-power—is
that the clairvoyant faculties were brought into play. But scientists
deny clairvoyance; and if, to escape the unwelcome alternative of
accrediting the phenomena to a spiritual source, they concede to us the
fact of clairvoyance, it then devolves upon them to either accept the
kabalistic explanation of what this faculty is, or achieve the task
hitherto impracticable of making a new theory to fit the facts.
Again, if for the sake of argument it should be admitted that Mr.
Crookes’ word “however” might have been clairvoyantly read, what shall
we say of mediumistic communications having a prophetic character? Does
any theory of mediumistic impulse account for the ability to foretell
events beyond the possible knowledge of both speaker and listener? Mr.
Cox will have to try again.
As we have said before, the modern psychic force, and the ancient
oracular fluids, whether terrestrial or sidereal, are identical in
essence—simply a blind force. So is air. And while in a dialogue the
sound-waves produced by a conversation of the speakers affect the same
body of air, that does not imply any doubt of the fact that there
are two persons talking with each other. Is it any more reasonable
to say that when a common agent is employed by medium and “spirit”
to intercommunicate, there must necessarily be but one intelligence
displaying itself? As the air is necessary for the mutual exchange
of audible sounds, so are certain currents of astral light, or ether
directed by an _Intelligence_, necessary for the production of the
phenomena called spiritual. Place two interlocutors in the exhausted
receiver of an air-pump, and, if they could live, their words would
remain inarticulate thoughts, for there would be no air to vibrate, and
hence no ripple of sound would reach their ears. Place the strongest
medium in such isolating atmosphere as a powerful mesmerizer, familiar
with the properties of the magical agent, can create around him, and no
manifestations will take place until some opposing intelligence, more
potential than the will-power of the mesmerizer, overcomes the latter
and terminates the astral inertia.
The ancients were at no loss to discriminate between a blind
force acting spontaneously and the same force when directed by an
intelligence.
Plutarch, the priest of Apollo, when speaking of the oracular vapors
which were but a subterranean gas, imbued with intoxicating magnetic
properties, shows its nature to be dual, when he addresses it in these
words: “And who art thou? without a God who creates and ripens thee;
without a dæmon [spirit] who, acting under the orders of God, directs
and governs thee; thou canst do nothing, thou art _nothing_ but a
vain breath.”[328] Thus without the indwelling soul or intelligence,
“Psychic Force” would be also but a “vain breath.”
Aristotle maintains that this gas, or astral emanation, escaping from
inside the earth, is the sole _sufficient cause_, acting from within
outwardly for the vivification of every living being and plant upon the
external crust. In answer to the skeptical negators of his century,
Cicero, moved by a just wrath, exclaims: “And what can be more divine
than the exhalations of the earth, which affect the human soul so as to
enable her to predict the future? And could the hand of time evaporate
such a virtue? Do you suppose you are talking of some kind of wine or
salted meat?”[329] Do modern experimentalists claim to be wiser than
Cicero, and say that this eternal force has evaporated, and that the
springs of prophecy are dry?
All the prophets of old—inspired sensitives—were said to be uttering
their prophecies under the same conditions, either by the direct
outward efflux of the astral emanation, or a sort of damp fluxion,
rising from the earth. It is this astral matter which serves as a
temporary clothing of the souls who form themselves in this light.
Cornelius Agrippa expresses the same views as to the nature of these
phantoms by describing it as moist or humid: “_In spirito turbido_
HUMIDOQUE.”[330]
Prophecies are delivered in two ways—consciously, by magicians who are
able to look into the astral light; and unconsciously, by those who
act under what is called inspiration. To the latter class belonged
and belong the Biblical prophets and the modern trance-speakers. So
familiar with this fact was Plato, that of such prophets he says: “No
man, when in his senses, attains prophetic truth and inspiration ...
but only when demented by some distemper or possession ...” (by a
daimonion or spirit).[331] “Some persons call them prophets; they do
not know that they are only _repeaters_ ... and are not to be called
prophets at all, but only _transmitters_ of vision and prophecy,“he
adds.
In continuation of his argument, Mr. Cox says: “The most ardent
spiritualists practically admit the existence of psychic force, under
the very inappropriate name of magnetism (to which it has no affinity
whatever), for they assert that the spirits of the dead can only do the
acts attributed to them by using the magnetism (that is, the psychic
force) of the mediums.”[332]
Here, again, a misunderstanding arises in consequence of different
names being applied to what may prove to be one and the same
imponderable compound. Because electricity did not become a science
till the eighteenth century, no one will presume to say that this
force has not existed since the creation; moreover, we are prepared
to prove that even the ancient Hebrews were acquainted with it. But,
merely because exact science did not happen before 1819 to stumble
over the discovery which showed the intimate connection existing
between magnetism and electricity, it does not at all prevent these two
agents being identical. If a bar of iron can be endowed with magnetic
properties, by passing a current of voltaic electricity over some
conductor placed in a certain way close to the bar, why not accept,
as a provisional theory, that a medium may also be a _conductor_,
and nothing more, at a seance? Is it unscientific to say that the
intelligence of “psychic force,” drawing currents of electricity from
the waves of the ether, and employing the medium as a conductor,
develops and calls into action the latent magnetism with which the
atmosphere of the seance-room is saturated, so as to produce the
desired effects? The word _magnetism_ is as appropriate as any other,
until science gives us something more than a merely hypothetical agent
endowed with conjectural properties.
“The difference between the advocates of psychic force and the
spiritualists consists in this,” says Sergeant Cox, “that we contend
that there is as yet insufficient proof of any other directing agent
than the intelligence of the medium, and _no proof whatever_ of the
agency of the ‘spirits’ of the dead.”[333]
We fully agree with Mr. Cox as to the lack of proof that the agency
is that of the spirits of the dead; as for the rest, it is a very
extraordinary deduction from “a wealth of facts,” according to the
expression of Mr. Crookes, who remarks further, “On going over my
notes, I find ... such a superabundance of evidence, so overwhelming
a mass of testimony ... that I could fill several numbers of the
_Quarterly_.”[334]
Now some of these facts of an “overwhelming evidence” are as follows:
1st. The movement of heavy bodies with contact, but without mechanical
exertion. 2d. The phenomena of percussive and other sounds. 3d. The
alteration of weight of bodies. 4th. Movements of heavy substances
_when at a distance from the medium_. 5th. The rising of tables and
chairs off the ground, _without contact with any person_. 6th. THE
LEVITATION OF HUMAN BEINGS.[335] 7th. “Luminous apparitions.” Says
Mr. Crookes, “Under the strictest conditions, I have seen a solid
self-luminous body, the size and nearly the shape of a turkey’s egg,
float noiselessly about the room, at one time higher than any one could
reach on tiptoe, and then gently descend to the floor. It was visible
for more than ten minutes, and before it faded away it struck the
table three times with a sound like that of a hard, solid body.”[336]
(We must infer that the egg was of the same nature as M. Babinet’s
meteor-cat, which is classified with other natural phenomena in Arago’s
works.) 8th. The appearance of hands, either self-luminous or visible
by ordinary light. 9th. “Direct writing” by these same luminous hands,
detached, and evidently endowed with intelligence. (Psychic force?)
10th. “Phantom-forms and faces.” In this instance, the psychic force
comes “from a corner of the room” as a “phantom form,” takes an
accordeon in its hand, and then glides about the room, playing the
instrument; Home, the medium, being in full view at the time.[337] The
whole of the preceding Mr. Crookes witnessed and tested at his own
house, and, having assured himself scientifically of the genuineness of
the phenomenon, reported it to the Royal Society. Was he welcomed as
the discoverer of natural phenomena of a new and important character?
Let the reader consult his work for the answer.
In addition to these freaks played on human credulity by “psychic
force,” Mr. Crookes gives another class of phenomena, which he terms
“special instances,” which _seem_ (?) to point to the agency of an
_exterior_ intelligence.[338]
“I have been,” says Mr. Crookes, “with Miss Fox when she has been
writing a message automatically to one person present, whilst a message
to another person, on _another_ subject, was being given alphabetically
by means of ‘raps,’ and the whole time she was conversing freely with
a third person, on a subject totally different from either.... During
a seance with Mr. Home, a small lath moved across the table to me,
_in the light_, and delivered a message to me by tapping my hand; I
repeating the alphabet, and the lath tapping me at the right letters
... being at a distance from Mr. Home’s hands.” The same lath, upon
request of Mr. Crookes, gave him “a telegraphic message through the
Morse alphabet, by taps on my hand” (the Morse code being quite unknown
to any other person present, and but imperfectly to himself), “and,”
adds Mr. Crookes, “it convinced me that there was a good Morse operator
at the other end of the line, WHEREVER THAT MIGHT BE.”[339] Would it be
undignified in the present case to suggest that Mr. Cox should search
for the operator in his private principality—Psychic Land? But the same
lath does more and better. In full light in Mr. Crookes’ room _it_
is asked to give a message, “ ... a pencil and some sheets of paper
had been lying on the centre of the table; presently the _pencil rose
on its point_, and after advancing by hesitating jerks to the paper,
fell down. It then rose, and again fell.... After three unsuccessful
attempts, a small wooden lath” (the Morse operator) “which was lying
near upon the table, _slid towards the pencil_, and _rose_ a few inches
from the table; the pencil rose again, _and propping itself against the
lath_, the two together made an effort to mark the paper. It fell, and
then _a joint effort_ was made again. After a third trial the lath gave
it up, and _moved back to its place_; the pencil lay as it fell across
the paper, and an alphabetic message told us: “We have tried to do as
you asked, but _our power_ is exhausted.”[340] The word _our_, as the
joint intelligent efforts of the friendly lath and pencil, would make
us think that there were _two_ psychic forces present.
In all this, is there any proof that the directing agent was “the
intelligence of the medium”? Is there not, on the contrary, every
indication that the movements of the lath and pencil were directed
by spirits “of the dead,” or at least of those of some other unseen
intelligent entities? Most certainly the word magnetism explains in
this case as little as the term _psychic force_; howbeit, there is more
reason to use the former than the latter, if it were but for the simple
fact that the _transcendent_ magnetism or mesmerism produces phenomena
identical in effects with those of spiritualism. The phenomenon of the
_enchanted_ circle of Baron Du Potet and Regazzoni, is as contrary
to the accepted laws of physiology as the rising of a table without
contact is to the laws of natural philosophy. As strong men have often
found it impossible to raise a small table weighing a few pounds, and
broken it to pieces in the effort, so a dozen of experimenters, among
them sometimes, academicians, were utterly unable to step across a
chalk-line drawn on the floor by Du Potet. On one occasion a Russian
general, well known for his skepticism, persisted until he fell on the
ground in violent convulsions. In this case, the magnetic fluid which
opposed such a resistance was Mr. Cox’s psychic force, which endows the
tables with an extraordinary and supernatural weight. If they produce
the same psychological and physiological effects, there is good reason
to believe them more or less identical. We do not think the deduction
could be very reasonably objected to. Besides, were the fact even
denied, this is no reason why it should not be so. Once upon a time,
all the Academies in Christendom had agreed to deny that there were
any mountains in the moon; and there was a certain time when, if any
one had been so bold as to affirm that there was life in the superior
regions of the atmosphere as well as in the fathomless depths of the
ocean, he would have been set down as a fool or an ignoramus.
“The Devil affirms—it must be a lie!” the pious Abbé Almiguana used
to say, in a discussion with a “spiritualized table.” We will soon be
warranted in paraphrasing the sentence and making it read—“Scientists
deny—then it must be true.”
CHAPTER VII.
“Thou great First Cause, least understood.”—POPE.
“Whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
’Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
’Tis heaven itself that points out our hereafter
And intimates eternity to man.
ETERNITY! Thou pleasing, dreadful thought!”—ADDISON.
“There is another and a better world.”—KOTZEBUE: _The Stranger_.
After according so much space to the conflicting opinions of our men
of science about certain occult phenomena of our modern period, it
is but just that we give attention to the speculations of mediæval
alchemists and certain other illustrious men. Almost without exception,
ancient and mediæval scholars believed in the arcane doctrines of
wisdom. These included Alchemy, the Chaldeo-Jewish Kabala, the esoteric
systems of Pythagoras and the old Magi, and those of the later Platonic
philosophers and theurgists. We also propose in subsequent pages to
treat of the Indian gymnosophists and the Chaldean astrologers. We
must not neglect to show the grand truths underlying the misunderstood
religions of the past. The four elements of our fathers, earth, air,
water, and fire, contain for the student of alchemy and ancient
psychology—or as it is now termed, _magic_—many things of which our
philosophy has never dreamed. We must not forget that what is now
called _Necromancy_ by the Church, and _Spiritualism_ by modern
believers, and that includes the evoking of departed spirits, is a
science which has, from remote antiquity, been almost universally
diffused over the face of the globe.
Although neither an alchemist, magician, nor astrologer, but simply
a great philosopher, Henry More, of Cambridge University—a man
universally esteemed, may be named as a shrewd logician, scientist, and
metaphysician. His belief in witchcraft was firm throughout his life.
His faith in immortality and able arguments in demonstration of the
survival of man’s spirit after death are all based on the Pythagorean
system, adopted by Cardan, Van Helmont, and other mystics. The infinite
and uncreated spirit that we usually call GOD, a substance of the
highest virtue and excellency, produced everything else by _emanative
causality_. God thus is the primary substance, the rest, the secondary;
if the former created matter with a power of moving itself, he, the
primary substance, is still the cause of that motion as well as of the
matter, and yet we rightly say that it is matter which moves itself.
“We may define this kind of spirit we speak of to be a substance
indiscernible, that can move itself, that can penetrate, contract, and
dilate itself, and can also penetrate, move, and alter matter,”[341]
which is the third emanation. He firmly believed in apparitions,
and stoutly defended the theory of the individuality of every soul
in which “personality, memory, and conscience will surely continue
in the future state.” He divided the astral spirit of man after its
exit from the body into two distinct entities: the “aërial” and the
“æthereal vehicle.” During the time that a disembodied man moves in its
aërial clothing, he is subject to _Fate_—_i. e._, evil and temptation,
attached to its earthly interests, and therefore is not utterly pure;
it is only when he casts off this garb of the first spheres and becomes
ethereal that he becomes sure of his immortality. “For what shadow
can that body cast that is a pure and transparent light, such as the
ethereal vehicle is? And therefore that oracle is then fulfilled, when
the soul has ascended into that condition we have already described, in
which alone it is out of the reach of fate and mortality.” He concludes
his work by stating that this transcendent and divinely-pure condition
was the only aim of the Pythagoreans.
As to the skeptics of his age, his language is contemptuous and severe.
Speaking of Scot, Adie, and Webster, he terms them “our new inspired
saints ... sworn advocates of the witches, who thus madly and boldly,
against all sense and reason, against all antiquity, all interpreters,
and against the Scripture itself, will have even no Samuel in the
scene, but a confederate knave! Whether the Scripture, or these inblown
buffoons, puffed up with nothing but ignorance, vanity, and stupid
infidelity, are to be believed, let any one judge,” he adds.[342]
What kind of language would this eminent divine have used against our
skeptics of the nineteenth century?
Descartes, although a worshipper of matter, was one of the most devoted
teachers of the magnetic doctrine and, in a certain sense, even of
Alchemy. His system of physics was very much like that of other great
philosophers. Space, which is infinite, is composed, or rather filled
up with a fluid and elementary matter, and is the sole fountain of all
life, enclosing all the celestial globes and keeping them in perpetual
motion. The magnet-streams of Mesmer are disguised by him into the
Cartesian vortices, and both rest on the same principle. Ennemoser does
not hesitate to say that both have more in common “than people suppose,
who have not carefully examined the subject.”[343]
The esteemed philosopher, Pierre Poiret Naudé, was the warmest defender
of the doctrines of occult magnetism and its first propounders,[344]
in 1679. The magico-theosophical philosophy is fully vindicated in his
works.
The well-known Dr. Hufeland has written a work on magic[345] in which
he propounds the theory of the universal magnetic sympathy between men,
animals, plants, and even minerals. The testimony of Campanella, Van
Helmont, and Servius, is confirmed by him in relation to the sympathy
existing between the different parts of the body as well as between the
parts of all organic and even inorganic bodies.
Such also was the doctrine of Tenzel Wirdig. It may even be found
expounded in his works, with far more clearness, logic, and vigor,
than in those of other mystical authors who have treated of the same
subject. In his famous treatise, _The New Spiritual Medicine_, he
demonstrates, on the ground of the later-accepted fact of universal
attraction and repulsion—now called “gravitation” that the whole nature
is _ensouled_. Wirdig calls this magnetic sympathy “the accordance
of spirits.” Everything is drawn to its like, and converges with
natures congenial to itself. Out of this sympathy and antipathy
arises a constant movement in the whole world, and in all its parts,
and uninterrupted communion between heaven and earth, which produces
universal harmony. Everything lives and perishes through magnetism;
one thing affects another one, even at great distances, and its
“congenitals” may be influenced to health and disease by the power
of this sympathy, at any time, and notwithstanding the intervening
space.[346] “Hufeland,” says Ennemoser, “gives the account of a nose
which had been cut from the back of a porter, but which, when the
porter died, died too and fell off from its artificial position. A
piece of skin,” adds Hufeland, “taken from a living head, had its
hair turn gray at the same time as that on the head from which it was
taken.”[347]
Kepler, the forerunner of Newton in many great truths, even in that of
the universal “gravitation” which he very justly attributed to magnetic
attraction, notwithstanding that he terms astrology “the insane
daughter of a most wise mother” Astronomy, shares the kabalistic belief
that the spirits of the stars are so many “intelligences.” _He firmly
believes that each planet is the seat of an intelligent principle,
and that they are all inhabited by spiritual beings, who exercise
influences over other beings inhabiting more gross and material spheres
than their own and especially_ our earth.[348] As Kepler’s _spiritual_
starry influences were superseded by the vortices of the more
materialistic Descartes, whose atheistical tendencies did not prevent
him from believing that he had found out a diet that would prolong his
life five hundred years and more, so the vortices of the latter and his
astronomical doctrines may some day give place to the _intelligent_
magnetic streams which are directed by the _Anima Mundi_.
Baptista Porta, the learned Italian philosopher, notwithstanding his
endeavors to show to the world the groundlessness of their accusations
of magic being a superstition and sorcery, was treated by later critics
with the same unfairness as his colleagues. This celebrated alchemist
left a work on _Natural Magic_,[349] in which he bases all of the
occult phenomena possible to man upon the world-soul which binds all
with all. He shows that the astral light acts in harmony and sympathy
with all nature; that it is the essence out of which our spirits are
formed; and that by acting in unison with their parent-source, our
sidereal bodies are rendered capable of producing magic wonders. The
whole secret depends on our knowledge of kindred elements. He believed
in the philosopher’s stone, “of which the world hath so great an
opinion of, which hath been bragged of in so many ages and _happily
attained unto by some_.” Finally, he throws out many valuable hints as
to its “spiritual meaning.” In 1643, there appeared among the mystics
a monk, Father Kircher, who taught a complete philosophy of universal
magnetism. His numerous works[350] embrace many of the subjects merely
hinted at by Paracelsus. His definition of magnetism is very original,
for he contradicted Gilbert’s theory that the earth was a great magnet.
He asserted that although every particle of matter, and even the
intangible invisible “powers” were magnetic, they did not themselves
constitute a magnet. _There is but one_ MAGNET _in the universe, and
from it proceeds the magnetization of everything existing._ This
magnet is of course what the kabalists term the central Spiritual
Sun, or God. The sun, moon, planets, and stars he affirmed are highly
magnetic; but they have become so by induction from living in the
universal magnetic fluid—the Spiritual light. He proves the mysterious
sympathy existing between the bodies of the three principal kingdoms
of nature, and strengthens his argument by a stupendous catalogue of
instances. Many of these were verified by naturalists, but still more
have remained unauthenticated; therefore, according to the traditional
policy and very equivocal logic of our scientists, they are denied.
For instance, he shows a difference between mineral magnetism and
zoömagnetism, or animal magnetism. He demonstrates it in the fact that
except in the case of the lodestone all the minerals are magnetized by
the higher potency, the animal magnetism, while the latter enjoys it as
the direct emanation from the first cause—the Creator. A needle can be
magnetized by simply being held in the hand of a strong-willed man, and
amber develops its powers more by the friction of the human hand than
by any other object; therefore man can impart his own life, and, to a
certain degree, _animate_ inorganic objects. This, “in the eyes of the
foolish, is sorcery.” “The sun is the most magnetic of all bodies,” he
says; thus anticipating the theory of General Pleasonton by more than
two centuries. “The ancient philosophers never denied the fact,” he
adds; “but have at all times perceived that the sun’s emanations were
binding all things to itself, and that it imparts this binding power to
everything falling under its direct rays.”
As a proof of it he brings the instance of a number of plants being
especially attracted to the sun, and others to the moon, and showing
their irresistible sympathy to the former by following its course
in the heavens. The plant known as the _Githymal_,[351] faithfully
follows its sovereign, even when it is invisible on account of the
fog. The acacia uncloses its petals at its rising, and closes them at
its setting. So does the Egyptian lotos and the common sunflower. The
nightshade exhibits the same predilection for the moon.
As examples of antipathies or sympathies among plants, he instances the
aversion which the vine feels for the cabbage, and its fondness toward
the olive-tree; the love of the ranunculus for the water-lily, and of
the rue for the fig. The antipathy which sometimes exists even among
kindred substances is clearly demonstrated in the case of the Mexican
pomegranate, whose shoots, when cut to pieces, repel each other with
the “most extraordinary ferocity.”
Kircher accounts for every feeling in human nature as results of
changes in our magnetic condition. Anger, jealousy, friendship, love,
and hatred, are all modifications of the magnetic atmosphere which
is developed in us and constantly emanates from us. Love is one of
the most variable, and therefore the aspects of it are numberless.
Spiritual love, that of a mother for her child, of an artist for
some particular art, love as pure friendship, are purely magnetic
manifestations of sympathy in congenial natures. _The magnetism of
pure love is the originator of every created thing._ In its ordinary
sense love between the sexes is electricity, and he calls it _amor
febris species_, the fever of species. There are two kinds of magnetic
attraction: sympathy and fascination; the one holy and natural, the
other evil and unnatural. To the latter, fascination, we must attribute
the power of the poisonous toad, which upon merely opening its mouth,
forces the passing reptile or insect to run into it to its destruction.
The deer, as well as smaller animals, are attracted by the breath
of the boa, and are made irresistibly to come within its reach. The
electric fish, the torpedo, repels the arm with a shock that for a
time benumbs it. To exercise such a power for beneficent purposes, man
requires three conditions: 1, nobility of soul; 2, strong will and
imaginative faculty; 3, a subject weaker than the magnetizer; otherwise
he will resist. A man free from worldly incentives and sensuality, may
cure in such a way the most “incurable” diseases, and his vision may
become clear and prophetic.
A curious instance of the above-mentioned universal attraction between
all the bodies of the planetary system and everything organic as well
as inorganic pertaining to them, is found in a quaint old volume of
the seventeenth century. It contains notes of travel and an official
report to the King of France, by his Ambassador, de la Loubère, upon
what he has seen in the kingdom of Siam. “At Siam,” he says, “there are
two species of fresh-water fish, which they respectively call _pal-out_
and _pla-cadi_ fish. Once salted and placed uncut (whole) in the pot,
they are found to exactly follow the flux and reflux of the sea,
growing higher and lower in the pot as the sea ebbs or flows.”[352] De
la Loubère experimented with this fish for a long time, together with
a government engineer, named Vincent, and, therefore, vouches for the
truth of this assertion, which at first had been dismissed as an idle
fable. So powerful is this mysterious attraction that it affected the
fishes even when their bodies became totally rotten and fell to pieces.
It is especially in the countries unblessed with civilization that
we should seek for an explanation of the nature, and observe the
effects of that subtile power, which ancient philosophers called the
“world’s soul.” In the East only, and on the boundless tracts of
unexplored Africa, will the student of psychology find abundant food
for his truth-hungering soul. The reason is obvious. The atmosphere
in populous neighborhoods is badly vitiated by the smoke and fumes of
manufactories, steam-engines, railroads, and steamboats, and especially
by the miasmatic exhalations of the living and the dead. Nature is as
dependent as a human being upon conditions before she can work, and
her mighty breathing, so to say, can be as easily interfered with,
impeded, and arrested, and the correlation of her forces destroyed in
a given spot, as though she were a man. Not only climate, but also
occult influences daily felt not only modify the physio-psychological
nature of man, but even alter the constitution of so-called inorganic
matter in a degree not fairly realized by European science. Thus the
London _Medical and Surgical Journal_ advises surgeons not to carry
lancets to Calcutta, because it has been found by personal experience
“that English steel could not bear the atmosphere of India;” so a
bunch of English or American keys will be completely covered with rust
twenty-four hours after having been brought to Egypt; while objects
made of native steel in those countries remain unoxidized. So, too, it
has been found that a Siberian Shaman who has given stupendous proofs
of his occult powers among his native Tschuktschen, is gradually and
often completely deprived of such powers when coming into smoky and
foggy London. Is the inner organism of man less sensitive to climatic
influences than a bit of steel? If not, then why should we cast doubt
upon the testimony of travellers who may have seen the Shaman, day
after day, exhibit phenomena of the most astounding character in his
native country, and deny the possibility of such powers and such
phenomena, only because he cannot do as much in London or Paris? In
his lecture on the _Lost Arts_, Wendell Phillips proves that beside
the psychological nature of man being affected by a change of climate,
Oriental people have physical senses far more acute than the Europeans.
The French dyers of Lyons, whom no one can surpass in skill, he says,
“have a theory that there is a certain delicate shade of blue that
Europeans _cannot see_.... And in Cashmere, where the girls make
shawls worth $30,000, they will show him (the dyer of Lyons) three
hundred distinct colors, which he not only cannot make, but _cannot
even distinguish_.” If there is such a vast difference between the
acuteness of the external senses of two races, why should there not be
the same in their psychological powers? Moreover, the eye of a Cashmere
girl is able to see _objectively_ a color which does exist, but which
being inappreciable by the European, is therefore non-existent for him.
Why then not concede, that some peculiarly-endowed organisms, which
are thought to be possessed of that mysterious faculty called _second
sight_, see their pictures as objectively as the girl sees the colors;
and that therefore the former, instead of mere objective hallucinations
called forth by imagination are, on the contrary, reflections of real
things and persons impressed upon the astral ether, as explained by the
old philosophy of the _Chaldean Oracles_, and surmised by those modern
discoverers, Babbage, Jevons, and the authors of the _Unseen Universe_?
“Three spirits live and actuate man,” teaches Paracelsus; “three
worlds pour their beams upon him; but all three only as the image and
echo of one and the same all constructing and uniting principle of
production. The first is the spirit of the elements (terrestrial body
and vital force in its brute condition); the second, the spirit of the
stars (sidereal or astral body—the soul); the third is the _Divine_
spirit (_Augoeidés_).” Our human body, being possessed of “primeval
earth-stuff,” as Paracelsus calls it, we may readily accept the
tendency of modern scientific research “to regard the processes of both
animal and vegetable life as simply physical and chemical.” This theory
only the more corroborates the assertions of old philosophers and the
_Mosaic Bible_, that from the dust of the ground our bodies were made,
and to dust they will return. But we must remember that
“‘Dust thou art, to dust returnest,’
Was not spoken of the soul.”
Man is a little world—a microcosm inside the great universe. Like a
fœtus, he is suspended, by all his _three_ spirits, in the matrix
of the macrocosmos; and while his terrestrial body is in constant
sympathy with its parent earth, his astral soul lives in unison with
the sidereal _anima mundi_. He is in it, as it is in him, for the
world-pervading element fills all space, and _is_ space itself, only
shoreless and infinite. As to his third spirit, the divine, what is it
but an infinitesimal ray, one of the countless radiations proceeding
directly from the Highest Cause—the Spiritual Light of the World?
This is the trinity of organic and inorganic nature—the spiritual and
the physical, which are three in one, and of which Proclus says that
“The first monad is the Eternal God; the second, eternity; the third,
the paradigm, or pattern of the universe;” the three constituting the
Intelligible Triad. Everything in this visible universe is the outflow
of this Triad, and a microcosmic triad itself. And thus they move in
majestic procession in the fields of eternity, around the spiritual
sun, as in the heliocentric system the celestial bodies move round the
visible suns. The Pythagorean _Monad_, which lives “in solitude and
darkness,” may remain on this earth forever invisible, impalpable,
and undemonstrated by experimental science. Still the whole universe
will be gravitating around it, as it did from the “beginning of time,”
and with every second, man and atom approach nearer to that solemn
moment in the eternity, when the Invisible Presence will become clear
to their spiritual sight. When every particle of matter, even the
most sublimated, has been cast off from the last shape that forms the
ultimate link of that chain of double evolution which, throughout
millions of ages and successive transformations, has pushed the entity
onward; and when it shall find itself reclothed in that primordial
essence, identical with that of its Creator, then this once impalpable
organic atom will have run its race, and the sons of God will once more
“shout for joy” at the return of the pilgrim.
“Man,” says Van Helmont, “is the mirror of the universe, and his triple
nature stands in relationship to all things.” The will of the Creator,
through which all things were made and received their first impulse,
is the property of every living being. Man, endowed with an additional
spirituality, has the largest share of it on this planet. It depends on
the proportion of matter in him whether he will exercise its magical
faculty with more or less success. Sharing this divine potency in
common with every inorganic atom, he exercises it through the course
of his whole life, whether consciously or otherwise. In the former
case, when in the full possession of his powers, he will be the master,
and the _magnale magnum_ (the universal soul) will be controlled and
guided by him. In the cases of animals, plants, minerals, and even
of the average of humanity, this ethereal fluid which pervades all
things, finding no resistance, and being left to itself, moves them as
its impulse directs. Every created being in this sublunary sphere, is
formed out of the _magnale magnum_, and is related to it. Man possesses
a double celestial power, and is allied to heaven. This power is “not
only in the outer man, but to a degree also in the animals, and perhaps
in all other things, as all things in the universe stand in a relation
to each other; or, at least, God is in all things, as the ancients
have observed it with a worthy correctness. It is necessary that the
magic strength should be awakened in the outer as well as in the inner
man.... And if we call this a magic power, the uninstructed only can
be terrified by the expression. But, if you prefer it, you can call it
a spiritual power—_spirituale robur vocitaveris_. There is, therefore,
such magic power in the inner man. But, as there exists a certain
relationship between the inner and the outer man, this strength must be
diffused through the whole man.”[353]
In an extended description of the religious rites, monastic life, and
“superstitions” of the Siamese, de la Loubère cites among other things
the wonderful power possessed by the _Talapoin_ (the monks, or the
holy men of Buddha) over the wild beasts. “The Talapoin of Siam,” he
says, “will pass whole weeks in the dense woods under a small awning
of branches and palm leaves, and never make a fire in the night to
scare away the wild beasts, as all other people do who travel through
the woods of this country.” The people consider it a miracle that no
Talapoin is ever devoured. The tigers, elephants, and rhinoceroses—with
which the neighborhood abounds—respect him; and travellers placed in
secure ambuscade have often seen these wild beasts lick the hands and
feet of the sleeping Talapoin. “They all use magic,” adds the French
gentleman, “and think all nature animated (ensouled);[354] they believe
in tutelar geniuses.” But that which seems to shock the author most is
the idea which prevails among the Siamese, “that all that man was in
his bodily life, he will be after death.” “When the Tartar, which now
reigns at China,” remarks de la Loubère, “would force the Chinese to
shave their hair after the Tartarian fashion, several of them chose
rather to suffer death, than to go, they said, into the other world and
appear before their ancestors without hair; imagining that they shaved
the head of the soul also!”[355] “Now, what is altogether impertinent,”
adds the Ambassador, “in this absurd opinion is, that the Orientals
attribute the human figure rather than any other to the soul.” Without
enlightening his reader as to the particular shape these benighted
Orientals ought to select for their disembodied souls, de la Loubère
proceeds to pour out his wrath on these “savages.” Finally, he attacks
the memory of the old king of Siam, the father of the one to whose
court he was sent, by accusing him of having foolishly spent over two
million livres in search of the philosopher’s stone. “The Chinese,” he
says, “reputed so wise, have for three or four thousand years had the
folly of believing in the existence, and of seeking out a universal
remedy by which they hope to exempt themselves from the necessity of
dying. They base themselves on some foolish traditions, concerning
some _rare_ persons that are reported to have made gold, and to have
lived some ages; there are some very strongly established facts among
the Chinese, the Siamese, and other Orientals, concerning those that
know how to render themselves immortal, either absolutely, or in such
a manner that they can die no otherwise than by violent death.[356]
Wherefore, they name some persons who have withdrawn themselves from
the sight of men to enjoy free and peaceable life. They relate wonders
concerning the knowledge of these pretended immortals.”
If Descartes, a Frenchman and a scientist, could, in the midst of
civilization, firmly believe that such a universal remedy had been
found, and that if possessed of it he could live at least five hundred
years, why are not the Orientals entitled to the same belief? The
master-problems of both life and death are still unsolved by occidental
physiologists. Even sleep is a phenomenon about whose cause there is a
great divergence of opinion among them. How, then, can they pretend to
set limits to the possible, and define the impossible?
From the remotest ages the philosophers have maintained the singular
power of music over certain diseases, especially of the nervous
class. Kircher recommends it, having experienced its good effects in
himself, and he gives an elaborate description of the instrument he
employed. It was a harmonica composed of five tumblers of a very thin
glass, placed in a row. In two of them were two different varieties of
wine; in the third, brandy; in the fourth, oil; in the fifth, water.
He extracted five melodious sounds from them in the usual way, by
merely rubbing his finger on the edges of the tumblers. The sound has
an attractive property; it draws out disease, which streams out to
encounter the musical wave, and the two, blending together, disappear
in space. Asclepiades employed music for the same purpose, some twenty
centuries ago; he blew a trumpet to cure sciatica, and its prolonged
sound making the fibres of the nerves to palpitate, the pain invariably
subsided. Democritus in like manner affirmed that many diseases could
be cured by the melodious sounds of a flute. Mesmer used this very
harmonica described by Kircher for his magnetic cures. The celebrated
Scotchman, Maxwell, offered to prove to various medical faculties that
with certain magnetic means at his disposal, he would cure any of the
diseases abandoned by them as incurable; such as epilepsy, impotence,
insanity, lameness, dropsy, and the most obstinate fevers.[357]
The familiar story of the exorcism of the “evil spirit from God” that
obsessed Saul, will recur to every one in this connection. It is thus
related: “And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon
Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: _so Saul was
refreshed, and was well_, and the evil spirit departed from him.”[358]
Maxwell, in his _Medicina Magnetica_, expounds the following
propositions, all which are the very doctrines of the alchemists and
kabalists.
“That which men call the world-soul, is a life, as fire, spiritual,
fleet, light, and ethereal as light itself. It is a life-spirit
everywhere, and everywhere the same.... All matter is destitute of
action, except as it is ensouled by this spirit. This spirit maintains
all things in their peculiar condition. It is found in nature free from
all fetters; and he who understands how to unite it with a harmonizing
body, possesses a treasure which exceeds all riches.”
“This spirit is the common bond of all quarters of the earth, and lives
through and in all—_adest in mundo quid commune omnibus mextis, in quo
ipsa permanent_.”
“He who knows this universal life-spirit and its application can
prevent all injuries.”[359]
“If thou canst avail thyself of this spirit and fix it on some
particular body thou wilt perform the mystery of magic.”
“He who knows how to operate on men by this universal spirit, can heal,
and this at any distance that he pleases.”[360]
“He who can invigorate the particular spirit through the universal one,
_might continue his life to eternity_.”[361]
“There is a blending together of spirits, or of emanations, even when
they are far separated from each other. And what is this blending
together? It is an eternal and incessant outpouring of the rays of one
body into another.”
“In the meantime,” says Maxwell, “it is not _without danger_ to treat
of this. Many abominable abuses of this may take place.”
And now let us see what are these abuses of mesmeric and magnetic
powers in some healing mediums.
Healing, to deserve the name, requires either faith in the patient,
or robust health united with a strong will, in the operator. _With
expectency supplemented by faith, one can cure himself of almost any
morbific condition._ The tomb of a saint; a holy relic; a talisman; a
bit of paper or a garment that has been handled by the supposed healer;
a nostrum; a penance, or a ceremonial; the laying on of hands, or a
few words impressively pronounced—either will do. It is a question of
temperament, imagination, self-cure. In thousands of instances, the
doctor, the priest, or the relic has had credit for healings that were
solely and simply due to the patient’s unconscious will. The woman with
the bloody issue who pressed through the throng to touch the robe of
Jesus, was told that her “faith” had made her whole.
The influence of mind over the body is so powerful that it has effected
miracles at all ages.
“How many unhoped-for, sudden, and prodigious cures have been effected
by imagination,” says Salverte. “Our medical books are filled with
facts of this nature which would easily pass for miracles.”[362]
But, if the patient has no faith, what then? If he is physically
negative and receptive, and the healer strong, healthy, positive,
determined, the disease may be extirpated by the imperative will of the
operator, which, consciously or unconsciously, draws to and reinforces
itself with the universal spirit of nature, and restores the disturbed
equilibrium of the patient’s aura. He may employ as an auxiliary, a
crucifix—as Gassner did; or impose the hands and “will,” like the
French Zouave Jacob, like our celebrated American, Newton, the healer
of many thousands of sufferers, and like many others; or like Jesus,
and some apostles, he may cure by the word of command. The process in
each case is the same.
In all these instances, the cure is radical and real, and without
secondary ill-effects. But, when one who is himself physically
diseased, attempts healing, he not only fails of that, but often
imparts his illness to his patient, and robs him of what strength he
may have. The decrepit King David reinforced his failing vigor with the
healthy magnetism of the young Abishag;[363] and the medical works tell
us of an aged lady of Bath, England, who broke down the constitutions
of two maids in succession, in the same way. The old sages, and
Paracelsus also, removed disease by applying a healthy organism to the
afflicted part, and in the works of the above-said fire-philosopher,
their theory is boldly and categorically set forth. If a diseased
person—medium or not—attempts to heal, his force may be sufficiently
robust to displace the disease, to disturb it in the present place,
and cause it to shift to another, where shortly it will appear; the
patient, meanwhile, thinking himself cured.
But, what if the healer be morally diseased? The consequences may
be infinitely more mischievous; for it is easier to cure a bodily
disease than cleanse a constitution infected with moral turpitude. The
mystery of Morzine, Cevennes, and that of the Jansenists, is still as
great a mystery for physiologists as for psychologists. If the gift
of prophecy, as well as hysteria and convulsions, can be imparted by
“infection,” why not every vice? The healer, in such a case, conveys
to his patient—who is now his victim—the moral poison that infects
his own mind and heart. His magnetic touch is defilement; his glance,
profanation. Against this insidious taint, there is no protection for
the passively-receptive subject. The healer holds him under his power,
spellbound and powerless, as the serpent holds a poor, weak bird. The
evil that one such “healing medium” can effect is incalculably great;
and such healers there are by the hundred.
But, as we have said before, there are real and God-like healers,
who, notwithstanding all the malice and skepticism of their bigoted
opponents, have become famous in the world’s history. Such are the
Curé d’Ars, of Lyons, Jacob, and Newton. Such, also, were Gassner, the
clergyman of Klorstele, and the well-known Valentine Greatrakes, the
ignorant and poor Irishman, who was endorsed by the celebrated Robert
Boyle, President of the Royal Society of London, in 1670. In 1870,
he would have been sent to Bedlam, in company with other healers, if
another president of the same society had had the disposal of the case,
or Professor Lankester would have “summoned” him under the _Vagrant
Act_ for practicing upon Her Majesty’s subjects “by _palmistry_ or
otherwise.”
But, to close a list of witnesses which might be extended indefinitely,
it will suffice to say that, from first to last, from Pythagoras down
to Eliphas Levi, from highest to humblest, every one teaches _that
the magical power is never possessed by those addicted to vicious
indulgences_. Only the pure in heart “see God,” or exercise divine
gifts—only such can heal the ills of the body, and allow themselves,
with relative security, to be guided by the “invisible powers.” Such
only can give peace to the disturbed spirits of their brothers and
sisters, for the healing waters come from no poisonous source; grapes
do not grow on thorns, and thistles bear no figs. But, for all this,
“magic has nothing supernal in it;” it is a science, and even the power
of “casting out devils” was a branch of it, of which the Initiates made
a special study. “That skill which expels demons out of human bodies,
is a science useful and sanative to men,” says Josephus.[364]
The foregoing sketches are sufficient to show why we hold fast to
the wisdom of the ages, in preference to any new theories that may
have been hatched from the occurrences of our later days, respecting
the laws of intermundane intercourse and the occult powers of man.
While phenomena of a physical nature may have their value as a means
of arousing the interest of materialists, and confirming, if not
wholly, at least inferentially, our belief in the survival of our
souls and spirits, it is questionable whether, under their present
aspect, the modern phenomena are not doing more harm than good. Many
minds, hungering after proofs of immortality, are fast falling into
fanaticism; and, as Stow remarks, “fanatics are governed rather by
imagination than judgment.”
Undoubtedly, believers in the modern phenomena can claim for themselves
a diversity of endowments, but the “discerning of spirits” is evidently
absent from this catalogue of “spiritual” gifts. Speaking of the
“Diakka,” whom he one fine morning had discovered in a shady corner of
the “Summer Land,” A. J. Davis, the great American seer, remarks: “A
Diakka is one who takes insane delight in _playing parts_, in juggling
_tricks_, in _personating_ opposite characters; to whom prayer and
profane utterances are of equi-value; surcharged with a passion for
lyrical narrations; ... morally deficient, he is without the active
feelings of justice, philanthropy, or tender affection. He knows
nothing of what men call the sentiment of gratitude; the ends of hate
and love are the same to him; his motto is often fearful and terrible
to others—SELF is the whole of private living, and exalted annihilation
_the end of all private life_.[365] Only yesterday, one said to a
lady medium, signing himself _Swedenborg_, this: “Whatsoever is, has
been, will be, or may be, _that_ I AM; and private life is but the
aggregative phantasms of thinking throblets, rushing in their rising
onward to the central heart of eternal death!”[366]
Porphyry, whose works—to borrow the expression of an irritated
phenomenalist—“are mouldering like every other antiquated trash in the
closets of oblivion,” speaks thus of these Diakka—if such be their
name—rediscovered in the nineteenth century: “It is with the direct
help of these bad demons, that every kind of sorcery is accomplished
... it is the result of their operations, and men who injure their
fellow-creatures by enchantments, usually pay great honors to these bad
demons, and especially to their chief. These spirits pass their time in
deceiving us, with a great display of cheap prodigies and _illusions_;
their ambition is to be taken for gods, and their leader demands to be
recognized as the supreme god.”[367]
The spirit signing himself Swedenborg—just quoted from Davis’s
_Diakka_, and hinting that he is the I AM, singularly resembles this
chief leader of Porphyry’s bad demons.
What more natural than this vilification of the ancient and experienced
theurgists by certain mediums, when we find Iamblichus, the expositor
of spiritualistic theurgy, strictly forbidding all endeavors to procure
such phenomenal manifestations; unless, after a long preparation of
moral and physical purification, and under the guidance of experienced
theurgists. When, furthermore, he declares that, with very few
exceptions, for _a person_ “_to appear elongated or thicker, or
be borne aloft in the air_,” is a sure mark of obsession by _bad_
demons.[368]
Everything in this world has its time, and truth, however based upon
unimpeachable evidence, will not root or grow, unless, like a plant, it
is thrown into soil in its proper season. “The age must be prepared,”
says Professor Cooke; and some thirty years ago this humble work would
have been doomed to self-destruction by its own contents. But the
modern phenomenon, notwithstanding the daily _exposés_, the ridicule
with which it is crowned at the hand of every materialist, and its own
numerous errors, grows and waxes strong in facts, if not in wisdom and
spirit. What would have appeared twenty years ago simply preposterous,
may well be listened to now that the phenomena are endorsed by great
scientists. Unfortunately, if the manifestations increase in power
daily, there is no corresponding improvement in philosophy. The
discernment of spirits is still as wanting as ever.
Perhaps, among the whole body of spiritualist writers of our day, not
one is held in higher esteem for character, education, sincerity, and
ability, than Epes Sargent, of Boston, Massachusetts. His monograph
entitled _The Proof Palpable of Immortality_, deservedly occupies a
high rank among works upon the subject. With every disposition to be
charitable and apologetic for mediums and their phenomena, Mr. Sargent
is still compelled to use the following language: “The power of spirits
to reproduce simulacra of persons who have passed from the earth-life,
suggests the question—How far can we be assured of the identity
of _any_ spirit, let the tests be what they may? We have not yet
arrived at that stage of enlightenment that would enable us to reply
confidently to this inquiry.... There is much that is yet a puzzle in
the language and action of this class of materialized spirits.” As
to the intellectual calibre of most of the spirits which lurk behind
the physical phenomena, Mr. Sargent will unquestionably be accepted
as a most competent judge, and he says, “the great majority, as in
this world, are of the unintellectual sort.” If it is a fair question,
we would like to ask why they should be so lacking in intelligence,
if they are human spirits? Either intelligent human spirits _cannot_
materialize, or, the spirits that do materialize have not human
intelligence, and, therefore, by Mr. Sargent’s own showing, they may
just as well be “elementary” spirits, who have ceased to be human
altogether, or those demons, which, according to the Persian Magi and
Plato, hold a middle rank between gods and disembodied men.
There is good evidence, that of Mr. Crookes for one, to show that many
“materialized” spirits talk in an audible voice. Now, we have shown,
on the testimony of ancients, that the voice of human spirits is not
and _cannot_ be articulated; being, as Emanuel Swedenborg declares, “a
deep suspiration.” Who of the two classes of witnesses may be trusted
more safely? Is it the ancients who had the experience of so many ages
in theurgical practices, or modern spiritualists, who have had none
at all, and who have no facts upon which to base an opinion, except
such as have been communicated by “spirits,” whose identity they have
no means of proving? There are mediums whose organisms have called
out sometimes hundreds of these would-be “human” forms. And yet we
do not recollect to have seen or heard of one expressing anything
but the most commonplace ideas. This fact ought surely to arrest the
attention of even the most uncritical spiritualist. If a spirit can
speak at all, and if the way is opened to intelligent as well as to
unintellectual beings, why should they not sometimes give us addresses
in some remote degree approximating in quality to the communications
we receive through the “direct writing?” Mr. Sargent puts forward a
very suggestive and important idea in this sentence. “How far they
are limited in their mental operations and in their recollections by
the act of materialization, or how far by the intellectual horizon of
the medium is still a question.”[369] If the same kind of “spirits”
materialize that produce the direct writing, and both manifest through
mediums, and the one talk nonsense, while the other often give us
sublime philosophical teachings, why should their mental operations be
limited “by the intellectual horizon of the medium” in the one instance
more than in the other? The materializing mediums—at least so far as
our observation extends—are no more uneducated than many peasants and
mechanics who at different times have, under supernal influences, given
profound and sublime ideas to the world. The history of psychology
teems with examples in illustration of this point, among which that of
Boehmè, the inspired but ignorant shoemaker, and our own Davis, are
conspicuous. As to the matter of unintellectuality we presume that no
more striking cases need be sought than those of the child-prophets
of Cevennes, poets and seers, such as have been mentioned in previous
chapters. When spirits have once furnished themselves with vocal organs
to speak at all, it surely ought to be no more difficult for them to
talk as persons of their assumed respective education, intelligence,
and social rank would in life, instead of falling invariably into one
monotonous tone of commonplace and, but too often, platitude. As to Mr.
Sargent’s hopeful remark, that “the science of Spiritualism being still
in its infancy, we may hope for more light on this question,” we fear
we must reply, that _it is not through “dark cabinets” that this light
will ever break_.[370]
It is simply ridiculous and absurd to require from every investigator
who comes forward as a witness to the marvels of the day and
psychological phenomena the diploma of a master of arts and sciences.
The experience of the past forty years is an evidence that it is not
always the minds which are the most “scientifically trained” that are
the best in matters of simple common sense and honest truth. Nothing
blinds like fanaticism, or a one sided view of a question. We may
take as an illustration Oriental magic or ancient spiritualism, as
well as the modern phenomena. Hundreds, nay thousands of perfectly
trustworthy witnesses, returning from residence and travels in the
East, have testified to the fact that uneducated fakirs, sheiks,
dervishes, and lamas have, in their presence, without confederates
or mechanical appliances, produced wonders. They have affirmed that
the phenomena exhibited by them were in contravention of all the
_known_ laws of science, and thus tended to prove the existence of
many yet unknown occult potencies in nature, seemingly directed by
preterhuman intelligences. What has been the attitude assumed by our
scientists toward this subject? How far did the testimony of the
most “scientifically” trained minds make impression on their own?
Did the investigations of Professors Hare and de Morgan, of Crookes
and Wallace, de Gasparin and Thury, Wagner and Butlerof, etc., shake
for one moment their skepticism? How were the personal experiences
of Jacolliot with the fakirs of India received, or the psychological
elucidations of Professor Perty, of Geneva, viewed? How far does the
loud cry of mankind, craving for palpable and demonstrated signs of
a God, an individual soul, and of eternity, affect them; and what is
their response? They pull down and destroy every vestige of spiritual
things, but they erect nothing. “We cannot get such signs with either
retorts or crucibles,” they say; “hence, it’s all but a delusion!” In
this age of cold reason and prejudice, even the Church has to look to
science for help. Creeds built on sand, and high-towering but rootless
dogmas, crumble down under the cold breath of research, and pull down
_true_ religion in their fall. But the longing for some outward sign of
a God and a life hereafter, remains as tenaciously as ever in the human
heart. In vain is all sophistry of science; it can never stifle the
voice of nature. Only her representatives have poisoned the pure waters
of simple faith, and now humanity mirrors itself in waters made turbid
with all the mud stirred up from the bottom of the once pure spring.
The anthropomorphic God of our fathers is replaced by anthropomorphic
monsters; and what is still worse, by the reflection of humanity itself
in these waters, whose ripples send it back the distorted images of
truth and facts as evoked by its misguided imagination. “It is not a
miracle that we want,” writes the Reverend Brooke Herford, “but to find
palpable evidence of the spiritual and the divine. It is not to the
prophets that men cry for such a “sign,” but rather to the scientists.
Men feel as if all that groping about in the foremost verge or
innermost recesses of creation should bring the investigator at length
close to the deep, underlying facts of all things, to some unmistakable
signs of God.” The signs are there, and the scientists too; what can
we expect more of them, now that they have done so well their duty?
Have they not, these Titans of thought, dragged down God from His
hiding-place, and given us instead a _protoplasm_?
At the Edinburgh meeting of the British Association, in 1871, Sir
William Thomson said: “Science is bound by the everlasting law of
honor to face fearlessly every problem which can fairly be presented
to it.” In his turn, Professor Huxley remarks: “With regard to the
miracle-question, I can only say that the word ‘impossible’ is not,
to my mind, applicable to matters of philosophy.” The great Humboldt
remarks that “a presumptuous skepticism that rejects facts without
examination of their truth is, in some respects, more injurious than
unquestioning credulity.”
These men have proved untrue to their own teachings. The opportunity
afforded them by the opening of the Orient, to investigate for
themselves the phenomena alleged by every traveller to take place
in those countries, has been rejected. Did our physiologists and
pathologists ever so much as think of availing themselves of it to
settle this most momentous subject of human thought? Oh, no; for
they would never dare. It is not to be expected that the principal
Academicians of Europe and America should undertake a joint journey
to Thibet and India, and investigate the fakir marvel on the spot!
And were one of them to go as a solitary pilgrim and witness all the
miracles of creation, in that land of wonders, who, of his colleagues,
could be expected to believe his testimony?
It would be as tedious as superfluous to begin a restatement of facts,
so forcibly put by others. Mr. Wallace and W. Howitt,[371] have
repeatedly and cleverly described the thousand and one absurd errors
into which the learned societies of France and England have fallen,
through their blind skepticism. If Cuvier could throw aside the fossil
excavated in 1828 by Boué, the French geologist, only because the
anatomist thought himself wiser than his colleague, and would not
believe that human skeletons could be found eighty feet deep in the mud
of the Rhine; and if the French Academy could discredit the assertions
of Boucher de Perthes, in 1846, only to be criticised in its turn in
1860, when the truth of de Perthes’ discoveries and observations was
fully confirmed by the whole body of geologists finding flint weapons
in the drift-gravels of northern France; and if McEnery’s testimony, in
1825, to the fact that he had discovered worked flints, together with
the remains of extinct animals, in Kent’s Hole Cavern[372] was laughed
at; and that of Godwin Austen to the same effect, in 1840, ridiculed
still more, if that were possible; and all that excess of scientific
skepticism and merriment could, in 1865, finally come to grief, and
be shown to have been entirely uncalled for; when—says Mr. Wallace
“all the previous reports for forty years were confirmed and shown to
be even less wonderful than the reality;“who can be so credulous as
to believe in the infallibility of our science? And why wonder at the
exhibition of such a lack of moral courage in individual members of
this great and stubborn body known as modern science?
Thus fact after fact has been discredited. From all sides we hear
constant complaints. “Very little is known of psychology!” sighs
one F. R. S. “We must confess that we know little, if anything, in
physiology,” says another. “Of all sciences, there is none which rests
upon so uncertain a basis as medicine,” reluctantly testifies a third.
“What do we know about the presumed nervous fluids?... Nothing, as
yet,” puts in a fourth one; and so on in every branch of science. And,
meanwhile, phenomena, surpassing in interest all others of nature, and
to be solved only by physiology, psychology, and the “as yet unknown”
fluids, are either rejected as delusions, or, if even true, “do not
interest” scientists. Or, what is still worse, when a _subject_, whose
organism exhibits in itself the most important features of such occult
though natural potencies, offers his person for an investigation,
instead of an honest experiment being attempted with him he finds
himself entrapped by a scientist (?) and paid for his trouble with a
sentence of three months’ imprisonment! This is indeed promising.
It is easy to comprehend that a fact given in 1731, testifying to
another fact which happened during the papacy of Paul III., for
instance, is disbelieved in 1876. And when scientists are told that
the Romans preserved lights in their sepulchres for countless years
by the _oiliness of gold_; and that one of such ever-burning lamps
was found brightly burning in the tomb of Tullia, the daughter of
Cicero, notwithstanding that the tomb had been shut up fifteen hundred
and fifty years,[373]—they have a certain right to doubt, and even
disbelieve the statement, until they assure themselves, on the evidence
of their own senses, that such a thing is possible. In such a case they
can reject the testimony of all the ancient and mediæval philosophers.
The burial of living fakirs and their subsequent resuscitation, after
thirty days of inhumation, may have a suspicious look to them. So also
with the self-infliction of mortal wounds, and the exhibition of their
own bowels to the persons present by various lamas, who heal such
wounds almost instantaneously.
For certain men who deny the evidence of their own senses as to
phenomena produced in their own country, and before numerous witnesses,
the narratives to be found in classical books, and in the notes of
travellers, must of course seem absurd. But what we will never be able
to understand is the collective stubbornness of the Academies, in the
face of such bitter lessons in the past, to these institutions which
have so often “darkened counsel by words without knowledge.” Like the
Lord answering Job “out of the whirlwind,” magic can say to modern
science: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
declare, if thou hast understanding!” And, who art thou who dare say to
nature, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy
proud waves be stayed?”
But what matters it if they do deny? Can they prevent phenomena
taking place in the four corners of the world, if their skepticism
were a thousand times more bitter? Fakirs will still be buried and
resuscitated, gratifying the curiosity of European travellers; and
lamas and Hindu ascetics will wound, mutilate, and even disembowel
themselves, and find themselves all the better for it; and the denials
of the whole world will not blow sufficiently to extinguish the
perpetually-burning lamps in certain of the subterranean crypts of
India, Thibet, and Japan. One of such lamps is mentioned by the Rev.
S. Mateer, of the London Mission. In the temple of Trevandrum, in the
kingdom of Travancore, South India, “there is a deep well inside the
temple, into which immense riches are thrown year by year, and in
another place, in a hollow covered by a stone, a great golden lamp,
which was lit over 120 years ago, still continues burning,” says this
missionary in his description of the place. Catholic missionaries
attribute these lamps, as a matter of course, to the obliging services
of the devil. The more prudent Protestant divine mentions the fact,
and makes no commentary. The Abbé Huc has seen and examined one of
such lamps, and so have other people whose good luck it has been to
win the confidence and friendship of Eastern lamas and divines. No
more can be denied the wonders seen by Captain Lane in Egypt; the
Benares experiences of Jacolliot and those of Sir Charles Napier;
the levitations of human beings in broad daylight, and which can be
accounted for only on the explanation given in the Introductory chapter
of the present work.[374] Such levitations are testified to—besides Mr.
Crookes—by Professor Perty, who shows them produced in open air, and
lasting sometimes twenty minutes; all these phenomena and many more
have happened, do, and will happen in every country of this globe, and
that in spite of all the skeptics and scientists that ever were evolved
out of the Silurian mud.
Among the ridiculed claims of alchemy is that of the _perpetual_ lamps.
If we tell the reader that we have seen such, we may be asked—in
case that the sincerity of our personal belief is not questioned—how
we can tell that the lamps we have observed are perpetual, as the
period of our observation was but limited? Simply that, as we know the
ingredients employed, and the manner of their construction, and the
natural law applicable to the case, we are confident that our statement
can be corroborated upon investigation in the proper quarter. What that
quarter is, and from whom that knowledge can be learned, our critics
must discover, by taking the pains we did. Meanwhile, however, we will
quote a few of the 173 authorities who have written upon the subject.
None of these, as we recollect, have asserted that these sepulchral
lamps would burn perpetually, but only for an indefinite number of
years, and instances are recorded of their continuing alight for many
centuries. It will not be denied that, if there is a natural law by
which a lamp can be made without replenishment to burn ten years,
there is no reason why the same law could not cause the combustion to
continue one hundred or one thousand years.
Among the many well-known personages who firmly believed and
strenuously asserted that such sepulchral lamps burned for several
hundreds of years, and would have continued to burn _may be_ forever,
had they not been extinguished, or the vessels broken by some accident,
we may reckon the following names: Clemens Alexandrinus, Hermolaus
Barbarus, Appian, Burattinus, Citesius, Cœlius, Foxius, Costæus,
Casalius, Cedrenus, Delrius, Ericius, Gesnerus, Jacobonus, Leander,
Libavius, Lazius, P. de la Mirandolla, Philalethes, Licetus, Maiolus,
Maturantius, Baptista Porta, Pancirollus, Ruscellius, Scardonius,
Ludovicus Vives, Volateranus, Paracelsus, several Arabian alchemists,
and finally, Pliny, Solinus, Kircher, and Albertus Magnus.
The discovery is claimed by the ancient Egyptians, those sons of the
Land of Chemistry.[375] At least, they were a people who used these
lamps far more than any other nation, on account of their religious
doctrines. The astral soul of the mummy was believed to be lingering
about the body for the whole space of the three thousand years of
the circle of necessity. Attached to it by a magnetic thread, which
could be broken but by its own exertion, the Egyptians hoped that the
ever-burning lamp, symbol of their incorruptible and immortal spirit,
would at last decide the more material soul to part with its earthly
dwelling, and unite forever with its divine SELF. Therefore lamps were
hung in the sepulchres of the rich. Such lamps are often found in the
subterranean caves of the dead, and Licetus has written a large folio
to prove that in his time, whenever a sepulchre was opened, a burning
lamp was found within the tomb, but was instantaneously extinguished
on account of the _desecration_. T. Livius, Burattinus, and Michael
Schatta, in their letters to Kircher,[376] affirm that they found many
lamps in the subterranean caves of old Memphis. Pausanias speaks of
the golden lamp in the temple of Minerva at Athens, which he says was
the workmanship of Callimachus, and burnt a whole year. Plutarch[377]
affirms that he saw one in the temple of Jupiter Amun, and that the
priests assured him that it had burnt continually for years, and though
it stood in the open air, neither wind nor water could extinguish it.
St. Augustine, the Catholic authority, also describes a lamp in the
fane of Venus, of the same nature as the others, unextinguishable
either by the strongest wind or by water. A lamp was found at Edessa,
says Kedrenus, “which, being hidden at the top of a certain gate,
burned 500 years.” But of all such lamps, the one mentioned by Olybius
Maximus of Padua is by far the more wonderful. It was found near
Attestè, and Scardeonius[378] gives a glowing description of it: “In a
large earthen urn was contained a lesser, and in that a burning lamp,
which had continued so for 1500 years, by means of a most pure liquor
contained in two bottles, one of gold and the other of silver. These
are in the custody of Franciscus Maturantius, and are by him valued at
an exceeding rate.”
Taking no account of exaggerations, and putting aside as mere
unsupported negation the affirmation by modern science of the
impossibility of such lamps, we would ask whether, in case these
inextinguishable fires are found to have really existed in the ages
of “miracles,” the lamps burning at Christian shrines and those of
Jupiter, Minerva, and other Pagan deities, ought to be differently
regarded. According to certain theologians, it would appear that the
former (for Christianity also claims such lamps) have burned by a
_divine_, miraculous power, and that the light of the latter, made by
“heathen” art, was supported by the wiles of the devil. Kircher and
Licetus show that they were ordered in these two diverse ways. The lamp
at Antioch, which burned 1500 years, in an open and public place, over
the door of a church, was preserved by the “_power of God_,” who “hath
made so infinite a number of stars to burn with perpetual light.” As
to the Pagan lamps, St. Augustine assures us they were the work of the
devil, “who deceives us in a thousand ways.” What more easy for Satan
to do than represent a flash of light, or a bright flame to them who
first enter into such a subterranean cave? This was asserted by all
good Christians during the Papacy of Paul III., when upon opening a
tomb in the Appian Way, at Rome, there was found the entire body of a
young girl swimming in a bright liquor which had so well preserved it,
that the face was beautiful and like life itself. At her feet burned
a lamp, whose flame vanished upon opening the sepulchre. From some
engraved signs it was found to have been buried for over 1500 years,
and supposed to have been the body of Tulliola, or Tullia, Cicero’s
daughter.[379]
Chemists and physicists deny that perpetual lamps are possible,
alleging that whatever is resolved into vapor or smoke cannot be
permanent, but must consume; and as the oily nutriment of a lighted
lamp is exhaled into a vapor, hence the fire cannot be perpetual
for want of food. Alchemists, on the other hand, deny that all the
nourishment of kindled fire must of necessity be converted into
vapor. They say that there are things in nature which will not only
resist the force of fire and remain inconsumable, but will also prove
inextinguishable by either wind or water. In an old chemical work
of the year 1700, called ΝΕΚΡΟΚΗΔΕΙΑ, the author gives a number of
refutations of the claims of various alchemists. But though he denies
that a fire can be made to burn _perpetually_, he is half-inclined to
believe it possible that a lamp should burn several hundred years.
Besides, we have a mass of testimony from alchemists who devoted years
to these experiments and came to the conclusion that it was possible.
There are some peculiar preparations of gold, silver, and mercury;
also of naphtha, petroleum, and other bituminous oils. Alchemists also
name the oil of camphor and amber, the _Lapis asbestos seu Amianthus_,
the _Lapis Carystius_, _Cyprius_, and _Linum vivum seu Creteum_, as
employed for such lamps. They affirm that such matter can be prepared
either of gold or silver, reduced to fluid, and indicate that gold is
the fittest _pabulum_ for their wondrous flame, as, of all metals, gold
wastes the least when either heated or melted, and, moreover, can be
made to reäbsorb its oily humidity as soon as exhaled, so continuously
feeding its own flame when it is once lighted. The Kabalists assert
that the secret was known to Moses, who had learned it from the
Egyptians; and that the lamp ordered by the “Lord” to burn on the
tabernacle, was an inextinguishable lamp. “And thou shalt command the
children of Israel, that they bring thee pure oil-olive beaten for the
light, _to cause the lamp to burn always_” (Exod. xxvii. 20).
Licetus also denies that these lamps were prepared of metal, but on
page 44 of his work mentions a preparation of quicksilver filtrated
seven times through white sand by fire, of which, he says, lamps were
made that would burn perpetually. Both Maturantius and Citesius firmly
believe that such a work can be done by a purely chemical process. This
liquor of quicksilver was known among alchemists as _Aqua Mercurialis_,
_Materia Metallorum_, _Perpetua Dispositio_, and _Materia prima Artis_,
also _Oleum Vitri_. Tritenheim and Bartolomeo Korndorf both made
preparations for the inextinguishable fire, and left their recipes for
it.[380]
Asbestos, which was known to the Greeks under the name of Ασβεστος, or
_inextinguishable_, is a kind of stone, which once set on fire cannot
be quenched, as Pliny and Solinus tell us. Albertus Magnus describes it
as a stone of an iron color, found mostly in Arabia. It is generally
found covered with a hardly-perceptible oleaginous moisture, which
upon being approached with a lighted candle will immediately catch
fire. Many were the experiments made by chemists to extract from it
this indissoluble oil, but they are alleged to have all failed. But,
are our chemists prepared to say that the above operation is utterly
impracticable? If this oil could once be extracted there can be no
question but it would afford a perpetual fuel. The ancients might
well boast of having had the secret of it, for, we repeat, there
are experimenters living at this day who have done so successfully.
Chemists who have vainly tried it, have asserted that the fluid or
liquor chemically extracted from that stone was more of a watery
than oily nature, and so impure and feculent that it could not burn;
others affirmed, on the contrary, that the oil, as soon as exposed
to the air, became so thick and solid that it would hardly flow, and
when lighted emitted no flame, but escaped in dark smoke; whereas the
lamps of the ancients are alleged to have burned with the purest and
brightest flame, without emitting the slightest smoke. Kircher, who
shows the practicability of purifying it, thinks it so difficult as to
be accessible only to the highest adepts of alchemy.
St. Augustine, who attributes the whole of these arts to the Christian
scape-goat, the devil, is flatly contradicted by Ludovicus Vives,[381]
who shows that all such would-be magical operations are the work
of man’s industry and deep study of the hidden secrets of nature,
wonderful and miraculous as they may seem. Podocattarus, a Cypriote
knight,[382] had both flax and linen made out of another asbestos,
which _Porcacchius_ says[383] he saw at the house of this knight. Pliny
calls this flax _linum vinum_, and Indian flax, and says it is done
out of _asbeston sive asbestinum_, a kind of flax of which they made
cloth that was to be cleaned by throwing it in the fire. He adds that
it was as precious as pearls and diamonds, for not only was it very
rarely found but exceedingly difficult to be woven, on account of the
shortness of the threads. Being beaten flat with a hammer, it is soaked
in warm water, and when dried its filaments can be easily divided into
threads like flax and woven into cloth. Pliny asserts he has seen some
towels made of it, and assisted in an experiment of purifying them by
fire. Baptista Porta also states that he found the same, at Venice,
in the hands of a Cyprian lady; he calls this discovery of Alchemy a
_secretum optimum_.
Dr. Grew, in his description of the curiosities in Gresham College
(seventeenth century), believes the art, as well as the use of such
linen, altogether lost, but it appears that it was not quite so, for
we find the Museum Septalius boasting of the possession of thread,
ropes, paper, and net-work done of this material as late as 1726;
some of these articles made, moreover, by the own hand of Septalius,
as we learn in Greenhill’s _Art of Embalming_, p. 361. “Grew,” says
the author, “seems to make _Asbestinus Lapis_ and _Amianthus_ all
one, and calls them in English the thrum-stone;” he says it grows in
short threads or thrums, from about a quarter of an inch to an inch in
length, parallel and glossy, as fine as those small, single threads
the silk-worms spin, and very flexible like to flax or tow. That the
secret is not altogether lost is proved by the fact that some Buddhist
convents in China and Thibet are in possession of it. Whether made
of the fibre of one or the other of such stones, we cannot say, but
we have seen in a monastery of female Talapoins, a yellow gown, such
as the Buddhist monks wear, thrown into a large pit, full of glowing
coals, and taken out two hours afterward as clear as if it had been
washed with soap and water.
Similar severe trials of asbestos having occurred in Europe and
America in our own times, the substance is being applied to various
industrial purposes, such as roofing-cloth, incombustible dresses and
fire-proof safes. A very valuable deposit on Staten Island, in New York
harbor, yields the mineral in bundles, like dry wood, with fibres of
several feet in length. The finer variety of asbestos, called αμιαντος
(undefiled) by the ancients, took its name from its white, satin-like
lustre.
The ancients made the wick of their perpetual lamps from another stone
also, which they called _Lapis Carystius_. The inhabitants of the city
of Carystos seemed to have made no secret of it, as _Matthæus Raderus_
says in his work[384] that they “kemb’d, spun, and wove this downy
stone into mantles, table-linen, and the like, which when foul they
purified again with fire instead of water.” Pausanias, in _Atticus_,
and Plutarch[385] also assert that the wicks of lamps were made from
this stone; but Plutarch adds that it was no more to be found in his
time. Licetus is inclined to believe that the perpetual lamps used by
the ancients in their sepulchres had no wicks at all, as very few have
been found; but Ludovicus Vives is of a contrary opinion and affirms
that he has seen quite a number of them.
Licetus, moreover, is firmly persuaded that a “pabulum for fire may be
given with such an equal temperament as cannot be consumed but after
a long series of ages, and so that neither the matter shall exhale
but strongly resist the fire, nor the fire consume the matter, but be
restrained by it, as it were with a chain, from flying upward.” To
this, Sir Thomas Brown,[386] speaking of lamps which have burned many
hundred years, included in small bodies, observes that “this proceeds
from the purity of the oil, which yields no fuliginous exhalations to
suffocate the fire; for if air had nourished the flame, then it had not
continued many minutes, for it would certainly in that case have been
spent and wasted by the fire.” But he adds, “the art of preparing this
inconsumable oil is lost.”
Not quite; and time will prove it, though all that we now write should
be doomed to fail, like so many other truths.
We are told, in behalf of science, that she accepts no other mode of
investigation than observation and experiment. Agreed; and have we
not the records of say three thousand years of observation of facts
going to prove the occult powers of man? As to experiment, what better
opportunity could have been asked than the so-called modern phenomena
have afforded? In 1869, various scientific Englishmen were invited by
the London Dialectical Society to assist in an investigation of these
phenomena. Let us see what our philosophers replied. Professor Huxley
wrote: “I have no time for such an inquiry, which would involve much
trouble and (unless it were unlike all inquiries of that kind I have
known) much annoyance.... I take no interest in the subject ... but
supposing the phenomena to be genuine—they do not interest me.”[387]
Mr. George H. Lewes expresses a wise thing in the following sentence:
“When any man says that phenomena are produced by no known physical
laws, he declares he knows the laws by which they are produced.”[388]
Professor Tyndall expresses doubt as to the possibility of good results
at any seance which he might attend. His presence, according to the
opinion of Mr. Varley, throws everything in confusion.[389] Professor
Carpenter writes, “I have satisfied myself by personal investigation,
that, whilst a great number of what pass as such (_i. e._, spiritual
manifestations) are the results of intentional imposture, and many
others of self-deception, there are certain phenomena which are quite
genuine, and must be considered as fair subjects of scientific study
... the source of these phenomena does not lie in any communication
_ab-extra_, but depend upon the _subjective_ condition of the
individual which operates according to certain recognized physiological
laws ... the process to which I have given the name ‘_unconscious
cerebration_’ ... performs a large part in the production of the
phenomena known as spiritualistic.”[390]
And it is thus that the world is apprised through the organ of exact
science, that _unconscious cerebration_ has acquired the faculty of
making the guitars fly in the air and forcing furniture to perform
various clownish tricks!
So much for the opinions of the English scientists. The Americans
have not done much better. In 1857, a committee of Harvard University
warned the public against investigating this subject, which “corrupts
the morals and degrades the intellect.” They called it, furthermore,
“a contaminating influence, which surely tends to lessen the truth of
man and the purity of woman.” Later, when Professor Robert Hare, the
great chemist, defying the opinions of his contemporaries, investigated
spiritualism, and became a believer, he was immediately declared _non
compos mentis_; and in 1874, when one of the New York daily papers
addressed a circular letter to the principal scientists of this
country, asking them to investigate, and offering to pay the expenses,
they, like the guests bidden to the supper, “with one consent, began to
make excuses.”
Yet, despite the indifference of Huxley, the jocularity of Tyndall,
and the “unconscious cerebration” of Carpenter, many a scientist as
noted as either of them, has investigated the unwelcome subject,
and, overwhelmed with the evidence, become converted. And another
scientist, and a great author—although not a spiritualist—bears this
honorable testimony: “That the spirits of the dead occasionally revisit
the living, or haunt their former abodes, has been in all ages, in
all European countries, a fixed belief, not confined to rustics, but
participated in by the intelligent.... If human testimony on such
subjects can be of any value, there is a body of evidence reaching from
the remotest ages to the present time, as _extensive and unimpeachable
as is to be found_ in support of anything whatever.”[391]
Unfortunately, human skepticism is a stronghold capable of defying any
amount of testimony. And to begin with Mr. Huxley, our men of science
accept of but so much as suits them, and no more.
“Oh shame to men! devil with devil damn’d
Firm concord holds,—_men_ only disagree
Of creatures rational....”[392]
How can we account for such divergence of views among men taught out of
the same text-books and deriving their knowledge from the same source?
Clearly, this is but one more corroboration of the truism that no two
men see the same thing exactly alike. This idea is admirably formulated
by Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson, in a letter to the Dialectical Society.
“I have long,” says he, “been convinced, by the experience of my
life as a pioneer in several heterodoxies which are rapidly becoming
orthodoxies, that nearly all truth is temperamental to us, or given
in the affections and intuitions, and that discussion and inquiry do
little more than feed temperament.”
This profound observer might have added to his experience that of
Bacon, who remarks that “ ... a _little_ philosophy inclineth a man’s
mind to atheism, but _depth_ in philosophy bringeth man’s mind about to
religion.”
Professor Carpenter vaunts the advanced philosophy of the present day
which “ignores no fact however strange that can be attested by valid
evidence;” and yet he would be the first to reject the claims of the
ancients to philosophical and scientific knowledge, although based
upon evidence quite “as valid” as that which supports the pretensions
of men of our times to philosophical or scientific distinction. In
the department of science, let us take for example the subjects of
electricity and electro-magnetism, which have exalted the names of
Franklin and Morse to so high a place upon our roll of fame. Six
centuries before the Christian era, Thales is said to have discovered
the electric properties of amber; and yet the later researches of
Schweigger, as given in his extensive works on Symbolism, have
thoroughly demonstrated that all the ancient mythologies were based
on the science of natural philosophy, and show that the most occult
properties of electricity and magnetism were known to the theurgists
of the earliest Mysteries recorded in history, those of Samothrace.
Diodorus, of Sicily, Herodotus, and Sanchoniathon, the Phœnician—the
oldest of historians—tell us that these Mysteries originated in the
night of time, centuries and probably thousands of years prior to
the historical period. One of the best proofs of it we find in a
most remarkable picture, in Raoul-Rochette’s _Monuments d’Antiquité
Figurés_, in which, like the “erect-haired Pan,” all the figures have
their hair streaming out in every direction—except the central figure
of the Kabeirian Demeter, from whom the power issues, and one other,
a kneeling man.[393] The picture, according to Schweigger, evidently
represents a part of the ceremony of initiation. And yet it is not
so long since the elementary works on natural philosophy began to
be ornamented with cuts of _electrified_ heads, with hair standing
out in all directions, under the influence of the electric fluid.
Schweigger shows that a _lost natural philosophy of antiquity_ was
connected with the most important religious ceremonies. He demonstrates
in the amplest manner, that _magic_ in the prehistoric periods had a
part in the mysteries and that the greatest phenomena, the so-called
miracles—whether Pagan, Jewish, or Christian—rested in fact on the
arcane knowledge of the ancient priests of physics and all the branches
of chemistry, or rather alchemy.
In chapter xi., which is entirely devoted to the wonderful achievements
of the ancients, we propose to demonstrate our assertions more fully.
We will show, on the evidence of the most trustworthy classics, that
at a period far anterior to the siege of Troy, the learned priests of
the sanctuaries were thoroughly acquainted with electricity and even
lightning-conductors. We will now add but a few more words before
closing the subject.
The theurgists so well understood the minutest properties of magnetism,
that, without possessing the lost key to their arcana, but depending
wholly upon what was known in their modern days of electro-magnetism,
Schweigger and Ennemoser have been able to trace the identity of the
“twin brothers,” the Dioskuri, with the polarity of electricity and
magnetism. Symbolical myths, previously supposed to be meaningless
fictions, are now found to be “the cleverest and at the same time most
profound expressions of a strictly scientifically defined truth of
nature,” according to Ennemoser.[394]
Our physicists pride themselves on the achievements of our century
and exchange antiphonal hymns of praise. The eloquent diction
of their class-lectures, their flowery phraseology, require but
a slight modification to change these lectures into melodious
sonnets. Our modern Petrarchs, Dantes, and Torquato Tassos rival
with the troubadours of old in poetical effusion. In their unbounded
glorification of matter, they sing the amorous commingling of the
wandering atoms, and the loving interchange of protoplasms, and lament
the coquettish fickleness of “forces” which play so provokingly at
hide-and-seek with our grave professors in the great drama of life,
called by them “force-correlation.” Proclaiming matter sole and
autocratic sovereign of the Boundless Universe, they would forcibly
divorce her from her consort, and place the widowed queen on the great
throne of nature made vacant by the exiled spirit. And now, they try to
make her appear as attractive as they can by incensing and worshipping
at the shrine of their own building. Do they forget, or are they
utterly unaware of the fact, that in the absence of its legitimate
sovereign, this throne is but a whitened sepulchre, inside of which
all is rottenness and corruption! That matter without the spirit which
vivifies it, and of which it is but the “gross purgation,” to use a
hermetic expression, is nothing but a soulless corpse, whose limbs, in
order to be moved in predetermined directions, require an intelligent
operator at the great galvanic battery called LIFE!
In what particular is the knowledge of the present century so superior
to that of the ancients? When we say knowledge we do not mean that
brilliant and clear definition of our modern scholars of particulars
to the most trifling detail in every branch of exact science; of that
tuition which finds an appropriate term for every detail insignificant
and microscopic as it may be; a name for every nerve and artery in
human and animal organisms, an appellation for every cell, filament,
and rib in a plant; but the philosophical and ultimate expression of
every truth in nature.
The greatest ancient philosophers are accused of shallowness and a
superficiality of knowledge of those details in exact sciences of
which the moderns boast so much. Plato is declared by his various
commentators to have been utterly ignorant of the anatomy and functions
of the human body; to have known nothing of the uses of the nerves
to convey sensations; and to have had nothing better to offer than
vain speculations concerning physiological questions. He has simply
generalized the divisions of the human body, they say, and given
nothing reminding us of anatomical facts. As to his own views on the
human frame, the microcosmos being in his ideas the image in miniature
of the macrocosmos, they are much too transcendental to be given the
least attention by our exact and materialistic skeptics. The idea of
this frame being, as well as the universe, formed out of triangles,
seems preposterously ridiculous to several of his translators. Alone
of the latter, Professor Jowett, in his introduction to the _Timæus_,
honestly remarks that the modern physical philosopher “hardly allows
to his notions the merit of being ‘the dead men’s bones’ out of which
he has himself risen to a higher knowledge;”[395] forgetting how much
the metaphysics of olden times has helped the “physical” sciences of
the present day. If, instead of quarrelling with the insufficiency
and at times absence of terms and definitions strictly scientific in
Plato’s works, we analyze them carefully, the _Timæus_, alone, will
be found to contain within its limited space the germs of every new
discovery. The circulation of the blood and the law of gravitation are
clearly mentioned, though the former fact, it may be, is not so clearly
defined as to withstand the reiterated attacks of modern science; for
according to Prof. Jowett, the specific discovery that the blood flows
out at one side of the heart through the arteries, and returns through
the veins at the other, was unknown to him, though Plato was perfectly
aware “that blood is a fluid in constant motion.”
Plato’s method, like that of geometry, was to descend from universals
to particulars. Modern science vainly seeks a first cause among the
permutations of molecules; the former sought and found it amid the
majestic sweep of worlds. For him it was enough to know the great
scheme of creation and to be able to trace the mightiest movements
of the universe through their changes to their ultimates. The petty
details, whose observation and classification have so taxed and
demonstrated the patience of modern scientists, occupied but little of
the attention of the old philosophers. Hence, while a fifth-form boy
of an English school can prate more learnedly about the little things
of physical science than Plato himself, yet, on the other hand, the
dullest of Plato’s disciples could tell more about great cosmic laws
and their mutual relations, and demonstrate a familiarity with and
control over the occult forces which lie behind them, than the most
learned professor in the most distinguished academy of our day.
This fact, so little appreciated and never dwelt upon by Plato’s
translators, accounts for the self-laudation in which we moderns
indulge at the expense of that philosopher and his compeers. Their
alleged mistakes in anatomy and physiology are magnified to an
inordinate extent to gratify our self-love, until, in acquiring the
idea of our own superior learning, we lose sight of the intellectual
splendor which adorns the ages of the past; it is as if one should,
in fancy, magnify the solar spots until he should believe the bright
luminary to be totally eclipsed.
The unprofitableness of modern scientific research is evinced in
the fact that while we have a name for the most trivial particle of
mineral, plant, animal, and man, the wisest of our teachers are unable
to tell us anything definite about the vital force which produces the
changes in these several kingdoms. It is necessary to seek further
for corroboration of this statement than the works of our highest
scientific authorities themselves.
It requires no little moral courage in a man of eminent professional
position to do justice to the acquirements of the ancients, in the
face of a public sentiment which is content with nothing else than
their abasement. When we meet with a case of the kind we gladly lay a
laurel at the feet of the bold and honest scholar. Such is Professor
Jowett, Master of Balliol College, and Regius Professor of Greek in
the University of Oxford, who, in his translation of Plato’s works,
speaking of “the physical philosophy of the ancients as a whole,”
gives them the following credit: 1. “That the nebular theory was the
received belief of the early physicists.” Therefore it could not have
rested, as Draper asserts,[396] upon the telescopic discovery made
by Herschel I. 2. “That the development of animals out of frogs who
came to land, and of man out of the animals, was held by Anaximenes
in the sixth century before Christ.” The professor might have added
that this theory antedated Anaximenes by some thousands of years,
perhaps; that it was an accepted doctrine among Chaldeans, and that
Darwin’s evolution of species and monkey theory are of an antediluvian
origin. 3. “ ... that, even by Philolaus and the early Pythagoreans,
the earth was held to be a body like the other stars revolving in
space.”[397] Thus Galileo, studying some Pythagorean fragments, which
are shown by Reuchlin to have yet existed in the days of the Florentine
mathematician;[398] being, moreover, familiar with the doctrines of
the old philosophers, but reässerted an astronomical doctrine which
prevailed in India at the remotest antiquity. 4. The ancients “
... thought that there was a sex in plants as well as in animals.”
Thus our modern naturalists had but to follow in the steps of their
predecessors. 5. “That musical notes depended on the relative length or
tension of the strings from which they were emitted, and were measured
by ratios of number.” 6. “That mathematical laws pervaded the world
and even qualitative differences were supposed to have their origin
in number;” and 7, “the annihilation of matter was denied by them,
and held to be a _transformation_ only.”[399] “Although one of these
discoveries might have been supposed to be a happy guess,” adds Mr.
Jowett, “we can hardly attribute them all to mere coincidences.”[400]
In short, the Platonic philosophy was one of order, system, and
proportion; it embraced the evolution of worlds and species, the
correlation and conservation of energy, the transmutation of material
form, the indestructibility of matter and of spirit. Their position in
the latter respect being far in advance of modern science, and binding
the arch of their philosophical system with a keystone at once perfect
and immovable. If science has made such colossal strides during these
latter days—if we have such clearer ideas of natural law than the
ancients—why are our inquiries as to the nature and source of life
unanswered? If the modern laboratory is so much richer in the fruits
of experimental research than those of the olden time, how comes it
that we make no step except on paths that were trodden long before the
Christian era? How does it happen that the most advanced standpoint
that has been reached in our times only enables us to see in the dim
distance up the Alpine path of knowledge the monumental proofs that
earlier explorers have left to mark the plateaux they had reached and
occupied?
If modern masters are so much in advance of the old ones, why do they
not restore to us the lost arts of our postdiluvian forefathers? Why do
they not give us the unfading colors of Luxor—the Tyrian purple; the
bright vermilion and dazzling blue which decorate the walls of this
place, and are as bright as on the first day of their application? The
indestructible cement of the pyramids and of ancient aqueducts; the
Damascus blade, which can be turned like a corkscrew in its scabbard
without breaking; the gorgeous, unparalleled tints of the stained glass
that is found amid the dust of old ruins and beams in the windows of
ancient cathedrals; and the secret of the true malleable glass? And
if chemistry is so little able to rival even with the early mediæval
ages in some arts, why boast of achievements which, according to strong
probability, were perfectly known thousands of years ago? The more
archæology and philology advance, the more humiliating to our pride are
the discoveries which are daily made, the more glorious testimony do
they bear in behalf of those who, perhaps on account of the distance
of their remote antiquity, have been until now considered ignorant
flounderers in the deepest mire of superstition.
Why should we forget that, ages before the prow of the adventurous
Genoese clove the Western waters, the Phœnician vessels had
circumnavigated the globe, and spread civilization in regions now
silent and deserted? What archæologist will dare assert that the same
hand which planned the Pyramids of Egypt, Karnak, and the thousand
ruins now crumbling to oblivion on the sandy banks of the Nile, did
_not_ erect the monumental Nagkon-Wat of Cambodia? or trace the
hieroglyphics on the obelisks and doors of the deserted Indian village,
newly discovered in British Columbia by Lord Dufferin? or those on the
ruins of Palenque and Uxmal, of Central America? Do not the relics we
treasure in our museums—last mementos of the long “lost arts” speak
loudly in favor of ancient civilization? And do they not prove, over
and over again, that nations and continents that have passed away have
buried along with them arts and sciences, which neither the first
crucible ever heated in a mediæval cloister, nor the last cracked by a
modern chemist have revived, nor will—at least, in the present century.
“They were not without some knowledge of optics,” Professor Draper
magnanimously concedes to the ancients; others positively deny to them
even that little. “The convex lens found at Nimroud shows that they
were not unacquainted with magnifying instruments.”[401] Indeed? If
they were not, all the classical authors must have lied. For, when
Cicero tells us that he had seen the entire _Iliad_ written on skin
of such a miniature size, that it could easily be rolled up inside a
nut-shell, and Pliny asserts that Nero had a ring with a small glass
in it, through which he watched the performance of the gladiators at
a distance—could audacity go farther? Truly, when we are told that
Mauritius could see from the promontory of Sicily over the entire
sea to the coast of Africa, with an instrument called _nauscopite_,
we must either think that all these witnesses lied, or that the
ancients were more than slightly acquainted with optics and magnifying
glasses. Wendell Phillips states that he has a friend who possesses an
extraordinary ring “perhaps three-quarters of an inch in diameter, and
on it is the naked figure of the god Hercules. By the aid of glasses,
you can distinguish the interlacing muscles, and _count every separate
hair on the eyebrows_.... Rawlinson brought home a stone about twenty
inches long and ten wide, containing an entire treatise on mathematics.
It would be perfectly illegible without glasses.... In Dr. Abbott’s
Museum, there is a ring of Cheops, to which Bunsen assigns 500 B.C. The
signet of the ring is about the size of a quarter of a dollar, and the
engraving is _invisible_ without the aid of glasses.... At Parma, they
will show you a gem once worn on the finger of Michael Angelo, of which
the engraving is 2,000 years old, and on which there are the figures of
_seven_ women. You must have the aid of powerful glasses in order to
distinguish the forms at all.... So the microscope,” adds the learned
lecturer, “instead of dating from our time, finds its brothers in the
Books of Moses—and these are infant brothers.“
The foregoing facts do not seem to show that the ancients had merely
“_some_ knowledge of optics.” Therefore, totally disagreeing in this
particular with Professor Fiske and his criticism of Professor Draper’s
_Conflict_ in his _Unseen World_, the only fault we find with the
admirable book of Draper is that, as an historical critic, he sometimes
uses his own optical instruments in the wrong place. While, in order
to magnify the atheism of the Pythagorean Bruno, he looks through
convex lenses; whenever talking of the knowledge of the ancients, he
evidently sees things through _concave_ ones.
It is simply worthy of admiration to follow in various modern works
the cautious attempts of both pious Christians and skeptical, albeit
very learned men, to draw a line of demarcation between what we are
and what we are not to believe, in ancient authors. No credit is ever
allowed them without being followed by a qualifying caution. If Strabo
tells us that ancient Nineveh was forty-seven miles in circumference,
and his testimony is accepted, why should it be otherwise the moment
he testifies to the accomplishment of Sibylline prophecies? Where is
the common sense in calling Herodotus the “Father of History,” and
then accusing him, in the same breath, of silly gibberish, whenever he
recounts marvellous manifestations, of which he was an eye-witness?
Perhaps, after all, such a caution is more than ever necessary, now
that our epoch has been christened the Century of Discovery. The
disenchantment may prove too cruel for Europe. Gunpowder, which has
long been thought an invention of Bacon and Schwartz, is now shown
in the school-books to have been used by the Chinese for levelling
hills and blasting rocks, centuries before our era. “In the Museum
of Alexandria,” says Draper, “there was a machine invented by Hero,
the mathematician, a little more than 100 years B.C. It revolved by
the agency of steam, and was of the form that we should now call a
reaction-engine.... Chance had nothing to do with the invention of the
modern steam-engine.”[402] Europe prides herself upon the discoveries
of Copernicus and Galileo, and now we are told that the astronomical
observations of the Chaldeans extend back to within a hundred years of
the flood; and Bunsen fixes the flood at not less than 10,000 years
before our era.[403] Moreover, a Chinese emperor, more than 2,000 years
before the birth of Christ (_i. e._, before Moses) put to death his two
chief astronomers for not predicting an eclipse of the sun.
It may be noted, as an example of the inaccuracy of current notions as
to the scientific claims of the present century, that the discoveries
of the indestructibility of matter and force-correlation, especially
the latter, are heralded as among our crowning triumphs. It is “the
most important discovery of the present century,” as Sir William
Armstrong expressed it in his famous address as president of the
British Association. But, this “important discovery” is no discovery
after all. Its origin, apart from the undeniable traces of it to be
found among the old philosophers, is lost in the dense shadows of
prehistoric days. Its first vestiges are discovered in the dreamy
speculations of Vedic theology, in the doctrine of emanation and
absorption, the nirvana in short. John Erigena outlined it in his bold
philosophy in the eighth century, and we invite any one to read his _De
Divisione Naturæ_, who would convince himself of this truth. Science
tells that when the theory of the indestructibility of matter (also
a very, very old idea of Demokritus, by the way) was demonstrated,
it became necessary to extend it to force. No material particle can
ever be lost; no part of the force existing in nature can vanish;
hence, force was likewise proved indestructible, and its various
manifestations or forces, under divers aspects, were shown to be
mutually convertible, and but different modes of motion of the material
particles. And thus was rediscovered the force-correlation. Mr. Grove,
so far back as 1842, gave to each of these forces, such as heat,
electricity, magnetism, and light, the character of convertibility;
making them capable of being at one moment a cause, and at the next an
effect.[404] But whence come these forces, and whither do they go, when
we lose sight of them? On this point science is silent.
The theory of “force-correlation,” though it may be in the minds of
our contemporaries “the greatest discovery of the age,” can account
for neither the beginning nor the end of one of such forces; neither
can the theory point out the cause of it. Forces may be convertible,
and one may produce the other, still, no exact science is able to
explain the alpha and omega of the phenomenon. In what particular
are we then in advance of Plato who, discussing in the _Timæus_ the
primary and secondary qualities of matter,[405] and the feebleness of
human intellect, makes Timæus say: “God knows the original qualities
of things; man can only hope to attain to probability.” We have but
to open one of the several pamphlets of Huxley and Tyndall to find
precisely the same confession; but they improve upon Plato by not
allowing even God to know more than themselves; and perhaps it may
be upon this that they base their claims of superiority? The ancient
Hindus founded their doctrine of emanation and absorption on precisely
that law. The Τὸ Ὀν the primordial point in the boundless circle,
“whose circumference is nowhere, and the centre everywhere,” emanating
from itself all things, and manifesting them in the visible universe
under multifarious forms; the forms interchanging, commingling, and,
after a gradual transformation from the pure spirit (or the Buddhistic
“_nothing_”), into the grossest matter, beginning to recede and as
gradually re-emerge into their primitive state, which is the absorption
into Nirvana[406]—what else is this but correlation of forces?
Science tells us that heat may be shown to develop electricity,
electricity produce heat; and magnetism to evolve electricity, and
_vice versa_. Motion, they tell us, results from motion itself, and so
on, _ad infinitum_. This is the A B C of occultism and of the earliest
alchemists. The indestructibility of matter and force being discovered
and proved, the great problem of eternity is solved. What need have
we more of spirit? its uselessness is henceforth scientifically
demonstrated!
Thus modern philosophers may be said not to have gone one step beyond
what the priests of Samothrace, the Hindus, and even the Christian
Gnostics well knew. The former have shown it in that wonderfully
ingenious mythos of the Dioskuri, or “the sons of heaven;” the twin
brothers, spoken of by Schweigger, “who constantly die and return
to life together, while it is absolutely necessary _that one should
die that the other may live_.” They knew as well as our physicists,
that when a force has disappeared it has simply been converted into
another force. Though archæology may not have discovered any ancient
apparatus for such special conversions, it may nevertheless be affirmed
with perfect reason and upon analogical deductions that nearly all
the ancient religions were based on such indestructibility of matter
and force—plus the emanation of the whole from an ethereal, spiritual
fire—or the central sun, which is God or spirit, on the knowledge of
whose potentiality is based ancient theurgic magic.
In the manuscript commentary of Proclus on magic he gives the following
account: “In the same manner as lovers gradually advance from that
beauty which is apparent in sensible forms, to that which is divine;
so the ancient priests, when they considered that there is a certain
alliance and sympathy in natural things to each other, and of things
manifest to occult powers, and discovered that all things subsist
in all, they fabricated a sacred science from this mutual sympathy
and similarity. Thus they recognized things supreme in such as are
subordinate, and the subordinate in the supreme; in the celestial
regions, terrene properties subsisting in a causal and celestial
manner; and in earth celestial properties, but according to a terrene
condition.”
Proclus then proceeds to point to certain mysterious peculiarities
of plants, minerals, and animals, all of which are well known to our
naturalists, but none of which are explained. Such are the rotatory
motion of the sunflower, of the heliotrope, of the lotos—which, before
the rising of the sun, folds its leaves, drawing the petals within
itself, so to say, then expands them gradually, as the sun rises,
and draws them in again as it descends to the west—of the sun and
lunar stones and the helioselenus, of the cock and lion, and other
animals. “Now the ancients,” he says, “having contemplated this mutual
sympathy of things (celestial and terrestrial) applied them for occult
purposes, both celestial and terrene natures, by means of which,
through a certain similitude, they deduced divine virtues into this
inferior abode.... All things are full of divine natures; terrestrial
natures receiving the plenitude of such as are celestial, but celestial
of _super_celestial essences, while every order of things proceeds
gradually in a beautiful descent from _the highest to the lowest_.[407]
For whatever particulars are collected into one above the order of
things, are afterwards dilated in descending, _various souls being
distributed under their various ruling divinities_.”[408]
Evidently Proclus does not advocate here simply a superstition, but
science; for notwithstanding that it is occult, and unknown to our
scholars, who deny its possibilities, magic is still a science. It is
firmly and solely based on the mysterious affinities existing between
organic and inorganic bodies, the visible productions of the four
kingdoms, and the invisible powers of the universe. That which science
calls gravitation, the ancients and the mediæval hermetists called
magnetism, attraction, affinity. It is the universal law, which is
understood by Plato and explained in _Timæus_ as the attraction of
lesser bodies to larger ones, and of similar bodies to similar, the
latter exhibiting a magnetic power rather than following the law of
gravitation. The anti-Aristotelean formula that _gravity causes all
bodies to descend with equal rapidity, without reference to their
weight_, the difference being caused by some other _unknown_ agency,
would seem to point a great deal more forcibly to _magnetism_ than to
gravitation, the former attracting rather in virtue of the substance
than of the weight. A thorough familiarity with the occult faculties
of everything existing in nature, visible as well as invisible; their
mutual relations, attractions, and repulsions; the cause of these,
traced to the _spiritual_ principle which pervades and animates all
things; the ability to furnish the best conditions for this principle
to manifest itself, in other words a profound and exhaustive knowledge
of natural law—this _was_ and _is_ the basis of magic.
In his notes on _Ghosts and Goblins_, when reviewing some facts adduced
by certain illustrious defenders of the spiritual phenomena, such
as Professor de Morgan, Mr. Robert Dale Owen, and Mr. Wallace among
others—Mr. Richard A. Proctor says that he “cannot see any force in
the following remarks by Professor Wallace: ‘How is such evidence as
this,’ he (Wallace) says, speaking of one of Owen’s stories, ‘refuted
or explained away? Scores, and even hundreds, of equally-attested facts
are on record, but no attempt is made to explain them. They are simply
ignored, and in many cases admitted to be inexplicable.’” To this
Mr. Proctor jocularly replies that as “our philosophers declare that
they have long ago decided these ghost stories to be all delusions;
_therefore_ they need only be ignored; and they feel much ‘worritted’
that fresh evidence should be adduced, and fresh converts made, some of
whom are so unreasonable as to ask for a new trial on the ground that
the former verdict was contrary to the evidence.”
“All this,” he goes on to say, “affords excellent reason why the
‘converts’ should not be ridiculed for their belief; but something more
to the purpose must be urged before ‘the philosophers’ can be expected
to devote much of their time to the inquiry suggested. It ought to
be shown that _the well-being of the human race is to some important
degree concerned in the matter_, whereas the trivial nature of all
ghostly conduct hitherto recorded is admitted even by converts!”
Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten has collected a great number of
authenticated facts from secular and scientific journals, which show
with what serious questions our scientists sometimes replace the vexed
subject of “Ghosts and Goblins.” She quotes from a Washington paper a
report of one of these solemn conclaves, held on the evening of April
29th, 1854. Professor Hare, of Philadelphia, the venerable chemist, who
was so universally respected for his individual character, as well as
for his life-long labors for science, “was _bullied_ into silence” by
Professor Henry, as soon as he had touched the subject of spiritualism.
“The impertinent action of one of the members of the ‘American
Scientific Association,’” says the authoress, “was sanctioned by the
majority of that distinguished body and subsequently endorsed by all
of them in their proceedings.”[409] On the following morning, in the
report of the session, the _Spiritual Telegraph_ thus commented upon
the events:
“It would seem that a subject like this” (presented by Professor Hare)
was one which would lie peculiarly within the domain of ‘science.’ But
the ‘American Association for the Promotion of Science’,[410] decided
that it was either unworthy of their attention or dangerous for them to
meddle with, and so they voted to put the invitation on the table....
We cannot omit in this connection to mention that the ‘American
Association for _the Promotion of Science_’ held a very learned,
extended, grave, and profound discussion at the same session, _upon the
cause why ‘roosters crow between twelve and one o’clock at night_!’
A subject worthy of philosophers; and one, moreover, which must have
been shown to effect “the well-being of the human race” in a _very_
“_important_ degree.”
It is sufficient for one to express belief in the existence of a
mysterious sympathy between the life of certain plants and that
of human beings, to assure being made the subject of ridicule.
Nevertheless, there are many well-authenticated cases going to show
the reality of such an affinity. Persons have been known to fall sick
simultaneously with the uprooting of a tree planted upon their natal
day, and dying when the tree died. Reversing affairs, it has been
known that a tree planted under the same circumstances withered and
died simultaneously with the person whose twin brother, so to speak,
it was. The former would be called by Mr. Proctor an “effect of the
imagination;” the latter a “curious coincidence.”
Max Müller gives a number of such cases in his essay _On Manners and
Customs_. He shows this popular tradition existing in Central America,
in India, and Germany. He traces it over nearly all Europe; finds it
among the Maori Warriors, in British Guiana, and in Asia. Reviewing
Tyler’s _Researches into the Early History of Mankind_, a work in
which are brought together quite a number of such traditions, the
great philologist very justly remarks the following: “If it occurred
in Indian and German tales only, we might consider it as ancient Aryan
property; but when we find it again in Central America, nothing remains
but either to admit a later communication between European settlers and
native American story-tellers ... or to inquire whether there is not
some intelligible and truly human element in this supposed sympathy
between the life of flowers and the life of man.”
The present generation of men, who believe in nothing beyond the
superficial evidence of their senses, will doubtless reject the very
idea of such a sympathetic power existing in plants, animals, and even
stones. The caul covering their inner sight allows them to see but that
which they cannot well deny. The author of the _Asclepian Dialogue_
furnishes us with a reason for it, that might perhaps fit the present
period and account for this epidemic of unbelief. In our century, as
then, “there is a lamentable departure of divinity from man, when
nothing worthy of heaven or celestial concerns is heard or believed,
and when every divine voice is by a _necessary_ silence dumb.”[411] Or,
as the Emperor Julian has it, “the _little_ soul” of the skeptic “is
indeed acute, but sees nothing with a vision healthy and sound.”
_We are at the bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state._
Plato divides the intellectual progress of the universe during every
cycle into fertile and barren periods. In the sublunary regions, the
spheres of the various elements remain eternally in perfect harmony
with the divine nature, he says; “but their parts,” owing to a too
close proximity to earth, and their commingling with the _earthly_
(which is matter, and therefore the realm of evil), “are sometimes
according, and sometimes contrary to (divine) nature.” When those
circulations—which Eliphas Levi calls “currents of the astral light” in
the universal ether which contains in itself every element, take
place in harmony with the divine spirit, our earth and everything
pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The occult powers of
plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize with the “superior
natures,” and the divine soul of man is in perfect intelligence with
these “inferior” ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose
their magic sympathy, and the spiritual sight of the majority of
mankind is so blinded as to lose every notion of the superior powers
of its own divine spirit. We are in a barren period: the eighteenth
century, during which the malignant fever of skepticism broke out so
irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief as an hereditary disease upon the
nineteenth. The divine intellect is veiled in man; his animal brain
alone _philosophizes_.
_Formerly, magic was a universal science, entirely in the hands of
the sacerdotal savant._ Though the focus was jealously guarded in the
sanctuaries, its rays illuminated the whole of mankind. Otherwise, how
are we to account for the extraordinary identity of “superstitions,”
customs, traditions, and even sentences, repeated in popular proverbs
so widely scattered from one pole to the other that we find exactly
the same ideas among the Tartars and Laplanders as among the southern
nations of Europe, the inhabitants of the steppes of Russia, and the
aborigines of North and South America? For instance, Tyler shows one of
the ancient Pythagorean maxims, “Do not stir the fire with a sword,”
as popular among a number of nations which have not the slightest
connection with each other. He quotes De Plano Carpini, who found
this tradition prevailing among the Tartars so far back as in 1246. A
Tartar will not consent for any amount of money to stick a knife into
the fire, or touch it with any sharp or pointed instrument, for fear
of cutting the “head of the fire.” The Kamtchadal of North-eastern
Asia consider it a great sin so to do. The Sioux Indians of North
America dare not touch the fire with either needle, knife, or any sharp
instrument. The Kalmucks entertain the same dread; and an Abyssinian
would rather bury his bare arms to the elbows in blazing coals than
use a knife or axe near them. All these facts Tyler also calls “simply
curious coincidences.” Max Müller, however, thinks that they lose much
of their force by the fact “of the Pythagorean doctrine being at the
bottom of it.”
Every sentence of Pythagoras, like most of the ancient maxims, has
a dual signification; and, while it had an occult physical meaning,
expressed literally in its words, it embodied a moral precept, which
is explained by Iamblichus in his _Life of Pythagoras_. This “Dig
not fire with a sword,” is the ninth symbol in the _Protreptics_ of
this Neo-platonist. “This symbol,” he says, “exhorts to prudence.” It
shows “the propriety of not opposing sharp words to a man full of fire
and wrath—not contending with him. For frequently by uncivil words
you will agitate and disturb an ignorant man, and you will suffer
yourself.... Herakleitus also testifies to the truth of this symbol.
For, he says, ‘It is difficult to fight with anger, for whatever is
necessary to be done redeems the soul.’ And this he says truly. For
many, by gratifying anger, have changed the condition of their soul,
and have made death preferable to life. But by governing the tongue
and being quiet, friendship is produced from strife, the fire of anger
being extinguished, and you yourself will not appear to be destitute of
intellect.”[412]
We have had misgivings sometimes; we have questioned the impartiality
of our own judgment, our ability to offer a respectful criticism upon
the labors of such giants as some of our modern philosophers—Tyndall,
Huxley, Spencer, Carpenter, and a few others. In our immoderate love
for the “men of old” the primitive sages—we were always afraid to
trespass the boundaries of justice and refuse their dues to those who
deserve them. Gradually this natural fear gave way before an unexpected
reinforcement. We found out that we were but the feeble echo of public
opinion, which, though suppressed, has sometimes found relief in able
articles scattered throughout the periodicals of the country. One of
such can be found in the _National Quarterly Review_ of December,
1875, entitled “Our Sensational Present-Day Philosophers.” It is a
very able article, discussing fearlessly the claims of several of
our scientists to new discoveries in regard to the nature of matter,
the human soul, the mind, the universe; how the universe came into
existence, etc. “The religious world has been much startled,” the
author proceeds to say, “and not a little excited by the utterances
of men like Spencer, Tyndall, Huxley, Proctor, and a few others of the
same school.” Admitting very cheerfully how much science owes to each
of those gentlemen, nevertheless the author “most emphatically” denies
that they have made any discoveries at all. There is nothing new in
the speculations, even of the most advanced of them; nothing which was
not known and taught, in one form or another, thousands of years ago.
He does not say that these scientists “put forward their theories as
their own discoveries, but they leave the fact to be implied, and the
newspapers do the rest.... The public, which has neither time nor the
inclination to examine the facts, adopts the faith of the newspapers
... and wonders what will come next! ... The supposed originators of
such startling theories are assailed in the newspapers. Sometimes the
obnoxious scientists undertake to defend themselves, but we cannot
recall a single instance in which they have candidly said, ‘Gentlemen,
be not angry with us; we are merely _revamping_ stories which are
nearly as old as the mountains.’” This would have been the simple
truth; “but even scientists or philosophers,” adds the author, “are not
always proof against the weakness of encouraging any notion which they
think may secure niches for them among the immortal ones.”[413]
Huxley, Tyndall, and even Spencer have become lately the great oracles,
the “infallible popes” on the dogmas of protoplasm, molecules,
primordial forms, and atoms. They have reaped more palms and laurels
for their great discoveries than Lucretius, Cicero, Plutarch, and
Seneca had hairs on their heads. Nevertheless, the works of the
latter teem with ideas on the protoplasm, primordial forms, etc., let
alone the atoms, which caused Demokritus to be called the _atomic_
philosopher. In the same _Review_ we find this very startling
denunciation:
“Who, _among the innocent_, has not been astonished, even within the
last year, at the wonderful results accomplished by oxygen? What
an excitement Tyndall and Huxley have created by proclaiming, in
their own ingenious, oracular way, just the very doctrines which we
have just quoted from Liebig; yet, as early as 1840, Professor Lyon
Playfair translated into English the most ‘advanced’ of Baron Liebig’s
works.”[414]
“Another recent utterance,” he says, “which startled a large number
of innocent and pious persons, is, that every thought we express,
or attempt to express, produces a certain wonderful change in the
substance of the brain. But, for this and a good deal more of its
kind, our philosophers had only to turn to the pages of Baron Liebig.
Thus, for instance, that scientist proclaims: “Physiology has
sufficiently decisive grounds for the opinions, that _every thought,
every sensation_ is accompanied by a change in the composition of the
_substance of the brain_; that every motion, every manifestation of
force is the result of a transformation of the structure or of its
substance.[415]
Thus, throughout the sensational lectures of Tyndall, we can trace,
almost to a page, the whole of Liebig’s speculations, interlined now
and then with the still earlier views of Demokritus and other Pagan
philosophers. A potpourri of old hypotheses elevated by the great
authority of the day into quasi-demonstrated formulas, and delivered
in that pathetic, picturesque, mellow, and thrillingly-eloquent
phraseology so pre-eminently his own.
Further, the same reviewer shows us many of the identical ideas and
all the material requisite to demonstrate the great discoveries of
Tyndall and Huxley, in the works of Dr. Joseph Priestley, author of
_Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit_, and even in Herder’s _Philosophy
of History_.
“Priestley,” adds the author, “was not molested by government, simply
because he had no ambition to obtain fame by proclaiming his atheistic
views from the house-top. This philosopher ... was the author of from
seventy to eighty volumes, and the discoverer of oxygen.” It is in
these works that “he puts forward those identical ideas which have
been declared so ‘startling,’ ‘bold,’ etc., as the utterances of our
present-day philosophers.”
“Our readers,” he proceeds to say, “remember what an excitement has
been created by the utterances of some of our modern philosophers as
to the origin and nature of ideas, but those utterances, like others
that preceded and followed them, contain nothing new.” “An idea,”
says Plutarch, “is a _being_ incorporeal, which has no subsistence by
itself, but gives figure and form unto shapeless matter, and _becomes
the cause of its manifestation_” (_De Placitio Philosophorum_).
Verily, no modern atheist, Mr. Huxley included, can outvie Epicurus in
materialism; he can but mimic him. And what is his “protoplasm,” but a
_rechauffé_ of the speculations of the Hindu Swâbhâvikas or Pantheists,
who assert that all things, the gods as well as men and animals, are
born from Swâbhâva or their own nature?[416] As to Epicurus, this
is what Lucretius makes him say: “The soul, thus produced, must be
_material_, because we trace it issuing from a material source; because
it exists, and exists alone in a material system; is nourished by
material food; grows with the growth of the body; becomes matured with
its maturity; declines with its decay; and hence, whether belonging to
man or brute, must die with its death.” Nevertheless, we would remind
the reader that Epicurus is here speaking of the _Astral Soul_, not of
Divine Spirit. Still, if we rightly understand the above, Mr. Huxley’s
“mutton-protoplasm” is of a very ancient origin, and can claim for its
birthplace, Athens, and for its cradle, the brain of old Epicurus.
Further, still, anxious not to be misunderstood or found guilty of
depreciating the labor of any of our scientists, the author closes
his essay by remarking, “We merely want to show that, at least,
that portion of the public which considers itself intelligent and
enlightened should cultivate its memory, or remember the ‘advanced’
thinkers of the past much better than it does. Especially should those
do so who, whether from the desk, the rostrum, or the pulpit, undertake
to instruct all willing to be instructed by them. There would then be
much less groundless apprehension, much less charlatanism, and above
all, much less plagiarism, than there is.”[417]
Truly says Cudworth that the greatest ignorance of which our
modern wiseacres accuse the ancients is their belief in the soul’s
immortality. Like the old skeptic of Greece, our scientists—to use
an expression of the same Dr. Cudworth—are afraid that if they admit
spirits and apparitions they must admit a God too; and there is
nothing too absurd, he adds, for them to suppose, in order to keep
out the existence of God. The great body of ancient materialists,
skeptical as they now seem to us, thought otherwise, and Epicurus,
who rejected the soul’s immortality, believed still in a God, and
Demokritus fully conceded the reality of apparitions. The preëxistence
and God-like powers of the human spirit were believed in by most all
the sages of ancient days. The magic of Babylon and Persia based upon
it the doctrine of their _machagistia_. The _Chaldean Oracles_, on
which Pletho and Psellus have so much commented, constantly expounded
and amplified their testimony. Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Epicharmus,
Empedocles, Kebes, Euripides, Plato, Euclid, Philo, Boëthius, Virgil,
Marcus Cicero, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Psellus, Synesius,
Origen, and, finally, _Aristotle_ himself, far from denying our
immortality, support it most emphatically. Like Cardon and Pompanatius,
“who were no friends to the soul’s immortality,” as says Henry More,
“Aristotle expressly concludes that the rational soul is both a
distinct being from the soul of the world, though of the same essence,
and that “it does preëxist before it comes into the body.”[418]
Years have rolled away since the Count Joseph De Maistre wrote a
sentence which, if appropriate to the Voltairean epoch in which
he lived, applies with still more justice to our period of utter
skepticism. “I have heard,” writes this eminent man, “I have heard and
read of myriads of good jokes on the ignorance of the ancients, who
were always seeing spirits everywhere; methinks that we are a great
deal more imbecile than our forefathers, in never perceiving any such
now, anywhere.”[419]
CHAPTER VIII.
“Think not my magic wonders wrought by aid
Of Stygian angels summoned up from Hell;
Scorned and accursed by those who have essay’d
Her gloomy Divs and Afrites to compel.
But by perception of the secret powers
Of mineral springs, in nature’s inmost cell,
Of herbs in curtain of her greenest bowers,
And of the moving stars o’er mountain tops and towers.”
—TASSO, Canto XIV., xliii.
“Who dares think _one_ thing and _another_ tell
My heart detests him as the gates of Hell!”—POPE.
“If man ceases to exist when he disappears in the grave, you
must be compelled to affirm that he is the only creature in
existence whom nature or providence has condescended to deceive
and cheat by capacities for which there are no available
objects.”—BULWER-LYTTON: _Strange Story_.
The preface of Richard A. Proctor’s latest work on astronomy, entitled
_Our Place among Infinities_, contains the following extraordinary
words: “It was their ignorance of the earth’s place among infinities,
which led the ancients to regard the heavenly bodies as ruling
favorably or adversely the fates of men and nations, and to dedicate
the days in sets of seven to the seven planets of their astrological
system.”
Mr. Proctor makes two distinct assertions in this sentence: 1. That
the ancients were ignorant of the earth’s place among infinities; and
2, That they regarded the heavenly bodies as ruling, favorably or
adversely, the fates of men and nations.[420] We are very confident
that there is at least good reason to suspect that the ancients were
familiar with the movements, emplacement, and mutual relations of the
heavenly bodies. The testimony of Plutarch, Professor Draper, and
Jowett, are sufficiently explicit. But we would ask Mr. Proctor how it
happens, if the ancient astronomers were so ignorant of the law of the
birth and death of worlds that, in the fragmentary bits which the hand
of time has spared us of ancient lore there should be—albeit couched in
obscure language—so much information which the most recent discoveries
of science have verified? Beginning with the tenth page of the work
under notice, Mr. Proctor sketches for us the theory of the formation
of our earth, and the successive changes through which it passed until
it became habitable for man. In vivid colors he depicts the gradual
accretion of cosmic matter into gaseous spheres surrounded with “a
liquid non-permanent shell;” the condensation of both; the ultimate
solidification of the external crust; the slow cooling of the mass;
the chemical results following the action of intense heat upon the
primitive earthy matter; the formation of soils and their distribution;
the change in the constitution of the atmosphere; the appearance of
vegetation and animal life; and, finally, the advent of man.
Now, let us turn to the oldest written records left us by the
Chaldeans, the Hermetic _Book of Numbers_,[421] and see what we
shall find in the allegorical language of Hermes, Kadmus, or Thuti,
the thrice great Trismegistus. “In the beginning of time the great
invisible one had his holy hands full of celestial matter which he
scattered throughout the infinity; and lo, behold! it became balls of
fire and balls of clay; and they scattered like the moving metal[422]
into many smaller balls, and began their ceaseless turning; and some
of them which were balls of fire became balls of clay; and the balls
of clay became balls of fire; and the balls of fire were waiting their
time to become balls of clay; and the others envied them and bided
their time to become balls of pure divine fire.”
Could any one ask a clearer definition of the cosmic changes which Mr.
Proctor so elegantly expounds?
Here we have the distribution of matter throughout space; then its
concentration into the spherical form; the separation of smaller
spheres from the greater ones; axial rotation; the gradual change of
orbs from the incandescent to the earthy consistence; and, finally,
the total loss of heat which marks their entrance into the stage of
planetary death. The change of the balls of clay into balls of fire
would be understood by materialists to indicate some such phenomenon
as the sudden ignition of the star in Cassiopeia, A.D. 1572, and the
one in Serpentarius, in 1604, which was noted by Kepler. But, do the
Chaldeans evince in this expression a profounder philosophy than of
our day? Does this change into balls of “pure divine fire” signify a
continuous planetary existence, correspondent with the spirit-life
of man, beyond the awful mystery of death? If worlds have, as the
astronomers tell us, their periods of embryo, infancy, adolescence,
maturity, decadence, and death, may they not, like man, have their
continued existence in a sublimated, ethereal, or spiritual form? The
magians so affirm. They tell us that the fecund mother Earth is subject
to the same laws as every one of her children. At her appointed time
she brings forth all created things; in the fulness of her days she
is gathered to the tomb of worlds. Her gross, material body slowly
parts with its atoms under the inexorable law which demands their
new arrangement in other combinations. Her own perfected vivifying
spirit obeys the eternal attraction which draws it toward that central
spiritual sun from which it was originally evolved, and which we
vaguely know under the name of GOD.
“And the heaven was visible in seven circles, and the planets appeared
with all their signs, in star-form, and the stars were divided and
numbered with the rulers that were in them, and their _revolving_
course was bounded with _the air_, and borne with a circular course,
through the agency of the divine SPIRIT.”[423]
We challenge any one to indicate a single passage in the works of
Hermes which proves him guilty of that crowning absurdity of the Church
of Rome which assumed, upon the geocentric theory of astronomy, that
the heavenly bodies were made for our use and pleasure, and that it
was worth while for the only son of God to descend upon this cosmic
mote and die in expiation for our sins! Mr. Proctor tells us of a
liquid non-permanent shell of uncongealed matter enclosing a “viscous
plastic ocean,” within which “there is another interior _solid globe_
rotating.” We, on our part, turn to the _Magia Adamica_ of Eugenius
Philalethes, published in 1650, and at page 12, we find him quoting
from Trismegistus in the following terms: “Hermes affirmeth that in
the _Beginning_ the earth was a quackmire or quivering kind of jelly,
it being nothing else but _water congealed_ by the incubation and heat
of the divine spirit; _cum adhuc_ (sayeth he) _Terra tremula esset,
Lucente sole compacta esto_.”
In the same work, Philalethes, speaking in his quaint, symbolical way,
says, “The earth is invisible ... on my soul it is so, and which is
more, the _eye_ of _man_ never _saw_ the _earth_, nor can it be _seen_
without _art_. To make this _element invisible_, is the _greatest
secret_ in _magic_ ... as for this _fœculent_, gross _body_ upon _which
we walk_, it is a _compost_, and no earth _but it hath earth in it_,
... in a word all the _elements_ are _visible_ but _one_, namely the
_earth_, and when thou hast attained to so much _perfection_ as to
know why _God_ hath placed the _earth in abscondito_,[424] thou hast
an excellent figure whereby to know _God Himself_, and how He is
_visible_, how _invisible_.”[425]
Ages before our savants of the nineteenth century came into existence,
a wise man of the Orient thus expressed himself, in addressing the
invisible Deity: “For thy Almighty Hand, that made the world of
_formless matter_.”[426]
There is much more contained in this language than we are willing
to explain, but we will say that the secret is worth the seeking;
perhaps in this formless matter, the _pre_-Adamite earth, is contained
a “potency” with which Messrs. Tyndall and Huxley would be glad to
acquaint themselves.
But to descend from universals to particulars, from the ancient
theory of planetary evolution to the evolution of plant and animal
life, as opposed to the theory of special creation, what does Mr.
Proctor call the following language of Hermes but an anticipation of
the modern theory of evolution of species? “When God had filled his
powerful hands with those things which are in nature, and in that which
compasseth nature, then shutting them close again, he said: ‘Receive
from me, O holy earth! that art ordained to be the _mother of all_,
lest thou shouldst want anything;’ when presently opening such hands
as it becomes a God to have, he poured down all that was necessary
to the constitution of things.” Here we have primeval matter imbued
with “the promise and potency of every future form of life,” and the
earth declared to be the predestined mother of everything that should
thenceforth spring from her bosom.
More definite is the language of Marcus Antoninus in his discourse to
himself. “The nature of the universe delights not in anything so much
as to alter all things, and present them under another form. This is
her conceit to play one game and begin another. Matter is placed before
her like a piece of wax and she shapes it to all forms and figures. Now
she makes _a bird, then out of the bird a beast_—now a _flower_, then a
frog, and she is pleased with her own magical performances as men are
with their own fancies.”[427]
Before any of our modern teachers thought of evolution, the ancients
taught us, through Hermes, that nothing can be abrupt in nature; that
she never proceeds by jumps and starts, that everything in her works is
slow harmony, and that there is nothing sudden—not even violent death.
The slow development from preëxisting forms was a doctrine with
the Rosicrucian Illuminati. The _Tres Matres_ showed Hermes the
mysterious progress of their work, before they condescended to reveal
themselves to mediæval alchemists. Now, in the Hermetic dialect,
these three mothers are the symbol of light, heat, and electricity,
or magnetism, the two latter being as convertible as the whole of
the forces or agents which have a place assigned them in the modern
“Force-correlation.” Synesius mentions books of stone which he found in
the temple of Memphis, on which was engraved the following sentence:
“One _nature_ delights in another, one nature overcomes another, one
nature overrules another, and the whole of them are _one_.”
The inherent restlessness of matter is embodied in the saying of
Hermes: “Action is the life of Phta;” and Orpheus calls nature
Πολυμήχανος μάτηρ, “the mother that makes many things,” or the
ingenious, the contriving, the inventive mother.
Mr. Proctor says: “All that _that is upon and within the earth, all
vegetable forms and_ all animal forms, our bodies, our brains, are
formed of materials which have been drawn in from those depths of
space surrounding us on all sides.” The Hermetists and the later
Rosicrucians held that all things visible and invisible were produced
by the contention of light with darkness, and that every particle
of matter contains within itself a spark of the divine essence—or
light, _spirit_—which, through its tendency to free itself from its
entanglement and return to the central source, produced motion in the
particles, and from motion forms were born. Says Hargrave Jennings,
quoting Robertus di Fluctibus: “Thus all minerals in this spark of life
have the rudimentary possibility of plants and growing organisms; thus
all plants have rudimentary sensations which might (in the ages) enable
them to perfect and transmute into locomotive new creatures, lesser or
higher in their grade, or nobler or meaner in their functions; thus all
plants, and all vegetation might pass off (by side roads) into more
distinguished highways as it were, of independent, completer advance,
allowing their original spark of light to expand and thrill with higher
and more vivid force, and to urge forward with more abounding, informed
purpose, all wrought by planetary influence directed by the unseen
spirits (or workers) of the great original architect.”[428]
_Light_—the first mentioned in _Genesis_, is termed by the kabalists,
Sephira, or the Divine _Intelligence_, the mother of all the Sephiroth,
while the _Concealed Wisdom_ is the father. Light is the first
begotten, and the first emanation of the Supreme, and Light is Life,
says the evangelist. Both are electricity—the life-principle, the
_anima mundi_, pervading the universe, the electric vivifier of all
things. Light is the great Protean magician, and under the Divine
Will of the architect, its multifarious, omnipotent waves gave birth
to every form as well as to every living being. From its swelling,
electric bosom, springs _matter_ and _spirit_. Within its beams lie
the beginnings of all physical and chemical action, and of all cosmic
and spiritual phenomena; it vitalizes and disorganizes; it gives life
and produces death, and from its primordial point gradually emerged
into existence the myriads of worlds, visible and invisible celestial
bodies. It was at the ray of this _First_ mother, one in three, that
God, according to Plato, “lighted a fire, which we now call the
sun,”[429] and, which is _not_ the cause of either light or heat, but
merely the focus, or, as we might say, the lens, by which the rays of
the primordial light become materialized, are concentrated upon our
solar system, and produce all the correlations of forces.
So much for the first of Mr. Proctor’s two propositions; now for the
second.
The work which we have been noticing, comprises a series of twelve
essays, of which the last is entitled _Thoughts on Astrology_. The
author treats the subject with so much more consideration than is
the custom of men of his class, that it is evident he has given it
thoughtful attention. In fact, he goes so far as to say that, “If
we consider the matter aright, we must concede ... that of all the
errors into which men have fallen in their desire to penetrate into
futurity, astrology is the most respectable, we may even say the most
reasonable.”[430]
He admits that “The heavenly bodies _do_ rule the fates of men and
nations in the most unmistakable manner, seeing that without the
controlling and beneficent influences of the chief among those orbs—the
sun—every living creature on the earth must perish.“[431] He admits,
also, the influence of the moon, and sees nothing strange in the
ancients reasoning by analogy, that if two among these heavenly bodies
were thus potent in terrestrial influences, it was ” ... natural that
the other moving bodies known to the ancients, should be thought to
possess also their special powers.”[432] Indeed, the professor sees
nothing unreasonable in their supposition that the influences exerted
by the slower moving planets “might be even more potent than those of
the sun himself.” Mr. Proctor thinks that the system of astrology “was
formed gradually and perhaps tentatively.” Some influences may have
been inferred from observed events, the fate of this or that king or
chief, guiding astrologers in assigning particular influences to such
planetary aspects as were presented at the time of his nativity. Others
may have been invented, and afterward have found general acceptance,
because confirmed by some _curious coincidences_.
A witty joke may sound very prettily, even in a learned treatise, and
the word “coincidence” may be applied to anything we are unwilling to
accept. But a sophism is not a truism; still less is it a mathematical
demonstration, which alone ought to serve as a beacon—to astronomers,
at least. Astrology is a science _as infallible_ as astronomy itself,
with the condition, however, that its interpreters must be equally
infallible; and it is this condition, _sine qua non_, so very difficult
of realization, that has always proved a stumbling-block to both.
Astrology is to exact astronomy what psychology is to exact physiology.
In astrology and psychology one has to step beyond the visible world of
matter, and enter into the domain of transcendent spirit. It is the old
struggle between the Platonic and Aristotelean schools, and it is not
in our century of Sadducean skepticism that the former will prevail
over the latter. Mr. Proctor, in his professional capacity, is like the
uncharitable person of the Sermon on the Mount, who is ever ready to
attract public attention to the mote in his despised neighbor’s eye,
and overlook the beam in his own. Were we to record the failures and
ridiculous blunders of astronomers, we are afraid they would outnumber
by far those of the astrologers. Present events fully vindicate
Nostradamus, who has been so much ridiculed by our skeptics. In an old
book of prophecies, published in the fifteenth century (an edition of
1453), we read the following, among other astrological predictions:[433]
“In twice two hundred years, the Bear
The Crescent will assail;
But if the Cock and Bull unite,
The Bear will not prevail.
In twice ten years again—
Let Islam know and fear—
The Cross shall stand, the Crescent wane,
Dissolve, and disappear.”
In just twice two hundred years from the date of that prophecy, we
had the Crimean war, during which the alliance of the Gallic Cock and
English Bull interfered with the political designs of the Russian Bear.
In 1856 the war was ended, and Turkey, or the Crescent, closely escaped
destruction. In the present year (1876) the most unexpected events of a
political character have just taken place, and _twice ten years_ have
elapsed since peace was proclaimed. Everything seems to bid fair for a
fulfilment of the old prophecy; the future will tell whether the Moslem
Crescent, which seems, indeed, to be _waning_, will irrevocably “wane,
dissolve, and disappear,” as the outcome of the present troubles.
In explaining away the heterodox facts which he appears to have
encountered in his pursuit of knowledge, Mr. Proctor is obliged more
than once in his work, to fall back upon these “curious coincidences.”
One of the most curious of these is stated by him in a foot-note (page
301) as follows: “I do not here dwell on the curious coincidence—if,
indeed, Chaldean astrologers had not discovered the ring of Saturn—that
they showed the god corresponding within a ring and _triple_.... Very
moderate optical knowledge—such, indeed, as we may fairly infer from
the presence of optical instruments among Assyrian remains—might
have led to the discovery of Saturnal rings and Jupiter’s moons....
Bel, the Assyrian Jupiter,” he adds, “was represented sometimes with
four star-tipped wings. _But it is possible that these are mere
coincidences._”
In short, Mr. Proctor’s theory of coincidence becomes finally more
suggestive of miracle than the facts themselves. For coincidences our
friends the skeptics appear to have an unappeasable appetite. We have
brought sufficient testimony in the preceding chapter to show that the
ancients must have used as good optical instruments as we have now.
Were the instruments in possession of Nebuchadnezzar of such moderate
power, and the knowledge of his astronomers so very contemptible,
when, according to Rawlinson’s reading of the tiles, the Birs-Nimrud,
or temple of Borsippa, had seven stages, symbolical of the concentric
circles of the seven spheres, each built of tiles and metals to
correspond with the color of the ruling planet of the sphere typified?
Is it a coincidence again, that they should have appropriated to each
planet the color which our latest telescopic discoveries show to be
the real one?[434] Or is it again a coincidence, that Plato should
have indicated in the _Timæus_ his knowledge of the indestructibility
of matter, of conservation of energy, and correlation of forces? “The
latest word of modern philosophy,” says Jowett, “is continuity and
development, but to Plato _this is the beginning and foundation of
science_.”[435]
The radical element of the oldest religions was essentially
_sabaistic_; and we maintain that their myths and allegories—if once
correctly and thoroughly interpreted, will dovetail with the most exact
astronomical notions of our day. We will say more; there is hardly a
scientific law—whether pertaining to physical astronomy or physical
geography—that could not be easily pointed out in the ingenious
combinations of their fables. They allegorized the most important as
well as the most trifling causes of the celestial motions; the nature
of every phenomenon was personified; and in the mythical biographies
of the Olympic gods and goddesses, one well acquainted with the
latest principles of physics and chemistry can find their causes,
inter-agencies, and mutual relations embodied in the deportment and
course of action of the fickle deities. The atmospheric electricity
in its neutral and latent states is embodied usually in demi-gods and
goddesses, whose scene of action is more limited to earth and who, in
their occasional flights to the higher deific regions, display their
electric tempers always _in strict proportion with the increase of
distance from the earth’s surface_: the weapons of Hercules and Thor
were never more mortal than when the gods soared into the clouds. We
must bear in mind that before the time when the Olympian Jupiter was
anthropomorphized by the genius of Pheidias into the Omnipotent God,
the _Maximus_, the God of gods, and thus abandoned to the adoration of
the multitudes, in the earliest and abstruse science of symbology he
embodied in his person and attributes the whole of the cosmic forces.
The Myth was less metaphysical and complicated, but more truly eloquent
as an expression of natural philosophy. Zeus, the male element of the
creation with Chthonia—Vesta (the earth), and Metis (the water) the
first of the Oceanides (the feminine principles)—was viewed according
to Porphyry and Proclus as the _zōŏn-ek-zōōn_, the chief of living
beings. In the Orphic theology, the oldest of all, metaphysically
speaking, he represented both the _potentia_ and _actus_, the
unrevealed _cause_ and the Demiurg, or the active creator as an
emanation from the invisible potency. In the latter demiurgic capacity,
in conjunction with his consorts, we find in him all the mightiest
agents of cosmic evolution—chemical affinity, atmospheric electricity,
attraction, and repulsion.
It is in following his representations in this physical qualification
that we discover how well acquainted were the ancients with all the
doctrines of physical science in their modern development. Later, in
the Pythagorean speculations, Zeus became the metaphysical trinity;
the monad evolving from its invisible SELF the _active_ cause, effect,
and intelligent will, the whole forming the _Tetractis_. Still later
we find the earlier Neo-platonists leaving the primal monad aside,
on the ground of its utter incomprehensibleness to human intellect,
speculating merely on the _demiurgic triad_ of this deity as visible
and intelligible in its effects; and thus the metaphysical continuation
by Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, and other philosophers of this view of
Zeus the father, Zeus _Poseidon_, or _dunamis_, the son and power, and
the spirit or _nous_. This triad was also accepted as a whole by the
Irenæic school of the second century; the more substantial difference
between the doctrines of the Neo-platonists and the Christians being
merely the forcible amalgamation by the latter of the incomprehensible
monad with its actualized creative trinity.
In his astronomical aspect Zeus-Dionysus has his origin in the zodiac,
the ancient solar year. In Libya he assumed the form of a ram, and is
identical with the Egyptian Amun, who begat Osiris, the taurian god.
Osiris is also a personified emanation of the Father-Sun, and himself
the Sun in Taurus. The Parent-Sun being the Sun in Aries. As the
latter, Jupiter, is in the guise of a ram, and as Jupiter-Dionysus or
Jupiter-Osiris, he is the bull. This animal is, as it is well known,
the symbol of the creative power; moreover the Kabala explains, through
the medium of one of its chief expounders, Simon-Ben-Iochai,[436] the
origin of this strange worship of the bulls and cows. It is neither
Darwin nor Huxley—the founders of the doctrine of evolution and its
necessary complement, the transformation of species—that can find
anything against the rationality of this symbol, except, perhaps, a
natural feeling of uneasiness upon finding that they were preceded by
the ancients even in this particular modern discovery. Elsewhere, we
will give the doctrine of the kabalists as taught by Simon-Ben-Iochai.
It may be easily proved that from time immemorial Saturn or Kronos,
whose ring, most positively, _was_ discovered by the Chaldean
astrologers, and whose symbolism is no “coincidence,” was considered
the father of Zeus, before the latter became himself the father of
all the gods, and was the highest deity. He was the Bel or Baal of
the Chaldeans, and originally imported among them by the Akkadians.
Rawlinson insists that the latter came from Armenia; but if so, how can
we account for the fact that Bel is but a Babylonian personification
of the Hindu Siva, or Bala, the fire-god, the omnipotent creative, and
at the same time, destroying Deity, in many senses higher than Brahma
himself?
“Zeus,” says an Orphic hymn, “is the first and the last, the head, and
the extremities; from him have proceeded all things. He is a man and an
immortal nymph (male and female element); the soul of all things; and
the principal motor in fire; he is the sun and the moon; the fountain
of the ocean; the demiurgus of the universe; one power, one God; the
mighty creator and governor of the cosmos. Everything, fire, water,
earth, ether, night, the heavens, Metis, the primeval architecturess
(the Sophia of the Gnostics, and the Sephira of the Kabalists), the
beautiful Eros, Cupid, all is included within the vast dimensions of
his glorious body!”[437]
This short hymn of laudation contains within itself the groundwork of
every mythopœic conception. The imagination of the ancients proved
as boundless as the visible manifestations of the Deity itself which
afforded them the themes for their allegories. Still the latter,
exuberant as they seem, never departed from the two principal ideas
which may be ever found running parallel in their sacred imagery;
a strict adherence to the physical as well as moral or spiritual
aspect of natural law. Their metaphysical researches never clashed
with scientific truths, and their religions may be truly termed the
psycho-physiological creeds of the priests and scientists, who built
them on the traditions of the infant-world, such as the unsophisticated
minds of the primitive races received them, and on their own
experimental knowledge, hoary with all the wisdom of the intervening
ages.
As the sun, what better image could be found for Jupiter emitting
his golden rays than to personify this emanation in Diana, the
all-illuminating virgin Artemis, whose oldest name was Diktynna,
literally the emitted _ray_, from the word _dikein_. The moon is
non-luminous, and it shines only by the reflected light of the
sun; hence, the imagery of his daughter, the goddess of the moon,
and herself, Luna, Astartè, or Diana. As the Cretan Diktynna, she
wears a wreath made of the magic plant _diktamnon_, or _dictamnus_,
the evergreen shrub whose contact is said, at the same time, to
develop somnambulism and cure finally of it; and, as Eilithyia and
Juno Pronuba, she is the goddess who presides over births; she
is an Æsculapian deity, and the use of the dictamnus-wreath, in
association with the moon, shows once more the profound observation
of the ancients. This plant is known in botany as possessing strongly
sedative properties; it grows on Mount Dicte, a Cretan mountain, in
great abundance; on the other hand, the moon, according to the best
authorities on animal magnetism, acts upon the juices and ganglionic
system, or nerve-cells, the seat from whence proceed all the
nerve-fibres which play such a prominent part in mesmerization. During
childbirth the Cretan women were covered with this plant, and its
roots were administered as best calculated to soothe acute pain, and
allay the irritability so dangerous at this period. They were placed,
moreover, within the precincts of the temple sacred to the goddess,
and, if possible, under the direct rays of the resplendent daughter of
Jupiter—the bright and warm Eastern moon.
The Hindu Brahmans and Buddhists have complicated theories on the
influence of the sun and moon (the male and female elements), as
containing the negative and positive principles, the opposites of the
magnetic polarity. “The influence of the moon on women is well known,”
write all the old authors on magnetism; and Ennemoser, as well as Du
Potet, confirm the theories of the Hindu seers in every particular.
The marked respect paid by the Buddhists to the sapphire-stone—which
was also sacred to Luna, in every other country—may be found based
on something more scientifically exact than a mere groundless
superstition. They ascribed to it a sacred magical power, which every
student of psychological mesmerism will readily understand, for its
polished and deep-blue surface produces extraordinary somnambulic
phenomena. The varied influence of the prismatic colors on the growth
of vegetation, and especially that of the “blue ray,” has been
recognized but recently. The Academicians quarrelled over the unequal
heating power of the prismatic rays until a series of experimental
demonstrations by General Pleasonton, proved that under the blue ray,
the most electric of all, animal and vegetable growth was increased to
a magical proportion. Thus Amoretti’s investigations of the electric
polarity of precious stones show that the diamond, the garnet, the
amethyst, are -E., while the sapphire is +E.[438] Thus, we are enabled
to show that the latest experiments of science only corroborate that
which was known to the Hindu sages before any of the modern academies
were founded. An old Hindu legend says that Brahma-Prajapâti, having
fallen in love with his own daughter, _Ushâs_ (Heaven, sometimes the
Dawn also), assumed the form of a buck (_ris’ya_) and Ushâs that
of a female deer (_rôhit_) and thus committed the first sin.[439]
Upon seeing such a desecration, the gods felt so terrified, that
uniting their most fearful-looking bodies—each god possessing as many
bodies as he desires—they produced Bhûtavan (the spirit of evil),
who was created by them on purpose to destroy the _incarnation_ of
the first sin committed by the Brahma himself. Upon seeing this,
Brahma-Hiranyagarbha[440] repented bitterly and began repeating the
Mantras, or prayers of purification, and, in his grief, dropped on
earth a tear, the _hottest_ that ever fell from an eye; and from it was
formed the first sapphire.
This half-sacred, half-popular legend shows that the Hindus knew which
was the most electric of all the prismatic colors; moreover, the
particular influence of the sapphire-stone was as well defined as that
of all the other minerals. Orpheus teaches how it is possible to affect
a whole audience by means of a lodestone; Pythagoras pays a particular
attention to the color and nature of precious stones; while Apollonius
of Tyana imparts to his disciples the secret virtues of each, and
changes his jewelled rings daily, using a particular stone for every
day of the month and according to the laws of judicial astrology. The
Buddhists assert that the sapphire produces peace of mind, equanimity,
and chases all evil thoughts by establishing a healthy circulation in
man. So does an electric battery, with its well-directed fluid, say
our electricians. “The sapphire,” say the Buddhists, “will open barred
doors and dwellings (for the spirit of man); it produces a desire for
prayer, and brings with it more peace than any other gem; but he who
would wear it must lead a pure and holy life.”[441]
Diana-Luna is the daughter of Zeus by Proserpina, who represents
the Earth in her active labor, and, according to Hesiod, as Diana
Eilythia-Lucina she is Juno’s daughter. But Juno, devoured by Kronos or
Saturn, and restored back to life by the Oceanid Metis, is also known
as the Earth. Saturn, as the evolution of Time, swallows the earth
in one of the ante-historical cataclysms, and it is only when Metis
(the waters) by retreating in her many beds, frees the continent, that
Juno is said to be restored to her first shape. The idea is expressed
in the 9th and 10th verses of the first chapter of _Genesis_. In the
frequent matrimonial quarrels between Juno and Jupiter, Diana is always
represented as turning her back on her mother and smiling upon her
father, though she chides him for his numerous frolics. The Thessalian
magicians are said to have been obliged, during such eclipses, to
draw her attention to the earth by the power of their spells and
incantations, and the Babylonian astrologers and magi never desisted
in their spells until they brought about a reconciliation between the
irritated couple, after which Juno “radiantly smiled on the bright
goddess” Diana, who, encircling her brow with her crescent, returned to
her hunting-place in the mountains.
It seems to us that the fable illustrates the different phases of the
moon. We, the inhabitants of the earth, never see but one-half of our
bright satellite, who thus turns _her back_ to her mother Juno. The
sun, the moon, and the earth are constantly changing positions with
relation to each other. With the _new_ moon there is constantly a
change of weather; and sometimes the wind and storms may well suggest
a quarrel between the sun and earth, especially when the former is
concealed by grumbling thunder-clouds. Furthermore, the new moon, when
her dark side is turned toward us, is invisible; and it is only after a
_reconciliation_ between the sun and the earth, that a bright crescent
becomes visible on the side nearest to the sun, though this time Luna
is not illuminated by sunlight _directly_ received, but by sunlight
reflected from the earth to the moon, and by her reflected back to us.
Hence, the Chaldean astrologers and the magicians of Thessaly, who
probably watched and determined as accurately as a Babinet the course
of the celestial bodies, were said by their enchantments to force the
moon to descend on earth, _i.e._, to show her crescent, which she could
do but after receiving the “radiant smile” from her mother-earth, who
put it on after the conjugal reconciliation. Diana-Luna, having adorned
her head with her crescent, returns back to hunt in _her mountains_.
As to calling in question the intrinsic knowledge of the ancients
on the ground of their “_superstitious_ deductions from natural
phenomena,” it is as appropriate as it would be if, five hundred years
hence, our descendents should regard the pupils of Professor Balfour
Stewart as _ancient_ ignoramuses, and himself a shallow philosopher.
If modern science, in the person of this gentleman, can condescend to
make experiments to determine whether the appearance of the spots on
the sun’s surface is in any way connected with the potatoe disease,
and finds _it is_; and that, moreover, “the earth is very seriously
affected by what takes place in the sun,”[442] why should the ancient
astrologers be held up as either fools or arrant knaves? There is the
same relation between natural and judicial or judiciary astrology, as
between physiology and psychology, the physical and the moral. If in
later centuries these sciences were degraded into charlatanry by some
money-making impostors, is it just to extend the accusation to those
mighty men of old who, by their persevering studies and holy lives,
bestowed an immortal name upon Chaldea and Babylonia? Surely those who
are now found to have made correct astronomical observations ranging
back to “within 100 years from the flood,” from the top observatory
of the “cloud-encompassed Bel,” as Prof. Draper has it, can hardly be
considered impostors. If their mode of impressing upon the popular
minds the great astronomical truths differed from the “system of
education” of our present century and appears ridiculous to some, the
question still remains unanswered: which of the two systems was the
best? With them science went hand in hand with religion, and the idea
of God was inseparable from that of his works. And while in the present
century there is not one person out of ten thousand who knows, if he
ever knew the fact at all, that the planet Uranus is _next_ to Saturn,
and revolves about the sun in eighty-four years; and that Saturn is
_next_ to Jupiter, and takes twenty-nine and a half years to make one
complete revolution in its orbit; while Jupiter performs his revolution
in twelve years; the uneducated masses of Babylon and Greece, having
impressed on their minds that Uranus was the father of Saturn, and
Saturn that of Jupiter, considering them furthermore deities as well as
all their satellites and attendants, we may perhaps infer from it, that
while Europeans only discovered Uranus in 1781, a curious coincidence
is to be noticed in the above myths.
We have but to open the most common book on astrology, and compare the
descriptions embraced in the _Fable of the Twelve Houses_ with the
most modern discoveries of science as to the nature of the planets
and the elements in each star, to see that without any spectroscope
the ancients were perfectly well acquainted with the same. Unless
the fact is again regarded as “a coincidence,” we can learn, to a
certain extent, of the degree of the solar heat, light, and nature of
the planets by simply studying their symbolic representations in the
Olympic gods, and the twelve signs of the zodiac, to each of which in
astrology is attributed a particular quality. If the goddesses of our
own planet vary in no particular from other gods and goddesses, but
all have a like physical nature, does not this imply that the sentinels
who watched from the top of Bel’s tower, by day as well as by night,
holding communion with the euhemerized deities, had remarked, before
ourselves, the physical unity of the universe and the fact that the
planets above are made of precisely the same chemical elements as our
own. The sun in Aries, Jupiter, is shown in astrology as a masculine,
diurnal, cardinal, equinoctial, easterly sign, hot and dry, and
answers perfectly to the character attributed to the fickle “Father
of the gods.” When angry Zeus-Akrios snatches from his fiery belt the
thunderbolts which he hurls forth from heaven, he rends the clouds and
descends as Jupiter _Pluvius_ in torrents of rain. He is the greatest
and highest of gods, and his movements are as rapid as lightning
itself. The planet Jupiter is known to revolve on its axis so rapidly
that the point of its equator turns at the rate of 450 miles a minute.
An immense excess of centrifugal force at the equator is believed to
have caused the planet to become extremely flattened at the poles; and
in Crete the personified god Jupiter was represented without ears. The
planet Jupiter’s disk is crossed by dark belts; varying in breadth,
they appear to be connected with its rotation on its axis, and are
produced by disturbances in its atmosphere. The face of Father Zeus,
says Hesiod, became spotted with rage when he beheld the Titans ready
to rebel.
In Mr. Proctor’s book, astronomers seem especially doomed by Providence
to encounter all kinds of curious “coincidences,” for he gives us
many cases out of the “multitude,” and even of the “_thousands_ of
facts [sic].” To this list we may add the army of Egyptologists and
archæologists who of late have been the chosen pets of the capricious
_Dame Chance_, who, moreover, generally selects “well-to-do Arabs”
and other Eastern gentlemen, to play the part of benevolent _genii_
to Oriental scholars in difficulties. Professor Ebers is one of the
latest favored ones. It is a well-known fact, that whenever Champollion
needed important links, he fell in with them in the most various and
unexpected ways.
Voltaire, the greatest of “infidels” of the eighteenth century, used
to say, that if there were no God, people would have to invent one.
Volney, another “materialist,” nowhere throughout his numerous writings
denies the existence of God. On the contrary, he plainly asserts
several times that the universe is the work of the “All-wise,” and is
convinced that there is a Supreme Agent, a universal and identical
Artificer, designated by the name of God.[443] Voltaire becomes, toward
the end of his life, Pythagorical, and concludes by saying: “I have
consumed forty years of my pilgrimage ... seeking the philosopher’s
stone called truth. I have consulted all the adepts of antiquity,
Epicurus and Augustine, Plato and Malebranche, and I still remain in
ignorance.... All that I have been able to obtain by comparing and
combining the system of Plato, of the tutor of Alexander, Pythagoras,
and the Oriental, is this: _Chance is a word void of sense_. The world
is arranged according to mathematical laws.”[444]
It is pertinent for us to suggest that Mr. Proctor’s stumbling-block is
that which trips the feet of all materialistic scientists, whose views
he but repeats; he confounds the physical and spiritual operations of
nature. His very theory of the probable inductive reasoning of the
ancients as to the subtile influences of the more remote planets, by
comparison with the familiar and potent effects of the sun and moon
upon our earth, shows the drift of his mind. Because science _affirms_
that the sun imparts physical _heat_ and _light_ to us, and the moon
affects the tides, he thinks that the ancients must have regarded the
other heavenly bodies as exerting the same kind of influence upon us
physically, and indirectly upon our fortunes.[445] And here we must
permit ourselves a digression.
How the ancients regarded the heavenly bodies is very hard to
determine, for one unacquainted with the esoteric explanation of their
doctrines. While philology and comparative theology have begun the
arduous work of analysis, they have as yet arrived at meagre results.
The allegorical form of speech has often led our commentators so far
astray, that they have confounded causes with effects, and _vice
versa_. In the baffling phenomenon of force-correlation, even our
greatest scientists would find it very hard to explain which of these
forces is the cause, and which the effect, since each may be both by
turns, and convertible. Thus, if we should inquire of the physicists,
“Is it light which generates heat, or the latter which produces
light?” we would in all probability be answered that it is certainly
light which creates heat. Very well; but how? did the great Artificer
first produce light, or did He first construct the sun, which is said
to be the sole dispenser of light, and, consequently, heat? These
questions may appear at first glance indicative of ignorance; but,
perhaps, if we ponder them deeply, they will assume another appearance.
In _Genesis_, the “Lord” first creates _light_, and three days and
three nights are alleged to pass away before He creates the sun, the
moon, and the stars. This gross blunder against _exact_ science has
created much merriment among materialists. And they certainly would
be warranted in laughing, if their doctrine that our light and heat
are derived from the sun were unassailable. Until recently, nothing
has happened to upset this theory, which, for lack of a better one,
according to the expression of a preacher, “reigns sovereign in the
Empire of Hypothesis.” The ancient sun-worshippers regarded the Great
Spirit as a nature-god, identical with nature, and the sun as the
deity, “in whom the Lord of life dwells.” Gama is the sun, according
to the Hindu theology, and “The sun is the source of the souls and of
_all life_.”[446] Agni, the “Divine Fire,” the deity of the Hindu,
is the sun,[447] for the fire and sun are the same. Ormazd is light,
the Sun-God, or the Life-giver. In the Hindu philosophy, “The souls
issue from the soul of the world, and return to it as sparks to the
fire.”[448] But, in another place, it is said that “_The Sun_ is the
soul _of all things_; all has proceeded out of it, and will return to
it,”[449] which shows that the sun is meant allegorically here, and
refers to the _central_, invisible sun, GOD, whose first manifestation
was Sephira, the emanation of En-Soph—Light, in short.
“And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great
cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it,”
says Ezekiel (i. 4, 22, etc.), “ ... and the likeness of a throne ...
and as the appearance of a man above upon it ... and I saw as it were
the appearance _of fire_ and it had brightness round about it.” And
Daniel speaks of the “ancient of days,” the kabalistic En-Soph, whose
throne was “the fiery flame, his wheels burning fire.... A fiery stream
issued and came forth from before him.”[450] Like the Pagan Saturn, who
had his castle of flame in the seventh heaven, the Jewish Jehovah had
his “castle of fire over the seventh heavens.”[451]
If the limited space of the present work would permit we might easily
show that none of the ancients, the sun-worshippers included, regarded
our visible sun otherwise than as an emblem of their metaphysical
invisible central sun-god. Moreover, they did _not_ believe what our
modern science teaches us, namely, that light and heat proceed from
_our_ sun, and that it is this planet which imparts all life to our
visible nature. “His radiance is undecaying,” says the _Rig-Veda_,
“the intensely-shining, all-pervading, unceasing, undecaying rays of
Agni desist not, neither night nor day.” This evidently related to the
spiritual, central sun, whose rays are all-pervading and unceasing, the
eternal and boundless life-giver. HE the _Point_; the centre (which is
everywhere) of the circle (which is nowhere), the ethereal, spiritual
fire, the soul and spirit of the all-pervading, mysterious ether; the
despair and puzzle of the materialist, who will some day find that that
which causes the numberless cosmic forces to manifest themselves in
eternal correlation is but a divine electricity, or rather _galvanism_,
and that the sun is but one of the myriad _magnets_ disseminated
through space—a reflector—as General Pleasonton has it. That the
sun has no more heat in it than the moon or the space-crowding host
of sparkling stars. That there is no _gravitation_ in the Newtonian
sense,[452] but only magnetic attraction and repulsion; and that it
is by their magnetism that the planets of the solar system have their
motions regulated in their respective orbits by the still more powerful
magnetism of the sun, not by their weight or gravitation. This and much
more they may learn; but, until then we must be content with being
merely laughed at, instead of being burned alive for impiety, or shut
up in an insane asylum.
The laws of Manu are the doctrines of Plato, Philo, Zoroaster,
Pythagoras, and of the Kabala. The esoterism of every religion may
be solved by the latter. The kabalistic doctrine of the allegorical
Father and Son, or Πατηρ and Λογος is identical with the groundwork of
Buddhism. Moses could not reveal to the multitude the sublime secrets
of religious speculation, nor the cosmogony of the universe; the whole
resting upon the Hindu _Illusion_, a clever mask veiling the _Sanctum
Sanctorum_, and which has misled so many theological commentators.[453]
The kabalistic heresies receive an unexpected support in the heterodox
theories of General Pleasonton. According to his opinions (which he
supports on far more unimpeachable facts than orthodox scientists
theirs) the space between the sun and the earth must be filled with a
material medium, which, so far as we can judge from his description,
answers to our kabalistic astral light. The passage of light through
this must produce enormous friction. Friction generates electricity,
and it is this electricity and its correlative magnetism which forms
those tremendous forces of nature that produce in, on, and about our
planet the various changes which we everywhere encounter. He proves
that terrestrial heat _cannot_ be directly derived from the sun, for
heat _ascends_. The force by which heat is effected is a repellent
one, he says, and as it is associated with positive electricity, it is
attracted to the upper atmosphere by its negative electricity, always
associated with cold, which is opposed to positive electricity. He
strengthens his position by showing that the earth, which when covered
with snow cannot be affected by the sun’s rays, is warmest where the
snow is deepest. This he explains upon the theory that the radiation of
heat from the interior of the earth, positively electrified, meeting at
the _surface_ of the earth with the snow in contact with it, negatively
electrified, produces the heat.
Thus he shows that it is not at all to the sun that we are indebted for
light and heat; that light is a creation _sui generis_, which sprung
into existence at the instant when the Deity _willed_, and uttered the
fiat: “Let there be light;” and that it is this independent material
agent which produces heat _by friction_, on account of its enormous
and incessant velocity. In short, it is the first kabalistic emanation
to which General Pleasonton introduces us, that Sephira or divine
_Intelligence_ (the female principle), which, in unity with En-Soph,
or divine wisdom (male principle) produced every thing visible and
invisible. He laughs at the current theory of the incandescence of the
sun and its gaseous substance. The reflection from the photosphere
of the sun, he says, passing through planetary and stellar spaces,
must have thus created a vast amount of electricity and magnetism.
Electricity, by the union of its opposite polarities, evolves heat and
imparts magnetism to all substances capable of receiving it. The sun,
planets, stars, and nebulæ are all magnets, etc.
If this courageous gentleman should prove his case, future generations
will have but little disposition to laugh at Paracelsus and his
sidereal or astral light, and at his doctrine of the magnetic influence
exercised by the stars and planets upon every living creature, plant,
or mineral of our globe. Moreover, if the Pleasonton hypothesis is
established, the transcendent glory of Professor Tyndall will be
rather obscured. According to public opinion, the General makes a
terrible onslaught on the learned physicist, for attributing to the sun
calorific effects experienced by him in an Alpine ramble, that were
simply due to his own vital electricity.[454]
The prevalence of such revolutionary ideas in science, embolden us
to ask the representatives of science whether they can explain _why_
the tides follow the moon in her circling motion? The fact is, they
cannot demonstrate even so familiar a phenomenon as this, one that has
no mystery for even the neophytes in alchemy and magic. We would also
like to learn whether they are equally incapable of telling us why the
moon’s rays are so poisonous, even fatal, to some organisms; why in
some parts of Africa and India a person sleeping in the moonlight is
often made insane; why the crises of certain diseases correspond with
lunar changes; why somnambulists are more affected at her full; and
why gardeners, farmers, and woodmen cling so tenaciously to the idea
that vegetation is affected by lunar influences? Several of the mimosæ
alternately open and close their petals as the full moon emerges from
or is obscured by clouds. And the Hindus of Travancore have a popular
but extremely suggestive proverb which says: “Soft words are better
than harsh; the sea is attracted by the cool moon and not by the hot
sun.” Perhaps the one man or the many men who launched this proverb on
the world knew more about the cause of such attraction of the waters
by the moon than we do. Thus if science cannot explain the cause of
this physical influence, what can she know of the moral and occult
influences that may be exercised by the celestial bodies on men and
their destiny; and why contradict that which it is impossible for her
to prove false? If certain aspects of the moon effect tangible results
so familiar in the experience of men throughout all time, what violence
are we doing to logic in assuming the possibility that a certain
combination of sidereal influences may also be more or less potential?
If the reader will recall what is said by the learned authors of
the _Unseen Universe_, as to the positive effect produced upon the
universal ether by so small a cause as the evolution of thought in a
single human brain, how reasonable will it not appear that the terrific
impulses imparted to this common medium by the sweep of the myriad
blazing orbs that are rushing through “the interstellar depths,” should
affect us and the earth upon which we live, in a powerful degree? If
astronomers cannot explain to us the occult law by which the drifting
particles of cosmic matter aggregate into worlds, and then take their
places in the majestic procession which is ceaselessly moving around
some central point of attraction, how can any one assume to say what
mystic influences may or may not be darting through space and affecting
the issues of life upon this and other planets? Almost nothing is known
of the laws of magnetism and the other imponderable agents; almost
nothing of their effects upon our bodies and minds; even that which is
known and moreover perfectly demonstrated, is attributed to chance, and
curious _coincidences_. But we do know, by these coincidences,[455]
that “there are periods when certain diseases, propensities, fortunes,
and misfortunes of humanity are more rife than at others.” There are
times of epidemic in moral and physical affairs. In one epoch “the
spirit of religious controversy will arouse the most ferocious passions
of which human nature is susceptible, provoking mutual persecution,
bloodshed, and wars; at another, an epidemic of resistance to
constituted authority will spread over half the world (as in the year
1848), rapid and simultaneous as the most virulent bodily disorder.”
Again, the _collective character_ of mental phenomena is illustrated
by an anomalous psychological condition invading and dominating
over thousands upon thousands, depriving them of everything but
automatic action, and giving rise to the popular opinion of demoniacal
possession, an opinion in some sense justified by the satanic passions,
emotions, and acts which accompany the condition. At one period, the
aggregate tendency is to retirement and contemplation; hence, the
countless votaries of monachism and anchoretism; at another the mania
is directed toward _action_, having for its proposed end some utopian
scheme, equally impracticable and useless; hence, the myriads who have
forsaken their kindred, their homes, and their country, to seek a land
whose stones were gold, or to wage exterminating war for the possession
of worthless cities and trackless deserts.[456]
The author from whom the above is quoted says that “the seeds of vice
and crime appear to be sown under the surface of society, and to
spring up and bring forth fruit with appalling rapidity and paralyzing
succession.”
In the presence of these striking phenomena science stands speechless;
she does not even attempt to conjecture as to their cause, and
naturally, for she has not yet learned to look outside of this ball
of dirt upon which we live, and its heavy atmosphere, for the hidden
influences which are affecting us day by day, and even minute by
minute. But the ancients, whose “ignorance” is assumed by Mr. Proctor,
fully realized the fact that the reciprocal relations between the
planetary bodies is as perfect as those between the corpuscles of the
blood, which float in a common fluid; and that each one is affected
by the combined influences of all the rest, as each in its turn
affects each of the others. As the planets differ in size, distance,
and activity, so differ in intensity their impulses upon the ether or
astral light, and the magnetic and other subtile forces radiated by
them in certain aspects of the heavens. Music is the combination and
modulation of sounds, and sound is the effect produced by the vibration
of the ether. Now, if the impulses communicated to the ether by the
different planets may be likened to the tones produced by the different
notes of a musical instrument, it is not difficult to conceive that
the Pythagorean “music of the spheres” is something more than a mere
fancy, and that certain planetary aspects may imply disturbances in
the ether of our planet, and certain others rest and harmony. Certain
kinds of music throw us into frenzy; some exalt the soul to religious
aspirations. In fine, there is scarcely a human creation which does
not respond to certain vibrations of the atmosphere. It is the same
with colors; some excite us, some soothe and please. The nun clothes
herself in black to typify the despondency of a faith crushed under the
sense of original sin; the bride robes herself in white; red inflames
the anger of certain animals. If we and the animals are affected
by vibrations acting upon a very minute scale, why may we not be
influenced in the mass by vibrations acting upon a grand scale as the
effect of combined stellar influences?
“We know,” says Dr. Elam, “that certain pathological conditions
have a tendency to become epidemic, _influenced by causes not yet
investigated_.... We see how strong is the tendency of opinion once
promulgated to run into an epidemic form—no opinion, no delusion, is
too absurd to assume this collective character. We observe, also,
how remarkably the same ideas reproduce themselves and _reappear in
successive ages_; ... no crime is too horrible to become popular,
homicide, infanticide, suicide, poisoning, or any other diabolical
human conception. ... In epidemics, the cause of the rapid spread at
that particular period _remains a mystery_!”
These few lines contain an undeniable _psychological_ fact, sketched
with a masterly pen, and at the same time a _half_-confession of utter
ignorance—“_Causes not yet investigated_.” Why not be honest and add at
once, “_impossible_ to investigate with present scientific methods?”
Noticing an epidemic of incendiarism, Dr. Elam quotes from the _Annales
d’Hygiene Publique_ the following cases: “A girl about seventeen years
of age was arrested on suspicion ... she confessed that twice she had
set fire to dwellings by _instinct_, by _irresistible necessity_.... A
boy about eighteen committed many acts of this nature. He was not moved
by any passion, but the bursting-out of the flames excited a profoundly
pleasing emotion.”
Who but has noticed in the columns of the daily press similar
incidents? They meet the eye constantly. In cases of murder, of every
description, and of other crimes of a diabolical character, the act
is attributed, in nine cases out of ten, by the offenders themselves,
to _irresistible obsessions_. “_Something_ whispered constantly in
my ear.... _Somebody_ was incessantly pushing and leading me on.”
Such are the too-frequent confessions of the criminals. Physicians
attribute them to hallucinations of disordered brains, and call the
homicidal impulse temporary _lunacy_. But is lunacy itself well
understood by any psychologist? Has its cause ever been brought under a
hypothesis capable of withstanding the challenge of an uncompromising
investigator? Let the controversial works of our contemporary alienists
answer for themselves.
Plato acknowledges man to be the toy of the element of necessity, which
he enters upon in appearing in this world of matter; he is influenced
by external causes, and these causes are _daimonia_, like that of
Socrates. Happy is the man physically pure, for if his _external_
soul (body) is pure, it will strengthen the second one (astral body),
or the soul which is termed by him the _higher mortal soul_, which
though liable to err from its own motives, will always side with reason
against the animal proclivities of the body. The lusts of man arise in
consequence of his perishable material body, so do other diseases; but
though he regards crimes as _involuntary_ sometimes, for they result
like bodily disease from external causes, Plato clearly makes a wide
distinction between these _causes_. The fatalism which he concedes
to humanity, does not preclude the possibility of avoiding them, for
though pain, fear, anger, and other feelings are given to men by
_necessity_, “if they conquered these they would live righteously,
and if they were conquered by them, _unrighteously_.”[457] The
_dual_ man, _i. e._, one from whom the divine _immortal_ spirit has
departed, leaving but the animal form and astral body (Plato’s higher
_mortal_ soul), is left merely to his _instincts_, for he was conquered
by all the evils entailed on matter; hence, he becomes a docile
tool in the hands of the _invisibles_—beings of sublimated matter,
hovering in our atmosphere, and ever ready to inspire those who are
deservedly deserted by their _immortal_ counsellor, the Divine Spirit,
called by Plato “genius.”[458] According to this great philosopher
and initiate, one “who lived well during his appointed time would
return to the habitation _of his star_, and there have a blessed and
suitable existence. But if he failed in attaining this in the second
generation he would pass _into a woman_—become helpless and weak as
a woman;[459] and should he not cease from evil in that condition,
he would be changed into some brute, which resembled him in his evil
ways, and would not cease from his toils and transformations until he
followed the original principle of sameness and likeness within him,
and overcame, by the help of reason, the latter secretions of turbulent
and irrational _elements_ (elementary dæmons) composed of fire and air,
and water and earth, and returned to the form of his first and better
nature.”[460]
But Dr. Elam thinks otherwise. On page 194 of his book, _A Physician’s
Problems_, he says that the cause of the rapid spread of certain
epidemics of disease which he is noticing “remains a mystery;” but as
regards the incendiarism he remarks that “in all this we find nothing
mysterious,” though the epidemic is strongly developed. Strange
contradiction! De Quincey, in his paper, entitled _Murder Considered as
One of the Fine Arts_, treats of the epidemic of assassination, between
1588 and 1635, by which seven of the most distinguished characters of
the time lost their lives at the hands of assassins, and neither he,
nor any other commentator has been able to explain the mysterious cause
of this homicidal mania.
If we press these gentlemen for an explanation, which as pretended
philosophers they are bound to give us, we are answered that it is a
great deal more _scientific_ to assign for such epidemics “agitation of
the mind,” “ ... a time of political excitement (1830)“ ” ... imitation
and impulse,“ ” ... excitable and idle boys,“ and ”_hysterical_ girls,”
than to be absurdly seeking for the verification of superstitious
traditions in a hypothetical astral light. It seems to us that if,
by some providential fatality, _hysteria_ were to disappear entirely
from the human system, the medical fraternity would be entirely at a
loss for explanations of a large class of phenomena now conveniently
classified under the head of “normal symptoms of certain pathological
conditions of the nervous centres.” Hysteria has been hitherto the
sheet-anchor of skeptical pathologists. Does a dirty peasant-girl begin
suddenly to speak with fluency different foreign languages hitherto
unfamiliar to her, and to write poetry—“hysterics!” Is a medium
levitated, in full view of a dozen of witnesses, and carried out of one
third-story window and brought back through another—“disturbance of the
nervous centres, followed by a _collective_ hysterical delusion.”[461]
A Scotch terrier, caught in the room during a manifestation, is hurled
by an invisible hand across the room, breaks to pieces, in his _salto
mortali_, a chandelier, under a ceiling eighteen feet high, to fall
down killed[462]—“_canine hallucination_!”
“True science has no belief,” says Dr. Fenwick, in Bulwer-Lytton’s
_Strange Story_; “true science knows but three states of mind: denial,
conviction, and the vast interval between the two, which is not belief,
but the _suspension of judgment_.” Such, perhaps, was true science in
Dr. Fenwick’s days. But the true science of our modern times proceeds
otherwise; it either denies point-blank, without any preliminary
investigation, or sits in the interim, between denial and conviction,
and, dictionary in hand, invents new Græco-Latin appellations for
non-existing kinds of hysteria!
How often have powerful clairvoyants and adepts in mesmerism
described the epidemics and _physical_ (though to others invisible)
manifestations which science attributes to epilepsy, hæmato-nervous
disorders, and what not, of _somatic origin_, as their lucid vision
saw them in the astral light. They affirm that the “electric waves”
were in violent perturbation, and that they discerned a direct relation
between this ethereal disturbance and the mental or physical epidemic
then raging. But science has heeded them not, but gone on with her
encyclopædic labor of devising new names for old things.
“History,” says Du Potet, the prince of French mesmerists, “keeps but
too well the sad records of sorcery. These facts were but too real, and
lent themselves but too readily to dreadful malpractices of the art, to
monstrous abuse!... But how did I come to find out that art? Where did
I learn it? In my thoughts? no; it is _nature_ herself which discovered
to me the secret. And how? By producing before my own eyes, without
waiting for me to search for it, indisputable facts of sorcery and
magic.... What is, after all, somnambulistic sleep? _A result of the
potency of magic._ And what is it which determines these attractions,
these _sudden impulses_, these raving epidemics, rages, antipathies,
crises;—these convulsions which _you can make durable_?... what is it
which determines them, if not the _very principle_ we employ, the agent
_so decidedly well known to the ancients_? What you call nervous fluid
or _magnetism_, the men of old called _occult power_, or the potency of
the soul, subjection, MAGIC!”
“Magic is based on the existence of a mixed world placed _without_, not
_within_ us; and with which we can enter in communication by the use of
certain arts and practices.... An element _existing in nature_, unknown
to most men, gets hold of a person and withers and breaks him down,
as the fearful hurricane does a bulrush; it scatters men far away, it
strikes them in a _thousand places_ at _the same time_, without their
perceiving the invisible foe, or being able to protect themselves ...
all this is _demonstrated_; but that this element could choose friends
and select _favorites_, obey their _thoughts_, answer to the human
voice, and understand the meaning of _traced signs_, that is what
people cannot realize, and _what their reason rejects_, and that is
_what I saw_; and I say it here most emphatically, that for me it is a
fact and _a truth_ demonstrated for ever.”[463]
“If I entered into greater details, one could readily understand that
there do exist _around_ us, _as in ourselves_, mysterious beings who
have _power_ and _shape_, who enter and go out at will, notwithstanding
the well-closed doors.”[464] Further, the great mesmerizer teaches
us that the faculty of directing this fluid is a “physical property,
resulting from our organization ... it passes through all bodies ...
everything can be used as a conductor for magical operations, and
it will retain the power of producing effects in its turn.” This is
the theory common to all hermetic philosophers. Such is the power of
the fluid, “that _no chemical or physical forces are able to destroy
it_.... There is very little analogy between the imponderable fluids
known to physicists and this animal magnetic fluid.”[465]
If we now refer to mediæval ages, we find, among others, Cornelius
Agrippa telling us precisely the same: “The ever-changing universal
force, the ‘soul of the world,’ can fecundate anything by infusing in
it its own celestial properties. Arranged according to the formula
taught by _science_, these objects receive the gift of communicating
to us their virtue. It is sufficient to wear them, to feel them
immediately operating on the soul as on the body.... Human soul
possesses, from the fact of its being of the same essence as all
creation, a _marvellous power_. One who possesses the secret is enabled
to rise in science and knowledge as high as his imagination will carry
him; but he does that only on the condition of becoming closely united
to this universal force.... Truth, even the future, can be then made
ever present to the eyes of the soul; and this fact has been many
times demonstrated by things coming to pass as they were seen and
described beforehand ... time and space vanish before the eagle eye of
the immortal soul ... her power becomes boundless ... she can shoot
through space and envelop with her presence a man, _no matter at what
distance_; she can plunge and penetrate him through, and make him hear
the voice of the person she belongs to, as if that person were in the
room.”[466]
If unwilling to seek for proof or receive information from
mediæval, hermetic philosophy, we may go still further back into
antiquity, and select, out of the great body of philosophers of the
pre-Christian ages, one who can least be accused of superstition and
credulity—Cicero. Speaking of those whom he calls _gods_, and who are
either human or atmospheric spirits, “We know,” says the old orator,
“that of all living beings man is the best formed, and, as the gods
belong to this number, they must have a human form.... I do not mean
to say that the gods have body and blood in them; but I say that they
_seem_ as if they had bodies with blood in them.... Epicurus, for whom
hidden things were as tangible as if he had touched them with his
finger, teaches us that gods are not generally visible, but that they
are _intelligible_; that they are not bodies having a certain solidity
... but that we can recognize them by their _passing_ images; that
as there are _atoms_ enough in the infinite space _to produce such
images_, these are produced before us ... and make us realize what are
these happy, immortal beings.”[467]
“When the initiate,” says Levi, in his turn, “has become quite
_lucide_, he communicates and directs at will the _magnetic_
vibrations in the mass of astral light.... Transformed in human light
at the moment of the conception, _it_ (the light) becomes the _first
envelope of the soul_; by combination with the subtlest fluids it
forms an ethereal body, or the _sidereal phantom_, which is entirely
disengaged _only_ at the moment of death.”[468] To project this
ethereal body, at no matter what distance; to render it more objective
and tangible by condensing over its fluidic form the waves of the
parent essence, is the great secret of the adept-_magician_.
Theurgical magic is the last expression of occult psychological
science. The Academicians reject it as the hallucination of diseased
brains, or brand it with the opprobrium of charlatanry. We deny to them
most emphatically the right of expressing their opinion on a subject
which they have never investigated. They have no more right, in their
present state of knowledge, to judge of magic and Spiritualism than
a Fiji islander to venture his opinion about the labors of Faraday
or Agassiz. About all they can do on any one day is to correct the
errors of the preceding day. Nearly three thousand years ago, earlier
than the days of Pythagoras, the ancient philosophers claimed that
light was ponderable—hence _matter_, and that light was force. The
corpuscular theory, owing to certain Newtonian failures to account for
it, was laughed down, and the undulatory theory, which proclaimed light
_imponderable_, accepted. And now the world is startled by Mr. Crookes
_weighing_ light with his radiometer! The Pythagoreans held that
neither the sun nor the stars were the _sources_ of light and heat,
and that the former was but an agent; but the modern schools teach the
contrary.
The same may be said respecting the Newtonian law of gravitation.
Following strictly the Pythagorean doctrine, Plato held that
gravitation was not merely a law of the magnetic attraction of
lesser bodies to larger ones, but a magnetic repulsion of similars
and attraction of dissimilars. “Things brought together,” says he,
“contrary to nature, are naturally at war, and repel one another.”[469]
This cannot be taken to mean that repulsion occurs of necessity between
bodies of dissimilar properties, but simply that when naturally
antagonistic bodies are brought together they repel one another. The
researches of Bart and Schweigger leave us in little or no doubt
that the ancients were well acquainted with the mutual attractions
of iron and the lodestone, as well as with the positive and negative
properties of electricity, by whatever name they may have called it.
The reciprocal magnetic relations of the planetary orbs, which are
all magnets, was with them an accepted fact, and aërolites were not
only called by them magnetic stones, but used in the Mysteries for
purposes to which we now apply the magnet. When, therefore, Professor
A. M. Mayer, of the Stevens Institute of Technology, in 1872, told the
Yale Scientific Club that the earth is a great magnet, and that “on
any sudden agitation of the sun’s surface the magnetism of the earth
receives a profound disturbance in its equilibrium, causing fitful
tremors in the magnets of our observatories, and producing those grand
outbursts of the polar lights, whose lambent flames dance in rhythm to
the quivering needle,”[470] he only restated, in good English, what
was taught in good Doric untold centuries before the first Christian
philosopher saw the light.
The prodigies accomplished by the priests of theurgical magic are
so well authenticated, and the evidence—if human testimony is worth
anything at all—is so overwhelming, that, rather than confess that the
Pagan theurgists far outrivalled the Christians in miracles, Sir David
Brewster piously concedes to the former the greatest proficiency in
physics, and everything that pertains to natural philosophy. Science
finds herself in a very disagreeable dilemma. She must either confess
that the ancient physicists were superior in knowledge to her modern
representatives, or that there exists something in nature beyond
physical science, and that _spirit_ possesses powers of which our
philosophers never dreamed.
“The mistake we make in some science we have specially cultivated,”
says Bulwer-Lytton, “is often only to be seen by the light of a
separate science as especially cultivated by another.”[471]
Nothing can be easier accounted for than the highest possibilities of
magic. By the radiant light of the universal magnetic ocean, whose
electric waves bind the cosmos together, and in their ceaseless
motion penetrate every atom and molecule of the boundless creation,
the disciples of mesmerism—howbeit insufficient their various
experiments—intuitionally perceive the alpha and omega of the great
mystery. Alone, the study of this agent, which is the divine breath,
can unlock the secrets of psychology and physiology, of cosmical and
spiritual phenomena.
“Magic,” says Psellus, “formed the last part of the sacerdotal science.
It investigated the nature, power, and quality of everything sublunary;
of the elements and their parts, of animals, all various plants and
their fruits, of stones and herbs. In short, it explored the essence
and power of everything. From hence, therefore, it produced its
effects And it formed _statues_ (magnetized) which procure health, and
made all various figures and things (talismans) which could equally
become the instruments of disease as well as of health. Often, too,
celestial fire is made to appear through magic, and then statues laugh
and lamps are spontaneously enkindled.”[472]
If Galvani’s modern discovery can set in motion the limbs of a dead
frog, and force a dead man’s face to express, by the distortion of
its features, the most varied emotions, from joy to diabolical rage,
despair, and horror, the Pagan priests, unless the combined evidence
of the most trustworthy men of antiquity is not to be relied upon,
accomplished the still greater wonders of making their stone and metal
statues to sweat and laugh. The _celestial_, pure fire of the Pagan
altar was electricity drawn from the astral light. Statues, therefore,
if properly prepared, might, without any accusation of superstition,
be allowed to have the property of imparting health and disease by
contact, as well as any modern galvanic belt, or overcharged battery.
Scholastic skeptics, as well as ignorant materialists, have greatly
amused themselves for the last two centuries over the _absurdities_
attributed to Pythagoras by his biographer, Iamblichus. The Samian
philosopher is said to have persuaded a she-bear to give up eating
human flesh; to have forced a white eagle to descend to him from
the clouds, and to have subdued him by stroking him gently with the
hand, and by talking to him. On another occasion, Pythagoras actually
persuaded an ox to renounce eating beans, by merely whispering in the
animal’s ear![473] Oh, ignorance and superstition of our forefathers,
how ridiculous they appear in the eyes of our enlightened generations!
Let us, however, analyze this absurdity. Every day we see unlettered
men, proprietors of strolling menageries, taming and completely
subduing the most ferocious animals, merely by the power of their
irresistible will. Nay, we have at the present moment in Europe several
young and physically-weak girls, under twenty years of age, fearlessly
doing the same thing. Every one has either witnessed or heard of the
seemingly magical power of some mesmerizers and psychologists. They are
able to subjugate their patients for any length of time. Regazzoni,
the mesmerist who excited such wonder in France and London, has
achieved far more extraordinary feats than what is above attributed to
Pythagoras. Why, then, accuse the ancient biographers of such men as
Pythagoras and Apollonius of Tyana of either wilful misrepresentation
or absurd superstition? When we realize that the majority of those
who are so skeptical as to the magical powers possessed by the ancient
philosophers, who laugh at the old theogonies and the fallacies of
mythology, nevertheless have an implicit faith in the records and
inspiration of their Bible, hardly daring to doubt even that monstrous
absurdity that Joshua arrested the course of the sun, we may well
say _Amen_ to Godfrey Higgins’ just rebuke: “When I find,” he says,
“learned men believing _Genesis literally_, which the ancients, with
all their failings, had too much sense to receive except allegorically,
I am tempted to doubt the reality of the improvement of the human
mind.”[474]
One of the very few commentators on old Greek and Latin authors,
who have given their just dues to the ancients for their mental
development, is Thomas Taylor. In his translation of Iamblichus’ _Life
of Pythagoras_, we find him remarking as follows: “Since Pythagoras,
as Iamblichus informs us, was initiated in all the Mysteries of Byblus
and Tyre, in the sacred operations of the Syrians, and in the Mysteries
of the Phœnicians, and also that he spent two and twenty years in the
adyta of temples in Egypt, associated with the magians in Babylon, and
was instructed by them in their venerable knowledge, it is not at all
wonderful that he was skilled in magic, or theurgy, and was therefore
able to perform things which surpass merely human power, and which
appear to be perfectly incredible to the vulgar.”[475]
The universal ether was not, in their eyes, simply a something
stretching, tenantless, throughout the expanse of heaven; it was a
boundless ocean peopled like our familiar seas with monstrous and minor
creatures, and having in its every molecule the germs of life. Like the
finny tribes which swarm in our oceans and smaller bodies of water,
each kind having its _habitat_ in some spot to which it is curiously
adapted, some friendly and some inimical to man, some pleasant and
some frightful to behold, some seeking the refuge of quiet nooks and
land-locked harbors, and some traversing great areas of water, the
various races of the _elemental_ spirits were believed by them to
inhabit the different portions of the great ethereal ocean, and to be
exactly adapted to their respective conditions. If we will only bear in
mind the fact that the rushing of planets through space must create as
absolute a disturbance in this plastic and attenuated medium, as the
passage of a cannon shot does in the air or that of a steamer in the
water, and on a cosmic scale, we can understand that certain planetary
aspects, admitting our premises to be true, may produce much more
violent agitation and cause much stronger currents to flow in a given
direction, than others. With the same premises conceded, we may also
see why, by such various aspects of the stars, shoals of friendly or
hostile “elementals” might be poured in upon our atmosphere, or some
particular portion of it, and make the fact appreciable by the effects
which ensue.
According to the ancient doctrines, the soulless elemental spirits
were evolved by the ceaseless motion inherent in the astral light.
Light is force, and the latter is produced by the _will_. As this will
proceeds from an intelligence which cannot err, for it has nothing of
the material organs of _human_ thought in it, being the superfine pure
emanation of the highest divinity itself—(Plato’s “Father”) it proceeds
from the beginning of time, according to immutable laws, to evolve the
elementary fabric requisite for subsequent generations of what we term
human races. All of the latter, whether belonging to this planet or to
some other of the myriads in space, have their earthly bodies evolved
in the matrix out of the bodies of a certain class of these elemental
beings which have passed away in the invisible worlds. In the ancient
philosophy there was no missing link to be supplied by what Tyndall
calls an “educated imagination;” no hiatus to be filled with volumes
of materialistic speculations made necessary by the absurd attempt
to solve an equation with but one set of quantities; our “ignorant”
ancestors traced the law of evolution throughout the whole universe. As
by gradual progression from the star-cloudlet to the development of the
physical body of man, the rule holds good, so from the universal ether
to the incarnate human spirit, they traced one uninterrupted series
of entities. These evolutions were from the world of spirit into the
world of gross matter; and through that back again to the source of all
things. The “descent of species” was to them a descent from the spirit,
primal source of all, to the “degradation of matter.” In this complete
chain of unfoldings the elementary, spiritual beings had as distinct
a place, midway between the extremes, as Mr. Darwin’s missing-link
between the ape and man.
No author in the world of literature ever gave a more truthful or more
poetical description of these beings than Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton, the
author of _Zanoni_. Now, himself “a thing not of matter” but an “Idea
of joy and light,” his words sound more like the faithful echo of
memory than the exuberant outflow of mere imagination.
“Man is arrogant in proportion of his ignorance,” he makes the wise
Mejnour say to Glyndon. “For several ages he saw in the countless
worlds that sparkle through space like the bubbles of a shoreless
ocean, only the petty candles ... that Providence has been pleased to
light for no other purpose but to make the night more agreeable to
man.... Astronomy has corrected this delusion of human vanity, and man
now reluctantly confesses that the stars are worlds, larger and more
glorious than his own.... Everywhere, then, in this immense design,
science brings new life to light.... Reasoning, then, by evident
analogy, if not a leaf, if not a drop of water, but is, no less than
yonder star, a habitable and breathing world—nay, if even man himself,
is a world to other lives, and millions and myriads dwell in the rivers
of his blood, and inhabit man’s frame, as man inhabits earth—common
sense (if our schoolmen had it) would suffice to teach that the
circumfluent infinite which you call space—the boundless impalpable
which divides earth from the moon and stars—is filled also with its
correspondent and appropriate life. Is it not a visible absurdity to
suppose that being is crowded upon every leaf, and yet absent from
the immensities of space! The law of the great system forbids the
waste even of an atom; it knows no spot where something of life does
not breathe.... Well, then, can you conceive that space, which is the
infinite itself, is alone a waste, is alone lifeless, is less useful to
the one design of universal being ... than the peopled leaf, than the
swarming globule? The microscope shows you the creatures on the leaf;
_no mechanical tube is yet invented to discover the nobler and more
gifted things that hover in the illimitable air_. Yet between these
last and man is a mysterious _and terrible affinity_.... But first,
to penetrate this barrier, the soul with which you listen must be
sharpened by intense enthusiasm, purified from all earthly desires....
When thus prepared, science can be brought to aid it; the sight itself
may be rendered more subtile, the nerves more acute, the spirit more
alive and outward, and the element itself—the air the space—may be
made, by certain secrets of the higher chemistry, more palpable and
clear. And this, too, is not _magic_ as the credulous call it; as I
have so often said before, magic (a science that violates nature)
exists not; it is _but the science by which nature can be controlled_.
Now, in space there are millions of beings, _not literally spiritual_,
for they have all, like the animalcula unseen by the naked eye, certain
forms of matter, though matter so delicate, air-drawn, and subtile,
that it is, as it were, but a film, a gossamer, that clothes the
spirit.... Yet, in truth, these races differ most widely ... some of
surpassing wisdom, some of horrible malignity; some hostile as fiends
to men, others gentle as messengers between earth and heaven.... Amid
the dwellers of the threshold is one, too, surpassing in malignity and
hatred all her tribe; one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and
whose power increases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its
fear.”[476]
Such is the insufficient sketch of elemental beings void of divine
spirit, given by one whom many with reason believed to know more than
he was prepared to admit in the face of an incredulous public.
In the following chapter we will contrive to explain some of the
esoteric speculations of the initiates of the sanctuary, as to
what man was, is, and may yet be. The doctrines they taught in the
Mysteries—the source from which sprung the Old and partially the New
Testament, belonged to the most advanced notions of morality, and
religious _revelations_. While the literal meaning was abandoned to
the fanaticism of the unreasoning lower classes of society, the higher
ones, the majority of which consisted of _Initiates_, pursued their
studies in the solemn silence of the temples, and their worship of the
_one_ God of Heaven.
The speculations of Plato, in the _Banquet_, on the creation of the
primordial men, and the essay on Cosmogony in the _Timæus_, must be
taken allegorically, if we accept them at all. It is this hidden
Pythagorean meaning in _Timæus_, _Cratylus_, and _Parmenides_, and a
few other trilogies and dialogues, that the Neo-platonists ventured to
expound, as far as the theurgical vow of secresy would allow them. The
Pythagorean doctrine that _God is the universal mind diffused through
all things_, and the dogma of the soul’s immortality, are the leading
features in these apparently incongruous teachings. His piety and the
great veneration Plato felt for the MYSTERIES, are sufficient warrant
that he would not allow his indiscretion to get the better of that
deep sense of responsibility which is felt by every adept. “Constantly
perfecting himself in perfect MYSTERIES, a man in them alone becomes
truly perfect,” says he in the _Phædrus_.[477]
He took no pains to conceal his displeasure that the Mysteries had
become less secret than formerly. Instead of profaning them by putting
them within the reach of the multitude, he would have guarded them
with jealous care against all but the most earnest and worthy of
his disciples.[478] While mentioning the gods, on every page, his
monotheism is unquestionable, for the whole thread of his discourse
indicates that by the term _gods_ be means a class of beings far
lower in the scale than deities, and but one grade higher than men.
Even Josephus perceived and acknowledged this fact, despite the
natural prejudice of his race. In his famous onslaught upon Apion,
this historian says:[479] “Those, however, among the Greeks who
philosophized _in accordance with truth_, were not ignorant of anything
... nor did they fail to perceive the chilling superficialities of the
mythical allegories, on which account they justly despised them....
By which thing Plato, being moved, says it is not necessary to admit
any one of the other poets into ‘the Commonwealth,’ and _he dismisses
Homer_ blandly, after having crowned him and pouring unguent upon
him, in order that indeed he should not destroy, by _his myths_, the
_orthodox belief respecting one God_.”
Those who can discern the true spirit of Plato’s philosophy, will
hardly be satisfied with the estimate of the same which Jowett lays
before his readers. He tells us that the influence exercised upon
posterity by the _Timæus_ is partly due to a misunderstanding of the
doctrine of its author by the Neo-platonists. He would have us believe
that the hidden meanings which they found in this _Dialogue_, are
“quite at variance with the spirit of Plato.” This is equivalent to the
assumption that Jowett understands what this spirit really was; whereas
his criticism upon this particular topic rather indicates that he did
not penetrate it at all. If, as he tells us, the Christians seem to
find in his work their trinity, the word, the church, and the creation
of the world, in a Jewish sense, it is because all this _is_ there, and
therefore it is but natural that they should have found it. The outward
building is the same; but the spirit which animated the dead letter
of the philosopher’s teaching has fled, and we would seek for it in
vain through the arid dogmas of Christian theology. The Sphinx is the
same now, as it was four centuries before the Christian era; but the
Œdipus is no more. He is slain because he has given to the world that
which the world was not ripe enough to receive. He was the embodiment
of truth, and he had to die, as every grand truth has to, before, like
the Phœnix of old, it revives from its own ashes. Every translator of
Plato’s works remarked the strange similarity between the philosophy of
the esoterists and the Christian doctrines, and each of them has tried
to interpret it in accordance with his own religious feelings. So Cory,
in his _Ancient Fragments_, tries to prove that it is but an outward
resemblance; and does his best to lower the Pythagorean Monad in the
public estimation and exalt upon its ruins the later anthropomorphic
deity. Taylor, advocating the former, acts as unceremoniously with the
Mosaic God. Zeller boldly laughs at the pretensions of the Fathers
of the Church, who, notwithstanding history and its chronology, and
whether people will have it or not, insist that Plato and his school
have robbed Christianity of its leading features. It is as fortunate
for us as it is unfortunate for the Roman Church that such clever
sleight-of-hand as that resorted to by Eusebius is rather difficult
in our century. It was easier to pervert chronology “for the sake
of making synchronisms,” in the days of the Bishop of Cæsarea, than
it is now, and while history exists, no one can help people knowing
that Plato lived 600 years before Irenæus took it into his head to
establish a _new_ doctrine from the ruins of Plato’s older Academy.
This doctrine of God being the universal mind diffused through all
things, underlies all ancient philosophies. The Buddhistic tenets
which can never be better comprehended than when studying the
Pythagorean philosophy—its faithful reflection—are derived from this
source as well as the Brahmanical religion and early Christianity.
The purifying process of transmigrations—the metempsychoses—however
grossly anthropomorphized at a later period, must only be regarded as
a supplementary doctrine, disfigured by theological sophistry with
the object of getting a firmer hold upon believers through a popular
superstition. Neither Gautama Buddha nor Pythagoras intended to teach
this purely-metaphysical allegory _literally_. Esoterically, it is
explained in the “Mystery” of the _Kounboum_,[480] and relates to
the purely spiritual peregrinations of the human soul. It is not in
the dead letter of Buddhistical sacred literature that scholars may
hope to find the true solution of its metaphysical subtilties. The
latter weary the power of thought by the inconceivable profundity of
its ratiocination; and the student is never farther from truth than
when he believes himself nearest its discovery. The mastery of every
doctrine of the perplexing Buddhist system can be attained only by
proceeding strictly according to the Pythagorean and Platonic method;
from universals down to particulars. The key to it lies in the refined
and mystical tenets of the spiritual influx of divine life. “Whoever is
unacquainted with my law,” says Buddha, “and dies in that state, must
return to the earth till he becomes a perfect Samanean. To achieve this
object, he must destroy within himself the trinity of _Maya_.[481] He
must extinguish his passions, unite and identify himself with _the law_
(the teaching of the secret doctrine), and comprehend the religion of
_annihilation_.”
Here, annihilation refers but to _matter_, that of the visible as
well as of the invisible body; for the astral soul (_perisprit_) is
still matter, however sublimated. The same book says that what Fo
(Buddha) meant to say was, that “the primitive substance is eternal
and unchangeable. Its highest revelation is the pure, luminous ether,
the boundless infinite space, not a void resulting from the absence
of forms, but, on the contrary, _the foundation of all forms_, and
anterior to them. “But the very presence of _forms_ denotes it to be
the creation of _Maya_, and all her works are as nothing before the
_uncreated_ being, SPIRIT, in whose profound and sacred repose all
motion must cease forever.”
Thus _annihilation_ means, with the Buddhistical philosophy, only a
dispersion of matter, in whatever form or _semblance_ of form it may
be; for everything that bears a shape was created, and thus must sooner
or later perish, _i.e._, change that shape; therefore, as something
temporary, though seeming to be permanent, it is but an illusion,
_Maya_; for, as eternity has neither beginning nor end, the more or
less prolonged duration of some particular form passes, as it were,
like an instantaneous flash of lightning. Before we have the time to
realize that we have seen it, it is gone and passed away for ever;
hence, even our astral bodies, pure ether, are but illusions of matter,
so long as they retain their terrestrial outline. The latter changes,
says the Buddhist, according to the merits or demerits of the person
during his lifetime, and this is metempsychosis. When the spiritual
_entity_ breaks loose for ever from every particle of matter, then
only it enters upon the eternal and unchangeable Nirvana. He exists in
spirit, in _nothing_; as a form, a shape, a semblance, he is completely
_annihilated_, and thus will die no more, for spirit alone is no
_Maya_, but the only REALITY in an illusionary universe of ever-passing
forms.
It is upon this Buddhist doctrine that the Pythagoreans grounded the
principal tenets of their philosophy. “Can that spirit, which gives
life and motion, and partakes of the nature of light, be reduced to
nonentity?” they ask. “Can that sensitive spirit in brutes which
exercises memory, one of the rational faculties, die, and become
nothing?” And Whitelock Bulstrode, in his able defence of Pythagoras,
expounds this doctrine by adding: “If you say, they (the brutes)
breathe their spirits into the air, and there vanish, that is all
I contend for. The air, indeed, is the proper place to receive
them, being, according to Laertius, full of souls; and, according
to Epicurus, full of atoms, the principles of all things; for even
this place wherein we walk and birds fly has so much of a spiritual
nature, that it is invisible, and, therefore, may well be the receiver
of forms, since the forms of all bodies are so; we can only see and
hear its effects; the air itself is too fine, and above the capacity
of the age. What then is the ether in the region above, and what are
the influences or forms that descend from thence?” The _spirits_ of
creatures, the Pythagoreans hold, who are emanations of the most
sublimated portions of ether, emanations, BREATHS, _but not forms_.
Ether is incorruptible, all philosophers agree in that; and what is
incorruptible _is so far from being annihilated_ when it gets rid of
the _form_, that it lays a good claim to IMMORTALITY. “But what is that
which has no body, no _form_; which is imponderable, invisible and
indivisible; that which exists and yet _is not_?” ask the Buddhists.
“It is Nirvana,” is the answer. It is NOTHING, not a region, but rather
a state. When once Nirvana is reached, man is exempt from the effects
of the “four truths;” for an effect can only be produced through a
certain cause, and every cause is _annihilated_ in this state.
These “four truths” are the foundation of the whole Buddhist doctrine
of Nirvana. They are, says the book of _Pradjuâ Pâramitâ_,[482] 1.
The existence of pain. 2. The production of pain. 3. The annihilation
of pain. 4. The way to the annihilation of pain. What is the source
of pain?—Existence. Birth existing, decrepitude and death ensue; for
wherever there is a form, there is a _cause_ for pain and suffering.
_Spirit_ alone has no form, and therefore _cannot be said to exist_.
Whenever man (the ethereal, inner man) reaches that point when he
becomes utterly spiritual, hence, formless, he has reached a state of
perfect bliss. MAN as an objective being becomes annihilated, but the
spiritual entity with its subjective life, will live for ever, for
spirit is incorruptible and immortal.
It is by the spirit of the teachings of both Buddha and Pythagoras,
that we can so easily recognize the identity of their doctrines.
The all-pervading, universal soul, the _Anima Mundi_, is Nirvana;
and Buddha, as a generic name, is the anthropomorphized _monad_ of
Pythagoras. When resting in Nirvana, the final bliss, Buddha is the
silent monad, dwelling in darkness and silence; he is also the formless
Brahm, the sublime but _unknowable_ Deity, which pervades invisibly the
whole universe. Whenever it is manifested, desiring to impress itself
upon humanity in a shape intelligent to our intellect, whether we call
it an _avatar_, or a King Messiah, or a _permutation_ of Divine Spirit,
_Logos_, Christos, it is all one and the same thing. In each case it
is “the Father,” who is in the _Son_, and the Son in “the Father.” The
immortal spirit overshadows the mortal man. It enters into him, and
pervading his whole being, makes of him a god, who descends into his
earthly tabernacle. Every man may become a Buddha, says the doctrine.
And so throughout the interminable series of ages we find now and then
men who more or less succeed in _uniting_ themselves “with God,” as the
expression goes, with their _own spirit_, as we ought to translate. The
Buddhists call such men _Arhat_. An Arhat is next to a Buddha, and none
is equal to him either in _infused_ science, or _miraculous_ powers.
Certain fakirs demonstrate the theory well in practice, as Jacolliot
has proved.
Even the so-called _fabulous_ narratives of certain Buddhistical
books, when stripped of their allegorical meaning, are found to be the
secret doctrines taught by Pythagoras. In the Pali Books called the
_Jutakâs_, are given the 550 incarnations or metempsychoses of Buddha.
They narrate how he has appeared in every form of animal life, and
animated every sentient being on earth, from infinitesimal insect to
the bird, the beast, and finally man, the microcosmic image of God on
earth. Must this be taken _literally_; is it intended as a description
of the _actual_ transformations and existence of one and the same
individual immortal, divine spirit, which by turns has animated every
kind of sentient being? Ought we not rather to understand, with
Buddhist metaphysicians, that though the individual human spirits are
numberless, collectively they are one, as every drop of water drawn out
of the ocean, metaphorically speaking, may have an individual existence
and still be one with the rest of the drops going to form that ocean;
for each human spirit is a scintilla of the one all-pervading light?
That this divine spirit animates the flower, the particle of granite on
the mountain side, the lion, the man? Egyptian Hierophants, like the
Brahmans, and the Buddhists of the East, and some Greek philosophers,
maintained originally that the same spirit that animates the particle
of dust, lurking latent in it, animates man, manifesting itself in him
in its highest state of activity. The doctrine, also, of a gradual
refusion of the human _soul_ into the essence of the primeval parent
spirit, was universal at one time. But this doctrine never implied
annihilation of the higher spiritual _ego_—only the dispersion of the
_external forms_ of man, after his terrestrial death, as well as during
his abode on earth. Who is better fitted to impart to us the mysteries
of after-death, so erroneously thought impenetrable, than those men
who having, through self-discipline and purity of life and purpose,
succeeded in uniting themselves with their “God,” were afforded _some_
glimpses, however imperfect, of the great truth.[483] And these seers
tell us strange stories about the _variety_ of forms assumed by
disembodied astral souls; forms of which each one is a spiritual though
concrete reflection of the abstract state of the mind, and thoughts of
the once living man.
To accuse Buddhistical philosophy of rejecting a Supreme Being—God,
and the soul’s immortality, of atheism, in short, on the ground that
according to their doctrines, Nirvana means _annihilation_, and
_Svabhâvât is_ NOT _a person, but nothing_, is simply absurd. The En
(or Ayîn) of the Jewish En-Soph, also means _nihil_ or _nothing_, that
which is not (_quo ad nos_); but no one has ever ventured to twit the
Jews with atheism. In both cases the real meaning of the term _nothing_
carries with it the idea that God is _not a thing_, not a concrete or
visible Being to which a name expressive of _any_ object known to us on
earth may be applied with propriety.
CHAPTER IX.
“Thou can’st not call that madness of which thou art proved to
know nothing.”—TERTULLIAN: _Apology_
“This is not a matter of to-day,
Or yesterday, but hath been from all times;
And none hath told us whence it came or how!”—SOPHOCLES.
“Belief in the supernatural is a fact natural, primitive,
universal, and constant in the life and history of the human
race. Unbelief in the supernatural begets materialism;
materialism, sensuality; sensuality, social convulsions, amid
whose storms man again learns to believe and pray.”—GUIZOT.
“If any one think these things incredible, let him keep his
opinions to himself, and not contradict those who, by such
events, are incited to the study of virtue.”—JOSEPHUS.
From the Platonic and Pythagorean views of matter and force, we
will now turn to the kabalistic philosophy of the origin of man,
and compare it with the theory of natural selection enunciated by
Darwin and Wallace. It may be that we shall find as much reason to
credit the ancients with originality in this direction as in that
which we have been considering. To our mind, no stronger proof of the
theory of cyclical progression need be required than the comparative
enlightenment of former ages and that of the Patristic Church, as
regards the form of the earth, and the movements of the planetary
system. Even were other evidence wanting, the ignorance of Augustine
and Lactantius, misleading the whole of Christendom upon these
questions until the period of Galileo, would mark the eclipses through
which human knowledge passes from age to age.
The “coats of skin,” mentioned in the third chapter of _Genesis_ as
given to Adam and Eve, are explained by certain ancient philosophers
to mean the fleshy bodies with which, in the progress of the cycles,
the progenitors of the race became clothed. They maintained that the
godlike physical form became grosser and grosser, until the bottom of
what may be termed the last spiritual cycle was reached, and mankind
entered upon the ascending arc of the first human cycle. Then began
an uninterrupted series of cycles or _yogas_; the precise number of
years of which each of them consisted remaining an inviolable mystery
within the precincts of the sanctuaries and disclosed only to the
initiates. As soon as humanity entered upon a new one, the stone age,
with which the preceding cycle had closed, began to gradually merge
into the following and next higher age. With each successive age, or
epoch, men grew more refined, until the acme of perfection possible in
that particular cycle had been reached. Then the receding wave of time
carried back with it the vestiges of human, social, and intellectual
progress. Cycle succeeded cycle, by imperceptible transitions;
highly-civilized flourishing nations, waxed in power, attained the
climax of development, waned, and became extinct; and mankind, when the
end of the lower cyclic arc was reached, was replunged into barbarism
as at the start. Kingdoms have crumbled and nation succeeded nation
from the beginning until our day, the races alternately mounting to
the highest and descending to the lowest points of development. Draper
observes that there is no reason to suppose that any one cycle applied
to the whole human race. On the contrary, while man in one portion of
the planet was in a condition of retrogression, in another he might be
progressing in enlightenment and civilization.
How analogous this theory is to the law of planetary motion, which
causes the individual orbs to rotate on their axes; the several systems
to move around their respective suns; and the whole stellar host to
follow a common path around a common centre! Life and death, light and
darkness, day and night on the planet, as it turns about its axis and
traverses the zodiacal circle representing the lesser and the greater
cycles.[484] Remember the Hermetic axiom:—“As above, so below; as in
heaven, so on earth.”
Mr. Alfred R. Wallace argues with sound logic, that the development
of man has been more marked in his mental organization than in his
external form. Man, he conceives to differ from the animal, by
being able to undergo great changes of conditions and of his entire
environment, without very marked alterations in bodily form and
structure. The changes of climate he meets with a corresponding
alteration in his clothing, shelter, weapons, and implements of
husbandry. His body may become less hairy, more erect, and of a
different color and proportions; “the head and face is immediately
connected with the organ of the mind, and as being the medium,
expressing the most refined motions of his nature,” alone change with
the development of his intellect. There was a time when “he had not yet
acquired that wonderfully-developed brain, the organ of the mind, which
now, even in his lowest examples, raises him far above the highest
brutes, at a period when he had the form, but hardly the nature of
man, when he neither possessed human speech nor sympathetic and moral
feelings.” Further, Mr. Wallace says that “Man may have been—indeed,
I believe _must have been_, once a homogeneous race ... in man, the
hairy covering of the body has almost entirely disappeared.“ Of the
cave men of Les Eyzies, Mr. Wallace remarks further ” ... the great
breadth of the face, the enormous development of the ascending ramus of
the lower jaw ... indicate enormous muscular power and the habits of a
savage and brutal race.”
Such are the glimpses which anthropology affords us of men, either
arrived at the bottom of a cycle or starting in a new one. Let
us see how far they are corroborated by clairvoyant psychometry.
Professor Denton submitted a fragment of fossilized bone to his wife’s
examination, without giving Mrs. Denton any hint as to what the
article was. It immediately called up to her pictures of people and
scenes which he thinks belonged to the stone age. She saw men closely
resembling monkeys, with a body very hairy, and “as if the natural
hair answered the purpose of clothing.” “I question whether he can
stand perfectly upright; his hip-joints appear to be so formed, he
cannot,” she added. “Occasionally I see part of the body of one of
those beings that looks comparatively smooth. I can see the skin, which
is lighter colored ... I do not know whether he belongs to the same
period.... At a distance the face seems flat; the lower part of it
is heavy; they have what I suppose would be called prognathous jaws.
The frontal region of the head is low, and the lower portion of it is
very prominent, forming a round ridge across the forehead, immediately
above the eyebrows.... Now I see a face that looks like that of a human
being, though there is a monkey-like appearance about it. All these
seem of that kind, having long arms and hairy bodies.”[485]
Whether or not the men of science are willing to concede the
correctness of the Hermetic theory of the physical evolution of man
from higher and more spiritual natures, they themselves show us how
the race has progressed from the lowest observed point to its present
development. And, as all nature seems to be made up of analogies, is
it unreasonable to affirm that the same progressive development of
individual forms has prevailed among the inhabitants of the _unseen_
universe? If such marvellous effects have been caused by evolution upon
our little insignificant planet, producing reasoning and intuitive men
from some higher type of the ape family, why suppose that the boundless
realms of space are inhabited only by disembodied _angelic_ forms?
Why not give place in that vast domain to the spiritual duplicates
of these hairy, long-armed and half-reasoning ancestors, their
predecessors, and all their successors, down to our time? Of course,
the spiritual parts of such primeval members of the human family would
be as uncouth and undeveloped as were their physical bodies. While
they made no attempt to calculate the duration of the “grand cycle,”
the Hermetic philosophers yet maintained that, according to the cyclic
law, the living human race must inevitably and collectively return
one day to that point of departure, where man was first clothed with
“coats of skin;” or, to express it more clearly, the human race must,
in accordance with the law of evolution, be finally _physically_
spiritualized. Unless Messrs. Darwin and Huxley are prepared to prove
that the man of our century has attained, as a physical and moral
animal, the acme of perfection, and evolution, having reached its apex,
must stop all further progress with the modern genus, _Homo_, we do not
see how they can possibly confute such a logical deduction.
In his lecture on _The Action of Natural Selection on Man_, Mr.
Alfred R. Wallace concludes his demonstrations as to the development
of human races under that law of selection by saying that, if his
conclusions are just, “it must inevitably follow that the higher—the
more intellectual and moral—must displace the lower and more degraded
races; and the power of ‘natural selection,’ still acting on his mental
organization, must ever lead to the more perfect adaptation of man’s
higher faculties to the condition of surrounding nature, and to the
exigencies of the social state. While his external form will probably
ever remain unchanged, except in the development of that perfect beauty
... refined and ennobled by the highest intellectual faculties and
sympathetic emotions, his mental constitution may continue to advance
and improve, till the world is again inhabited by a single, nearly
homogeneous race, no individual of which will be inferior _to the
noblest specimens of existing humanity_.” Sober, scientific methods and
cautiousness in hypothetical possibilities have evidently their share
in this expression of the opinions of the great anthropologist. Still,
what he says above clashes in no way with our kabalistic assertions.
Allow to ever-progressing nature, to the great law of the “survival of
the fittest,” one step beyond Mr. Wallace’s deductions, and we have in
future the possibility—nay, the assurance of a race, which, like the
Vril-ya of Bulwer-Lytton’s _Coming Race_, will be but one remove from
the primitive “Sons of God.”
It will be observed that this philosophy of cycles, which was
allegorized by the Egyptian Hierophants in the “circle of necessity,”
explains at the same time the allegory of the “Fall of man.” According
to the Arabian descriptions, each of the seven chambers of the
Pyramids—those grandest of all cosmic symbols—was known by the name of
a planet. The peculiar architecture of the Pyramids shows in itself
the drift of the metaphysical thought of their builders. The apex is
lost in the clear blue sky of the land of the Pharaohs, and typifies
the primordial point lost in the unseen universe from whence started
the first race of the spiritual prototypes of man. Each mummy, from
the moment that it was embalmed, lost its physical individuality
in one sense; it symbolized the human race. Placed in such a way
as was best calculated to aid the exit of the “soul,” the latter
had to pass through the seven planetary chambers before it made its
exit through the symbolical apex. Each chamber typified, at the same
time, one of the seven spheres, and one of the seven higher types of
physico-spiritual humanity alleged to be above our own. Every 3,000
years, the soul, representative of its race, had to return to its
primal point of departure before it underwent another evolution into a
more perfected spiritual and physical transformation. We must go deep
indeed into the abstruse metaphysics of Oriental mysticism before we
can realize fully the infinitude of the subjects that were embraced at
one sweep by the majestic thought of its exponents.
Starting as a pure and perfect spiritual being, the Adam of the second
chapter of _Genesis_, not satisfied with the position allotted to him
by the Demiurgus (who is the eldest first-begotten, the Adam-Kadmon),
Adam the second, the “man of dust,” strives in his pride to become
Creator in his turn. Evolved out of the androgynous Kadmon, this
Adam is himself an androgyn; for, according to the oldest beliefs
presented allegorically in Plato’s _Timæus_, the prototypes of our
races were all enclosed in the microcosmic tree which grew and
developed within and under the great mundane or macrocosmic tree.
Divine spirit being considered a unity, however numerous the rays of
the great spiritual sun, man has still had his origin like all other
forms, whether organic or otherwise, in this one Fount of Eternal
Light. Were we even to reject the hypothesis of an androgynous man, in
connection with physical evolution, the significance of the allegory
in its spiritual sense, would remain unimpaired. So long as the first
god-man, symbolizing the two first principles of creation, the dual
male and female element, had no thought of good and evil he could
not hypostasize “woman,” for she was in him as he was in her. It was
only when, as a result of the evil hints of the serpent, _matter_,
the latter condensed itself and cooled on the spiritual man in its
contact with the elements, that the fruits of the man-tree—who is
himself that tree of knowledge—appeared to his view. From this moment
the androgynal union ceased, man evolved out of himself the woman as a
separate entity. They have broken the thread between pure spirit and
pure matter. Henceforth they will create no more _spiritually_, and
by the sole power of their will; man has become a physical creator,
and the kingdom of spirit can be won only by a long imprisonment in
matter. The meaning of Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, the sacred
oak among whose luxuriant branches a serpent dwells, and _cannot_ be
dislodged,[486] thus becomes apparent. Creeping out from the primordial
_ilus_, the mundane snake grows more material and waxes in strength and
power with every new evolution.
The Adam Primus, or Kadmon, the Logos of the Jewish mystics, is the
same as the Grecian Prometheus, who seeks to rival with the divine
wisdom; he is also the Pimander of Hermes, or the POWER OF THE THOUGHT
DIVINE, in its most spiritual aspect, for he was less hypostasized by
the Egyptians than the two former. These all create men, but fail in
their final object. Desiring to endow man with an immortal spirit, in
order that by linking the trinity in one, he might gradually return to
his primal spiritual state without losing his individuality, Prometheus
fails in his attempt to steal the _divine_ fire, and is sentenced to
expiate his crime on Mount Kazbeck. Prometheus is also the _Logos_ of
the ancient Greeks, as well as Herakles. In the _Codex Nazaræus_[487]
we see Bahak-Zivo deserting the heaven of his father, confessing that
though he is the father of the genii, he is unable to “construct
creatures,” for he is equally unacquainted with Orcus as with “the
consuming fire which is wanting in light.” And Fetahil, one of the
“powers,” sits in the “mud” (matter) and wonders why the living fire is
so changed.
All of these _Logoi_ strove to endow man with the immortal spirit,
failed, and nearly all are represented as being punished for the
attempt by severe sentences. Those of the early Christian Fathers
who like Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus, were well versed in Pagan
symbology, having begun their careers as philosophers, felt very much
embarrassed. They could not deny the anticipation of their doctrines in
the oldest myths. The latest _Logos_, according to their teachings, had
also appeared in order to show mankind the way to immortality; and in
his desire to endow the world with eternal life through the Pentecostal
fire, had lost his life agreeably to the traditional programme. Thus
was originated the very awkward explanation of which our modern clergy
freely avail themselves, that all these mythic types show the prophetic
spirit which, through the Lord’s mercy, was afforded even to the
heathen idolaters! The Pagans, they assert, had presented in their
imagery the great drama of Calvary—hence the resemblance. On the other
hand, the philosophers maintained, with unassailable logic, that the
pious fathers had simply helped themselves to a ready-made groundwork,
either finding it easier than to exert their own imagination, or
because of the greater number of ignorant proselytes who were attracted
to the new doctrine by such an extraordinary resemblance with
their mythologies, at least as far as the outward form of the most
fundamental doctrines goes.
The allegory of the Fall of man and the fire of Prometheus is also
another version of the myth of the rebellion of the proud Lucifer,
hurled down to the bottomless pit—Orcus. In the religion of the
Brahmans, Moisasure, the Hindu Lucifer, becomes envious of the
Creator’s resplendent light, and at the head of a legion of inferior
spirits rebels against Brahma, and declares war against him. Like
Hercules, the faithful Titan, who helps Jupiter and restores to him his
throne, Siva, the third person of the Hindu trinity, hurls them all
from the celestial abode in Honderah, the region of eternal darkness.
But here the fallen angels are made to repent of their evil deed,
and in the Hindu doctrine they are all afforded the opportunity to
progress. In the Greek fiction, Hercules, the Sun-god, descends to
Hades to deliver the victims from their tortures; and the Christian
Church also makes her incarnate god descend to the dreary Plutonic
regions and overcome the rebellious ex-archangel. In their turn the
kabalists explain the allegory in a semi-scientific way. Adam the
second, or the first-created race which Plato calls gods, and the Bible
the Elohim, was not triple in his nature like the earthly man: _i.e._,
he was not composed of soul, spirit, and body, but was a compound of
sublimated astral elements into which the “Father” had breathed an
immortal, divine spirit. The latter, by reason of its godlike essence,
was ever struggling to liberate itself from the bonds of even that
flimsy prison; hence the “sons of God,” in their imprudent efforts,
were the first to trace a future model for the cyclic law. But, man
must not be “like one of us,” says the Creative Deity, one of the
Elohim “intrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal.”[488] And
thus it was, when the men of the first race had reached the summit of
the first cycle, they lost their balance, and their second envelope,
the grosser clothing (astral body), dragged them down the opposite arc.
This kabalistic version of the sons of God (or of light) is given in
the _Codex Nazaræus_. Bahak-Zivo, the “father of genii, is ordered to
‘construct creatures.’” But, as he is “ignorant of Orcus,” he fails to
do so and calls in Fetahil a still purer spirit to his aid, who fails
still worse.
Then steps on the stage of creation the “spirit”[489] (which properly
ought to be translated “soul,” for it is the _anima mundi_, and which
with the Nazarenes and the Gnostics was _feminine_), and perceiving
that for Fetahil,[490] the _newest man_ (the latest), the splendor
was “changed,” and that for splendor existed “decrease and damage,”
awakes Karabtanos,[491] “who was frantic and _without sense and
judgment_,” and says to him: “Arise; see, the splendor (light) of the
_newest_ man (Fetahil) has failed (to produce or create men), the
decrease of this splendor is visible. Rise up, come with thy MOTHER
(the _spiritus_) and free thee from limits by which thou art held,
and those more ample than the whole world.” After which follows the
union of the frantic and blind matter, guided by the insinuations of
the spirit (not the _Divine_ breath, but the _Astral_ spirit, which
by its double essence is already tainted with matter) and the offer
of the MOTHER being accepted the Spiritus conceives “Seven Figures,”
which Irenæus is disposed to take for the seven _stellars_ (planets)
but which represent the seven _capital sins_, the progeny of an astral
soul separated from its divine source (spirit) and _matter_, the blind
demon of concupiscence. Seeing this, Fetahil extends his hand toward
the abyss of matter, and says: ‘Let the earth exist, just as the abode
of the powers has existed.’” Dipping his hand in the chaos, which he
condenses, he creates our planet.[492]
Then the _Codex_ proceeds to tell how Bahak-Zivo was separated from
the Spiritus, and the genii, or angels, from the rebels.[493] Then
Mano[494] (the greatest), who dwells with the _greatest_ FERHO, calls
Kebar-Zivo (known also by the name of Nebat-Iavar bar Iufin-Ifafin),
Helm and _Vine_ of the food of life,[495] he being the _third life_,
and, commiserating the rebellious and foolish genii, on account of the
magnitude of their ambition, says: “Lord of the genii[496] (Æons),
see what the genii, the rebellious angels do, and about what they are
consulting.[497] They say, “Let us call forth the world, and let us
call the ‘powers’ into existence. The genii are the _Principes_, the
‘sons of Light,’ but thou art the ‘_Messenger of Life_.’”[498]
And in order to counteract the influence of the seven “badly disposed”
principles, the progeny of _Spiritus_, CABAR ZIO, the mighty Lord
of Splendor, procreates _seven other lives_ (the cardinal virtues)
who shine in their own form and light “from on high”[499] and thus
reëstablishes the balance between good and evil, light and darkness.
But this creation of beings, without the requisite influx of divine
pure breath in them, which was known among the kabalists as the “Living
Fire,” produced but creatures of matter and astral light.[500] Thus
were generated the animals which preceded man on this earth. The
spiritual beings, the “sons of light,” those who remained faithful to
the great _Ferho_ (the First Cause of all), constitute the celestial or
angelic hierarchy, the Adonim, and the legions of the _never-embodied_
spiritual men. The followers of the rebellious and foolish genii, and
the descendants of the “witless” seven spirits begotten by “Karabtanos”
and the “spiritus,” became, in course of time, the “men of our
planet,”[501] after having previously passed through every “creation”
of every one of the elements. From this stage of life they have been
traced by Darwin, who shows us how our _highest_ forms have been
evolved out of the _lowest_. Anthropology dares not follow the kabalist
in his metaphysical flights _beyond_ this planet, and it is doubtful if
its teachers have the courage to search for the _missing link_ in the
old kabalistic manuscripts.
Thus was set in motion the _first cycle_, which in its rotations
_downward_, brought an infinitesimal part of the created _lives_ to our
planet of _mud_. Arrived at the lowest point of the arc of the cycle
which directly preceded life on this earth, the pure divine spark still
lingering in the Adam made an effort to separate itself from the astral
spirit, for “man was falling gradually into generation,” and the fleshy
coat was becoming with every action more and more dense.
And now comes a mystery, a _Sod_;[502] a secret which Rabbi
Simeon[503] imparted but to very few initiates. It was enacted once
every seven years during the Mysteries of Samothrace, and the records
of it are found self-printed on the leaves of the Thibetan sacred tree,
the mysterious KOUNBOUM, in the Lamasery of the holy adepts.[504]
In the shoreless ocean of space radiates the central, spiritual,
and _Invisible_ sun. The universe is his body, spirit and soul; and
after this ideal model are framed ALL THINGS. These three emanations
are the three lives, the three degrees of the gnostic _Pleroma_,
the three “Kabalistic Faces,” for the ANCIENT of the ancient, the
holy of the aged, the great En-Soph, “has a form and then he has no
form.” The invisible “assumed a form when he called the universe into
existence,”[505] says the _Sohar_, the Book of splendor. The _first_
light is His soul, the Infinite, Boundless, and Immortal breath; under
the efflux of which the universe heaves its mighty bosom, infusing
_Intelligent_ life throughout creation. The _second_ emanation
condenses cometary matter and produces forms within the cosmic circle;
sets the countless worlds floating in the electric space, and infuses
the _unintelligent_, blind life-principle into every form. The third,
produces the whole universe of physical matter; and as it keeps
gradually receding from the Central Divine Light its brightness wanes
and it becomes DARKNESS and the BAD—pure matter, the “gross purgations
of the celestial fire” of the Hermetists.
When the Central Invisible (the Lord Ferho) saw the efforts of the
divine _Scintilla_, unwilling to be dragged lower down into the
degradation of matter, to liberate itself, he permitted it to shoot
out from itself a _monad_, over which, attached to it as by the finest
thread, the Divine Scintilla (the soul) had to watch during its
ceaseless peregrinations from one form to another. Thus the monad was
shot down into the first form of matter and became encased in stone;
then, in course of time, through the combined efforts of _living fire_
and _living water_, both of which shone their _reflection_ upon the
stone, the monad crept out of its prison to sunlight as a lichen. From
change to change it went higher and higher; the monad, with every
new transformation borrowing more of the radiance of its parent,
_Scintilla_, which approached it nearer at every transmigration.
For “the First Cause, had willed it to proceed in this order;” and
destined it to creep on higher until its physical form became once more
the Adam _of dust_, shaped in the image of the Adam Kadmon. Before
undergoing its last earthly transformation, the external covering of
the monad, from the moment of its conception as an embryo, passes in
turn, once more, through the phases of the several kingdoms. In its
fluidic prison it assumes a vague resemblance at various periods of the
gestation to plant, reptile, bird, and animal, until it becomes a human
embryo.[506] At the birth of the future man, the monad, radiating with
all the glory of its immortal parent which watches it from the seventh
sphere, becomes _senseless_.[507] It loses all recollection of the
past, and returns to consciousness but gradually, when the instinct of
childhood gives way to reason and intelligence. After the separation
between the life-principle (astral spirit) and the body takes place,
the liberated soul—Monad, exultingly rejoins the mother and father
spirit, the radiant Augoeides, and the two, merged into one, forever
form, with a glory proportioned to the spiritual purity of the past
earth-life, the Adam who has completed the circle of necessity, and is
freed from the last vestige of his physical encasement. Henceforth,
growing more and more radiant at each step of his upward progress, he
mounts the shining path that ends at the point from which he started
around the GRAND CYCLE.
The whole Darwinian theory of natural selection is included in the
first six chapters of the book of _Genesis_. The “Man” of chapter i.
is radically different from the “Adam” of chapter ii., for the former
was created “male and female” that is, bi-sexed—and in the image of God;
while the latter, according to verse seven, was formed of the dust of
the ground, and became “a living soul,” after the Lord God “breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life.” Moreover, _this Adam_ was a
male being, and in verse twenty we are told that “there was not found
a helpmeet for him.” The Adonai, being pure spiritual entities, had no
sex, or rather had both sexes united in themselves, like their Creator;
and the ancients understood this so well that they represented many of
their deities as of dual sex. The Biblical student must either accept
this interpretation, or make the passages in the two chapters alluded
to absurdly contradict each other. It was such literal acceptance of
passages that warranted the atheists in covering the Mosaic account
with ridicule, and it is the dead letter of the old text that begets
the materialism of our age. Not only are these two races of beings thus
clearly indicated in _Genesis_, but even a third and a fourth one are
ushered before the reader in chapter iv., where the “sons of God” and
the race of “giants” are spoken of.
As we write, there appears in an American paper, _The Kansas City
Times_, an account of important discoveries of the remains of a
prehistorical _race of giants_, which corroborates the statements of
the kabalists and the Bible allegories at the same time. It is worth
preserving:
“In his researches among the forests of Western Missouri, Judge E.
P. West has discovered a number of conical-shaped mounds, similar
in construction to those found in Ohio and Kentucky. These mounds
are found upon the high bluffs overlooking the Missouri River, the
largest and more prominent being found in Tennessee, Mississippi, and
Louisiana. Until about three weeks ago it was not suspected that the
mound builders had made this region their home in the prehistoric
days; but now it is discovered that this strange and extinct race once
occupied this land, and have left an extensive graveyard in a number of
high mounds upon the Clay County bluffs.
“As yet, only one of these mounds has been opened. Judge West
discovered a skeleton about two weeks ago, and made a report to other
members of the society. They accompanied him to the mound, and not far
from the surface excavated and took out the remains of two skeletons.
The bones are very large—so large, in fact, when compared with an
ordinary skeleton of modern date, they appear to have formed part of
a giant. The head bones, such as have not rotted away, are monstrous
in size. The lower jaw of one skeleton is in a state of preservation,
and is double the size of the jaw of a civilized person. The teeth in
this jaw-bone are large, and appear to have been ground down and worn
away by contact with roots and carnivorous food. The jaw-bone indicates
immense muscular strength. The thigh-bone, when compared with that of
an ordinary modern skeleton, looks like that of a horse. The length,
thickness, and muscular development are remarkable. But the most
peculiar part about the skeleton is the frontal bone. It is very low,
and differs radically from any ever seen in this section before. It
forms one thick ridge of bone about one inch wide, extending across the
eyes. It is a narrow but rather heavy ridge of bone which, instead of
extending upward, as it does now in these days of civilization, receded
back from the eyebrows, forming a flat head, and thus indicates a very
low order of mankind. It is the opinion of the scientific gentlemen
who are making these discoveries that these bones are the remains of
a prehistoric race of men. They do not resemble the present existing
race of Indians, nor are the mounds constructed upon any pattern or
model known to have been in use by any race of men now in existence in
America. The bodies are discovered in a sitting posture in the mounds,
and among the bones are found stone weapons, such as flint knives,
flint scrapers, and all of them different in shape to the arrow-heads,
war-hatchets, and other stone tools and weapons known to have been
in use by the aboriginal Indians of this land when discovered by the
whites. The gentlemen who have these curious bones in charge have
deposited them with Dr. Foe, on Main street. It is their intention
to make further and closer researches in the mounds on the bluffs
opposite this city. They will make a report of their labors at the next
meeting of the Academy of Science, by which time they expect to be
able to make some definite report as to their opinions. It is pretty
definitely settled, however, that the skeletons are those of a race of
men not now in existence.”
The author of a recent and very elaborate work[508] finds some cause
for merriment over the union of the sons of God with the “daughters of
men,” who _were fair_, as alluded to in _Genesis_, and described at
great length in that wonderful legend, the _Book of Enoch_. More is
the pity, that our most learned and liberal men do not employ their
close and merciless logic to repair its one-sidedness by seeking
the true spirit which dictated these allegories of old. This spirit
was certainly more _scientific_ than skeptics are yet prepared to
admit. But with every year some new discovery may corroborate their
assertions, until the whole of antiquity is vindicated.
One thing, at least, has been shown in the Hebrew text, viz.: that
there was one race of purely physical creatures, another purely
spiritual. The evolution and “transformation of species” required to
fill the gap between the two has been left to abler anthropologists.
We can only repeat the philosophy of men of old, which says that the
union of these two races produced a third—the Adamite race. Sharing
the natures of both its parents, it is equally adapted to an existence
in the material and spiritual worlds. Allied to the physical half of
man’s nature is reason, which enables him to maintain his supremacy
over the lower animals, and to subjugate nature to his uses. Allied
to his spiritual part is his _conscience_, which will serve as his
unerring guide through the besetments of the senses; for conscience is
that instantaneous perception between right and wrong, which can only
be exercised by the spirit, which, being a portion of the Divine Wisdom
and Purity, is absolutely pure and wise. Its promptings are independent
of reason, and it can only manifest itself clearly, when unhampered by
the baser attractions of our dual nature.
Reason being a faculty of our physical brain, one which is justly
defined as that of deducing inferences from premises, and being
wholly dependent on the evidence of other senses, cannot be a quality
pertaining directly to our divine spirit. The latter _knows_—hence,
all reasoning which implies discussion and argument would be useless.
So an entity, which, if it must be considered as a direct emanation
from the eternal Spirit of wisdom, has to be viewed as possessed of
the same attributes as the essence or the whole of which it is a
part. Therefore, it is with a certain degree of logic that the ancient
theurgists maintained that the _rational_ part of man’s soul (spirit)
never entered wholly into the man’s body, but only overshadowed him
more or less through the _irrational_ or astral soul, which serves
as an intermediatory agent, or a medium between spirit and body. The
man who has conquered matter sufficiently to relieve the direct light
from his shining _Augoeides_, feels truth intuitionally; he could not
err in his judgment, notwithstanding all the sophisms suggested by
cold reason, for he is ILLUMINATED. Hence, prophecy, vaticination,
and the so-called Divine inspiration are simply the effects of this
illumination from above by our own immortal spirit.
Swedenborg, following the mystical doctrines of the Hermetic
philosophers, devoted a number of volumes to the elucidation of
the “internal sense” of _Genesis_. Swedenborg was undoubtedly a
“natural-born magician,” a seer; he was _not_ an _adept_. Thus, however
closely he may have followed the apparent method of interpretation
used by the alchemists and mystic writers, he partially failed; the
more so, that the model chosen by him in this method was one who,
albeit a great alchemist, was no more of an adept than the Swedish
seer himself, in the fullest sense of the word. Eugenius Philalethes
had never attained “the highest pyrotechny,” to use the diction of the
mystic philosophers. But, although both have missed the whole truth in
its details, Swedenborg has virtually given the same interpretation
of the first chapter of _Genesis_ as the Hermetic philosophers.
The seer, as well as the initiates, notwithstanding their veiled
phraseology, clearly show that the first chapters of _Genesis_ relate
to the _regeneration_, or a new birth of man, not to the creation of
our universe and its crown work—MAN. The fact that the terms of the
alchemists, such as _salt_, _sulphur_, and _mercury_ are transformed by
Swedenborg into _ens_, _cause_, and _effect_,[509] does not affect the
underlying idea of solving the problems of the Mosaic books by the only
possible method—that used by the Hermetists—that of correspondences.
His doctrine of correspondence, or Hermetic symbolism, is that
of Pythagoras and of the kabalists—“as above, so below.” It is
also that of the Buddhist philosophers, who, in their still more
abstract metaphysics, inverting the usual mode of definition
given by our _erudite_ scholars, call the invisible types the
only reality, and everything else the effects of the causes, or
visible prototypes—_illusions_. However contradictory their various
elucidations of the _Pentateuch_ may appear _on their surface_, every
one of them tends to show that the sacred literature of every country,
the _Bible_ as much as the _Vedas_ or the Buddhist _Scriptures_, can
only be understood and thoroughly sifted by the light of Hermetic
philosophy. The great sages of antiquity, those of the mediæval ages,
and the mystical writers of our more modern times also, were all
_Hermetists_. Whether the light of truth had illuminated them through
their faculty of intuition, or as a consequence of study and regular
initiation, virtually, they had accepted the method and followed the
path traced to them by such men as Moses, Gautama-Buddha, and Jesus.
The truth, symbolized by some alchemists as _dew from heaven_, had
descended into their hearts, and they had all gathered it upon the
_tops of mountains_, after having spread CLEAN _linen cloths_ to
receive it; and thus, in one sense, they had secured, each for himself,
and in his own way, the _universal solvent_. How much they were allowed
to share it with the public is another question. That veil, which is
alleged to have covered the face of Moses, when, after descending from
Sinai, he taught his people the Word of God, cannot be withdrawn at
the will of the teacher only. It depends on the listeners, whether
they will also remove the veil which is “upon their hearts.” Paul says
it plainly; and his words addressed to the Corinthians can be applied
to every man or woman, and of any age in the history of the world. If
“their minds are blinded” by the shining skin of divine truth, whether
the Hermetic veil be withdrawn or not from the face of the teacher, it
cannot be taken away from their heart unless “it _shall turn to the
Lord_.” But the latter appellation must not be applied to either of the
three anthropomorphized personages of the Trinity, but to the “Lord,”
as understood by Swedenborg and the Hermetic philosophers—the Lord, who
is Life and MAN.
The everlasting conflict between the world-religions—Christianity,
Judaism, Brahmanism, Paganism, Buddhism, proceeds from this one source:
Truth is known but to the few; the rest, unwilling to withdraw the
veil from their own hearts, imagine it blinding the eyes of their
neighbor. The god of every exoteric religion, including Christianity,
notwithstanding its pretensions to mystery, is an idol, a fiction,
and cannot be anything else. Moses, _closely-veiled_, speaks to
the stiff-necked multitudes of Jehovah, the cruel, anthropomorphic
deity, as of the highest God, burying deep in the bottom of his
heart that truth which cannot be “either spoken of or revealed.”
Kapila cuts with the sharp sword of his sarcasms the Brahman-Yoggins,
who in their mystical visions pretend to see the HIGHEST _one_.
Gautama-Buddha conceals, under an impenetrable cloak of metaphysical
subtilties, the verity, and is regarded by posterity as _an atheist_.
Pythagoras, with his allegorical mysticism and metempsychosis, is
held for a clever impostor, and is succeeded in the same estimation
by other philosophers, like Apollonius and Plotinus, who are
generally spoken of as visionaries, if not charlatans. Plato, whose
writings were never read by the majority of our _great_ scholars but
superficially, is accused by many of his translators of absurdities
and puerilities, and even of being ignorant of his own language;[510]
most likely for saying, in reference to the Supreme, that “a matter
of that kind cannot be expressed by words, like other things to be
learned;”[511] and making Protagoras lay too much stress on the use
of “veils.” We could fill a whole volume with names of misunderstood
sages, whose writings—only because our materialistic critics feel
unable to lift the “veil,” which shrouds them—pass off in a current
way for mystical absurdities. The most important feature of this
seemingly imcomprehensible mystery lies perhaps in the inveterate
habit of the majority of readers to judge a work by its words and
insufficiently-expressed ideas, leaving the spirit of it out of
the question. Philosophers of quite different schools may be often
found to use a multitude of different expressions, some dark and
metaphorical—all figurative, and yet treating of the same subject.
Like the thousand divergent rays of a globe of fire, every ray leads,
nevertheless, to the central point, so every mystic philosopher,
whether he be a devotedly pious enthusiast like Henry More; an
irascible alchemist, using a Billingsgate phraseology—like his
adversary, Eugenius Philalethes; or an _atheist_ (?) like Spinoza,
all had one and the same object in view—MAN. It is Spinoza, however,
who furnishes perhaps the truest key to a portion of this unwritten
secret. While Moses forbids “graven images” of Him whose name is not
to be taken in vain, Spinoza goes farther. He clearly infers that God
must not be so much as _described_. Human language is totally unfit to
give an idea of this “Being” who is altogether unique. Whether it is
Spinoza or the Christian theology that is more right in their premises
and conclusion, we leave the reader to judge for himself. Every attempt
to the contrary leads a nation to anthropomorphize the deity in whom
it believes, and the result is that given by Swedenborg. Instead of
stating that God made man after his own image, we ought in truth to say
that “man _imagines_ God after his image,”[512] forgetting that he has
set up his own reflection for worship.
Where, then, lies the true, real secret so much talked about by the
Hermetists? That there was and there is a secret, no candid student
of esoteric literature will ever doubt. Men of genius—as many of the
Hermetic philosophers undeniably were—would not have made fools of
themselves by trying to fool others for several thousand consecutive
years. That this great secret, commonly termed “the philosopher’s
stone,” had a spiritual as well as a physical meaning attached to
it, was suspected in all ages. The author of _Remarks on Alchemy
and the Alchemists_ very truly observes that the subject of the
Hermetic art is MAN, and the object of the art is the perfection of
man.[513] But we cannot agree with him that only those whom he terms
“money-loving sots,” ever attempted to carry a purely _moral_ design
(of the alchemists) into the field of physical science. The fact
alone that man, in their eyes, is a trinity, which they divide into
_Sol_, water of _mercury_, and _sulphur_, which is the _secret fire_,
or, to speak plain, into _body_, _soul_, and _spirit_, shows that
there is a physical side to the question. Man is the philosopher’s
_stone_ spiritually—“_a triune or trinity in unity_,” as Philalethes
expresses it. But he is also that stone physically. The latter is but
the effect of the cause, and the cause is the universal solvent of
everything—divine spirit. Man is a correlation of chemical physical
forces, as well as a correlation of spiritual powers. The latter react
on the physical powers of man in proportion to the development of the
earthly man. “The work is carried to perfection according to the virtue
of a body, soul, and spirit,” says an alchemist; “for the body would
never be penetrable were it not for the _spirit_, nor would the spirit
be permanent in its supra-perfect _tincture_, were it not for the body;
nor could these two act one upon another without the soul, _for the
spirit is an invisible thing_, nor doth it ever appear without another
GARMENT, which garment is the SOUL.”[514]
The “philosophers by fire” asserted, through their chief, Robert
Fludd, that sympathy is the offspring of light, and “antipathy hath
its beginning from darkness.” Moreover, they taught, with other
kabalists, that “contrarieties in nature doth proceed from one eternal
essence, or from the root of all things.” Thus, the first cause is the
parent-source of good as well as of evil. The creator—who is _not_
the Highest God—is the father of matter, which is _bad_, as well as
of spirit, which, emanating from the highest, invisible cause, passes
through him like through a vehicle, and pervades the whole universe.
“It is most certain,” remarks Robertus di Fluctibus (Robert Fludd),
“that, as there are an infinity of _visible_ creatures, so there
is an endless variety of invisible ones, of divers natures, in the
universal machine. Through the mysterious name of God, which Moses was
so desirous of him (Jehova) to hear and know, when he received from
him this answer, _Jehova is my everlasting name_. As for the other
name, it is so pure and simple that it _cannot be articulated, or
compounded, or truly expressed by man’s voice_ ... all the other names
are wholly comprehended within it, for it contains the property as well
of _Nolunty_ as _volunty_, of privation as position, of death as life,
of cursing as blessing, of evil as good (though nothing ideally is
bad in him), of hatred and discord, and consequently of sympathy and
antipathy.”[515]
Lowest in the scale of being are those invisible creatures called by
the kabalists the “elementary.” There are three distinct classes of
these. The highest, in intelligence and cunning, are the so-called
terrestrial spirits, of which we will speak more categorically in other
parts of this work. Suffice to say, for the present, that they are the
_larvæ_, or shadows of those who have lived on earth, have refused
all spiritual light, remained and died deeply immersed in the mire of
matter, and from whose sinful souls the immortal spirit has gradually
separated. The second class is composed of the invisible antitypes of
the men _to be_ born. No form can come into objective existence—from
the highest to the lowest—before the abstract ideal of this form—or, as
Aristotle would call it, the _privation_ of this form—is called forth.
Before an artist paints a picture every feature of it exists already in
his imagination; to have enabled us to discern a watch, this particular
watch must have existed in its abstract form in the watchmaker’s mind.
So with future men.
According to Aristotle’s doctrine, there are three principles of
natural bodies: privation, matter, and form. These principles may be
applied in this particular case. The privation of the child which is to
be we will locate in the invisible mind of the great Architect of the
Universe—privation not being considered in the Aristotelic philosophy
as a principle in the composition of bodies, but as an external
property in their production; for the production is a change by which
the matter passes from the shape it has not to that which it assumes.
Though the privation of the unborn child’s form, as well as of the
future form of the unmade watch, is that which is neither substance
nor extension nor quality as yet, nor any kind of existence, it is
still something which _is_, though its outlines, in order to be, must
acquire an objective form—the abstract must become concrete, in short.
Thus, as soon as this privation of matter is transmitted by energy to
universal ether, it becomes a material form, however sublimated. If
modern science teaches that _human_ thought “affects the matter of
another universe simultaneously with this,” how can he who believes in
an Intelligent First Cause, deny that the divine thought is equally
transmitted, by the same law of energy, to our common mediator, the
universal ether—the world-soul? And, if so, then it must follow that
once there the divine thought manifests itself objectively, energy
faithfully reproducing the outlines of that whose “privation” was first
born in the divine mind. Only it must not be understood that this
_thought_ creates matter. No; it creates but the design for the future
form; the matter which serves to make this design having always been
in existence, and having been prepared to form a human body, through
a series of progressive transformations, as the result of evolution.
Forms pass; ideas that created them and the material which gave them
objectiveness, remain. These models, as yet devoid of immortal spirits,
are “elementals,“properly speaking, _psychic embryos_—which, when
their time arrives, die out of the invisible world, and are born into
this visible one as human infants, receiving in _transitu_ that divine
breath called spirit which completes the perfect man. This class cannot
communicate _objectively_ with men.
The third class are the “elementals” proper, which never evolve into
human beings, but occupy, as it were, a specific step of the ladder
of being, and, by comparison with the others, may properly be called
nature-spirits, or cosmic agents of nature, each being confined to its
own element and never transgressing the bounds of others. These are
what Tertullian called the “princes of the powers of the air.”
This class is believed to possess but one of the three attributes of
man. They have neither immortal spirits nor tangible bodies; only
astral forms, which partake, in a distinguishing degree, of the element
to which they belong and also of the ether. They are a combination
of sublimated matter and a rudimental mind. Some are changeless, but
still have no separate individuality, acting collectively, so to say.
Others, of certain elements and species, change form under a fixed law
which kabalists explain. The most solid of their bodies is ordinarily
just immaterial enough to escape perception by our physical eyesight,
but not so unsubstantial but that they can be perfectly recognized by
the inner, or clairvoyant vision. They not only exist and can all live
in ether, but can handle and direct it for the production of physical
effects, as readily as we can compress air or water for the same
purpose by pneumatic and hydraulic apparatus; in which occupation they
are readily helped by the “human elementary.” More than this; they can
so condense it as to make to themselves tangible bodies, which by their
Protean powers they can cause to assume such likeness as they choose,
by taking as their models the portraits they find stamped in the memory
of the persons present. It is not necessary that the sitter should be
thinking at the moment of the one represented. His image may have faded
many years before. The mind receives indelible impression even from
chance acquaintance or persons encountered but once. As a few seconds
exposure of the sensitized photograph plate is all that is requisite to
preserve indefinitely the image of the sitter, so is it with the mind.
According to the doctrine of Proclus, the uppermost regions from the
zenith of the universe to the moon belonged to the gods or planetary
spirits, according to their hierarchies and classes. The highest among
them were the twelve _ŭper-ouranioi_, or supercelestial gods, having
whole legions of subordinate demons at their command. They are followed
next in rank and power by the _egkosmioi_, the intercosmic gods, each
of these presiding over a great number of demons, to whom they impart
their power and change it from one to another at will. These are
evidently the personified forces of nature in their mutual correlation,
the latter being represented by the third class or the “elementals” we
have just described.
Further on he shows, on the principle of the Hermetic axiom—of types,
and prototypes—that the lower spheres have their subdivisions and
classes of beings as well as the upper celestial ones, the former
being always subordinate to the higher ones. He held that the four
elements are all filled with _demons_, maintaining with Aristotle
that the universe is full, and that there is no void in nature.
The demons of the earth, air, fire, and water are of an elastic,
ethereal, semi-corporeal essence. It is these classes which officiate
as intermediate agents between the gods and men. Although lower in
intelligence than the _sixth_ order of the higher demons, these beings
preside directly over the elements and organic life. They direct
the growth, the inflorescence, the properties, and various changes
of plants. They are the personified ideas or virtues shed from the
heavenly _ulê_ into the inorganic matter; and, as the vegetable
kingdom is one remove higher than the mineral, these emanations from
the celestial gods take form and being in the plant, they become _its
soul_. It is that which Aristotle’s doctrine terms the _form_ in the
three principles of natural bodies, classified by him as privation,
matter, and form. His philosophy teaches that besides the original
matter, another principle is necessary to complete the triune nature
of every particle, and this is form; an invisible, but still, in an
ontological sense of the word, a substantial being, really distinct
from matter proper. Thus, in an animal or a plant, besides the bones,
the flesh, the nerves, the brains, and the blood, in the former, and
besides the pulpy matter, tissues, fibres, and juice in the latter,
which blood and juice, by circulating through the veins and fibres,
nourishes all parts of both animal and plant; and besides the animal
spirits, which are the principles of motion; and the chemical energy
which is transformed into vital force in the green leaf, there must be
a substantial form, which Aristotle called in the horse, the _horse’s
soul_; Proclus, the _demon_ of every mineral, plant, or animal, and the
mediæval philosophers, the _elementary spirits_ of the four kingdoms.
All this is held in our century as metaphysics and gross superstition.
Still, on strictly ontological principles, there is, in these old
hypotheses, some shadow of probability, some clew to the perplexing
“missing links” of exact science. The latter has become so dogmatical
of late, that all that lies beyond the ken of _inductive_ science
is termed imaginary; and we find Professor Joseph Le Conte stating
that some of the best scientists “ridicule the use of the term ‘vital
force,’ or vitality, as a remnant _of superstition_.”[516] De Candolle
suggests the term “vital movement,” instead of vital force;[517]
thus preparing for a final scientific leap which will transform the
immortal, thinking man, into an automaton with a clock-work inside him.
“But,” objects Le Conte, “can we conceive of movement without force?
And if the movement is peculiar, so also is _the form of force_.”
In the Jewish _Kabala_, the nature-spirits were known under the
general name of _Shedim_ and divided into four classes. The Persians
called them all _devs_; the Greeks, indistinctly designated them as
_demons_; the Egyptians knew them as _afrites_. The ancient Mexicans,
says Kaiser, believed in numerous spirit-abodes, into one of which the
shades of innocent children were placed until final disposal; into
another, situated in the sun, ascended the valiant souls of heroes;
while the hideous spectres of incorrigible sinners were sentenced to
wander and despair in subterranean caves, held in the bonds of the
earth atmosphere, unwilling and unable to liberate themselves. They
passed their time in communicating with mortals, and frightening those
who could see them. Some of the African tribes know them as _Yowahoos_.
In the Indian Pantheon there are no less than 330,000,000 of various
kinds of spirits, including elementals, which latter were termed by
the Brahmans the Daityas. These beings are known by the adepts to be
attracted toward certain quarters of the heavens by something of the
same mysterious property which makes the magnetic needle turn toward
the north, and certain plants to obey the same attraction. The various
races are also believed to have a special sympathy with certain human
temperaments, and to more readily exert power over such than others.
Thus, a bilious, lymphatic, nervous, or sanguine person would be
affected favorably or otherwise by conditions of the astral light,
resulting from the different aspects of the planetary bodies. Having
reached this general principle, after recorded observations extending
over an indefinite series of years, or ages, the adept astrologer
would require only to know what the planetary aspects were at a given
anterior date, and to apply his knowledge of the succeeding changes in
the heavenly bodies, to be able to trace, with approximate accuracy,
the varying fortunes of the personage whose horoscope was required,
and even to predict the future. The accuracy of the horoscope would
depend, of course, no less upon the astrologer’s knowledge of the
occult forces and races of nature, than upon his astronomical erudition.
Eliphas Levi expounds with reasonable clearness, in his _Dogme et
Rituel de la Haute Magie_, the law of reciprocal influences between
the planets and their combined effect upon the mineral, vegetable, and
animal kingdoms, as well as upon ourselves. He states that the astral
atmosphere is as constantly changing from day to day, and from hour
to hour, as the air we breathe. He quotes approvingly the doctrine
of Paracelsus that every man, animal, and plant bears external and
internal evidences of the influences dominant at the moment of germinal
development. He repeats the old kabalistic doctrine, that nothing is
unimportant in nature, and that even so small a thing as the birth
of one child upon our insignificant planet has its effect upon the
universe, as the whole universe has its own reäctive influence upon him.
“The stars,” he remarks, “are linked to each other by attractions which
hold them in equilibrium and cause them to move with regularity through
space. This net-work of light stretches from all the spheres to all
the spheres, and there is not a point upon any planet to which is not
attached one of these indestructible threads. The precise locality, as
well as the hour of birth, should then be calculated by the true adept
in astrology; then, when he shall have made the exact calculation of
the astral influences, it remains for him to count the chances of his
position in life, the helps or hindrances he is likely to encounter ...
and his natural impulses toward the accomplishment of his destiny.” He
also asserts that the individual force of the person, as indicating his
ability to conquer difficulties and subdue unfavorable propensities,
and so carve out his fortune, or to passively await what blind fate may
bring, must be taken into account.
A consideration of the subject from the standpoint of the ancients,
affords us, it will be seen, a very different view from that taken
by Professor Tyndall in his famous Belfast address. “To supersensual
beings,” says he, “which, however potent and invisible, were nothing
but species of _human creatures_, perhaps raised from among mankind,
and retaining all human passions and appetites, were handed over the
rule and governance of natural phenomena.”
To enforce his point, Mr. Tyndall conveniently quotes from Euripides
the familiar passage in Hume: “The gods toss all into confusion, mix
everything with its reverse, that all of us, from our ignorance and
uncertainty, may pay them the more worship and reverence.” Although
enunciating in _Chrysippus_ several Pythagorean doctrines, Euripides
is considered by every ancient writer as heterodox, therefore the
quotation proceeding from this philosopher does not at all strengthen
Mr. Tyndall’s argument.
As to the _human_ spirit, the notions of the older philosophers and
mediæval kabalists while differing in some particulars, agreed on the
whole; so that the doctrine of one may be viewed as the doctrine of the
other. The most substantial difference consisted in the location of the
immortal or divine spirit of man. While the ancient Neo-platonists held
that the Augoeides never descends hypostatically into the living man,
but only sheds more or less its radiance on the inner man—the astral
soul—the kabalists of the middle ages maintained that the spirit,
detaching itself from the ocean of light and spirit, entered into man’s
soul, where it remained through life imprisoned in the astral capsule.
This difference was the result of the belief of Christian kabalists,
more or less, in the dead letter of the allegory of the fall of man.
The soul, they said, became, through the fall of Adam, contaminated
with the world of matter, or Satan. Before it could appear with its
enclosed divine spirit in the presence of the Eternal, it had to
purify itself of the impurities of darkness. They compared “the spirit
imprisoned within the soul to a drop of water enclosed within a capsule
of gelatine and thrown in the ocean; so long as the capsule remains
whole the drop of water remains isolated; break the envelope and the
drop becomes a part of the ocean—its individual existence has ceased.
So it is with the spirit. As long as it is enclosed in its plastic
mediator, or soul, it has an individual existence. Destroy the capsule,
a result which may occur from the agonies of withered conscience,
crime, and moral disease, and the spirit returns back to its original
abode. Its individuality is gone.”
On the other hand, the philosophers who explained the “fall into
generation” in their own way, viewed spirit as something wholly
distinct from the soul. They allowed its presence in the astral capsule
only so far as the spiritual emanations or rays of the “shining
one” were concerned. Man and soul had to conquer their immortality
by ascending toward the unity with which, if successful, they were
finally linked, and into which they were absorbed, so to say. The
individualization of man after death depended on the spirit, not on
his soul and body. Although the word “personality,” in the sense in
which it is usually understood, is an absurdity, if applied literally
to our immortal essence, still the latter is a distinct entity,
immortal and eternal, _per se_; and, as in the case of criminals beyond
redemption, when the shining thread which links the spirit to the
soul, from the moment of the birth of a child, is violently snapped,
and the disembodied entity is left to share the fate of the lower
animals, to gradually dissolve into ether, and have its individuality
annihilated—even then the spirit remains a distinct being. It becomes
a planetary spirit, an angel; for _the gods of the Pagan or the
archangels of the Christian_, the direct emanations of the First Cause,
notwithstanding the hazardous statement of Swedenborg, _never were or
will be men_, on our planet, at least.
This specialization has been in all ages the stumbling-block of
metaphysicians. The whole esoterism of the Buddhistical philosophy
is based on this mysterious teaching, understood by so few persons,
and so totally misrepresented by many of the most learned scholars.
Even metaphysicians are too inclined to confound the effect with the
cause. A person may have won his immortal life, and remain the same
_inner-self_ he was on earth, throughout eternity; but this does not
imply necessarily that he must either remain the Mr. Smith or Brown he
was on earth, or lose his individuality. Therefore, the astral soul and
terrestrial body of man may, in the dark Hereafter, be absorbed into
the cosmical ocean of sublimated elements, and cease to feel his _ego_,
if this _ego_ did not deserve to soar higher; and the divine spirit
still remain an unchanged entity, though this terrestrial experience of
his emanations may be totally obliterated at the instant of separation
from the unworthy vehicle.
If the “spirit,” or the divine portion of the soul, is preëxistent as
a distinct being from all eternity, as Origen, Synesius, and other
Christian fathers and philosophers taught, and if it is the same, and
nothing more than the metaphysically-objective soul, how can it be
otherwise than eternal? And what matters it in such a case, whether man
leads an animal or a pure life, if, do what he may, he can never lose
his individuality? This doctrine is as pernicious in its consequences
as that of vicarious atonement. Had the latter dogma, in company with
the false idea that we are all immortal, been demonstrated to the
world in its true light, humanity would have been bettered by its
propagation. Crime and sin would be avoided, not for fear of earthly
punishment, or of a ridiculous hell, but for the sake of that which
lies the most deeply rooted in our inner nature—the desire of an
individual and distinct life in the hereafter, the positive assurance
that we cannot win it unless we “take the kingdom of heaven by
violence,” and the conviction that neither human prayers nor the blood
of another man will save us from individual destruction after death,
unless we firmly link ourselves during our terrestrial life with our
own immortal spirit—our GOD.
Pythagoras, Plato, Timæus of Locris, and the whole Alexandrian school
derived the soul from the universal World-Soul; and the latter was,
according to their own teachings—ether; something of such a fine nature
as to be perceived only by our inner sight. Therefore, it cannot be the
essence of the Monas, or _cause_, because the _anima mundi_ is but the
effect, the objective emanation of the former. Both the human spirit
and soul are preëxistent. But, while the former exists as a distinct
entity, an individualization, the soul exists as preëxisting matter, an
unscient portion of an intelligent whole. Both were originally formed
from the Eternal Ocean of Light; but as the theosophists expressed
it, there is a visible as well as invisible spirit in fire. They
made a difference between the _anima bruta_ and the _anima divina_.
Empedocles firmly believed all men and animals to possess two souls;
and in Aristotle we find that he calls one the reasoning soul—νοῦς,
and the other, the animal soul—ψυχή. According to these philosophers,
the reasoning soul comes from _without_ the universal soul, and the
other from _within_. This divine and superior region, in which they
located the invisible and supreme deity, was considered by them (by
Aristotle himself) as a fifth element, purely spiritual and divine,
whereas the _anima mundi_ proper was considered as composed of a
fine, igneous, and ethereal nature spread throughout the universe, in
short—ether. The Stoics, the greatest materialists of ancient days,
excepted the Invisible God and Divine Soul (Spirit) from any such a
corporeal nature. Their modern commentators and admirers, greedily
seizing the opportunity, built on this ground the supposition that the
Stoics believed in neither God nor soul. But Epicurus, whose doctrine
militating directly against the agency of a Supreme Being and gods,
in the formation or government of the world, placed him far above the
Stoics in atheism and materialism, taught, nevertheless, that the soul
is of a fine, tender essence, formed from the smoothest, roundest, and
finest atoms, which description still brings us to the same sublimated
ether. Arnobius, Tertullian, Irenæus, and Origen, notwithstanding their
Christianity, believed, with the more modern Spinoza and Hobbes, that
the soul was corporeal, though of a very fine nature.
This doctrine of the possibility of losing one’s soul and, hence,
individuality, militates with the ideal theories and progressive ideas
of some spiritualists, though Swedenborg fully adopts it. They will
never accept the kabalistic doctrine which teaches that it is only
through observing the law of harmony that individual life hereafter can
be obtained; and that the farther the inner and outer man deviate from
this fount of harmony, whose source lies in our divine spirit, the more
difficult it is to regain the ground.
But while the spiritualists and other adherents of Christianity have
little if any perception of this fact of the possible death and
obliteration of the human personality by the separation of the immortal
part from the perishable, the Swedenborgians fully comprehend it. One
of the most respected ministers of the New Church, the Rev. Chauncey
Giles, D.D., of New York, recently elucidated the subject in a public
discourse as follows: Physical death, or the death of the body, was a
provision of the divine economy for the benefit of man, a provision
by means of which he attained the higher ends of his being. But there
is another death which is the interruption of the divine order and
the destruction of every human element in man’s nature, and every
possibility of human happiness. This is the spiritual death, which
takes place before the dissolution of the body. “There may be a vast
development of man’s natural mind without that development being
accompanied by a particle of love of God, or of unselfish love of
man.” When one falls into a love of self and love of the world, with
its pleasures, losing the divine love of God and of the neighbor, he
falls from life to death. The higher principles which constitute the
essential elements of his humanity perish, and he lives only on the
natural plane of his faculties. Physically he exists, spiritually
he is dead. To all that pertain to the higher and the only enduring
phase of existence he is as much dead as his body becomes dead to all
the activities, delights, and sensations of the world when the spirit
has left it. This spiritual death results from disobedience of the
laws of spiritual life, which is followed by the same penalty as the
disobedience of the laws of the natural life. But the spiritually dead
have still their delights; they have their intellectual endowments and
power, and intense activities. All the animal delights are theirs, and
to multitudes of men and women these constitute the highest ideal of
human happiness. The tireless pursuit of riches, of the amusements and
entertainments of social life; the cultivation of graces of manner,
of taste in dress, of social preferment, of scientific distinction,
intoxicate and enrapture these dead-alive; but, the eloquent preacher
remarks, “these creatures, with all their graces, rich attire, and
brilliant accomplishments, are dead in the eye of the Lord and the
angels, and when measured by the only true and immutable standard have
no more genuine life than skeletons whose flesh has turned to dust.” A
high development of the intellectual faculties does not imply spiritual
and true life. Many of our greatest scientists are but animate
corpses—they have no spiritual sight because their spirits have left
them. So we might go through all ages, examine all occupations, weigh
all human attainments, and investigate all forms of society, and we
would find these _spiritually dead_ everywhere.
Pythagoras taught that the entire universe is one vast system
of mathematically correct combinations. Plato shows the deity
_geometrizing_. The world is sustained by the same law of equilibrium
and harmony upon which it was built. The centripetal force could not
manifest itself without the centrifugal in the harmonious revolutions
of the spheres; all forms are the product of this dual force in
nature. Thus, to illustrate our case, we may designate the spirit as
the centrifugal, and the soul as the centripetal, spiritual energies.
When in perfect harmony, both forces produce one result; break or
damage the centripetal motion of the earthly soul tending toward the
centre which attracts it; arrest its progress by clogging it with a
heavier weight of matter than it can bear, and the harmony of the
whole, which was its life, is destroyed. Individual life can only be
continued if sustained by this two-fold force. The least deviation from
harmony damages it; when it is destroyed beyond redemption the forces
separate and the form is gradually annihilated. After the death of the
depraved and the wicked, arrives the critical moment. If during life
the ultimate and desperate effort of the inner-self to reunite itself
with the faintly-glimmering ray of its divine parent is neglected; if
this ray is allowed to be more and more shut out by the thickening
crust of matter, the soul, once freed from the body, follows its
earthly attractions, and is magnetically drawn into and held within the
dense fogs of the material atmosphere. Then it begins to sink lower
and lower, until it finds itself, when returned to consciousness, in
what the ancients termed _Hades_. The annihilation of such a soul is
never instantaneous; it may last centuries, perhaps; for nature never
proceeds by jumps and starts, and the astral soul being formed of
elements, the law of evolution must bide its time. Then begins the
fearful law of compensation, the _Yin-youan_ of the Buddhists.
This class of spirits are called the “terrestrial” or “_earthly_
elementary,” in contradistinction to the other classes, as we have
shown in the introductory chapter. In the East they are known as the
“Brothers of the Shadow.” Cunning, low, vindictive, and seeking to
retaliate their sufferings upon humanity, they become, until final
annihilation, vampires, ghouls, and prominent actors. These are the
leading “stars” on the great spiritual stage of “materialization,”
which phenomena they perform with the help of the more intelligent of
the genuine-born “elemental” creatures, which hover around and welcome
them with delight in their own spheres. Henry Kunrath, the great German
kabalist, has on a plate of his rare work, _Amphitheatri Sapientiæ
Æternæ_, representations of the four classes of these human “elementary
spirits.” Once past the threshold of the sanctuary of initiation, once
that an adept has lifted the “Veil of Isis,” the mysterious and jealous
goddess, he has nothing to fear; but till then he is in constant danger.
Although Aristotle himself, anticipating the modern physiologists,
regarded the human mind as a material substance, and ridiculed the
hylozoïsts, nevertheless he fully believed in the existence of a
“double” soul, or spirit and soul.[518] He laughed at Strabo for
believing that any particles of matter, _per se_, could have life
and intellect in themselves sufficient to fashion by degrees such a
multiform world as ours.[519] Aristotle is indebted for the sublime
morality of his Nichomachean Ethics to a thorough study of the
_Pythagoric Ethical Fragments_; for the latter can be easily shown to
have been the source at which he gathered his ideas, though he might
not have sworn “by him who the tetractys found.”[520] Finally, what
do we know so certain about Aristotle? His philosophy is so abstruse
that he constantly leaves his reader to supply by the imagination
the missing links of his logical deductions. Moreover, we know that
before his works ever reached our scholars, who delight in his
seemingly atheistical arguments in support of his doctrine of fate,
these works passed through too many hands to have remained immaculate.
From Theophrastus, his legator, they passed to Neleus, whose heirs
kept them mouldering in subterranean caves for nearly 150 years;[521]
after which, we learn that his manuscripts were copied and much
augmented by Apellicon of Theos, who supplied such paragraphs as had
become illegible, by conjectures of his own, probably many of these
drawn from the depths of his inner consciousness. Our scholars of the
nineteenth century might certainly profit well by Aristotle’s example,
were they as anxious to imitate him practically as they are to throw
his inductive method and materialistic theories at the head of the
Platonists. We invite them to collect _facts_ as carefully as he did,
instead of denying those they know nothing about.
What we have said in the introductory chapter and elsewhere, of mediums
and the tendency of their mediumship, is not based upon conjecture,
but upon actual experience and observation. There is scarcely one
phase of mediumship, of either kind, that we have not seen exemplified
during the past twenty-five years, in various countries. India, Thibet,
Borneo, Siam, Egypt, Asia Minor, America (North and South), and other
parts of the world, have each displayed to us its peculiar phase of
mediumistic phenomena and magical power. Our varied experience has
taught us two important truths, viz.: that for the exercise of the
latter personal purity and the exercise of a trained and indomitable
will-power are indispensable; and that spiritualists can never assure
themselves of the genuineness of mediumistic manifestations, unless
they occur in the light and under such reasonable test conditions as
would make an attempted fraud instantly noticed.
For fear of being misunderstood, we would remark that while, as a rule,
physical phenomena are produced by the nature-spirits, of their own
motion and to please their own fancy, still good disembodied human
spirits, under _exceptional_ circumstances, such as the aspiration
of a pure heart or the occurrence of some favoring emergency, can
manifest their presence by any of the phenomena _except personal
materialization_. But it must be a mighty attraction indeed to draw a
pure, disembodied spirit from its radiant home into the foul atmosphere
from which it escaped upon leaving its earthly body.
Magi and theurgic philosophers objected most severely to the “evocation
of souls.” “Bring her (the soul) not forth, lest in departing she
retain something,” says Psellus.[522]
“It becomes you not to behold them _before your body is initiated_,
Since, by always alluring, they seduce the souls of the uninitiated,”
says the same philosopher, in another passage.[523]
They objected to it for several good reasons. 1. “It is extremely
difficult to distinguish a good dæmon from a bad one,” says Iamblichus.
2. If a human soul succeeds in penetrating the density of the earth’s
atmosphere—always oppressive to her, often hateful—still there is a
danger the soul is unable to come into proximity with the material
world without that she cannot avoid; “departing, she _retains_
something,” that is to say, contaminating her purity, for which she
has to suffer more or less after her departure. Therefore, the true
theurgist will avoid causing any more suffering to this pure denizen
of the higher sphere than is absolutely required by the interests of
humanity. It is only the practitioner of black magic who compels the
presence, by the powerful incantations of necromancy, of the tainted
souls of such as have lived bad lives, and are ready to aid his selfish
designs. Of intercourse with the Augoeides, through the mediumistic
powers of _subjective_ mediums, we elsewhere speak. The theurgists
employed chemicals and mineral substances to chase away evil spirits.
Of the latter, a stone called Μνίζουριν was one of the most powerful
agents.
“When you shall see a _terrestrial_ demon approaching,
Exclaim, and sacrifice the stone Mnizurin,”
exclaims a Zoroastrian oracle (_Psel._, 40).
And now, to descend from the eminence of theurgico-magian poetry to the
“unconscious” magic of our present century, and the prose of a modern
kabalist, we will review it in the following:
In Dr. Morin’s _Journal de Magnétisme_, published a few years since
in Paris, at a time when the “table-turning” was raging in France, a
curious letter was published.
“Believe me, sir,” wrote the anonymous correspondent, “that there are
no spirits, no ghosts, no angels, no demons _enclosed in a table_; but,
all of these can be found there, nevertheless, for that depends on _our
own wills_ and our imaginations.... This MENSAbulism[524] is an ancient
phenomenon ... misunderstood by us moderns, but natural, for all that,
and which pertains to physics and psychology; unfortunately, it had
to remain incomprehensible until the discovery of electricity and
heliography, as, to explain a fact of spiritual nature, we are obliged
to base ourselves on a corresponding fact of a material order....
“As we all know, the daguerreotype-plate may be impressed, not only
by objects, but also by their reflections. Well, the phenomenon in
question, which ought to be named _mental photography_, produces,
besides _realities_, the dreams of our imagination, with such a
fidelity that very often we become unable to distinguish a copy taken
from _one present_, from a negative obtained of an _image_....
“The _magnetization_ of a table or of a person is absolutely identical
in its results; it is the saturation of a foreign body by either the
_intelligent_ vital electricity, or the thought of the magnetizer and
those present.”
Nothing can give a better or a more just idea of it than the electric
battery gathering the fluid on its conductor, to obtain thereof a
_brute_ force which manifests itself in sparks of light, etc. Thus,
the electricity accumulated on an isolated body acquires a power
of reaction equal to the action, either for charging, magnetizing,
decomposing, inflaming, or for discharging its vibrations far away.
These are the visible effects of the _blind_, or crude electricity
produced by blind elements—the word blind being used by the table
itself in contradistinction to the _intelligent_ electricity. But there
evidently exists a corresponding electricity produced by the cerebral
pile of man; this _soul-electricity_, this spiritual and universal
ether, which is the _ambient, middle nature of the metaphysical
universe_, or rather of the _incorporeal_ universe, has to be studied
before it is admitted by science, which, having no idea of it, will
never know anything of the great phenomenon of life until she does.
“It appears that to manifest itself the cerebral electricity requires
the help of the ordinary statical electricity; when the latter is
lacking in the atmosphere—when the air is very damp, for instance—you
can get little or nothing of either tables or mediums....
“There is no need for the ideas to be formulated very precisely in the
brains of the persons present; the _table_ discovers and formulates
them _itself_, in either prose or verse, but always correctly; the
table requires time to compose a verse; it begins, then it erases a
word, corrects it, and sometimes sends back the epigram to our address
... if the persons present are in sympathy with each other, _it_ jokes
and laughs with us as any living person could. As to the things of the
exterior world, it has to content itself with conjectures, as well as
ourselves; _it_ (the table) composes little philosophical systems,
discusses and maintains them as the most cunning rhetorician might. In
short, it creates itself a conscience and a reason properly belonging
to itself, but with the materials it finds in us....
“The Americans are persuaded that they talk with their dead; some think
(more truly) that these are _spirits_; others take them for angels;
others again for devils ... (the _intelligence_) assuming the shape
which fits the conviction and preconceived opinion of every one; so
did the initiates of the temples of Serapis, of Delphi, and other
theurgico-medical establishments of the same kind. They were convinced
beforehand that they would communicate with their gods; and _they_
never failed.
“We, who well know the value of the phenomenon ... are perfectly sure
that after having charged the table with our magnetic _efflux_, we have
called to life, or created an intelligence analogous to our own, which
like ourselves is endowed with a free will, can talk and discuss with
us, with a degree of superior lucidity, considering that the resultant
is stronger than the individual, or rather the whole is larger than a
part of it.... We must not accuse Herodotus of telling us fibs when he
records the most extraordinary circumstances, for we must hold them to
be as true and correct as the rest of historical facts which are to be
found in all the Pagan writers of antiquity....
“The phenomenon is as old as the world.... The priests of India and
China practiced it before the Egyptians and the Greeks. The savages
and the Esquimaux know it well. It is the phenomenon of Faith, sole
source of every prodigy,” and it will be done to you according to _your
faith_. The one who enunciated this profound doctrine was verily the
incarnated word of Truth; he neither deceived himself, nor wanted to
deceive others; he expounded an axiom which we now repeat, without much
hope of seeing it accepted.
“Man is a microcosm, or a little world; he carries in him a fragment of
the great _All_, in a chaotic state. The task of our half-gods is to
disentangle from it the share belonging to them by an incessant mental
and material labor. They have their task to do, the perpetual invention
of new products, of new moralities, and the proper arrangement of the
crude and formless material furnished them by the Creator, who created
them in His own image, that they should create in their turn and so
complete here the work of the Creation; an immense labor which can be
achieved only when the _whole_ will become so perfect, that it will be
like unto God Himself, and thus able to survive to itself. We are very
far yet from that final moment, for we can say that everything is to be
done, to be undone, and _outdone_ as yet on our globe, institutions,
machinery, and products.
“_Mens non solum agitat sed creat molem._
“We live in this life, in an ambient, intellectual centre, which
entertains between human beings and things a necessary and perpetual
solidarity; every brain is a ganglion, a station of a universal
_neurological_ telegraphy in constant rapport with the central and
other stations by the vibrations of thought.
“The spiritual sun shines for souls as the material sun shines for
bodies, for the universe _is double_ and follows the law of couples.
The ignorant operator interprets erroneously the divine dispatches, and
often delivers them in a false and ridiculous manner. Thus study and
true science alone can destroy the superstitions and nonsense spread by
the ignorant interpreters placed at the _stations of teaching_ among
every people in this world. These blind interpreters of the _Verbum_,
the WORD, have always tried to impose on their pupils the obligation to
swear to everything without examination in _verba magistri_.
“Alas! we could wish for nothing better were they to translate
correctly the _inner_ voices, which voices never deceive but those who
have _false spirits_ in them. ‘It is our duty,’ they say, ‘to interpret
oracles; it is we who have received the exclusive mission for it from
heaven, _spiritus flat ubi vult_, and it blows on us alone....’
“It blows _on every one_, and the rays of the spiritual light
illuminate every conscience; and when all the bodies and all the minds
will reflect equally this dual light, people will see a great deal
clearer than they do now.”
We have translated and quoted the above fragments for their great
originality and truthfulness. We know the writer; fame proclaims him a
great kabalist, and a few friends know him as a truthful and honest man.
The letter shows, moreover, that the writer has well and carefully
studied the chameleon-like nature of the intelligences presiding over
spiritual circles. That they are of the same kind and race as those
so frequently mentioned in antiquity, admits of as little doubt as
that the present generation of men are of the same nature as were
human beings in the days of Moses. Subjective manifestations proceed,
under harmonious conditions, from those beings which were known as
the “good demons” in days of old. Sometimes, but rarely, the planetary
spirits—beings of another race than our own—produce them; sometimes the
spirits of our translated and beloved friends; sometimes nature-spirits
of one or more of the countless tribes; but most frequently of all
terrestrial elementary spirits, disembodied evil men, the Diakka of A.
Jackson Davis.
We do not forget what we have elsewhere written about _subjective_ and
_objective_ mediumistic phenomena. We keep the distinction always in
mind. There are good and bad of both classes. An impure medium will
attract to his impure inner self, the vicious, depraved, malignant
influences as inevitably as one that is pure draws only those that are
good and pure. Of the latter kind of medium where can a nobler example
be found than the gentle Baroness Adelma von Vay, of Austria (born
Countess Wurmbrandt), who is described to us by a correspondent as “the
Providence of her neighborhood?” She uses her mediumistic power to heal
the sick and comfort the afflicted. To the rich she is a phenomenon;
but to the poor a ministering angel. For many years she has seen and
recognized the nature-spirits or cosmic elementaries, and found them
always friendly. But this was because she was a pure, good woman. Other
correspondents of the Theosophical Society have not fared so well at
the hands of these apish and impish beings. The Havanna case, elsewhere
described, is an example.
Though spiritualists discredit them ever so much, these nature-spirits
are realities. If the gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines
of the Rosicrucians existed in their days, they must exist now.
Bulwer-Lytton’s _Dweller of the Threshold_, is a modern conception,
modelled on the ancient type of the _Sulanuth_[525] of the Hebrews and
Egyptians, which is mentioned in the _Book of Jasher_.[526]
The Christians call them “devils,” “imps of Satan,” and like
characteristic names. They are nothing of the kind, but simply
creatures of ethereal matter, irresponsible, and neither good nor bad,
unless influenced by a superior intelligence. It is very extraordinary
to hear devout Catholics abuse and misrepresent the nature-spirits,
when one of their greatest authorities, Clement the Alexandrinian,
disposed of them, by describing these creatures as they really are.
Clement, who perhaps had been a theurgist as well as a Neo-platonist,
thus arguing upon good authority, remarks, that it is absurd to call
them devils,[527] for they are only _inferior_ angels, “the powers
which inhabit elements, move the winds and distribute showers, and
as such are agents and subject to God.”[528] Origen, who before he
became a Christian also belonged to the Platonic school, is of the same
opinion. Porphyry describes these dæmons more carefully than any one
else.
When the possible nature of the manifesting intelligences, which
science believes to be a “psychic force,” and spiritualists the
identical spirits of the dead, is better known, then will academicians
and believers turn to the old philosophers for information.
Let us for a moment imagine an intelligent orang-outang or some African
anthropoid ape disembodied, _i. e._, deprived of its physical and in
possession of an astral, if not an immortal body. We have found in
spiritual journals many instances where apparitions of departed pet
dogs and other animals have been seen. Therefore, upon spiritualistic
testimony, we must think that such animal “spirits” do appear although
we reserve the right of concurring with the ancients that the forms
are but tricks of the elementals. Once open the door of communication
between the terrestrial and the spiritual world, what prevents the
ape from producing physical phenomena such as he sees human spirits
produce. And why may not these excel in cleverness of ingenuity many of
those which have been witnessed in spiritual circles? Let spiritualists
answer. The orang-outang of Borneo is little, if any, inferior to the
savage man in intelligence. Mr. Wallace and other great naturalists
give instances of its wonderful acuteness, although its brains are
inferior in cubic capacity to the most undeveloped of savages. These
apes lack but speech to be men of low grade. The sentinels placed by
monkeys; the sleeping chambers selected and built by orang-outangs;
their prevision of danger and calculations, which show more than
instinct; their choice of leaders whom they obey; and the exercise of
many of their faculties, certainly entitle them to a place at least
on a level with many a flat-headed Australian. Says Mr. Wallace, “The
mental requirements of savages, and the faculties actually exercised by
them, are very little above those of the animals.”
Now, people assume that there can be no apes in the other world,
because apes have no “souls.” But apes have as much intelligence, it
appears, as some men; why, then, should these men, in no way superior
to the apes, have immortal spirits, and the apes none? The materialists
will answer that neither the one nor the other has a spirit, but that
annihilation overtakes each at physical death. But the spiritual
philosophers of all times have agreed that man occupies a step one
degree higher than the animal, and is possessed of that something
which it lacks, be he the most untutored of savages or the wisest of
philosophers. The ancients, as we have seen, taught that while man is a
trinity of body, astral spirit, and immortal soul, the animal is but a
duality—a being having a physical body and an astral spirit animating
it. Scientists can distinguish no difference in the elements composing
the bodies of men and brutes; and the kabalists agree with them so
far as to say that the astral bodies (or, as the physicists would
call it, “the life-principle”) of animals and men are _identical_ in
essence. Physical man is but the highest development of animal life.
If, as the scientists tell us, even _thought_ is matter, and every
sensation of pain or pleasure, every transient desire is accompanied
by a disturbance of ether; and those bold speculators, the authors of
the _Unseen Universe_ believe that thought is conceived “to affect the
matter of another universe simultaneously with this;” why, then, should
not the gross, brutish thought of an orang-outang, or a dog, impressing
itself on the ethereal waves of the astral light, as well as that of
man, assure the animal a continuity of life after death, or “a future
state?”
The kabalists held, and now hold, that it is unphilosophical to admit
that the astral body of man can survive corporeal death, and at the
same time assert that the astral body of the ape is resolved into
independent molecules. That which survives as an _individuality_
after the death of the body is the _astral soul_, which Plato, in the
_Timæus_ and _Gorgias_, calls the _mortal_ soul, for, according to
the Hermetic doctrine, it throws off its more material particles at
every progressive change into a higher sphere. Socrates narrates to
Callicles[529] that this _mortal_ soul retains all the characteristics
of the body after the death of the latter; so much so, indeed, that a
man marked with the whip will have his astral body “full of the prints
and scars.” The astral spirit is a faithful duplicate of the body,
both in a physical and spiritual sense. The Divine, the highest and
_immortal_ spirit, can be neither punished nor rewarded. To maintain
such a doctrine would be at the same time absurd and blasphemous, for
it is not merely a flame lit at the central and inexhaustible fountain
of light, but actually a portion of it, and of identical essence. It
assures immortality to the individual astral being in proportion to the
willingness of the latter to receive it. So long as the _double_ man,
_i. e._, the man of flesh and spirit, keeps within the limits of the
law of spiritual continuity; so long as the divine spark lingers in
him, however faintly, he is on the road to an immortality in the future
state. But those who resign themselves to a materialistic existence,
shutting out the divine radiance shed by their spirit, at the beginning
of the earthly pilgrimage, and stifling the warning voice of that
faithful sentry, the conscience, which serves as a focus for the light
in the soul—such beings as these, having left behind conscience and
spirit, and crossed the boundaries of matter, will of necessity have to
follow its laws.
Matter is as indestructible and eternal as the immortal spirit itself,
but only in its particles, and not as organized forms. The body of
so grossly materialistic a person as above described, having been
deserted by its spirit before physical death, when that event occurs,
the plastic material, astral soul, following the laws of blind matter,
shapes itself thoroughly into the mould which vice has been gradually
preparing for it through the earth-life of the individual. Then, as
Plato says, it assumes the form of that “animal to which it resembled
in its evil ways”[530] during life. “It is an ancient saying,” he tells
us, “that the souls departing hence exist in Hades and return hither
again and _are produced from the dead_[531].... But those who are found
to have lived an eminently holy life, these are they who arrive at the
pure abode ABOVE and DWELL ON THE UPPER PARTS of the earth”[532] (the
ethereal region). In _Phædrus_, again, he says that when man has ended
his _first_ life (on earth), some go to places of punishment _beneath_
the earth.[533] This region _below_ the earth, the kabalists do not
understand as a place inside the earth, but maintain it to be a sphere,
far inferior in perfection to the earth, and far more material.
Of all the modern speculators upon the seeming incongruities of the
_New Testament_, alone the authors of the _Unseen Universe_ seem to
have caught a glimpse of its kabalistic truths, respecting the gehenna
of the universe.[534] This gehenna, termed by the occultists the
_eighth_ sphere (numbering inversely), is merely a planet like our
own, _attached to the latter and following it in its penumbra_; a kind
of dust-hole, a “place where all its garbage and filth is consumed,”
to borrow an expression of the above-mentioned authors, and on which
all the dross and scorification of the cosmic matter pertaining to our
planet is in a continual state of remodelling.
The secret doctrine teaches that man, if he wins immortality, will
remain forever the trinity that he is in life, and will continue so
throughout all the spheres. The astral body, which in this life is
covered by a gross physical envelope, becomes—when relieved of that
covering by the process of corporeal death—in its turn the shell of
another and more ethereal body. This begins developing from the moment
of death, and becomes perfected when the astral body of the earthly
form finally separates from it. This process, they say, is repeated
at every new transition from sphere to sphere. But the immortal
soul, “the silvery spark,” observed by _Dr. Fenwick_ in _Margrave’s_
brain,[535] and not found by him in the animals, never changes, but
remains indestructible “by aught that shatters its tabernacle.” The
descriptions by Porphyry and Iamblichus and others, of the spirits of
animals, which inhabit the astral light, are corroborated by those of
many of the most trustworthy and intelligent clairvoyants. Sometimes
the animal forms are even made visible to every person present at a
spiritual circle, by being materialized. In his _People from the Other
World_, Colonel H. S. Olcott describes a materialized squirrel which
followed a spirit-woman into the view of the spectators, disappeared
and reappeared before their eyes several times, and finally followed
the spirit into the cabinet.
Let us advance another step in our argument. If there is such a thing
as existence in the spiritual world after corporeal death, then it
must occur in accordance with the law of evolution. It takes man from
his place at the apex of the pyramid of matter, and lifts him into a
sphere of existence where the same inexorable law follows him. And if
it follows him, why not everything else in nature? Why not animals and
plants, which have all a life-principle, and whose gross forms decay
like his, when that life-principle leaves them? If his astral body
becomes more ethereal upon attaining the other sphere, why not theirs?
They, as well as he, have been evolved out of condensed cosmic matter,
and our physicists cannot see the slightest difference between the
molecules of the four kingdoms of nature, which are thus specified by
Professor Le Conte:
4. _Animal Kingdom._
3. Vegetable Kingdom.
2. Mineral Kingdom.
1. Elements.
The progress of matter from each of these planes to the plane above is
continuous; and, according to Le Conte, there is no force in nature
capable of raising matter at once from No. 1 to No. 3, or from No. 2
to No. 4, without stopping and receiving an accession of force of a
different kind on the intermediate plane.
Now, will any one presume to say that out of a given number of
molecules, _originally and constantly homogeneous, and all energized
by the same principle of evolution_, a certain number can be carried
through those four kingdoms to the final result of evolving immortal
man, and the others not be allowed to progress beyond planes 1, 2, and
3? Why should not _all_ these molecules have an equal future before
them; the mineral becoming plant, the plant, animal, and the animal,
man—if not upon _this_ earth, at least somewhere in the boundless
realms of space? The harmony which geometry and mathematics—the only
exact sciences—demonstrate to be the law of the universe, would be
destroyed if evolution were perfectly exemplified in man alone and
limited in the subordinate kingdoms. What logic suggests, psychometry
proves; and, as we said before, it is not unlikely that a monument will
one day be erected by men of science to Joseph R. Buchanan, its modern
discoverer. If a fragment of mineral, fossilized plant, or animal form
gives the psychometer as vivid and accurate pictures of their previous
conditions, as a fragment of human bone does of those of the individual
to which it belonged, it would seem as if the same subtile spirit
pervaded all nature, and was inseparable from organic or inorganic
substances. If anthropologists, physiologists, and psychologists are
equally perplexed by primal and final causes, and by finding in matter
so much similarity in all its forms, but in spirit such abysses of
difference, it is, perhaps, because their inquiries are limited to our
visible globe, and that they cannot, or dare not, go beyond. The spirit
of a mineral, plant, or animal, may begin to form here, and reach its
final development millions of ages hereafter, on other planets, known
or unknown, visible or invisible to astronomers. For, who is able to
controvert the theory previously suggested, that the earth itself will,
like the living creatures to which it has given birth, ultimately, and
after passing through its own stage of death and dissolution, become an
etherealized astral planet? “As above, so below;” harmony is the great
law of nature.
Harmony in the physical and mathematical world of sense, is _justice_
in the spiritual one. Justice produces harmony, and injustice, discord;
and discord, on a cosmical scale, means chaos—annihilation.
If there is a developed immortal spirit in man, it must be in every
thing else, at least in a latent or germinal state, and it can only be
a question of time for each of these germs to become fully developed.
What gross injustice it would be for an impenitent criminal man, the
perpetrator of a brutal murder when in the exercise of his free will,
to have an immortal spirit which in time may be washed clean of
sin, and enjoying perfect happiness, while a poor horse, innocent of
all crime, should toil and suffer under the merciless torture of his
master’s whip during a whole life, and then be annihilated at death?
Such a belief implies a brutal injustice, and is only possible among
people taught in the dogma that everything is created for man, and he
alone is the sovereign of the universe;—a sovereign so mighty that to
save him from the consequences of his own misdeeds, it was not too much
that the God of the universe should die to placate his own just wrath.
If the most abject savage, with a brain “very little inferior to that
of a philosopher”[536] (the latter developed physically by ages of
civilization), is still, as regards the actual exercise of his mental
faculties, very little superior to an animal, is it just to infer
that both he and the ape will not have the opportunity to become
philosophers; the ape in this world, the man on some other planet
peopled equally with beings created in _some other image_ of God?
Says Professor Denton, when speaking of the future of psychometry:
“Astronomy will not disdain the assistance of this power. As new forms
of organic being are revealed, when we go back to the earlier geologic
periods, so new groupings of the stars, new constellations, will be
displayed, when the heavens of those early periods are examined by the
piercing gaze of future psychometers. An accurate map of the starry
heavens during the Silurian period may reveal to us many secrets that
we have been unable to discover.... Why may we not indeed be able to
read the history of the various heavenly bodies ... their geological,
their natural, and, perchance, their human history?... I have good
reason to believe that trained psychometers will be able to travel from
planet to planet, and read their present condition minutely, and their
past history.”[537]
Herodotus tells us that in the eighth of the towers of Belus, in
Babylon, used by the sacerdotal astrologers, there was an uppermost
room, a sanctuary, where the prophesying priestesses slept to receive
communications from the god. Beside the couch stood a table of gold,
upon which were laid various stones, which Manetho informs us were all
aërolites. The priestesses developed the prophetic vision in themselves
by pressing one of these sacred stones against their heads and bosoms.
The same took place at Thebes, and at Patara, in Lycia.[538]
This would seem to indicate that psychometry was known and extensively
practiced by the ancients. We have somewhere seen it stated that the
profound knowledge possessed, according to Draper, by the ancient
Chaldean astrologers, of the planets and their relations, was obtained
more by the divination of the betylos, or the meteoric stone, than
by astronomical instruments. Strabo, Pliny, Helancius—all speak of
the electrical, or electro-magnetic power of the betyli. They were
worshipped in the remotest antiquity in Egypt and Samothrace, as
magnetic stones, “containing souls which had fallen from heaven;” and
the priests of Cybelè wore a small betylos on their bodies. How curious
the coincidence between the practice of the priests of Belus and the
experiments of Professor Denton!
As Professor Buchanan truthfully remarks of psychometry, it will enable
us “ ... to detect vice and crime. No criminal act ... can escape the
detection of psychometry, when its powers are properly brought forth
... the sure detection of guilt by psychometry (no matter how secret
the act) will nullify all concealment.”[539]
Speaking of the elementary, Porphyry says: “These invisible beings
have been receiving from men honors as gods ... a universal belief
makes them capable of becoming very malevolent: it proves that their
wrath is kindled against those who neglect to offer them a legitimate
worship.”[540]
Homer describes them in the following terms: “Our _gods_ appear to us
when we offer them sacrifice ... _sitting themselves at our tables,
they partake of our festival meals_. Whenever they meet on his travels
a solitary Phœnician, they _serve to him as guides_, and otherwise
manifest their presence. We can say that _our piety_ approaches us
to them as much as crime and bloodshed unite the Cyclopes and the
ferocious race of giants.”[541] The latter proving that these gods were
kind and beneficent _dæmons_, and that, whether they were _disembodied_
spirits or elementary beings, they were no _devils_.
The language of Porphyry, who was himself a direct disciple of
Plotinus, is still more explicit as to the nature of these spirits.
“Demons,” he says, “are invisible; but they know _how to clothe
themselves_ with forms and configurations subjected to numerous
variations, which can be explained by their nature _having much of the
corporeal in itself_. Their abode is in the neighborhood of the earth
... and _when they can escape the vigilance of the good dæmons, there
is no mischief they will not dare commit_. One day they will employ
brute force; another, cunning.”[542] Further, he says: “It is a child’s
play for them to arouse in us vile passions, to impart to societies
and nations turbulent doctrines, provoking wars, seditions, and other
public calamities, and then tell you ‘that all of these is the work of
the gods.’ ... These spirits pass their time in cheating and deceiving
mortals, creating around them illusions and prodigies; _their greatest
ambition_ is to pass as _gods_ and _souls_ (disembodied spirits).”[543]
Iamblichus, the great theurgist of the Neo-platonic school, a man
skilled in sacred magic, teaches that “good dæmons appear to us _in
reality_, while the bad ones can manifest themselves but under the
_shadowy forms of phantoms_.” Further, he corroborates Porphyry, and
tells that “ ... the _good ones fear not the light_, while the wicked
_ones require darkness_.... The sensations they excite in us make us
believe in the presence and reality of things they show, though these
things be absent.”[544]
Even the most practiced theurgists found danger sometimes in their
dealings with certain elementaries, and we have Iamblichus stating
that, “The gods, the angels, and the dæmons, as well as the _souls_,
may be summoned through evocation and prayer.... But when, during
theurgic operations, a mistake is made, beware! Do not imagine that
you are communicating with beneficent divinities, who have answered
your earnest prayer; no, for they are bad dæmons, only under the guise
of good ones! For the elementaries often clothe themselves with the
similitude of the good, and assume a rank very much superior to that
they really occupy. Their boasting betrays them.”[545]
Some twenty years since, Baron Du Potet, disgusted with the
indifference of the scientists, who persisted in seeing in the greatest
psychological phenomena only the result of clever trickery, gave vent
to his indignation in the following terms:
“Here am I, on my way, I may truly say, to the land of marvels! I am
preparing to shock every opinion, and provoke laughter in our most
illustrious scientists ... for I am convinced that _agents of an
immense potency_ exist _outside of us_; that they can _enter in us_;
move our limbs and organs; and use us as they please. It was, after
all, the belief of our fathers and of the whole of antiquity. Every
religion admitted the reality of _spiritual agents_.... Recalling
innumerable phenomena which I have produced in the sight of thousands
of persons, seeing the _beastly indifference_ of _official_ science, in
presence of a discovery which transports the mind into the regions of
the unknown [sic]; an old man, at the very _moment when I ought to be
just being born_.... I am not sure if it would not have been better
for me to have shared the common ignorance.
“I have suffered calumnies to be written without refuting them....
At one time it is simple ignorance which speaks, and I am silent; at
another still, superficiality, raising its voice, makes a bluster, and
I find myself hesitating whether or not to speak. Is this indifference
or laziness? Has fear the power to paralyze my spirit? No; none of
these causes affect me; I know simply that it is necessary to prove
what one asserts, and this restrains me. For, in justifying my
assertions, in showing the living FACT, which proves my sincerity and
the truth, I translate OUTSIDE THE PRECINCTS OF THE TEMPLE the sacred
inscription, WHICH NO PROFANE EYE SHOULD EVER READ.
“You doubt sorcery and magic? O, truth! thy possession is a heavy
burden!”[546]
With a bigotry which one might search for in vain outside the church in
whose interest he writes, des Mousseaux quotes the above language, as
proof positive that this devoted savant, and all who share his belief,
have given themselves over to the dominion of the _Evil One_!
Self-complacency is the most serious obstacle to the enlightenment
of the modern spiritualist. His thirty years’ experience with the
phenomena seem to him sufficient to have established intermundane
intercourse upon an unassailable basis. His thirty years have not only
brought to him the conviction that the dead communicate and thus prove
the spirit’s immortality, but also settled in his mind an idea that
little or nothing can be learned of the other world, except through
mediums.
For the spiritualists, the records of the past either do not exist,
or if they are familiar with its gathered treasures, they regard
them as having no bearing upon their own experiences. And yet, the
problems which so vex them, were solved thousands of years ago by the
theurgists, who have left the keys to those who will search for them
in the proper spirit and with knowledge. Is it possible that nature
has changed her work, and that we are encountering different spirits
and different laws from those of old? Or can any spiritualist imagine
that he knows more, or even as much about mediumistic phenomena or
the nature of various spirits, as a priest-caste who spent their
lives in theurgical practice, which had been known and studied for
countless centuries? If the narratives of Owen and Hare, of Edmonds,
and Crookes, and Wallace are credible, why not those of Herodotus,
the “Father of History,” of Iamblichus, and Porphyry, and hundreds of
other ancient authors? If the spiritualists have their phenomena under
test-conditions, so had the old theurgists, whose records, moreover,
show that they could produce and vary them at will. The day when
this fact shall be recognized, and profitless speculations of modern
investigators shall give place to patient study of the works of the
theurgists, will mark the dawn of new and important discoveries in the
field of psychology.
CHAPTER X.
Τῆς δὲ γὰρ ἐκ τριάδος πᾶν πνεῦμα πατὴρ—ἐκέρασε.
—TAY.: _Lyd. de Mens._, 20.
“The more powerful souls perceive truth through themselves, and
are of a more inventive nature. Such souls are saved through
their own strength, according to the oracle.”—PROCLUS in 1 Alc.
“Since the soul perpetually runs and _passes through all
things_ in a certain space of time, which being performed, it
is presently compelled to run back again through all things,
and unfold the same web of generation in the world ... for
as often as the same causes return, the same effects will in
like manner be returned.”—FICIN. _de Im. An._, 129, _Chaldean
Oracles_.
“If not to some peculiar end assign’d,
Study’s the specious trifling of the mind.”—YOUNG.
From the moment when the fœtal embryo is formed until the old man,
gasping his last, drops into the grave, neither the beginning nor the
end is understood by scholastic science; all before us is a blank,
all after us chaos. For it there is no evidence as to the relations
between spirit, soul, and body, either before or after death. The mere
life-principle itself presents an unsolvable enigma, upon the study
of which materialism has vainly exhausted its intellectual powers.
In the presence of a corpse the skeptical physiologist stands dumb
when asked by his pupil whence came the former tenant of that empty
box, and whither it has gone. The pupil must either, like his master,
rest satisfied with the explanation that protoplasm made the man, and
force vitalized and will now consume his body, or he must go outside
the walls of his college and the books of its library to find an
explanation of the mystery.
It is sometimes as interesting as instructive to follow the two great
rivals, science and theology, in their frequent skirmishes. Not all
of the sons of the Church are as unsuccessful in their attempts at
advocacy as the poor Abbé Moigno, of Paris. This respectable, and no
doubt well-meaning divine, in his fruitless attempt to refute the
free-thinking arguments of Huxley, Tyndall, Du Bois-Raymond, and many
others, has met with a sad failure. In his antidotal arguments his
success was more than doubtful, and, as a reward for his trouble, the
“Congregation of the Index” forbids the circulation of his book among
the faithful.
It is a dangerous experiment to engage in a single-handed duel with
scientists on topics which are well demonstrated by experimental
research. In what they do _know_ they are unassailable, and until the
old formula is destroyed by their own hands and replaced by a more
newly-discovered one, there is no use fighting against Achilles—unless,
indeed, one is fortunate enough to catch the swift-footed god by his
vulnerable heel. This heel is—what they confess they do not know!
That was a cunning device to which a certain well-known preacher
resorted to reach this mortal part. Before we proceed to narrate the
extraordinary though well authenticated facts with which we intend
to fill this chapter, it will be good policy to show once more how
fallible is modern science as to every fact in nature which can
be tested neither by retort nor crucible. The following are a few
fragments from a series of sermons by F. Felix, of Notre Dame, entitled
_Mystery and Science_. They are worthy to be translated for and quoted
in a work which is undertaken in precisely the same spirit as that
exhibited by the preacher. For once the Church silenced for a time
the arrogance of her traditional enemy, in the face of the learned
academicians.
It was known that the great preacher, in response to the general
desire of the faithful, and perhaps to the orders of ecclesiastical
superiors, had been preparing himself for a great oratorical effort,
and the historic cathedral was filled with a monster congregation.
Amid a profound silence he began his discourse, of which the following
paragraphs are sufficient for our purpose:
“A portentous word has been pronounced against us to confront progress
with Christianity—SCIENCE. Such is the formidable evocation with
which they try to appall us. To all that we can say to base progress
upon Christianity, they have always a ready response: that is not
_scientific_. We say revelation; revelation is not scientific. We say
miracle; a miracle is not scientific.
“Thus antichristianism, faithful to its tradition, and now more than
ever, pretends to kill us by science. Principle _of darkness_, it
threatens us with light. It proclaims itself the light....
“A hundred times I asked myself, What is, then, that terrible science
which is making ready to devour us?... Is it mathematical science?...
but we also have our mathematicians. Is it physics? Astronomy?
Physiology? Geology? But we number in Catholicism astronomers,
physicists, geologists,[547] and physiologists, who make somewhat of
a figure in the scientific world, who have their place in the Academy
and their name in history. It would appear that what is to crush us is
neither this nor that science, but science in general.
“And why do they prophesy the overthrow of Christianity by science?
Listen: ... we must perish by science because we teach mysteries, and
because the Christian mysteries are in radical antagonism with modern
science.... Mystery is the negation of common sense; science repels it;
science condemns it; she has spoken—Anathema!
“Ah! you are right; if Christian mystery is what you proclaim it, then
in the name of science hurl the anathema at it. Nothing is antipathetic
to science like the absurd and contradictory. But, glory be to the
truth! such is not the mystery of Christianity. If it were so, it
would remain for you to explain the most inexplicable of mysteries:
how comes it that, during nearly 2,000 years, so many superior minds
and rare geniuses have embraced our mysteries, without thinking to
repudiate science or abdicate reason?[548] Talk as much as you like
of your modern science, modern thought, and modern genius, there were
scientists before 1789.
“If our mysteries are so manifestly absurd and contradictory, how is it
that such mighty geniuses should have accepted them without a single
doubt?... But God preserve me from insisting upon demonstrating that
mystery implies no contradiction with science!... Of what use to prove,
by metaphysical abstractions, that science can reconcile itself with
mystery, when all the realities of creation show unanswerably that
mystery everywhere baffles science? You ask that we should show you,
beyond doubt, that exact science cannot admit mystery; I answer you
decidedly that she cannot escape it. Mystery is the FATALITY of science.
“Shall we choose our proofs? First, then, look around at the purely
material world, from the smallest atom to the most majestic sun. There,
if you try to embrace in the unity of a single law all these bodies
and their movements, if you seek the word which explains, in this vast
panorama of the universe, this prodigious harmony, where all seems to
obey the empire of a single force, you pronounce a word to express it,
and say _Attraction_!... Yes, attraction, this is the sublime epitome
of the science of the heavenly bodies. You say that throughout space
these bodies recognize and attract each other; you say that they
attract in proportion to their mass, and in inverse ratio with the
squares of their distances. And, in fact, until the present moment,
nothing has happened to give the lie to this assertion, but everything
has confirmed a formula which now reigns sovereign in the EMPIRE OF
HYPOTHESIS, and therefore it must henceforth enjoy the glory of being
an invincible truism.
“Gentlemen, with all my heart I make my scientific obeisances to the
sovereignty of attraction. It is not I who would desire to obscure a
light in the world of matter which reflects upon the world of spirits.
The empire of attraction, then, is palpable; it is sovereign; it
stares us in the face!
“But, what is this attraction? who has seen attraction? who has met
attraction? who has touched attraction? How do these mute bodies,
_intelligent_, insensible, exercise upon each other unconsciously
this reciprocity of action and reaction which holds them in a common
equilibrium and unanimous harmony? _Is this force_ which draws sun
to sun, and atom to atom, an invisible mediator which goes from one
to another? And, in such case what is this mediator? whence comes to
itself this force which mediates, and this power which embraces, from
which the sun can no more escape than the atom. But is this force
nothing different from the elements themselves which attract each
other?... Mystery! Mystery!
“Yes, gentlemen, this attraction which shines with such brightness
throughout the material world, remains to you at bottom an impenetrable
mystery.... Well! because of its mystery, will you deny its reality,
which touches you, and its domination, which subjugates you?... And
again, remark if you please, mystery is so much at the foundation of
all science that if you should desire to exclude mystery, you would
be compelled to suppress science itself. _Imagine whatever science
you will_, follow the magnificent sweep of its deductions ... when
you arrive at its parent source, you come face to face with the
_unknown_.[549]
“Who has been able to penetrate the secret of the formation of a body,
the generation of a single atom? What is there I will not say at the
centre of a sun, but at the centre of an atom? who has sounded to the
bottom the abyss in a grain of sand? The grain of sand, gentlemen,
has been studied four thousand years by science, she has turned and
returned it; she divides it and subdivides it; she torments it with
her experiments; she vexes it with her questions to snatch from it
the final word as to its secret constitution; she asks it, with an
insatiable curiosity: ‘Shall I divide thee infinitesimally?’ Then,
suspended over this abyss, science hesitates, she stumbles, she feels
dazzled, she becomes dizzy, and, in despair says: I DO NOT KNOW!
“But if you are so fatally ignorant of the genesis and hidden nature of
a grain of sand, how should you have an intuition as to the generation
of a single living being? Whence in the living being does life come?
Where does it commence? What is the life-principle?”[550]
Can the scientists answer the eloquent monk? Can they escape from his
pitiless logic? Mystery certainly does bound them on every side; and
the _Ultima Thule_, whether of Herbert Spencer, Tyndall, or Huxley, has
written upon the closed portals the words INCOMPREHENSIBLE, UNKNOWABLE.
For the lover of metaphor, science may be likened to a twinkling
star shining with resplendent brightness through rifts in a bank of
densely-black clouds. If her votaries cannot define that mysterious
attraction which draws into concrete masses the material particles
which form the smallest pebble on the ocean-beach, how can they define
the limits at which the possible stops and the impossible begins?
Why should there be an attraction between the molecules of matter, and
none between those of spirit? If, out of the material portion of the
ether, by virtue of the inherent restlessness of its particles, the
forms of worlds and their species of plants and animals can be evolved,
why, out of the spiritual part of the ether, should not successive
races of beings, from the stage of monad to that of man, be developed;
each lower form unfolding a higher one until the work of evolution is
completed on our earth, in the production of immortal man? It will be
seen that, for the moment, we entirely put aside the accumulated facts
which prove the case, and submit it to the arbitrament of logic.
By whatsoever name the physicists may call the energizing principle
in matter is of no account; it is a subtile something apart from the
matter itself, and, as it escapes their detection, it must be something
besides matter. If the law of attraction is admitted as governing the
one, why should it be excluded from influencing the other? Leaving
logic to answer, we turn to the common experience of mankind, and there
find a mass of testimony corroborative of the immortality of the soul,
if we judge but from analogies. But we have more than that—we have
the unimpeachable testimony of thousands upon thousands, that there
is a regular science of the soul, which, notwithstanding that it is
now denied the right of a place among other sciences, _is_ a science.
This science, by penetrating the arcana of nature far deeper than our
modern philosophy ever dreamed possible, teaches us how to force the
_invisible_ to become visible; the existence of elementary spirits; the
nature and magical properties of the astral light; the power of living
men to bring themselves into communication with the former through
the latter. Let them examine the proofs with the lamp of experience,
and neither the Academy nor the Church, for which Father Felix so
persuasively spoke, can deny them.
Modern science is in a dilemma; it must concede our hypothesis to be
correct, or admit the possibility of miracle. To do so, is to say
that there can be an infraction of natural law. If this can happen
in one case, what assurance have we that it may not be repeated
indefinitely, and so destroy that fixity of law, that perfect balance
of forces by which the universe is governed. This is a very ancient
and an unanswerable argument. To deny the appearance, in our midst,
of supersensual beings, when they have been seen, at various times
and in various countries, by not merely thousands, but millions of
persons, is unpardonable obstinacy; to say that, in any one instance,
the apparition has been produced by a miracle, fatal to the fundamental
principle of science. What will they do? What can they do, when they
shall have awakened from the benumbing stupor of their pride, but
collect the facts, and try to enlarge the boundaries of their field of
investigations?
The existence of spirit in the common mediator, the ether, is denied
by materialism; while theology makes of it a personal god, the
kabalist holds that both are wrong, saying that in ether, the elements
represent but matter—the blind cosmic forces of nature; and Spirit, the
intelligence which directs them. The Hermetic, Orphic, and Pythagorean
cosmogonical doctrines, as well as those of Sanchoniathon and Berosus,
are all based upon one irrefutable formula, viz.: that the ether and
chaos, or, in the Platonic language, mind and matter, were the two
primeval and eternal principles of the universe, utterly independent of
anything else. The former was the all-vivifying intellectual principle;
the chaos, a shapeless, liquid principle, without “form or sense,” from
the union of which two, sprung into existence the universe, or rather,
the universal world, the first androgenous deity—the chaotic matter
becoming its body, and ether the soul. According to the phraseology of
a _Fragment of Hermias_, “chaos, from this union with spirit, obtaining
_sense_, shone with pleasure, and thus was produced the _Protogonos_
(the first-born) light.”[551] This is the universal trinity, based
on the metaphysical conceptions of the ancients, who, reasoning by
analogy, made of man, who is a compound of intellect and matter, the
microcosm of the macrocosm, or great universe.
If we now compare this doctrine with the speculations of science, which
comes to a full stop at the Borderland of the unknown, and, while
incompetent to solve the mystery, will allow no one else to speculate
upon the subject; or, with the great theological dogma, that the world
was called into existence by a heavenly trick of prestidigitation; we
do not hesitate to believe that, in the absence of better proof, the
Hermetic doctrine is by far the more reasonable, highly metaphysical
as it may appear. The universe is there, and we know that we exist;
but how did it come, and how did we appear in it? Denied an answer
by the rpresentatives of physical learning, and excommunicated and
anathematized for our blasphemous curiosity by the spiritual usurpers,
what can we do, but turn for information to the sages who meditated
upon the subject ages before the molecules of our philosophers
aggregated in ethereal space?
This visible universe of spirit and matter, they say, is but the
concrete image of the ideal abstraction; it was built on the model
of the first divine IDEA. Thus our universe existed from eternity in
a latent state. The soul animating this purely spiritual universe is
the central sun, the highest deity itself. It was not himself who
built the concrete form of his idea, but his first-begotten; and as it
was constructed on the geometrical figure of the dodecahedron,[552]
the first-begotten “was pleased to employ twelve thousand years in
its creation.” The latter number is expressed in the Tyrrhenian
cosmogony,[553] which shows man created in the sixth millennium. This
agrees with the Egyptian theory of 6,000 “years,”[554] and with the
Hebrew computation. Sanchoniathon,[555] in his _Cosmogony_, declares
that when the wind (spirit) became enamored of its own principles (the
chaos), an intimate union took place, which connection was called
_pothos_, and from this sprang the seed of all. And the chaos knew not
its own production, for it was _senseless_; but from its embrace with
the wind was generated môt, or the ilus (mud).[556] From this proceeded
the spores of creation and the generation of the universe.
The ancients, who named but four elements, made of æther a fifth one.
On account of its essence being made divine by the unseen presence
it was considered as a medium between this world and the next. They
held that when the directing intelligences retired from any portion of
ether, one of the four kingdoms which they are bound to superintend,
the space was left in possession of _evil_. An adept who prepared to
converse with the “invisibles,” had to know well his ritual, and be
perfectly acquainted with the conditions required for the perfect
equilibrium of the four elements in the astral light. First of all, he
must purify the essence, and within the circle in which he sought to
attract the pure spirits, equilibrize the elements, so as to prevent
the ingress of the elementaries into their respective spheres. But woe
to the imprudent inquirer who ignorantly trespasses upon forbidden
ground; danger will beset him at every step. He evokes powers that he
cannot control; he arouses sentries which allow only their masters to
pass. For, in the words of the immortal Rosicrucian, “Once that thou
hast resolved to become a coöperator with the spirit of the _living_
God, take care not to hinder Him in His work; for, if thy heat exceeds
the natural proportion thou hast stirr’d the wrath of the _moyst[557]
natures_, and they will stand up against the _central fire_, and the
central fire against them, and there will be a terrible division in
the _chaos_.”[558] The spirit of harmony and union will depart from
the elements, disturbed by the imprudent hand; and the currents of
blind forces will become immediately infested by numberless creatures
of matter and instinct—the bad dæmons of the theurgists, the devils
of theology; the gnomes, salamanders, sylphs, and undines will assail
the rash performer under multifarious aërial forms. Unable to invent
anything, they will search your memory to its very depths; hence the
nervous exhaustion and mental oppression of certain sensitive natures
at spiritual circles. The elementals will bring to light long-forgotten
remembrances of the past; forms, images, sweet mementos, and familiar
sentences, long since faded from our own remembrance, but vividly
preserved in the inscrutable depths of our memory and on the astral
tablets of the imperishable “BOOK OF LIFE.”
Every organized thing in this world, visible as well as invisible,
has an element appropriate to itself. The fish lives and breathes in
the water; the plant consumes carbonic acid, which for animals and
men produces death; some beings are fitted for rarefied strata of
air, others exist only in the densest. Life, to some, is dependent on
sunlight, to others, upon darkness; and so the wise economy of nature
adapts to each existing condition some living form. These analogies
warrant the conclusion that, not only is there no unoccupied portion of
universal nature, but also that for each thing that has life, special
conditions are furnished, and, being furnished, they are necessary.
Now, assuming that there is an invisible side to the universe, the
fixed habit of nature warrants the conclusion that this half is
occupied, like the other half; and that each group of its occupants
is supplied with the indispensable conditions of existence. It is as
illogical to imagine that identical conditions are furnished to all,
as it would be to maintain such a theory respecting the inhabitants of
the domain of visible nature. That there are spirits implies that there
is a diversity of spirits; for men differ, and human spirits are but
disembodied men.
To say that all spirits are alike, or fitted to the same atmosphere, or
possessed of like powers, or governed by the same attractions—electric,
magnetic, odic, astral, it matters not which—is as absurd as though
one should say that all planets have the same nature, or that all
animals are amphibious, or all men can be nourished on the same food.
It accords with reason to suppose that the grossest natures among the
spirits will sink to the lowest depths of the spiritual atmosphere—in
other words, be found nearest to the earth. Inversely, the purest would
be farthest away. In what, were we to coin a word, we should call the
_Psychomatics_ of Occultism, it is as unwarrantable to assume that
either of these grades of spirits can occupy the place, or subsist in
the conditions, of the other, as in hydraulics it would be to expect
that two liquids of different densities could exchange their markings
on the scale of Beaume’s hydrometer.
Görres, describing a conversation he had with some Hindus of the
Malabar coast, reports that upon asking them whether they had ghosts
among them, they replied, “Yes, but we know them to be _bad spirits_
... good ones can hardly ever appear at all. They are principally
the spirits of _suicides_ and _murderers_, or of those who die
violent deaths. They constantly flutter about and appear as phantoms.
Night-time is favorable to them, they seduce the feeble-minded and
tempt others in a thousand different ways.”[559]
Porphyry presents to us some hideous facts whose verity is
substantiated in the experience of every student of magic. “The
_soul_,”[560] says he, “having even after death a certain affection for
its body, an affinity proportioned to the violence with which their
union was broken, we see many spirits hovering in despair about their
earthly remains; we even see them eagerly seeking the putrid remains
of other bodies, but above all freshly-spilled blood, which seems to
impart to them for the moment some of the faculties of life.”[561]
Let spiritualists who doubt the theurgist, try the effect of about half
a pound of freshly-drawn human blood at their next materializing seance!
“The gods and the angels,” says Iamblichus, “appear to us among peace
and harmony; the bad demons, in tossing everything in confusion.... As
to the _ordinary souls_, we can perceive them more rarely, etc.”[562]
“The human soul (the astral body) is a demon that our language may
name genius,” says Apuleius.[563] “She is an _immortal god_, though in
a certain sense she is born at the same time as the man in whom she
is. Consequently, we may say that she dies in the same way that she is
born.”
“The soul is born in this world upon leaving _another world_ (_anima
mundi_), in which her existence precedes the one we all know (on
earth). Thus, the gods who consider her proceedings in all the phases
of various existences and as a whole, punish her sometimes for sins
committed during an anterior life. She dies when she separates herself
from a body in which she crossed this life as in a frail bark. And this
is, if I mistake not, the secret meaning of the tumulary inscription,
so simple for the initiate: ”_To the gods manes who lived._” But this
kind of death does not annihilate the soul, it only transforms it
into a _lemure_. Lemures are the manes or ghosts, which we know under
the name of lares. When they keep away and _show us a beneficient
protection_, we honor in them the protecting divinities of the family
hearth; but, if their crimes sentence them to err, we call them
_larvæ_. They become a plague for the wicked, and the _vain terror_ of
the good.”
This language can hardly be called ambiguous, and yet, the
Reïncarnationists quote Apuleius in corroboration of their theory that
man passes through a succession of physical human births upon this
planet, until he is finally purged from the dross of his nature. But
Apuleius distinctly says that we come upon this earth from another one,
where we had an existence, the recollection of which has faded away. As
the watch passes from hand to hand and room to room in a factory, one
part being added here, and another there, until the delicate machine is
perfected, according to the design conceived in the mind of the master
before the work was begun; so, according to ancient philosophy, the
first divine conception of man takes shape little by little, in the
several departments of the universal workshop, and the perfect human
being finally appears on our scene.
This philosophy teaches that nature never leaves her work
unfinished; if baffled at the first attempt, she tries again. When
she evolves a human embryo, the intention is that a man shall be
perfected—physically, intellectually, and spiritually. His body is
to grow mature, wear out, and die; his mind unfold, ripen, and be
harmoniously balanced; his divine spirit illuminate and blend easily
with the _inner_ man. No human being completes its grand cycle, or
the “circle of necessity,” until all these are accomplished. As the
laggards in a race struggle and plod in their first quarter while the
victor darts past the goal, so, in the race of immortality, some souls
outspeed all the rest and reach the end, while their myriad competitors
are toiling under the load of matter, close to the starting-point. Some
unfortunates fall out entirely, and lose all chance of the prize; some
retrace their steps and begin again. This is what the Hindu dreads
above all things—_transmigration_ and _reïncarnation_; only on other
and inferior planets, never on this one. But there is a way to avoid
it, and Buddha taught it in his doctrine of poverty, restriction of
the senses, perfect indifference to the objects of this earthly vale
of tears, freedom from passion, and frequent intercommunication with
the Atma—soul-contemplation. The cause of reïncarnation is ignorance
of our senses, and the idea that there is any reality in the world,
anything except abstract existence. From the organs of sense comes the
“hallucination” we call contact; “from contact, desire; from desire,
sensation (which also is a deception of our body); from sensation, the
cleaving to existing bodies; from this cleaving, reproduction; and from
reproduction, disease, decay, and death.”
Thus, like the revolutions of a wheel, there is a regular succession of
death and birth, the moral cause of which is the cleaving to existing
objects, while the instrumental cause is _karma_ (the power which
controls the universe, prompting it to activity), merit and demerit.
“It is, therefore, the great desire of all beings who would be released
_from the sorrows of successive birth_, to seek the destruction of the
moral cause, the cleaving to existing objects, or evil desire.” They,
in whom evil desire is entirely destroyed, are called _Arhats_.[564]
Freedom from evil desire insures the possession of a _miraculous_
power. At his death, the Arhat is never reïncarnated; he invariably
attains Nirvana—a word, by the bye, falsely interpreted by the
Christian scholars and skeptical commentators. Nirvana is the world
of _cause_, in which all deceptive effects or delusions of our senses
disappear. Nirvana is the highest attainable sphere. The _pitris_ (the
pre-Adamic spirits) are considered as _reïncarnated_, by the Buddhistic
philosopher, though in a degree far superior to that of the man of
earth. Do they not die in their turn? Do not their astral bodies
suffer and rejoice, and feel the same curse of illusionary feelings as
when embodied?
What Buddha taught in the sixth century, B.C., in India, Pythagoras
taught in the fifth, in Greece and Italy. Gibbon shows how deeply the
Pharisees were impressed with this belief in the transmigration of
souls.[565] The Egyptian circle of necessity is ineffaceably stamped
on the hoary monuments of old. And Jesus, when healing the sick,
invariably used the following expression: “Thy sins are forgiven thee.”
This is a pure Buddhistical doctrine. “The Jews said to the blind
man: Thou wast _altogether born in sins_, and dost thou teach us? The
doctrine of the disciples (of Christ) is analogous to the ‘Merit and
Demerit’ of the Buddhists; for the sick recovered, _if their sins were
forgiven_.”[566] But, this _former life_ believed in by the Buddhists,
is not a life _on this_ planet, for, more than any other people, the
Buddhistical philosopher appreciated the great doctrine of cycles.
The speculations of Dupuis, Volney, and Godfrey Higgins on the secret
meaning of the cycles, or the _kalpas_ and the yogs of the Brahmans
and Buddhists, amounted to little, as they did not have the key to the
esoteric, spiritual doctrine therein contained. No philosophy ever
speculated on God as an _abstraction_, but considered Him under His
various manifestations. The “First Cause” of the Hebrew Bible, the
Pythagorean “Monad,” the “One Existence” of the Hindu philosopher,
and the kabalistic “En-Soph” the _Boundless_—are identical. The Hindu
Bhagavant does not create; he enters the egg of the world, and
emanates from it as Brahm, in the same manner as the Pythagorean
Duad evolves from the highest and solitary Monas.[567] The Monas of
the Samian philosopher is the Hindu Monas (mind), “who has no first
cause (apûrva, or material cause), nor is liable to destruction.”[568]
Brahma, as Prajâpati, manifests himself first of all as “twelve
bodies,” or attributes, which are represented by the twelve gods,
symbolizing 1, Fire; 2, the Sun; 3, Soma, which gives omniscience; 4,
all living Beings; 5, Vayn, or material Ether; 6, Death, or breath of
destruction—Siva; 7, Earth; 8, Heaven; 9, Agni, the Immaterial Fire;
10, Aditya, the immaterial and female invisible Sun; 11, Mind; 12, the
great Infinite Cycle, “which is not to be stopped.”[569] After that,
Brahma dissolves himself into the Visible Universe, every atom of which
is himself. When this is done, the not-manifested, indivisible, and
indefinite Monas retires into the undisturbed and majestic solitude
of its unity. _The_ manifested deity, a duad at first, now becomes a
triad; its triune quality emanates incessantly spiritual powers, who
become immortal gods (souls). Each of these souls must be united in
its turn with a human being, and from the moment of its consciousness
it commences a series of births and deaths. An Eastern artist has
attempted to give pictorial expression to the kabalistic doctrine of
the cycles. The picture covers a whole inner wall of a subterranean
temple in the neighborhood of a great Buddhistic pagoda, and is
strikingly suggestive. Let us attempt to convey some idea of the
design, as we recall it.
Imagine a given point in space as the primordial one; then with
compasses draw a circle around this point; where the beginning and
the end unite together, emanation and reabsorption meet. The circle
itself is composed of innumerable smaller circles, like the rings
of a bracelet, and each of these minor rings forms the belt of
the goddess which represents that sphere. As the curve of the arc
approaches the ultimate point of the semi-circle—the nadir of the
grand cycle—at which is placed our planet by the mystical painter, the
face of each successive goddess becomes more dark and hideous than
European imagination is able to conceive. Every belt is covered with
the representations of plants, animals, and human beings, belonging
to the fauna, flora, and anthropology of that particular sphere.
There is a certain distance between each of the spheres, purposely
marked; for, after the accomplishment of the circles through various
transmigrations, the soul is allowed a time of temporary nirvana,
during which space of time the atma loses all remembrance of past
sorrows. The intermediate ethereal space is filled with strange beings.
Those between the highest ether and the earth below are the creatures
of a “middle nature;” nature-spirits, or, as the kabalists term it
sometimes, the elementary.
This picture is either a copy of the one described to posterity
by Berosus, the priest of the temple of Belus, at Babylon, or the
original. We leave it to the shrewdness of the modern archæologist
to decide. But the wall is covered with precisely such creatures
as described by the semi-demon, or half-god, Oannes, the Chaldean
man-fish,[570] “ ... hideous beings, which were produced of a two-fold
principle” the astral light and the grosser matter.
Even remains of architectural relics of the earliest races have been
sadly neglected by antiquarians, until now. The caverns of Ajunta,
which are but 200 miles from Bombay, in the Chandor range, and the
ruins of the ancient city of Aurungabad, whose crumbling palaces and
curious tombs have lain in desolate solitude for many centuries,
have attracted attention but very recently. Mementos of long bygone
civilization, they were allowed to become the shelter of wild beasts
for ages before they were found worthy of a scientific exploration,
and it is only recently that the _Observer_ gave an enthusiastic
description of these archaic ancestors of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
After justly blaming the local government which “has provided a
bungalow where the traveller may find shelter and safety, but that is
all,” it proceeds to narrate the wonders to be seen in this retired
spot, in the following words:
“In a deep glen away up the mountain there is a group of cave-temples
which are the most wonderful caverns on the earth. It is not known at
the present age how many of these exist in the deep recesses of the
mountains; but twenty-seven have been explored, surveyed, and, to some
extent, cleared of rubbish. There are, doubtless, many others. It is
hard to realize with what indefatigable toil these wonderful caves have
been hewn from the solid rock of amygdaloid. They are said to have been
wholly Buddhist in their origin, and were used for purposes of worship
and asceticism. They rank very high as works of art. They extend over
500 feet along a high cliff, and are carved in the most curious manner,
exhibiting, in a wonderful degree, the taste, talent, and persevering
industry of the Hindu sculptors.
“These cave-temples are beautifully cut and carved on the outside; but
inside they were finished most elaborately, and decorated with a vast
profusion of sculptures and paintings. These long-deserted temples have
suffered from dampness and neglect, and the paintings and frescoes are
not what they were hundreds of years ago. But the colors are still
brilliant, and scenes gay and festive still appear upon the walls.
Some of the figures cut in the rock are taken for marriage-processions
and scenes in domestic life that are represented as joyful. The female
figures are beautiful, delicate, and fair as Europeans. Every one of
these representations is artistic, and all of them are unpolluted
by any grossness or obscenity generally so prominent in Brahmanical
representations of a similar character.
“These caves are visited by a great number of antiquarians, who are
striving to decipher the hieroglyphics inscribed on the walls and
determine the age of these curious temples.
“The ruins of the ancient city of Aurungabad are not very far from
these caves. It was a walled city of great repute, but is now deserted.
There are not only broken walls, but crumbling palaces. They were built
of immense strength, and some of the walls appear as solid as the
everlasting hills.
“There are a great many places in this vicinity where there are Hindu
remains, consisting of deep caves and rock-cut temples. Many of
these temples are surrounded by a circular enclosure, which is often
adorned with statues and columns. The figure of an elephant is very
common, placed before or beside the opening of a temple, as a sort of
sentinel. Hundreds and thousands of niches are beautifully cut in the
solid rock, and when these temples were thronged with worshippers,
each niche had a statue or image, usually in the florid style of these
Oriental sculptures. It is a sad truth that almost every image here
is shamefully defaced and mutilated. It is often said that no Hindu
will bow down to an imperfect image, and that the Mahometans, knowing
this, purposely mutilated all these images to prevent the Hindus from
worshipping them. This is regarded by the Hindus as sacrilegious and
blasphemous, awakening the keenest animosities, which every Hindu
inherits from his father, and which centuries have not been able to
efface.
“Here also are the remains of buried cities—sad ruins—generally
without a single inhabitant. In the grand palaces where royalty once
gathered and held festivals, wild beasts find their hiding-places. In
several places the track of the railway has been constructed over or
through these ruins, and the material has been used for the bed of the
road.... Enormous stones have remained in their places for thousands of
years, and probably will for thousands of years to come. These rock
cut temples, as well as these mutilated statues, show a workmanship
that no work now being done by the natives can equal.[571] It is very
evident that hundreds of years since these hills were alive with a vast
multitude, where now it is all utter desolation, without cultivation or
inhabitants, and given over to wild beasts.
“It is good hunting ground, and, as the English are mighty hunters,
they may prefer to have these mountains and ruins remain without
change.”
We fervently hope they will. Enough vandalism was perpetrated in
earlier ages to permit us the hope that at least in this century of
exploration and learning, science, in its branches of archæology and
philology, will not be deprived of these most precious records, wrought
on imperishable tablets of granite and rock.
We will now present a few fragments of this mysterious doctrine of
reïncarnation—as distinct from metempsychosis—which we have from
an authority. Reïncarnation, _i.e._, the appearance of the same
individual, or rather of his astral monad, twice on the same planet,
is not a rule in nature; it is an exception, like the teratological
phenomenon of a two-headed infant. It is preceded by a violation of
the laws of harmony of nature, and happens only when the latter,
seeking to restore its disturbed equilibrium, violently throws back
into earth-life the astral monad which had been tossed out of the
circle of necessity by crime or accident. Thus, in cases of abortion,
of infants dying before a certain age, and of congenital and incurable
idiocy, nature’s original design to produce a perfect human being has
been interrupted. Therefore, while the gross matter of each of these
several entities is suffered to disperse itself at death, through
the vast realm of being, the immortal spirit and astral monad of the
individual—the latter having been set apart to animate a frame and the
former to shed its divine light on the corporeal organization—must try
a second time to carry out the purpose of the creative intelligence.
If reason has been so far developed as to become active and
discriminative, there is no reïncarnation on this earth, for the three
parts of the triune man have been united together, and he is capable
of running the race. But when the new being has not passed beyond the
condition of monad, or when, as in the idiot, the trinity has not been
completed, the immortal spark which illuminates it, has to reënter on
the earthly plane as it was frustrated in its first attempt. Otherwise,
the mortal or astral, and the immortal or divine, souls, could not
progress in unison and pass onward to the sphere above. Spirit follows
a line parallel with that of matter; and the spiritual evolution goes
hand in hand with the physical. As in the case exemplified by Professor
Le Conte (vide chap, ix.), “there is no force in nature” and the rule
applies to the spiritual as well as to the physical evolution—“which
is capable of raising at once spirit or matter from No. 1 to No. 3, or
from 2 to 4, without stopping and receiving an accession of force of a
different kind _on the intermediate plane_.” That is to say, the monad
which was imprisoned in the elementary being—the rudimentary or lowest
astral form of the future man—after having passed through and quitted
the _highest_ physical shape of a dumb animal—say an orang-outang,
or again an elephant, one of the most intellectual of brutes—that
monad, we say, cannot skip over the physical and intellectual sphere
of the terrestrial man, and be suddenly ushered into the spiritual
sphere above. What reward or punishment can there be in that sphere
of disembodied human entities for a fœtus or a human embryo which had
not even time to breathe on this earth, still less an opportunity to
exercise the divine faculties of the spirit? Or, for an irresponsible
infant, whose senseless monad remaining dormant within the astral and
physical casket, could as little prevent him from burning himself as
another person to death? Or for one idiotic from birth, the number of
whose cerebral circumvolutions is only from twenty to thirty per cent.
of those of sane persons;[572] and who therefore is irresponsible for
either his disposition, acts, or the imperfections of his vagrant,
half-developed intellect?
No need to remark that if even hypothetical, this theory is no more
ridiculous than many others considered as strictly orthodox. We must
not forget that either through the inaptness of the specialists or some
other reason, physiology itself is the least advanced or understood of
sciences, and that some French physicians, with Dr. Fournié, positively
despair of ever progressing in it beyond pure hypotheses.
Further, the same occult doctrine recognizes another possibility;
albeit so rare and so vague that it is really useless to mention it.
Even the modern Occidental occultists deny it, though it is universally
accepted in Eastern countries. When, through vice, fearful crimes
and animal passions, a disembodied spirit has fallen to the eighth
sphere—the allegorical Hades, and the _gehenna_ of the Bible—the
nearest to our earth—he can, with the help of that glimpse of reason
and consciousness left to him, repent; that is to say, he can, by
exercising the remnants of his will-power, strive upward, and like a
drowning man, struggle once more to the surface. In the _Magical and
Philosophical Precepts_ of Psellus, we find one which, warning mankind,
says:
“Stoop not down, for a precipice lies below the earth,
Drawing _under a descent of_ SEVEN _steps_, beneath which
Is the throne of dire necessity.”[573]
A strong aspiration to retrieve his calamities, a pronounced desire,
will draw him once more into the earth’s atmosphere. Here he will
wander and suffer more or less in dreary solitude. His instincts will
make him seek with avidity contact with living persons.... These
spirits are the invisible but too tangible magnetic vampires; the
_subjective_ dæmons so well known to mediæval ecstatics, nuns, and
monks, to the “witches” made so famous in the _Witch-Hammer_; and to
certain sensitive clairvoyants, according to their own confessions.
They are the blood-dæmons of Porphyry, the _larvæ_, and _lemures_ of
the ancients; the fiendish instruments which sent so many unfortunate
and weak victims to the rack and stake. Origen held all the dæmons
which possessed the demoniacs mentioned in the _New Testament_ to be
_human_ “spirits.” It is because Moses knew so well what they were,
and how terrible were the consequences to weak persons who yielded
to their influence, that he enacted the cruel, murderous law against
such would-be “witches;” but Jesus, full of justice and divine love to
humanity, _healed_ instead of _killing_ them. Subsequently our clergy,
the pretended exemplars of Christian principles, followed the law of
Moses, and quietly ignored the law of Him whom they call their “one
living God,” by burning dozens of thousands of such pretended “witches.”
Witch! mighty name, which in the past contained the promise of
ignominious death; and in the present has but to be pronounced to
raise a whirlwind of ridicule, a tornado of sarcasms! How is it then
that there have always been men of intellect and learning, who never
thought that it would disgrace their reputation for learning, or lower
their dignity, to publicly affirm the possibility of such a thing as
a “witch,” in the correct acceptation of the word. One such fearless
champion was Henry More, the learned scholar of Cambridge, of the
seventeenth century. It is well worth our while to see how cleverly he
handled the question.
It appears that about the year 1678, a certain divine, named John
Webster, wrote _Criticisms and Interpretations of Scripture_, against
the existence of witches, and other “superstitions.” Finding the work
“a weak and impertinent piece,” Dr. More criticised it in a letter to
Glanvil, the author of _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, and as an appendix
sent a treatise on witchcraft and explanations of the word witch,
itself. This document is very rare, but we possess it in a fragmentary
form in an old manuscript, having seen it mentioned besides only in an
insignificant work of 1820, on _Apparitions_, for it appears that the
document itself was long since out of print.
The words _witch_ and _wizard_, according to Dr. More, signify no more
than a wise man or a wise woman. In the word _wizard_, it is plain at
the very sight; and “the most plain and least operose deduction of the
name witch, is from _wit_, whose derived adjective might be _wittigh_
or _wittich_, and by contraction, afterwards witch; as the noun wit is
from the verb to _weet_, which is, to know. So that a witch, thus far,
is no more than a knowing woman; which answers exactly to the Latin
word _saga_, according to that of Festus, _sagæ dictæ anus quæ multa
sciunt_!”
This definition of the word appears to us the more plausible, as it
exactly answers the evident meaning of the Slavonian-Russian names for
witches and wizards. The former is called _vyèdma_, and the latter
_vyèdmak_, both from the verb to _know_, _védat_ or _vyedât_; the root,
moreover, being positively Sanscrit. “Veda,” says Max Müller, in his
_Lecture on the Vedas_, “means originally knowing, or knowledge. Veda
is the same word which appears in Greek οἶδα, I know [the digamma,
_vau_ being omitted], and in the English wise, wisdom, to wit.”[574]
Furthermore, the Sanscrit word _vidma_, answering to the German _wir
wissen_, means literally “_we know_.” It is a great pity that the
eminent philologist, while giving in his lecture the Sanscrit, Greek,
Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and German comparative roots of this word, has
neglected the Slavonian.
Another Russian appellation for _witch_ and _wizard_, the former being
purely Slavonian, is _znâhâr_ and _znâharka_ (feminine) from the same
verb _znât_ to know. Thus Dr. More’s definition of the word, given in
1678, is perfectly correct, and coincides in every particular with
modern philology.
“Use,” says this scholar, “questionless had appropriated the word to
such a kind of skill and knowledge as was out of the common road or
extraordinary. _Nor did this peculiarity imply any unlawfulness._ But
there was after a further restriction, in which alone now-a-days the
words _witch_ and _wizard_ are used. And that is, for one that has the
knowledge and skill of doing or telling things in an extraordinary
way, and that in virtue of either an express or implicit sociation or
confederacy with some _bad spirits_.” In the clause of the severe law
of Moses, so many names are reckoned up with that of witch, that it
is difficult as well as useless to give here the definition of every
one of them as found in Dr. More’s able treatise. “There shall not be
found among you any one that useth divination, or an observer of time,
or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar
spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer,” says the text. We will show,
further on, the real object of such severity. For the present, we will
remark that Dr. More, after giving a learned definition of every one
of such appellations, and showing the value of their real meaning in
the days of Moses, proves that there is a vast difference between the
“enchanters,” “observers of time,” etc., and a witch. “So many names
are reckoned up in this prohibition of Moses, that, as in our common
law, the sense may be more sure, and leave no room to evasion. And that
the name of ‘witch’ is not from any tricks of legerdemain as in common
jugglers, that delude the sight of the people at a market or fair, but
that it is the name of such as raise magical spectres to deceive men’s
sight, and so are most certainly witches—women and men who have a _bad
spirit_ in them. ‘Thou shalt not suffer’ מכשפה _mecassephah_, that is,
‘a witch, to live.’ Which would be a law of extreme severity, or rather
cruelty, against a poor hocus-pocus for his tricks of legerdemain.”
Thus, it is but the sixth appellation, that of a consulter with
familiar spirits or a witch, that had to incur the greatest penalty
of the law of Moses, for it is only a _witch_ which must _not_ be
suffered to live, while all the others are simply enumerated as such
with whom the people of Israel were forbidden to communicate on account
of their idolatry or rather religious views and learning chiefly. This
sixth word is שאיל אוב, _shoel aub_, which our English translation
renders, “a consulter with familiar spirits;” but which the Septuagint
translates, Εγγαστριμυθος, one that has a familiar spirit _inside_ him,
one possessed with the spirit of divination, which was considered to
be Python by the Greeks, and _obh_ by the Hebrews, the old serpent; in
its esoteric meaning the spirit of concupiscence and _matter_; which,
according to the kabalists, is always an elementary _human_ spirit of
the eighth sphere.
“_Shoel obh_, I conceive,” says Henry More, “is to be understood of
the witch herself who asks counsel of her or his familiar. The reason
of the name _obh_, was taken first from that spirit that was in the
body of the party, and swelled it to a protuberancy, the voice always
seeming to come out as from a bottle, for which reason they were named
_ventriloquists_. _Ob_ signifies as much as _Pytho_, which at first
took its name from the _pythii vates_, a spirit that tells hidden
things, or things to come. In _Acts_ XVI. 16, πνεύμα πὺθωνος, when
“Paul being grieved, turned and said to that spirit, I command thee, in
the name of Jesus Christ, to come out of her, and he came out at the
same hour.” Therefore, the words obsessed or _possessed_ are synonyms
of the word _witch_; nor could this _pytho_ of the eighth sphere come
out of her, unless it was a spirit distinct from her. And so it is that
we see in _Leviticus_ XX. 27: “A man also or woman that hath a familiar
spirit, or that is a wizard (an irresponsible _jidegnoni_) shall surely
be put _to death_, they shall stone them with stones, _their blood
shall be_ upon them.”
A cruel and unjust law beyond doubt, and one which gives the lie to
a recent utterance of “Spirits,” by the mouth of one of the most
popular _inspirational_ mediums of the day, to the effect that modern
philological research proves that the Mosaic law never contemplated
the killing of the poor “mediums” or _witches_ of the _Old Testament_,
but that the words, “thou shalt not suffer a witch _to live_,” meant
to live by their mediumship, that is, to gain their livelihood! An
interpretation no less ingenius than novel. Certainly, nowhere short
of the source of such _inspiration_ could we find such philological
profundity![575]
“Shut the door in the face of the dæmon,” says the _Kabala_, “and he
will keep running away from you, as if you pursued him,” which means,
that you must not give a hold on you to such spirits of obsession by
attracting them into an atmosphere of congenial sin.
These dæmons seek to introduce themselves into the bodies of the
simple-minded and idiots, and remain there until dislodged therefrom
by a powerful and _pure_ will. Jesus, Apollonius, and some of the
apostles, had the power to cast out _devils_, by purifying the
atmosphere _within_ and _without_ the patient, so as to force the
unwelcome tenant to flight. Certain volatile salts are particularly
obnoxious to them; and the effect of the chemicals used in a saucer,
and placed under the bed by Mr. Varley, of London,[576] for the purpose
of keeping away some disagreeable physical phenomena at night, are
corroborative of this great truth. Pure or even simply inoffensive
human spirits fear nothing, for having rid themselves of _terrestrial_
matter, terrestrial compounds can affect them in no wise; such spirits
are like a _breath_. Not so with the earth-bound souls and the
nature-spirits.
It is for these carnal terrestrial _larvæ_, degraded human spirits,
that the ancient kabalists entertained a hope of _reïncarnation_. But
when, or how? At a fitting moment, and if helped by a sincere desire
for his amendment and repentance by some strong, sympathizing person,
or the will of an adept, or even a desire emanating from the erring
spirit himself, provided it is powerful enough to make him throw off
the burden of sinful matter. Losing all consciousness, the once bright
monad is caught once more into the vortex of our terrestrial evolution,
and it repasses the subordinate kingdoms, and again breathes as a
living child. To compute the time necessary for the completion of this
process would be impossible. Since there is no perception of time in
eternity, the attempt would be a mere waste of labor.
As we have said, but few kabalists believe in it, and this doctrine
originated with certain astrologers. While casting up the nativities
of certain historical personages renowned for some peculiarities of
disposition, they found the conjunction of the planets answering
perfectly to remarkable oracles and prophesies about other persons
born ages later. Observation, and what would now be termed “remarkable
coincidences,” added to revelation during the “sacred sleep” of the
neophyte, disclosed the dreadful truth. So horrible is the thought that
even those who ought to be convinced of it prefer ignoring it, or at
least avoid speaking on the subject.
This way of obtaining oracles was practiced in the highest antiquity.
In India, this sublime lethargy is called “the sacred sleep of * * *.”
It is an oblivion into which the subject is thrown by certain magical
processes, supplemented by draughts of the juice of the soma. The body
of the sleeper remains for several days in a condition resembling
death, and by the power of the adept is purified of its earthliness and
made fit to become the temporary receptacle of the brightness of the
immortal Augoeides. In this state the torpid body is made to reflect
the glory of the upper spheres, as a burnished mirror does the rays
of the sun. The sleeper takes no note of the lapse of time, but upon
awakening, after four or five days of trance, imagines he has slept
but a few moments. What his lips utter he will never know; but as it
is the spirit which directs them they can pronounce nothing but divine
truth. For the time being the poor helpless clod is made the shrine
of the sacred presence, and converted into an oracle a thousand times
more infallible than the asphyxiated Pythoness of Delphi; and, unlike
her mantic frenzy, which was exhibited before the multitude, this holy
sleep is witnessed only within the sacred precinct by those few of the
adepts who are worthy to stand in the presence of the ADONAI.
The description which Isaiah gives of the purification necessary for a
prophet to undergo before he is worthy to be the mouthpiece of heaven,
applies to the case in point. In customary metaphor he says: “Then flew
one of the seraphim unto me having a live coal in his hand, which he
had taken with the tongs from off the altar ... and he laid it upon my
mouth and said, Lo! this hath touched thy lips and thine iniquity is
taken away.”
The invocation of his own Augoeides, by the purified adept, is
described in words of unparalleled beauty by Bulwer-Lytton in _Zanoni_,
and there he gives us to understand that the slightest touch of mortal
passion unfits the hierophant to hold communion with his spotless soul.
Not only are there few who can successfully perform the ceremony, but
even these rarely resort to it except for the instruction of some
neophytes, and to obtain knowledge of the most solemn importance.
And yet how little is the knowledge treasured up by these hierophants
understood or appreciated by the general public! “There is another
collection of writings and traditions bearing the title of _Kabala_,
attributed to Oriental scholars,” says the author of _Art-Magic_; “but
as this remarkable work is of little or no value without a key, which
_can only be furnished by Oriental fraternities_, its transcript would
be of no value to the general reader.”[577] And how they are ridiculed
by every Houndsditch commercial traveller who wanders through India in
pursuit of “orders” and writes to the _Times_, and misrepresented by
every nimble-fingered trickster who pretends to show by legerdemain, to
the gaping crowd, the feats of true Oriental magicians!
But, notwithstanding his unfairness in the Algerian affair, Robert
Houdin, an authority on the art of prestidigitation, and Moreau-Cinti,
another, gave honest testimony in behalf of the French mediums. They
both testified, when cross-examined by the Academicians, that none but
the “mediums” could possibly produce the phenomena of table-rapping and
levitation without a suitable preparation and furniture adapted for
the purpose. They also showed that the so-called “levitations without
contact” were feats utterly beyond the power of the _professional_
juggler; that for them, such levitations, unless produced in a room
supplied with secret machinery and concave mirrors, was _impossible_.
They added moreover, that the simple apparition of a diaphanous hand,
in a place in which confederacy would be rendered impossible, the
medium having been previously searched, would be a demonstration that
it was the work _of no human agency_, whatever else that agency might
be. The _Siècle_, and other Parisian newspapers immediately published
their suspicions that these two professional and very clever gentlemen
had become the confederates of the spiritists!
Professor Pepper, director of the Polytechnic Institute of London,
invented a clever apparatus to produce spiritual appearances on the
stage, and sold his patent in 1863, in Paris, for the sum of 20,000
francs. The phantoms looked real and were evanescent, being but an
effect produced by the reflection of a highly-illuminated object upon
the surface of plate-glass. They seemed to appear and disappear, to
walk about the stage and play their parts to perfection. Sometimes one
of the phantoms placed himself on a bench; after which, one of the
living actors would begin quarrelling with him, and, seizing a heavy
hatchet, would part the head and body of the ghost in two. But, joining
his two parts again, the spectre would reappear, a few steps off,
to the amazement of the public. The contrivance worked marvellously
well, and nightly attracted large crowds. But to produce these ghosts
required a stage-apparatus, and more than one confederate. There were
nevertheless some reporters who made this exhibition the pretext for
ridiculing the _spiritists_—as though the two classes of phenomena had
the slightest connection!
What the Pepper ghosts pretended to do, genuine disembodied human
spirits, when their reflection is materialized by the elementals, can
actually perform. They will permit themselves to be perforated with
bullets or the sword, or to be dismembered, and then instantly form
themselves anew. But the case is different with both cosmic and human
elementary spirits, for a sword or dagger, or even a pointed stick,
will cause them to vanish in terror. This will seem unaccountable to
those who do not understand of what a material substance the elementary
are composed; but the kabalists understand perfectly. The records of
antiquity and of the middle ages, to say nothing of the modern wonders
at Cideville, which have been judicially attested for us, corroborate
these facts.
Skeptics, and even skeptical spiritualists, have often unjustly accused
mediums of fraud, when denied what they considered their inalienable
right to test the spirits. But where there is one such case, there
are fifty in which spiritualists have permitted themselves to be
practiced upon by tricksters, while they neglected to appreciate
genuine manifestations procured for them by their mediums. Ignorant of
the laws of mediumship, such do not know that when an honest medium is
once taken possession of by spirits, whether disembodied or elemental,
he is no longer his own master. He cannot control the actions of the
spirits, nor even his own. They make him a puppet to dance at their
pleasure while they pull the wires behind the scenes. The false medium
may seem entranced, and yet be playing tricks all the while; while the
real medium may appear to be in full possession of his senses, when in
fact he is far away, and his body is animated by his “Indian guide,”
or “control.” Or, he may be entranced in his cabinet, while his astral
body (double) or _doppelganger_, is walking about the room moved by
another intelligence.
Among all the phenomena, that of _re-percussion_, closely allied with
those of bi-location and aërial “travelling,” is the most astounding.
In the middle ages it was included under the head of sorcery. De
Gasparin, in his refutations of the miraculous character of the marvels
of Cideville, treats of the subject at length; but these pretended
explanations were all in their turn exploded by de Mirville and des
Mousseaux, who, while failing in their attempt to trace the phenomena
back to the Devil, did, nevertheless, prove their spiritual origin.
“The prodigy of re-percussion,” says des Mousseaux, “occurs when a
blow aimed at the spirit, visible or otherwise, of an absent _living_
person, or at the phantom which represents him, strikes this person
himself, at the same time, and in the very place at which the spectre
or his double is touched! We must suppose, therefore, that the blow is
re-percussed, and that it reaches, as if rebounding, from the image of
the living person—his phantasmal[578] duplicate—the original, wherever
he may be, in flesh and blood.
“Thus, for instance, an individual appears before me, or, remaining
invisible, declares war, threatens, and causes me to be threatened with
obsession. I strike at the place where I perceive his phantom, where I
hear him moving, where I feel _somebody_, something which molests and
resists me. I strike; the blood will appear sometimes on this place,
and occasionally a scream may be heard; _he_ is wounded—perhaps, dead!
It is done, and I have explained the fact.”[579]
“Notwithstanding that, at the moment I struck him, his presence in
another place is authentically proved; ... I saw—yes, I saw plainly
the phantom hurt upon the cheek or shoulder, and this same wound is
found precisely on the living person, re-percussed upon his cheek or
shoulder. Thus, it becomes evident that the facts of re-percussion have
an intimate connection with those of bi-location or _duplication_,
either spiritual or corporeal.”
The history of the Salem witchcraft, as we find it recorded in the
works of Cotton Mather, Calef, Upham, and others, furnishes a curious
corroboration of the fact of the double, as it also does of the
effects of allowing elementary spirits to have their own way. This
tragical chapter of American history has never yet been written in
accordance with the truth. A party of four or five young girls had
become “developed” as mediums, by sitting with a West Indian negro
woman, a practitioner of _Obeah_. They began to suffer all kinds of
physical torture, such as pinching, having pins stuck in them, and the
marks of bruises and teeth on different parts of their bodies. They
would declare that they were hurt by the spectres of various persons,
and we learn from the celebrated _Narrative of Deodat Lawson_ (London,
1704), that “some of them confessed that they did afflict the sufferers
(_i. e._, these young girls), according to the time and manner they
were accused thereof; and, being asked what they did to afflict them,
some said that they pricked pins into poppets, made with rags, wax,
and other materials. One that confessed after the signing of her
death-warrant, said she used to afflict them by clutching and pinching
her hands together, and _wishing_ in what part and after what manner
she would have them afflicted, and _it was done_.”[580]
Mr. Upham tells us that Abigail Hobbs, one of these girls, acknowledged
that she had confederated with the Devil, who “came to her in the shape
of a man,” and commanded her to afflict the girls, bringing images
made of wood in their likeness, with thorns for her to prick into the
images, which she did; whereupon, the girls cried out that they were
hurt by her.”
How perfectly these facts, the validity of which was proven by
unimpeachable testimony in court, go to corroborate the doctrine of
Paracelsus. It is surpassingly strange that so ripe a scholar as Mr.
Upham should have accumulated into the 1,000 pages of his two volumes
such a mass of legal evidence, going to show the agency of earth-bound
souls and tricksy nature-spirits in these tragedies, without suspecting
the truth.
Ages ago, the old Ennius was made by Lucretius to say:
“Bis duo sunt hominis, manes, caro, _spiritus_ umbra;
Quatuor ista loci bis duo suscipirent;
Terra tegit carnem;—tumulum circumvolat umbra,
Orcus habet manes.”
In this present case, as in every similar one, the scientists, being
unable to explain the fact, assert that _it cannot exist_.
But we will now give a few historical instances going to show that
some daimons, or elementary spirits, are afraid of sword, knife, or
any thing sharp. We do not pretend to explain the reason. That is the
province of physiology and psychology. Unfortunately, physiologists
have not yet been able to even establish the relations between speech
and thought, and so, have handed it over to the metaphysicians, who,
in their turn, according to Fournié, have done nothing. Done nothing,
we say, but claimed everything. No fact could be presented to some of
them, that was too large for these learned gentlemen to at least try
to stuff into their pigeon-holes, labelled with some fancy Greek name,
expressive of everything else but the true nature of the phenomenon.
“Alas, alas! my son!” exclaims the wise Muphti, of Aleppo, to his
son Ibrahim, who choked himself with the head of a huge fish. “When
will you realize that your stomach is smaller than the ocean?” Or,
as Mrs. Catherine Crowe remarks in her _Night-Side of Nature_, when
will our scientists admit that “their intellects are no measure of God
Almighty’s designs?”
We will not ask which of the ancient writers mention facts of
seemingly-_supernatural_ nature; but rather which of them does not?
In Homer, we find Ulysses evoking the spirit of his friend, the
soothsayer Tiresias. Preparing for the ceremony of the “festival of
blood,” Ulysses draws his sword, and thus frightens away the thousands
of phantoms attracted by the sacrifice. The friend himself, the
so-long-expected Tiresias, dares not approach him so long as Ulysses
holds the dreaded weapon in his hand.[581] Æneas prepares to descend to
the kingdom of the shadows, and as soon as they approach its entrance,
the Sibyl who guides him utters her warning to the Trojan hero, and
orders him to draw his sword and clear himself a passage through the
dense crowd of flitting forms:
“_Tuque invade viam, vaginâque eripe ferrum._”[582]
Glanvil gives a wonderful narrative of the apparition of the “Drummer
of Tedworth,” which happened in 1661; in which the _scin-lecca_,
or double, of the drummer-sorcerer was evidently very much afraid
of the sword. Psellus, in his work,[583] gives a long story of his
sister-in-law being thrown into a most fearful state by an elementary
_daimon_ taking possession of her. She was finally cured by a conjurer,
a foreigner named Anaphalangis, who began by threatening the invisible
occupant of her body with a _naked sword_, until he finally dislodged
him. Psellus introduces a whole catechism of demonology, which he gives
in the following terms, as far as we remember:
“You want to know,” asked the conjurer, “whether the bodies of the
spirits can be hurt by sword or any other weapon?[584] Yes, they can.
Any hard substance striking them can make them sensible to pain; and
though their bodies be made neither of solid nor firm substance, they
feel it the same, for in beings endowed with sensibility it is not
their nerves only which possess the faculty of feeling, but likewise
also the spirit which resides in them ... the body of a spirit can be
sensible in its _whole_, as well as in each one of its parts. Without
the help of any physical organism the spirit sees, hears, and if you
touch him feels your touch. If you divide him in two, he will feel
the pain as would any living man, for he is _matter_ still, though so
refined as to be generally invisible to our eye.... One thing, however,
distinguishes him from the living man, viz.: that when a man’s limbs
are once divided, their parts cannot be reunited very easily. But,
cut a _demon_ in two, and you will see him immediately join himself
together. As water or air closes in behind a solid body[585] passing
through it, and no trace is left, so does the body of a demon condense
itself again, when the penetrative weapon is withdrawn from the wound.
But every rent made in it causes him pain nevertheless. _That is why
daimons_ dread the point of a sword or any sharp weapon. Let those who
want to see them flee try the experiment.”
One of the most learned scholars of his century, Bodin, the
Demonologian, held the same opinion, that both the human and cosmical
elementaries “were sorely afraid of swords and daggers.” It is also
the opinion of Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Plato. Plutarch mentions
it several times. The practicing theurgists knew it well and acted
accordingly; and many of the latter assert that “the demons suffer from
any rent made in their bodies.” Bodin tells us a wonderful story to
this effect, in his work _On the Dæmons_, p. 292.
“I remember,” says the author, “that in 1557 an elemental demon, one
of those who are called _thundering_, fell down _with the lightning_,
into the house of Poudot, the shoemaker, and immediately began
flinging stones all about the room. We picked up so many of them that
the landlady filled a large chest full, after having securely closed
the windows and doors and locked the chest itself. But it did not
prevent the demon in the least from introducing other stones into the
room, but without injuring any one for all that. Latomi, who was then
_Quarter-President_,[586] came to see what was the matter. Immediately
upon his entrance, the spirit knocked the cap off his head and made
him run away. It had lasted for over six days, when M. Jean Morgnes,
Counsellor at the _Presidial_, came to fetch me to see the mystery.
When I entered the house, some one advised the master of it to pray to
God with all his heart and to wheel round a sword in the air about the
room; he did so. On that following day the landlady told us, that from
that very moment they did not hear the least noise in the house; but
that during the seven previous days that it lasted they could not get a
moment’s rest.”
The books on the witchcraft of the middle ages are full of such
narratives. The very rare and interesting work of Glanvil, called
_Sadducismus Triumphatus_, ranks with that of Bodin, above mentioned,
as one of the best. But we must give space now to certain narratives of
the more ancient philosophers, who explain at the same time that they
describe.
And first in rank for wonders comes Proclus. His list of facts, most
of which he supports by the citation of witnesses—sometimes well-known
philosophers—is staggering. He records many instances in his time of
dead persons who were found to have changed their recumbent positions
in the sepulchre, for one of either sitting or standing, which he
attributes to their being _larvæ_, and which he says “is related by
the ancients of Aristius, Epimenides, and Hermodorus.” He gives five
such cases from the history of Clearchus, the disciple of Aristotle.
1. Cleonymus, the Athenian. 2. Polykritus, an illustrious man among
the Æolians. It is related by the historian Nomachius, that Polykritus
died, and returned in the ninth month after his death. “Hiero, the
Ephesian, and other historians,” says his translator, Taylor, “testify
to the truth of this.” 3. In Nicopolis, the same happened to one
Eurinus. The latter revived on the fifteenth day after his burial, and
lived for some time after that, leading an exemplary life. 4. Rufus, a
priest of Thessalonica, restored to life the third day after his death,
for the purpose of performing certain sacred ceremonies according to
promise; he fulfilled his engagement, and died again to return no more.
5. This is the case of one Philonæa, who lived under the reign of
Philip. She was the daughter of Demostratus and Charito of Amphipolos.
Married against her wish to one Kroterus, she died soon after. But
in the sixth month after her death, she revived, as Proclus says:
“through her love of a youth named Machates, who came to her father
Demostratus, from Pella.” She visited him for many nights successively,
but when this was finally discovered, she, or rather the vampire that
represented her, died of rage. Previous to this she declared that she
acted in this manner according to the will of _terrestrial demons_.
Her dead body was seen at this second death by every one in the town,
lying in her father’s house. On opening the vault, where her body had
been deposited, it was found empty by those of her relatives, who being
incredulous upon that point, went to ascertain the truth. The narrative
is corroborated by the _Epistles of Hipparchus_ and those of Arridæus
to Philip.[587]
Says Proclus: “Many other of the ancients have collected a history of
those that have apparently died, and afterward revived. Among these is
the natural philosopher Demokritus. In his writings concerning Hades,
he affirms that [in a certain case under discussion] death was not,
as it seemed, an entire desertion of the whole life of the body, but
a cessation caused by some blow, or perhaps a wound; but the bonds of
the soul yet remained rooted about the marrow, and the heart contained
in its profundity the empyreuma of life; and this remaining, it again
acquired the life, which had been extinguished, in consequence of being
adapted to animation.”
He says again, “That it is possible for the soul to depart from and
enter into the body, is evident from him, who, according to Clearchus,
used a _soul-attracting wand_ on a sleeping boy; and who persuaded
Aristotle, as Clearchus relates in his _Treatise on Sleep_, that the
soul may be separated from the body, and that it enters into a body and
uses it as a lodging. For, striking the boy with the wand, he drew out,
and, as it were, led his soul, for the purpose of evincing that the
body was immovable when the soul (astral body) was at a distance from
it, and that it was preserved uninjured; but the soul being again led
into the body by means of the wand, after its entrance, narrated every
particular. From this circumstance, therefore, both the spectators and
Aristotle were persuaded that the soul is separate from the body.”
It may be considered quite absurd to recall so often the facts of
witchcraft, in the full light of the nineteenth century. But the
century itself is getting old; and as it gradually approaches the fatal
end, it seems as if it were falling into dotage; not only does it
refuse to recollect how abundantly the facts of witchcraft were proven,
but it refuses to realize what has been going on for the last thirty
years, all over the wide world. After a lapse of several thousand
years we may doubt the magic powers of the Thessalonian priests and
their “sorceries,” as mentioned by Pliny;[588] we may throw discredit
upon the information given us by Suidas, who narrates Medea’s journey
through the air, and thus forget that magic was the highest knowledge
of natural philosophy; but how are we to dispose of the frequent
occurrence of precisely such journeys “through the air” when they
happen before our own eyes, and are corroborated by the testimony of
hundreds of apparently sane persons? If the universality of a belief
be a proof of its truth, few facts have been better established than
that of sorcery. “Every people, from the rudest to the most refined, we
may also add in every age, have believed in the kind of supernatural
agency, which we understand by this term,” says Thomas Wright, the
author of _Sorcery and Magic_, and a skeptical member of the National
Institute of France. “It was founded on the equally extensive creed,
that, besides our own visible existence, we live in an invisible world
of spiritual beings, by which our actions _and even our thoughts_
are often guided, and which have a certain degree of power over the
elements and over the ordinary course of organic life.” Further,
marvelling how this mysterious science flourished everywhere, and
noticing several famous schools of magic in different parts of Europe,
he explains the time-honored belief, and shows the difference between
sorcery and magic as follows: “The magician differed from the witch in
this, that, _while the latter was an ignorant instrument in the hands
of the demons, the former had become their master by the powerful
intermediation of Science_, which was only within reach of the few,
and which these beings were unable to disobey.”[589] This delineation,
established and known since the days of Moses, the author gives as
derived from “the most authentic sources.”
If from this unbeliever we pass to the authority of an adept in that
mysterious science, the anonymous author of _Art-Magic_, we find him
stating the following: “The reader may inquire wherein consists the
difference between a medium and a magician?... The medium is one
through whose astral spirit other spirits can manifest, making their
presence known by various kinds of phenomena. Whatever these consist
in, the medium is only a passive agent in their hands. He can _neither
command_ their presence, nor _will_ their absence; can never compel the
performance of any special act, nor direct its nature. The magician,
on the contrary, _can summon and dismiss spirits at will_; can perform
many feats of occult power through his own spirit; can compel the
presence and assistance of spirits of lower grades of being than
himself, and effect transformations in the realm of nature upon animate
and inanimate bodies.”[590]
This learned author forgot to point out a marked distinction in
mediumship, with which he must have been entirely familiar. Physical
phenomena are the result of the manipulation of forces through the
physical system of the medium, by the unseen intelligences, of
whatever class. In a word, physical mediumship depends on a peculiar
organization of the _physical_ system; spiritual mediumship, which
is accompanied by a display of subjective, intellectual phenomena,
depends upon a like peculiar organization of the _spiritual_ nature
of the medium. As the potter from one lump of clay fashions a vessel
of dishonor, and from another a vessel of honor, so, among physical
mediums, the plastic astral spirit of one may be prepared for a certain
class of objective phenomena, and that of another for a different
one. Once so prepared, it appears difficult to alter the phase of
mediumship, as when a bar of steel is forged into a certain shape,
it cannot be used for any other than its original purpose without
difficulty. As a rule, mediums who have been developed for one class of
phenomena rarely change to another, but repeat the same performance _ad
infinitum_.
Psychography, or the direct writing of messages by spirits, partakes of
both forms of mediumship. The writing itself is an objective physical
fact, while the sentiments it contains may be of the very noblest
character. The latter depend entirely on the moral state of the medium.
It does not require that he should be educated, to write philosophical
treatises worthy of Aristotle, nor a poet, to write verses that would
reflect honor upon a Byron or a Lamartine; but it does require that
the soul of the medium shall be pure enough to serve as a channel for
spirits who are capable of giving utterance to such lofty sentiments.
In _Art-Magic_, one of the most delightful pictures presented to us
is that of an innocent little child-medium, in whose presence, during
the past three years, four volumes of MSS., in the ancient Sanscrit,
have been written by the spirits, without pens, pencils, or ink. “It
is enough,” says the author, “to lay the blank sheets on a tripod,
carefully screened from the direct rays of light, but still dimly
visible to the eyes of attentive observers. The child sits on the
ground and lays her head on the tripod, embracing its supports with her
little arms. In this attitude she most commonly sleeps for an hour,
during which time the sheets lying on the tripod are filled up with
exquisitely formed characters in the ancient Sanscrit.” This is so
remarkable an instance of psychographic mediumship, and so thoroughly
illustrates the principle we have above stated, that we cannot refrain
from quoting a few lines from one of the Sanscrit writings, the more so
as it embodies that portion of the Hermetic philosophy relating to the
antecedent state of man, which elsewhere we have less satisfactorily
described.
“Man lives on many earths before he reaches this. Myriads of
worlds swarm in space where the soul in rudimental states performs
its pilgrimages, ere he reaches the large and shining planet
named the Earth, the glorious function of which is to confer
_self-consciousness_. At this point only is he man; at every other
stage of his vast, wild journey he is but an embryonic being—a
fleeting, temporary shape of matter—a creature in which a _part_, but
only a part, of the high, imprisoned soul shines forth; a rudimental
shape, with rudimental functions, ever living, dying, sustaining a
flitting spiritual existence as rudimental as the material shape from
whence it emerged; a butterfly, springing up from the chrysalitic
shell, but ever, as it onward rushes, in new births, new deaths, new
incarnations, anon to die and live again, but still stretch upward,
still strive onward, still rush on the giddy, dreadful, toilsome,
rugged path, until it awakens once more—once more to live and be a
material shape, a thing of dust, a creature of flesh and blood, but
now—_a man_.”[591]
We witnessed once in India a trial of psychical skill between a
holy _gossein_[592] and a sorcerer,[593] which recurs to us in this
connection. We had been discussing the relative powers of the fakir’s
Pitris,—pre-Adamite spirits, and the juggler’s invisible allies. A
trial of skill was agreed upon, and the writer was chosen as a referee.
We were taking our noon-day rest, beside a small lake in Northern
India. Upon the surface of the glassy water floated innumerable aquatic
flowers, and large shining leaves. Each of the contestants plucked a
leaf. The fakir, laying his against his breast, folded his hands across
it, and fell into a momentary trance. He then laid the leaf, with its
surface downward, upon the water. The juggler pretended to control the
“water-master,” the spirit dwelling in the water; and boasted that
he would compel the _power_ to prevent the Pitris from manifesting
any phenomena upon the fakir’s leaf in _their_ element. He took his
own leaf and tossed it upon the water, after going through a form
of barbarous incantation. It at once exhibited a violent agitation,
while the other leaf remained perfectly motionless. After the lapse
of a few seconds, both leaves were recovered. Upon that of the fakir
were found—much to the indignation of the juggler—something that
looked like a symmetrical design traced in milk-white characters, as
though the juices of the plant had been used as a corrosive writing
fluid. When it became dry, and an opportunity was afforded to examine
the lines with care, it proved to be a series of exquisitely-formed
Sanscrit characters; the whole composed a sentence embodying a high
moral precept. The fakir, let us add, could neither read nor write.
Upon the juggler’s leaf, instead of writing, was found the tracing of
a most hideous, impish face. Each leaf, therefore, bore an impression
or allegorical reflection of the character of the contestant, and
indicated the quality of spiritual beings with which he was surrounded.
But, with deep regret, we must once more leave India, with its blue sky
and mysterious past, its religious devotees and its weird sorcerers,
and on the enchanted carpet of the historian, transport ourselves back
to the musty atmosphere of the French Academy.
To appreciate the timidity, prejudice, and superficiality which
have marked the treatment of psychological subjects in the past, we
propose to review a book which lies before us. It is the _Histoire du
Merveilleux dans les Temps Modernes_. The work is published by its
author, the learned Dr. Figuier, and teems with quotations from the
most conspicuous authorities in physiology, psychology, and medicine.
Dr. Calmeil, the well-known director-in-chief of Charenton, the
famous lunatic asylum of France, is the robust Atlas on whose mighty
shoulders rests this world of erudition. As the ripe fruit of the
thought of 1860 it must forever keep a place among the most curious of
works of _art_. Moved by the restless demon of science, determined to
kill superstition—and, as a consequence, spiritism—at one blow, the
author affords us a summary view of the most remarkable instances of
mediumistic phenomena during the last two centuries.
The discussion embraces the Prophets of Cevennes, the Camisards, the
Jansenists, the Abbé Paris, and other historical epidemics, which,
as they have been described during the last twenty years by nearly
every writer upon the modern phenomena, we will mention as briefly
as possible. It is not _facts_ that we desire to bring again under
discussion, but merely the way in which such facts were regarded and
treated by those who, as physicians and recognized authorities, had the
greater responsibility in such questions. If this prejudiced author is
introduced to our readers at this time, it is only because his work
enables us to show what occult facts and manifestations may expect from
orthodox science. When the most world-renowned psychological epidemics
are so treated, what will induce a materialist to seriously study
other phenomena as well authenticated and as interesting, but still
less popular? Let it be remembered that the reports made by various
committees to their respective academies at that time, as well as the
records of the judicial tribunals, are still in existence, and may be
consulted for purposes of verification. It is from such unimpeachable
sources that Dr. Figuier compiled his extraordinary work. We must give,
at least, in substance, the unparalleled arguments with which the
author seeks to demolish every form of supernaturalism, together with
the commentaries of the demonological des Mousseaux, who, in one of his
works,[594] pounces upon his skeptical victim like a tiger upon his
prey.
Between the two champions—the materialist and the bigot—the unbiassed
student may glean a good harvest.
We will begin with the Convulsionaires of Cevennes, the epidemic of
whose astounding phenomena occurred during the latter part of 1700. The
merciless measures adopted by the French Catholics to extirpate the
spirit of prophecy from an entire population, is historical, and needs
no repetition here. The fact alone that a mere handful of men, women,
and children, not exceeding 2,000 persons in number, could withstand
for years king’s troops, which, with the militia, amounted to 60,000
men, is a miracle in itself. The marvels are all recorded, and the
_procès verbaux_ of the time preserved in the Archives of France until
this day. There is in existence an official report among others, which
was sent to Rome by the ferocious Abbé Chayla, the prior of Laval, in
which he complains that the _Evil One_ is so powerful, that no torture,
no amount of inquisitory exorcism, is able to dislodge him from the
Cevennois. He adds, that he closed their hands upon burning coals, and
they were not even singed; that he had wrapped their whole persons in
_cotton soaked with oil, and had set them on fire_, and in many cases
did not find one blister on their skins; that balls were shot at them,
and found flattened between the skin and clothes, without injuring
them, etc., etc.
Accepting the whole of the above as a solid groundwork for his
learned arguments, this is what Dr. Figuier says: “Toward the close
of the seventeenth century, an old maid imports into Cevennes the
spirit of prophecy. She communicates it (?) to young boys and girls,
who transpire it in their turn, and spread it in the surrounding
atmosphere.... Women and children become the most sensitive to the
infection” (vol. ii., p. 261). “Men, women, and _babies_ speak under
inspiration, not in ordinary _patois_, but in the purest French—a
language at that time utterly unknown in the country. Children of
twelve months, and even less, as we learn from the _procès verbaux_,
who previously could hardly utter a few short syllables, spoke
fluently, and prophesied.” “Eight thousand prophets,” says Figuier,
“were scattered over the country; doctors and eminent physicians were
sent for.” Half of the medical schools of France, among others, the
Faculty of Montpellier, hastened to the spot. Consultations were held,
and the physicians declared themselves “delighted, lost in wonder and
admiration, upon hearing young girls and boys, ignorant and illiterate,
deliver discourses on things _they had never learned_.”[595] The
sentence pronounced by Figuier against these treacherous professional
brethren, for being so delighted with the young prophets, is that they
“did not understand, themselves, what they saw.”[596] Many of the
prophets forcibly communicated their spirit to those who tried to break
the spell.[597] A great number of them were _between three and twelve
years_ of age; still others _were at the breast_, and spoke French
distinctly and correctly.[598] These discourses, which often lasted for
several hours, would have been impossible to the little orators, were
the latter in their natural or normal state.[599]
“Now,” asks the reviewer, “what was the meaning of such a series of
prodigies, all of them freely admitted in Figuier’s book? No meaning
at all! It was nothing,” he says, “except the effect of a ‘momentary
exaltation of the intellectual faculties.’”[600] “These phenomena,” he
adds, “are observable in many of the cerebral affections.”
“_Momentary exaltation_, lasting for many hours _in the brains of
babies under one year old_, not weaned yet, speaking good French before
they had learned to say one word in their own _patois_! Oh, miracle of
physiology! _Prodigy_ ought to be thy name!” exclaims des Mousseaux.
“Dr. Calmeil, in his work on insanity,” remarks Figuier, “when
reporting on the ecstatic _theomania_ of the Calvinists, concludes
that the disease must be attributed “in the simpler cases to HYSTERIA,
and in those of more serious character to _epilepsy_.... We rather
incline to the opinion,” says Figuier, “that it was a disease _sui
generis_, and in order to have an appropriate name for such a disease,
we must be satisfied with the one of the Trembling Convulsionaires of
Cevennes.”[601]
_Theomania_ and _hysteria_, again! The medical corporations must
themselves be possessed with an incurable _atomomania_; otherwise why
should they give out such absurdities for science, and hope for their
acceptance?
“Such was the fury for exorcising and _roasting_,” continues Figuier,
“that monks saw possessions by demons everywhere when they felt in need
of miracles to either throw more light on the omnipotency of the Devil,
or keep their dinner-pot boiling at the convent.”[602]
For this sarcasm the pious des Mousseaux expresses a heartfelt
gratitude to Figuier; for, as he remarks, “he is _in France_ one of
the first writers whom we find, to our surprise, _not denying_ the
phenomena which have been made long since _undeniable_. Moved by a
sense of lofty superiority and even disdain for the method used by his
predecessors. Dr. Figuier desires his readers to know that he does
_not_ follow the same path as they. ‘We will not reject,’ says he, ‘as
being unworthy of credit, _facts_ only because they are embarrassing
for our system. On the contrary, we will collect all of the facts that
the same historical evidence has transmitted to us ... and which,
consequently, are entitled to the same credence, and it is upon the
whole mass of such facts that we will base the _natural explanation_,
which we have to offer, in our turn, as a sequel to those of the
savants who have preceded us on this subject.’”[603]
Thereupon, Dr. Figuier proceeds.[604] He takes a few steps, and,
placing himself right in the midst of the Convulsionaires of St.
Medard, he invites his readers to scrutinize, under his direction,
_prodigies_ which are for him but simple effects of nature.
But before we proceed, in our turn, to show Dr. Figuier’s opinion, we
must refresh the reader’s memory as to what the Jansenist miracles
comprised, according to historical evidence.
Abbé Paris was a Jansenist, who died in 1727. Immediately after his
decease the most surprising phenomena began to occur at his tomb. The
churchyard was crowded from morning till night. Jesuits, exasperated at
seeing heretics perform wonders in healing, and other works, got from
the magistrates an order to close all access to the tomb of the Abbé.
But, notwithstanding every opposition, the wonders lasted for over
twenty years. Bishop Douglas, who went to Paris for that sole purpose
in 1749, visited the place, and he reports that the miracles were
still going on among the Convulsionaires. When every endeavor to stop
them failed, the Catholic clergy were forced to admit their reality,
but screened themselves, as usual, behind the Devil. Hume, in his
_Philosophical Essays_, says: “There surely never was so great a number
of miracles ascribed to one person as those which were lately said to
have been wrought in France upon the tomb of the Abbé Paris. The curing
of the sick, giving hearing to the deaf and sight to the blind, were
everywhere talked of as the effects of the holy sepulchre. But, what
is more extraordinary, many of the miracles were immediately proved
_upon the spot_, before judges of unquestioned credit and distinction,
in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in the
world ... nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported by the
civil magistrates, and determined enemies to those opinions in whose
favor the miracles were said to have been wrought, ever able distinctly
to refute or detect them ... such is historic evidence.”[605] Dr.
Middleton, in his _Free Enquiry_, a book which he wrote at a period
when the manifestations were already decreasing, _i. e._, about
nineteen years after they had first begun, declares that the evidence
of these miracles is fully as strong as that of the wonders recorded of
the Apostles.
The phenomena so well authenticated by thousands of witnesses before
magistrates, and in spite of the Catholic clergy, are among the most
wonderful in history. Carré de Montgeron, a member of parliament
and a man who became famous for his connection with the Jansenists,
enumerates them carefully in his work. It comprises four thick quarto
volumes, of which the first is dedicated to the king, under the title:
“_La Verité des Miracles operés par l’Intercession de M. de Paris,
demontrée contre l’Archeveque de Sens. Ouvrage dedié au Roi, par M.
de Montgeron, Conseiller au Parlement._” The author presents a vast
amount of personal and official evidence to the truthfulness of every
case. For speaking _disrespectfully_ of the Roman clergy, Montgeron was
thrown into the Bastile, but his work was accepted.
And now for the views of Dr. Figuier upon these remarkable and
unquestionably historical phenomena. “A Convulsionary bends back into
an arc, her loins supported by the sharp point of a peg,” quotes the
learned author, from the _procès verbaux_. “The pleasure that she begs
for is to be pounded by a stone weighing fifty pounds, and suspended
by a rope passing over a pulley fixed to the ceiling. The stone, being
hoisted to its extreme height, falls with all its weight upon the
patient’s stomach, her back resting all the while on the sharp point of
the peg. Montgeron and numerous other witnesses testified to the fact
that neither the flesh nor the skin of the back were ever marked in the
least, and that the girl, to show she suffered no pain whatever, kept
crying out, ‘Strike harder—harder!’
“Jeanne Maulet, a girl of twenty, leaning with her back against a wall,
received upon her stomach one hundred blows of a hammer weighing thirty
pounds; the blows, administered by a very strong man, were so terrible
that they shook the wall. To test the force of the blows, Montgeron
tried them on the stone wall against which the girl was leaning.... He
gets one of the instruments of the Jansenist healing, called the ‘GRAND
SECOURS.’ At the twenty-fifth blow,” he writes, “the stone upon which I
struck, which had been shaken by the preceding efforts, suddenly became
loose and fell on the other side of the wall, making an aperture more
than half a foot in size.” When the blows are struck with violence
upon an iron drill held against the stomach of a Convulsionaire (who,
sometimes, is but a weak woman), “it seems,” says Montgeron, “as if
it would penetrate through to the spine and rupture all the entrails
under the force of the blows” (vol. i., p. 380). “But, so far from that
occurring, the Convulsionaire cries out, with an expression of perfect
rapture in her face, ‘Oh, how delightful! Oh, that does me good!
Courage, brother; strike twice as hard, if you can!’ It now remains,”
continues Dr. Figuier, “to try to explain the strange phenomena which
we have described.”
“We have said, in the introduction to this work, that at the middle of
the nineteenth century one of the most famous epidemics of possession
broke out in Germany: that of the _Nonnains_, who performed all the
miracles most admired since the days of St. Medard, and even some
greater ones; who turned summersaults, who CLIMBED DEAD WALLS, and
spoke FOREIGN LANGUAGES.”[606]
The official report of the wonders, which is more full than that of
Figuier, adds such further particulars as that “the affected persons
would stand on their heads for hours together, and correctly describe
distant events, even such as were happening in the homes of the
committee-men; as it was subsequently verified. Men and women were held
suspended in the air, by an invisible force, and the combined efforts
of the committee were insufficient to pull them down. Old women climbed
perpendicular walls thirty feet in height with the agility of wild
cats, etc., etc.”
Now, one should expect that the learned critic, the eminent physician
and psychologist, who not only credits such incredible phenomena but
himself describes them minutely, and _con amore_, so to say, would
necessarily startle the reading public with some explanation so
extraordinary that his scientific views would cause a real hegira to
the unexplored fields of psychology. Well, he does startle us, for to
all this he quietly observes: “Recourse _was had to marriage_ to bring
to a stop these disorders of the Convulsionaires!”[607]
For once des Mousseaux had the best of his enemy: “Marriage, do you
understand this?” he remarks. “Marriage cures them of this faculty
of climbing dead-walls like so many flies, and of speaking foreign
languages. Oh! the curious properties of marriage in those remarkable
days!”
“It should be added,” continues Figuier, “that with the fanatics of St.
Medard, the blows were never administered except during the convulsive
crisis; and that, therefore, as Dr. Calmeil suggests, meteorism of
the abdomen, the _state of spasm_ of the uterus of women, of the
alimentary canal in all cases, the state of _contraction, of erethism,
of turgescence of the carneous envelopes of the muscular coats_ which
protect and cover the abdomen, chest, and principal vascular masses and
the osseous surfaces, _may have singularly contributed toward reducing,
and even destroying_, the force of the blows!”
“The astounding resistance that the skin, the areolar tissue, the
surface of the bodies and limbs of the Convulsionaires offered to
things which seem as if they ought to have torn or crushed them, is of
a nature to excite more surprise. Nevertheless, it can be explained.
This resisting force, this insensibility, seems to partake of the
extreme changes in sensibility which can occur in the animal economy
during a time of great exaltation. Anger, fear, in a word, every
passion, provided that it be carried to a paroxysmal point, can produce
this insensibility.”[608]
“Let us remark, besides,” rejoins Dr. Calmeil, quoted by Figuier, “that
for striking upon the bodies of the Convulsionaires use was made either
of massive objects with flat or rounded surfaces, or of cylindrical
and blunt shapes.[609] The action of such physical agents is not to be
compared, in respect to the danger which attaches to it, with that of
cords, supple or flexible instruments, and those having a sharp edge.
In fine, the contact and the shock of the blows produced upon the
Convulsionaires _the effect of a salutary shampooing_, and reduced the
violence of the tortures of HYSTERIA.”
The reader will please observe that this is not intended as a joke, but
is the sober theory of one of the most eminent of French physicians,
hoary with age and experience, the Director-in-Chief of the Government
Insane Asylum at Charenton. Really, the above explanation might lead
the reader to a strange suspicion. We might imagine, perhaps, that Dr.
Calmeil has kept company with the patients under his care a few more
years than was good for the healthy action of his own brain.
Besides, when Figuier talks of massive objects, of cylindrical and
blunt shapes, he surely forgets the sharp swords, pointed iron pegs,
and the hatchets, of which he himself gave a graphic description on
page 409 of his first volume. The brother of Elie Marion is shown by
him striking his stomach and abdomen with the sharp point of a knife,
with tremendous force, “his body all the while resisting as if it were
made of iron.”
Arrived at this point, des Mousseaux loses all patience, and
indignantly exclaims:
“Was the learned physician quite awake when writing the above
sentences?... If, perchance, the Drs. Calmeil and Figuier should
seriously maintain their assertions and insist on their theory, we are
ready to answer them as follows: ‘We are perfectly willing to believe
you. But before such a superhuman effort of condescension, will you not
demonstrate to us the truth of your theory in a more practical manner?
Let us, for example, develop in you a violent and terrible passion;
anger—rage if you choose. You shall permit us for a single moment to be
in your sight irritating, rude, and insulting. Of course, we will be so
only at _your request_ and in the interest of science and your cause.
Our duty under the contract will consist in humiliating and provoking
you to the last extremity. Before a public audience, who shall know
nothing of our agreement, but whom you must satisfy as to your
assertions, we will insult you; ... we will tell you that your writings
are an ambuscade to truth, an insult to common sense, a disgrace which
paper only can bear; but which the public should chastise. We will add
that _you lie to science_, you lie to the ears of the ignorant and
stupid fools gathered around you, open-mouthed, like the crowd around
a peddling quack.... And when, transported beyond yourself, your face
ablaze, and anger _tumefying_, you shall have _displaced your fluids_;
when your fury has reached the point of bursting, we will cause your
_turgescent_ muscles to be struck with powerful blows; your friends
shall show us the most insensible places; we will let a perfect shower,
an avalanche of stones fall upon them ... for so was treated the flesh
of the convulsed women whose appetite for such blows could never be
satisfied. But, in order to procure for you the gratification of a
_salutary shampooing_—as you deliciously express it—your limbs shall
only be pounded with objects having _blunt surfaces and cylindrical
shapes_, with clubs and sticks devoid of suppleness, and, if you prefer
it, neatly turned in a lathe.”
So liberal is des Mousseaux, so determined to accommodate his
antagonists with every possible chance to prove their theory, that he
offers them the choice to substitute for themselves in the experiment
their wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters, “since,” he says, “you
have remarked that the weaker sex is the strong and resistant sex in
these disconcerting trials.”
Useless to remark that des Mousseaux’s challenge remained unanswered.
CHAPTER XI.
“Strange condition of the human mind, which seems to require
that it should long exercise itself in Error, before it dare
approach the Truth.”—MAGENDIE.
“La verité que je defends est empreinte sur tous les monuments
du passé. Pour comprendre l’histoire, il faut etudier les
symboles anciens, les signes sacrés du sacerdoce, et l’art de
guerir dans les temps primitifs, art oublié aujourd’hui.”
—BARON DU POTET.
“It is a truth perpetually, that accumulated facts, lying in
disorder, begin to assume some order if an hypothesis is thrown
among them.”—HERBERT SPENCER.
And now we must search Magical History for cases similar to those
given in the preceding chapter. This insensibility of the human body
to the impact of heavy blows, and resistance to penetration by sharp
points and musket-bullets, is a phenomenon sufficiently familiar in the
experience of all times and all countries. While science is entirely
unable to give any reasonable explanation of the mystery, the question
appears to offer no difficulty to mesmerists, who have well studied
the properties of the fluid. The man, who by a few passes over a limb
can produce a local paralysis so as to render it utterly insensible
to burns, cuts, and the prickings of needles, need be but very little
astonished at the phenomena of the Jansenists. As to the adepts of
magic, especially in Siam and the East Indies, they are too familiar
with the properties of the _akasa_, the mysterious life-fluid, to
even regard the insensibility of the Convulsionaires as a very great
phenomenon. The astral fluid can be compressed about a person so as
to form an elastic shell, absolutely non-penetrable by any physical
object, however great the velocity with which it travels. In a word,
this fluid can be made to equal and even excel in resisting-power,
water and air.
In India, Malabar, and some places of Central Africa, the conjurers
will freely permit any traveller to fire his musket or revolver at
them, without touching the weapon themselves or selecting the balls.
In Laing’s _Travels among Timanni, the Kourankos, and the Soulimas_,
occurs a description by an English traveller, the first white man to
visit the tribe of the Soulimas, near the sources of the Dialliba, of
a very curious scene. A body of picked soldiers fired upon a chief who
had nothing to defend himself with but certain talismans. Although
their muskets were properly loaded and aimed, not a ball could strike
him. Salverte gives a similar case in his _Philosophy of Occult
Sciences_: “In 1568, the Prince of Orange condemned a Spanish prisoner
to be shot at Juliers; the soldiers tied him to a tree and fired, but
he was invulnerable. They at last stripped him to see what armor he
wore, but found only an _amulet_. When this was taken from him, _he
fell dead at the first shot_.”
This is a very different affair from the dexterous trickery resorted
to by Houdin in Algeria. He prepared balls himself of tallow,
blackened with soot, and by sleight of hand exchanged them for the
real bullets, which the Arab sheiks supposed they were placing in the
pistols. The simple-minded natives, knowing nothing but real magic,
which they had inherited from their ancestors, and which consists in
each case of some one thing that they can do without knowing why or
how, and seeing Houdin, as they thought, accomplish the same results
in a more impressive manner, fancied that he was a greater magician
than themselves. Many travellers, the writer included, have witnessed
instances of this invulnerability where deception was impossible. A
few years ago, there lived in an African village, an Abyssinian who
passed for a sorcerer. Upon one occasion a party of Europeans, going
to Soudan, amused themselves for an hour or two in firing at him with
their own pistols and muskets, a privilege which he gave them for a
trifling fee. As many as five shots were fired simultaneously, by
a Frenchman named Langlois, and the muzzles of the pieces were not
above two yards distant from the sorcerer’s breast. In each case,
simultaneously with the flash, the bullet would appear just beyond
the muzzle, quivering in the air, and then, after describing a short
parabola, fall harmlessly to the ground. A German of the party, who was
going in search of ostrich feathers, offered the magician a five-franc
piece if he would allow him to fire his gun with the muzzle touching
his body. The man at first refused; but, finally, after appearing to
hold conversation with somebody inside the ground, consented. The
experimenter carefully loaded, and pressing the muzzle of the weapon
against the sorcerer’s body, after a moment’s hesitation, fired ...
the barrel burst into fragments as far down as the stock, and the man
walked off unhurt.
This quality of invulnerability can be imparted to persons both by
living adepts and by spirits. In our own time several well-known
mediums have frequently, in the presence of the most respectable
witnesses, not only handled blazing coals and actually placed their
face upon a fire without singeing a hair, but even laid flaming coals
upon the heads and hands of by-standers, as in the case of Lord Lindsay
and Lord Adair. The well-known story of the Indian chief, who confessed
to Washington that at Braddock’s defeat he had fired his rifle at him
seventeen times at short range without being able to touch him, will
recur to the reader in this connection. In fact, many great commanders
have been believed by their soldiers to bear what is called “a charmed
life;” and Prince Emile von Sayn-Wittgenstein, a general of the
Russian army, is said to be one of these.
This same power which enables one to compress the astral fluid so
as to form an impenetrable shell around one, can be used to direct,
so to speak, a bolt of the fluid against a given object, with fatal
force. Many a dark revenge has been taken in that way; and in such
cases the coroner’s inquest will never disclose anything but sudden
death, apparently resulting from heart-disease, an apoplectic fit, or
some other natural, but still not veritable cause. Many persons firmly
believe that certain individuals possess the power of the evil eye. The
_mal’occhio_, or _jettatura_ is a belief which is prevalent throughout
Italy and Southern Europe. The Pope is held to be possessed—perchance
unconsciously—of that disagreeable gift. There are persons who can
kill toads by merely looking at them, and can even slay individuals.
The malignance of their desire brings evil forces to a focus, and the
death-dealing bolt is projected, as though it were a bullet from a
rifle.
In 1864, in the French province of Le Var, near the little village of
Brignoles, lived a peasant named Jacques Pelissier, who made a living
by killing birds by simple _will-power_. His case is reported by the
well-known Dr. d’Alger, at whose request the singular hunter gave
exhibitions to several scientific men, of his method of proceeding. The
story is told as follows: “At about fifteen or twenty paces from us,
I saw a charming little meadow-lark which I showed to Jacques. ‘Watch
him well, monsieur,’ said he, ‘he is mine.’ Instantly stretching his
right hand toward the bird, he approached him gently. The meadow-lark
stops, raises and lowers his pretty head, spreads his wings, but cannot
fly; at last he cannot make a step further and suffers himself to
be taken, only moving his wings with a feeble fluttering. I examine
the bird; his eyes are tightly closed and his body has a corpse-like
stiffness, although the pulsations of the heart are very distinct; it
is a true cataleptic sleep, and all the phenomena incontestably prove a
magnetic action. Fourteen little birds were taken in this way, within
the space of an hour; none could resist the power of Master Jacques,
and all presented the same cataleptic sleep; a sleep which, moreover,
terminates at the will of the hunter, whose humble slaves these little
birds have become.
“A hundred times, perhaps, I asked Jacques to restore life and movement
to his prisoners, to charm them only half way, so that they might hop
along the ground, and then again bring them completely under the charm.
All my requests were exactly complied with, and not one single failure
was made by this remarkable Nimrod, who finally said to me: ‘If you
wish it, I will kill those which you designate without touching them.’
I pointed out two for the experiment, and, at twenty-five or thirty
paces distance, he accomplished in less than five minutes what he had
promised.”[610]
A most curious feature of the above case is, that Jacques had complete
power only over sparrows, robins, goldfinches, and meadow-larks; he
could sometimes charm skylarks, but, as he says, “they often escape me.”
This same power is exercised with greater force by persons known as
wild beast tamers. On the banks of the Nile, some of the natives can
charm the crocodiles out of the water, with a peculiarly melodious,
low whistle, and handle them with impunity; while others possess such
powers over the most deadly snakes. Travellers tell of seeing the
charmers surrounded by multitudes of the reptiles which they dispatch
at their leisure.
Bruce, Hasselquist, and Lemprière,[611] testify to the fact that they
have seen in Egypt, Morocco, Arabia, and especially in the Senaar,
some natives utterly disregarding the bites of the most poisonous
vipers, as well as the stings of scorpions. They handle and play with
them, and throw them at will into a state of stupor.“In vain do the
Latin and Greek writers,” says Salverte, “assure us that the gift of
charming venomous reptiles was hereditary in certain families from time
immemorial, that in Africa the same gift was enjoyed by the Psylli;
that the Marses in Italy, and the Ophiozenes in Cyprus possessed it.”
The skeptics forget that, in Italy, even at the commencement of the
sixteenth century, men, claiming to be descended from the family of
Saint Paul, braved, like the Marses, the bites of serpents.”[612]
“Doubts upon this subject,” he goes on to say, “were removed forever at
the time of the expedition of the French into Egypt, and the following
relation is attested by thousands of eye-witnesses. The Psylli, who
pretended, as Bruce had related, to possess that faculty ... went
from house to house to destroy serpents of every kind.... A wonderful
instinct drew them at first toward the place in which the serpents
were hidden; furious, howling, and foaming, they seized and tore them
asunder with their nails and teeth.”
“Let us place,” says Salverte, inveterate skeptic himself, “to the
account of charlatanism, the howling and the fury; still, the instinct
which warned the Psylli of the presence of the serpents, has in it
something more real.” In the Antilles, the negroes discover, by its
odor, a serpent which they do not see.[613] “In Egypt, the same tact,
formerly possessed, is still enjoyed by men brought up to it from
infancy, and born as with an assumed hereditary gift to hunt serpents,
and to discover them even at a distance too great for the effluvia to
be perceptible to the dull organs of a European. The principal fact
above all others, the faculty of rendering dangerous animals powerless,
merely by touching them, remains well verified, and we shall, perhaps,
never understand better the nature of this secret, celebrated in
antiquity, and preserved to our time by the most ignorant of men.”[614]
Music is delightful to every person. Low whistling, a melodious
chant, or the sounds of a flute will invariably attract reptiles in
countries where they are found. We have witnessed and verified the
fact repeatedly. In Upper Egypt, whenever our caravan stopped, a
young traveller, who believed he excelled on the flute, amused the
company by playing. The camel-drivers and other Arabs invariably
checked him, having been several times annoyed by the unexpected
appearance of various families of the reptile tribe, which generally
shirk an encounter with men. Finally, our caravan met with a party,
among whom were professional serpent-charmers, and the virtuoso was
then invited, for experiment’s sake, to display his skill. No sooner
had he commenced, than a slight rustling was heard, and the musician
was horrified at suddenly seeing a large snake appear in dangerous
proximity with his legs. The serpent, with uplifted head and eyes fixed
on him, slowly, and, as if unconsciously, crawled, softly undulating
its body, and following his every movement. Then appeared at a distance
another one, then a third, and a fourth, which were speedily followed
by others, until we found ourselves quite in a select company. Several
of the travellers made for the backs of their camels, while others
sought refuge in the _cantinier’s_ tent. But it was a vain alarm. The
charmers, three in number, began their chants and incantations, and,
attracting the reptiles, were very soon covered with them from head
to foot. As soon as the serpents approached the men, they exhibited
signs of torpor, and were soon plunged in a deep catalepsy. Their eyes
were half closed and glazed, and their heads drooping. There remained
but one recalcitrant, a large and glossy black fellow, with a spotted
skin. This _meloman_ of the desert went on gracefully nodding and
leaping, as if it had danced on its tail all its life, and keeping
time to the notes of the flute. This snake would not be enticed by the
“charming” of the Arabs, but kept slowly moving in the direction of
the flute-player, who at last took to his heels. The modern Psyllian
then took out of his bag a half-withered plant, which he kept waving
in the direction of the serpent. It had a strong smell of mint, and as
soon as the reptile caught its odor, it followed the Arab, still erect
upon its tail, but now approaching the plant. A few more seconds, and
the “traditional enemy” of man was seen entwined around the arm of his
charmer, became torpid in its turn, and the whole lot were then thrown
together in a pool, after having their heads cut off.
Many believe that all such snakes are prepared and trained for the
purpose, and that they are either deprived of their fangs, or have
their mouths sewed up. There may be, doubtless, some inferior jugglers,
whose trickery has given rise to such an idea. But the _genuine_
serpent-charmer has too well established his claims in the East, to
resort to any such cheap fraud. They have the testimony on this subject
of too many trustworthy travellers, including some scientists, to be
accused of any such charlatanism. That the snakes, which are charmed
to dance and to become harmless, are still poisonous, is verified by
Forbes. “On the music stopping too suddenly,” says he, “or from some
other cause, the serpent, who had been dancing within a circle of
country-people, darted among the spectators, and inflicted a wound
in the throat of a young woman, who died in agony, in half an hour
afterward.”[615]
According to the accounts of many travellers the negro women of Dutch
Guiana, the Obeah women, excel in taming very large snakes called
_amodites_, or _papa_; they make them descend from the trees, follow,
and obey them by merely speaking to them.[616]
We have seen in India a small brotherhood of fakirs settled round a
little lake, or rather a deep pool of water, the bottom of which was
literally carpeted with enormous alligators. These amphibious monsters
crawl out, and warm themselves in the sun, a few feet from the fakirs,
some of whom may be motionless, lost in prayer and contemplation. So
long as one of these holy beggars remains in view, the crocodiles are
as harmless as kittens. But we would never advise a foreigner to risk
himself alone within a few yards of these monsters. The poor Frenchman
Pradin found an untimely grave in one of these terrible Saurians,
commonly called by the Hindus _Moudela_.[617] (This word should be
_nihang_ or _ghariyāl_.)
When Iamblichus, Herodotus, Pliny, or some other ancient writer tells
us of priests who caused asps to come forth from the altar of Isis,
or of thaumaturgists taming with a glance the most ferocious animals,
they are considered liars and ignorant imbeciles. When modern
travellers tell us of the same wonders performed in the East, they are
set down as enthusiastic jabberers, or _untrustworthy_ writers.
But, despite materialistic skepticism, man does possess such a power,
as we see manifested in the above instances. When psychology and
physiology become worthy of the name of sciences, Europeans will be
convinced of the weird and formidable potency existing in the human
will and imagination, whether exercised consciously or otherwise. And
yet, how easy to realize such power in _spirit_, if we only think of
that grand truism in nature that every most insignificant atom in it
is moved by _spirit_, which is _one_ in its essence, for the least
particle of it represents the _whole_; and that matter is but the
concrete copy of the abstract idea, after all. In this connection, let
us cite a few instances of the imperial power of even the _unconscious_
will, to create according to the imagination or rather the faculty of
discerning images in the astral light.
We have but to recall the very familiar phenomenon of _stigmata_, or
birth-marks, where effects are produced by the involuntary agency of
the maternal imagination under a state of excitement. The fact that
the mother can control the appearance of her unborn child was so well
known among the ancients, that it was the custom among wealthy Greeks
to place fine statues near the bed, so that she might have a perfect
model constantly before her eyes. The cunning trick by which the
Hebrew patriarch Jacob caused ring-streaked and speckled calves to be
dropped, is an illustration of the law among animals; and Aricante
tells “of four successive litters of puppies, born of healthy parents,
some of which, in each litter, were well formed, whilst the remainder
were without anterior extremities and had hair lip.” The works of
Geoffroi St. Hilaire, Burdach, and Elam, contain accounts of great
numbers of such cases, and in Dr. Prosper Lucas’s important volume,
_Sur l’Heredité Naturelle_, there are many. Elam quotes from Prichard
an instance where the child of a negro and white was marked with black
and white color upon separate parts of the body. He adds, with laudable
sincerity, “These are singularities of which, in the present state
of science, no explanation can be given.”[618] It is a pity that his
example was not more generally imitated. Among the ancients Empedocles,
Aristotle, Pliny, Hippocrates, Galen, Marcus Damascenus, and others
give us accounts quite as wonderful as our contemporary authors.
In a work published in London, in 1659,[619] a powerful argument is
made in refutation of the materialists by showing the potency of
the human mind upon the subtile forces of nature. The author, Dr.
More, views the fœtus as if it were a plastic substance, which can
be fashioned by the mother to an agreeable or disagreeable shape, to
resemble some person or in part several persons, and to be stamped
with the effigies, or as we might more properly call it, _astrograph_,
of some object vividly presented to her imagination. These effects
may be produced by her voluntarily or involuntarily, consciously or
unconsciously, feebly or forcibly, as the case may be. It depends upon
her ignorance or knowledge of the profound mysteries of nature. Taking
women in the mass, the marking of the embryo may be considered more
accidental than the result of design; and as each person’s atmosphere
in the astral light is peopled with the images of his or her immediate
family, the sensitive surface of the fœtus, which may almost be likened
to the collodionized plate of a photograph, is as likely as not to be
stamped with the image of a near or remote ancestor, whom the mother
never saw, but which, at some critical moment, came as it were into the
focus of nature’s camera. Says Dr. Elam, “Near me is seated a visitor
from a distant continent, where she was born and educated. The portrait
of a remote ancestress, far back in the last century, hangs upon the
wall. In every feature, one is an accurate presentment of the other,
although the one never left England, and the other was an American by
birth and half parentage.”
The power of the imagination upon our physical condition, even after
we arrive at maturity, is evinced in many familiar ways. In medicine,
the intelligent physician does not hesitate to accord to it a curative
or morbific potency greater than his pills and potions. He calls it
the _vis medicatrix naturæ_, and his first endeavor is to gain the
confidence of his patient so completely, that he can cause nature
to extirpate the disease. Fear often kills; and grief has such a
power over the subtile fluids of the body as not only to derange the
internal organs but even to turn the hair white. Ficinus mentions the
_signature_ of the fœtus with the marks of cherries and various fruits,
colors, hairs, and excrescences, and acknowledges that the imagination
of the mother may transform it into a resemblance of an ape, pig, or
dog, or any such animal. Marcus Damascenus tells of a girl covered with
hair and, like our modern Julia Pastrana, furnished with a full beard;
Gulielmus Paradinus, of a child whose skin and nails resembled those of
a bear; Balduinus Ronsæus of one born with a turkey’s wattles; Pareus,
of one with a head like a frog; and Avicenna, of chickens with hawks’
heads. In this latter case, which perfectly exemplifies the power of
the same imagination in animals, the embryo must have been stamped at
the instant of conception when the hen’s imagination saw a hawk either
in fact or in fancy. This is evident, for Dr. More, who quotes this
case on the authority of Avicenna, remarks very appropriately that, as
the egg in question might have been hatched a hundred miles distant
from the hen, the microscopic picture of the hawk impressed upon the
embryo must have enlarged and perfected itself with the growth of the
chicken quite independently of any subsequent influence from the hen.
Cornelius Gemma tells of a child that was born with his forehead
wounded and running with blood, the result of his father’s threats
toward his mother “... with a drawn sword which he directed toward her
forehead;” Sennertius records the case of a pregnant woman who, seeing
a butcher divide a swine’s head with his cleaver, brought forth her
child with his face cloven in the upper jaw, the palate, and upper lip
to the very nose. In Van Helmont’s _De Injectis Materialibus_, some
very astonishing cases are reported: The wife of a tailor at Mechlin
was standing at her door and saw a soldier’s hand cut off in a quarrel,
which so impressed her as to bring on premature labor, and her child
was born with only one hand, the other arm bleeding. In 1602, the wife
of Marcus Devogeler, a merchant of Antwerp, seeing a soldier who had
just lost his arm, was taken in labor and brought forth a daughter
with one arm struck off and bleeding as in the first case. Van Helmont
gives a third example of another woman who witnessed the beheading of
thirteen men by order of the Duc d’Alva. The horror of the spectacle
was so overpowering that she “suddainly fell into labour and brought
forth a perfectly-formed infant, onely the head was wanting, but the
neck bloody as their bodies she beheld that had their heads cut off.
And that which does still advance the wonder is, that the _hand_,
_arme_, and _head_ of these infants were none of them to be found.”[620]
If it was possible to conceive of such a thing as a miracle in nature,
the above cases of the sudden disappearance of portions of the unborn
human body might be designated. We have looked in vain through the
latest authorities upon human physiology for any sufficient theory
to account for the least remarkable of fœtal signatures. The most
they can do is to record instances of what they call “spontaneous
varieties of type,” and then fall back either upon Mr. Proctor’s
“curious coincidences” or upon such candid confessions of ignorance
as are to be found in authors not entirely satisfied with the sum
of human knowledge. Magendie acknowledges that, despite scientific
researches, comparatively little is known of fœtal life. At page 518
of the American edition of his _Precis Elementaire de Physiologie_
he instances “a case where the umbilical cord was ruptured and
perfectly cicatrized;” and asks “How was the circulation carried on
in this organ?” On the next page, he says: “Nothing is at present
known respecting the use of digestion in the fœtus;” and respecting
its nutrition, propounds this query: “What, then, can we say of the
nutrition of the fœtus? Physiological works contain only _vague
conjectures_ on this point.” On page 520, the following language
occurs: “In consequence of some _unknown cause_, the different parts of
the fœtus sometimes develop themselves in a preternatural manner.” With
singular inconsistency with his previous admissions of the ignorance of
science upon all these points which we have quoted, he adds: “_There
is no reason for believing that the imagination of the mother can have
any influence in the formation of these monsters_; besides, productions
of this kind are daily observed in the offspring of other animals and
even in plants.” How perfect an illustration is this of the methods of
scientific men!—the moment they pass beyond their circle of observed
facts, their judgment seems to become entirely perverted. Their
deductions from their own researches are often greatly inferior to
those made by others who have to take the facts at second hand.
The literature of science is constantly furnishing examples of this
truth; and when we consider the reasoning of materialistic observers
upon psychological phenomena, the rule is strikingly manifest.
Those who are _soul-blind_ are as constitutionally incapable of
distinguishing psychological causes from material effects as the
color-blind are to select scarlet from black.
Elam, without being in the least a spiritualist, nay, though an enemy
to it, represents the belief of honest scientists in the following
expressions: “it is certainly inexplicable how matter and mind can act
and react one upon the other; the mystery is acknowledged by all to be
insoluble, and will probably ever remain so.”
The great English authority upon the subject of malformation is _The
Science and Practice of Medicine_, by Wm. Aitken, M.D., Edinburgh,
and Professor of Pathology in the Army Medical School; the American
edition of which, by Professor Meredith Clymer, M.D., of the University
of Pennsylvania, has equal weight in the United States. At page 233
of vol. i. we find the subject treated at length. The author says,
“The superstition, absurd notions, and strange causes assigned to the
occurrence of such malformations, are now fast disappearing before
the lucid expositions of those famous anatomists who have made the
development and growth of the ovum a subject of special study. It is
sufficient to mention here the names, J. Muller, Rathke, Bischoff,
St. Hilaire, Burdach, Allen Thompson, G. & W. Vrolick, Wolff, Meckel,
Simpson, Rokitansky, and Von Ammon as sufficient evidence that the
truths of science will in time dispel the mists of ignorance and
superstition.” One would think, from the complacent tone adopted by
this eminent writer that we were in possession if not of the means of
readily solving this intricate problem at least of a clew to guide us
through the maze of our difficulties. But, in 1872, after profiting
by all the labors and ingenuity of the illustrious pathologists above
enumerated, we find him making the same confession of ignorance as that
expressed by Magendie in 1838. “Nevertheless,” says he, “much mystery
still enshrouds the origin of malformation; the origin of them may be
considered in two main issues, namely: 1, are they due to original
malformation of the germ? 2, or, are they due to subsequent deformities
of the embryo by causes operating on its development? With regard
to the first issue, it is believed that the germ may be originally
malformed, or defective, owing to _some influence proceeding either
from the female, or from the male_, as in case of repeated procreation
of the same kind of malformation by the same parents, deformities on
either side being transmitted as an inheritance.”
Being unsupplied with any philosophy of their own to account for the
lesions, the pathologists, true to professional instinct, resort to
negation. “That such deformity may be produced by mental impressions
on pregnant women there is an absence of positive proof,” they say.
“Moles, mothers’ marks, and cutaneous spots as ascribed to morbid
states of the coats of the ovum.... A very generally-recognized
cause of malformation consists in impeded development of the fœtus,
_the cause of which is not always obvious, but is for the most part
concealed.... Transient forms of the human fœtus are comparable to
persistent forms of many lower animals._” Can the learned professor
explain why? “_Hence malformations resulting from arrest of development
often acquire an animal-like appearance._”
Exactly; but why do not pathologists inform us why it is so? Any
anatomist who has made the development and growth of the embryo and
fœtus “a subject of special study,” can tell, without much brain-work,
what daily experience and the evidence of his own eyes show him, viz.:
that up to a certain period, the human embryo is a fac-simile of a
young batrachian in its first remove from the spawn—a tadpole. But
no physiologist or anatomist seems to have had the idea of applying
to the development of the human being—from the first instant of its
physical appearance as a germ to its ultimate formation and birth—the
Pythagorean esoteric doctrine of metempsychosis, so erroneously
interpreted by critics. The meaning of the kabalistic axiom: “A stone
becomes a plant; a plant a beast; a beast a man, etc.,” was mentioned
in another place in relation to the spiritual and physical evolution of
man on this earth. We will now add a few words more to make the idea
clearer.
What is the primitive shape of the future man? A grain, a corpuscle,
say some physiologists; a molecule, an ovum of the ovum, say others.
If it could be analyzed—by the spectroscope or otherwise—of what ought
we to expect to find it composed? Analogically, we should say, of a
nucleus of inorganic matter, deposited from the circulation at the
germinating point, and united with a deposit of organic matter. In
other words, this infinitesimal nucleus of the future man is composed
of the same elements as a stone—of the same elements as the earth,
which the man is destined to inhabit. Moses is cited by the kabalists
as authority for the remark, that it required earth and water to make a
living being, and thus it may be said that man first appears as a stone.
At the end of three or four weeks the ovum has assumed a plant-like
appearance, one extremity having become spheroidal and the other
tapering, like a carrot. Upon dissection it is found to be composed,
like an onion, of very delicate laminæ or coats, enclosing a liquid.
The laminæ approach each other at the lower end, and the embryo hangs
from the root of the umbilicus almost like a fruit from the bough. The
stone has now become changed, by metempsychosis, into a plant. Then the
embryonic creature begins to shoot out, from the inside outward, its
limbs, and develops its features. The eyes are visible as two black
dots; the ears, nose, and mouth form depressions, like the points of
a pineapple, before they begin to project. The embryo develops into
an animal-like fœtus—the shape of a tadpole—and like an amphibious
reptile lives in water, and develops from it. Its monad has not yet
become either human or immortal, for the kabalists tell us that that
only comes at the “fourth hour.” One by one the fœtus assumes the
characteristics of the human being, the first flutter of the immortal
breath passes through his being; he moves; nature opens the way for
him; ushers him into the world; and the divine essence settles in the
infant frame, which it will inhabit until the moment of physical death,
when man becomes a spirit.
This mysterious process of a nine-months formation the kabalists
call the completion of the “individual cycle of evolution.” As the
fœtus develops from the _liquor amnii_ in the womb, so the earths
germinate from the universal ether, or astral fluid, in the womb of
the universe. These cosmic children, like their pigmy inhabitants, are
first nuclei; then ovules; then gradually mature; and becoming mothers
in their turn, develop mineral, vegetable, animal, and human forms.
From centre to circumference, from the imperceptible vesicle to the
uttermost conceivable bounds of the cosmos, these glorious thinkers,
the kabalists, trace cycle merging into cycle, containing and contained
in an endless series. The embryo evolving in its pre-natal sphere,
the individual in his family, the family in the state, the state in
mankind, the earth in our system, that system in its central universe,
the universe in the cosmos, and the cosmos in the First Cause:—the
Boundless and Endless. So runs their philosophy of evolution:
“All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is; and God the Soul.”
“Worlds without number
Lie in this bosom like children.”
While unanimously agreeing that physical causes, such as blows,
accidents, and bad quality of food for the mother, effect the fœtus
in a way which endangers its life; and while admitting again that
moral causes, such as fear, sudden terror, violent grief, or even
extreme joy, may retard the growth of the fœtus or even kill it, many
physiologists agree with Magendie in saying, “there is no reason for
believing that the imagination of the mother can have any influence
in the formation of monsters;” and only because “productions of this
kind are daily observed in the production of other animals and even in
plants.”
In this opinion he is supported by the leading teratologists of our
day. Although Geoffroi St. Hilaire gave its name to the new science,
its facts are based upon the exhaustive experiments of Bichat, who, in
1802, was recognized as the founder of analytical and philosophical
anatomy. One of the most important contributions to teratological
literature is the monograph of G. J. Fisher, M. D., of Sing Sing, N.
Y., entitled _Diploteratology; an Essay on Compound Human Monsters_.
This writer classifies monstrous fœtal growths into their genera and
species, accompanying the cases with reflections suggested by their
peculiarities. Following St. Hilaire, he divides the history of the
subject into the fabulous, the positive, and the scientific periods.
It suffices for our purpose to say that in the present state of
scientific opinion two points are considered as established: 1, that
the maternal, mental condition has no influence in the production of
monstrosities; 2, that most varieties of monstrosity may be accounted
for on the theory of _arrest_ and _retardation_ of development. Says
Fisher, “By a careful study of the laws of development and the order
in which the various organs are evolved in the embryo, it has been
observed that monsters by defect or arrest of development, are, to a
certain extent, permanent embryos. The abnormal organs merely represent
the primitive condition of formation as it existed in an early stage of
embryonic or fœtal life.”[621]
With physiology in so confessedly chaotic a state as it is at present,
it seems a little like hardihood in any teratologist, however great his
achievements in anatomy, histology, or embryology, to take so dangerous
a position as that the mother has no influence upon her offspring.
While the microscopes of Haller and Prolik, Dareste and Laraboulet have
disclosed to us many interesting facts concerning the single or double
primitive traces on the vitelline membrane, what remains undiscovered
about embryology by modern science appears greater still. If we grant
that monstrosities are the result of an arrest of development—nay, if
we go farther, and concede that the fœtal future may be prognosticated
from the vitelline tracings, where will the teratologists take us
to learn the _antecedent_ psychological cause of either? Dr. Fisher
may have carefully studied some hundreds of cases, and feel himself
authorized to construct a new classification of their genera and
species; but facts are facts, and outside the field of his observation
it appears, even if we judge but by our own personal experience, in
various countries, that there are abundant attainable proofs that the
violent maternal emotions are often reflected in tangible, visible,
and permanent disfigurements of the child. And the cases in question
seem, moreover, to contradict Dr. Fisher’s assertion that monstrous
growths are due to causes traceable to “the early stages of embryonic
or fœtal life.” One case was that of a Judge of an Imperial Court at
Saratow, Russia, who always wore a bandage to cover a mouse-mark on
the left side of his face. It was a perfectly-formed mouse, whose body
was represented in high relief upon the cheek, and the tail ran upward
across the temple and was lost in his hair. The body seemed glossy,
gray, and quite natural. According to his own account, his mother had
an unconquerable repugnance to mice, and her labor was prematurely
brought on by seeing a mouse jump out from her workbox.
In another instance, of which the writer was a witness, a pregnant
lady, within two or three weeks of her accouchement, saw a bowl of
raspberries, and was seized with an irresistible longing for some, but
denied. She excitedly clasped her right hand to her neck in a somewhat
theatrical manner, and exclaimed that she _must_ have them. The child
born under our eyes, three weeks later, had a perfectly-defined
raspberry on the right side of his neck; to this day, when that fruit
ripens, his birth-mark becomes of a deep crimson, while, during the
winter, it is quite pale.
Such cases as these, which are familiar to many mothers of families,
either in their personal experience or that of friends, carry
conviction, despite the theories of all the teratologists of Europe and
America. Because, forsooth, animals and plants are observed to produce
malformations of their species as well as human beings, Magendie and
his school infer that the human malformations of an identical character
are not at all due to maternal imagination, _since the former are
not_. If physical causes produce physical effects in the subordinate
kingdoms, the inference is that the same rule must hold with ourselves.
But an entirely original theory was broached by Professor Armor,
of the Long Island Medical College, in the course of a discussion
recently held in the Detroit Academy of Medicine. In opposition to
the orthodox views which Dr. Fisher represents, Professor Armor
says that malformations result from either one of two causes—1, a
deficiency or abnormal condition in the generative matter from which
the fœtus is developed, or 2, morbid influences acting on the _fœtus
in utero_. He maintains that the generative matter represents in its
composition every tissue, structure, and form, and that there may be
such a transmission of _acquired_ structural peculiarities as would
make the generative matter incapable of producing a healthy and
equally-developed offspring. On the other hand, the generative matter
may be perfect in itself, but being subjected to morbid influences
during the process of gestation, the offspring will, of necessity, be
monstrous.
To be consistent, this theory must account for diploteratological cases
(double-headed or double-membered monsters), which seems difficult. We
might, perhaps, admit that in defective generative matter, the head
of the embryo might not be represented, or any other part of the body
be deficient; but, it hardly seems as if there could be two, three,
or more representatives of a single member. Again, if the generative
matter have hereditary taint, it seems as if _all_ the resulting
progeny should be equally monstrous; whereas the fact is that in many
cases the mother has given birth to a number of healthy children before
the monster made its appearance, all being the progeny of one father.
Numerous cases of this kind are quoted by Dr. Fisher; among others
he cites the case of Catherine Corcoran,[622] a “very healthy woman,
thirty years of age and who, previously to giving birth to this monster
had born five well-formed children, no two of which were twins ... it
had a head at either extremity, two chests, with arms complete, two
abdominal and two pelvic cavities united end to end, with four legs
placed two at either side, where the union between the two occurred.”
Certain parts of the body, however, were not duplicated, and therefore
this cannot be claimed as a case of the growing together of twins.
Another instance is that of Maria Teresa Parodi.[623] This woman, who
had previously given birth to eight well-formed children, was delivered
of a female infant the upper part of which only was double. Instances
in which _before_ and _after_ the production of a monster the children
were perfectly healthy are numerous, and if, on the other hand, the
fact that monstrosities are as common with animals as they are with
mankind is a generally-accepted argument against the popular theory
that these malformations are due to the imagination of the mother; and
that other fact—that there is no difference between the ovarian cell of
a mammifer and a man, be admitted, what becomes of Professor Armor’s
theory? In such a case an instance of an animal-malformation is as good
as that of a human monster; and this is what we read in Dr. Samuel L.
Mitchell’s paper _On two-headed Serpents_: “A female snake was killed,
together with her whole brood of young ones, amounting to 120, of these
_three were monsters_. One with two distinct heads; one with a double
head and only three eyes; and one with a double skull, furnished with
three eyes, and a single lower jaw; this last had two bodies.”[624]
Surely the _generative matter_ which produced these _three monsters_
was identical with that which produced the other 117? Thus the _Armor_
theory is as imperfect as all the rest.
The trouble proceeds from the defective method of reasoning usually
adopted—_Induction_; a method which claims to collect by _experiment_
and observation all the facts _within_ its reach, the former being
rather that of collecting and examining experiments and drawing
conclusions therefrom; and, according to the author of _Philosophical
Inquiry_, “as this conclusion cannot be extended beyond what is
warranted by the experiments, the Induction is an instrument of proof
and _limitation_.” Notwithstanding this limitation is to be found in
every scientific inquiry, it is rarely confessed, but hypotheses are
constructed for us as though the experimenters had found them to be
mathematically-proved theorems, while they are, to say the most, simple
approximations.
For a student of occult philosophy, who rejects in his turn the method
of induction on account of these perpetual limitations, and fully
adopts the Platonic division of causes—namely, the Efficient, the
Formal, the Material, and the Final, as well as the Eleatic method of
examining any given proposition, it is but natural to reason from the
following standpoint of the Neo-platonic school: 1. The subject either
_is_ as it is supposed or _is not_. Therefore, we will inquire: Does
the universal ether, known by the kabalists as the “astral light,”
contain electricity and magnetism, or does it not? The answer must
be in the affirmative, for “exact science” herself teaches us that
these two convertible agents saturating both the air and the earth,
there is a constant interchange of electricity and magnetism between
them. The question No. 1 being settled, we will have now to examine
_what happens_—1st. To _it_ with respect to _itself_. 2d. To _it_
with respect to _all other_ things. 3d. With all _other things_,
with respect _to it_. 4th. To all _other things_ with respect to
_themselves_.
ANSWERS: 1st. With respect to _itself_. That inherent properties
previously latent in electricity, become active under favoring
conditions; and that at one time the form of magnetic force is assumed
by the subtile, all-pervading agent; at another, the form of electric
force is assumed.
2d. With respect to all other things. By all other things for which it
has an affinity, it is attracted, by all others repelled.
3d. With all other things with respect to it. It happens that whenever
they come in contact with electricity, they receive its impress in
proportion to their conductivity.
4th. To all other things with respect to themselves. That under the
impulse received from the electric force, and in proportion to its
intensity, their molecules change their relations with each other; that
either they are wrenched asunder, so as to destroy the object—organic
or inorganic—which they formed, or, if previously disturbed, are
brought into equilibrium (as in cases of disease); or the disturbance
may be but superficial, and the object may be stamped with the image of
some other object encountered by the fluid before reaching them.
To apply the above propositions to the case in point: There are
several well-recognized principles of science, as, for instance, that
a pregnant woman is physically and mentally in a highly impressible
state. Physiology tells us that her intellectual faculties are
weakened, and that she is affected to an unusual degree by the most
trifling events. Her pores are opened, and she exudes a peculiar
cutaneous perspiration; she seems to be in a receptive condition for
all the influences in nature. Reichenbach’s disciples assert that her
_odic_ condition is very intense. Du Potet warns against incautiously
mesmerizing her, for fear of affecting the offspring. Her diseases
are imparted to it, and often it absorbs them entirely to itself; her
pains and pleasures react upon its temperament as well as its health;
great men proverbially have great mothers, and _vice versa_. “_It is
true that her imagination has an influence upon the fœtus_,” admits
Magendie, thus contradicting what he asserts in another place; and he
adds that “sudden terror may cause the death of the fœtus, _or retard
its growth_.”[625]
In the case recently reported in the American papers, of a boy who
was killed by a stroke of lightning, upon stripping the body, there
was found imprinted upon his breast the faithful picture of a tree
which grew near the window which he was facing at the time of the
catastrophe, and which was also felled by the lightning. Now, this
electrical photography, which was accomplished by the blind forces
of nature, furnishes an analogy by which we may understand how the
mental images of the mother are transmitted to the unborn child. Her
_pores_ are opened; she exudes an _odic_ emanation which is but another
form of the _akasa_, the electricity, or life-principle, and which,
according to Reichenbach, produces mesmeric sleep, and consequently
is _magnetism_. Magnetic currents develop themselves into electricity
upon their exit from the body. An object making a violent impression
on the mother’s mind, its image is instantly projected into the astral
light, or the universal ether, which Jevons and Babbage, as well as
the authors of the _Unseen Universe_, tell us is the repository of the
_spiritual_ images of all forms, and even human thoughts. Her magnetic
emanations attract and unite themselves with the descending current
which already bears the image upon it. It rebounds, and re-percussing
more or less violently, impresses itself upon the fœtus, according to
the very formula of physiology which shows how every maternal feeling
reacts on the offspring. Is this kabalistic theory more _hypothetical_
or incomprehensible than the teratological doctrine taught by the
disciples of Geoffroi St. Hilaire? The doctrine, of which Magendie so
justly observes, “is found convenient and easy from its _vagueness_
and obscurity,” and which “pretends to nothing less than the creation
of a new science, the theory of which reposes on certain laws not very
intelligible, as that of _arresting_, that of _retarding_, that of
_similar_ or _eccentric_ position, especially the _great law_, as it is
called, of _self for self_.”[626]
Eliphas Levi, who is certainly one of the best authorities on certain
points among kabalists, says: “Pregnant women are, more than others,
under the influence of the astral light, which assists in the formation
of their child, and constantly presents to them the reminiscences of
forms with which it is filled. It is thus that very virtuous women
deceive the malignity of observers by equivocal resemblances. They
often impress upon the fruit of their marriage an image which has
struck them in a dream, and thus are the same physiognomies perpetuated
from age to age.”
“The kabalistic use of the pentagram can therefore determine the
countenance of unborn infants, and an initiated woman might give to her
son the features of Nereus or Achilles, as well as those of Louis XV.
or Napoleon.”[627]
If it should confirm another theory than that of Dr. Fisher, he should
be the last to complain, for as he himself makes the confession, which
his own example verifies:[628] “One of the most formidable obstacles
to the advancement of science ... has ever been a _blind submission
to authority_.... To untrammel the mind from the influence of mere
authority, that it may have free scope in the investigation of facts
and laws which exist and are established in nature, is the grand
antecedent necessary to scientific discovery and permanent progress.”
If the maternal imagination can stunt the growth or destroy the
life of the fœtus, why cannot it influence its physical appearance?
There are some surgeons who have devoted their lives and fortunes to
find the cause for these malformations, but have only reached the
opinion that they are mere “coincidences.” It would be also highly
unphilosophical to say that animals are not endowed with imagination;
and, while it might be considered the acme of metaphysical speculation
to even formulate the idea that members of the vegetable kingdom—say
the _mimosas_ and the group of insect-catchers—have an instinct and
even rudimentary imagination of their own, yet the idea is not without
its advocates. If great physicists like Tyndall are forced to confess
that even in the case of intelligent and speaking man they are unable
to bridge the chasm between mind and matter, and define the powers of
the imagination, how much greater must be the mystery about what takes
place in the brain of a dumb animal.
What is imagination? _Psychologists tell us that it is the plastic or
creative power of the soul_; but materialists confound it with fancy.
The radical difference between the two, was however, so thoroughly
indicated by Wordsworth, in the preface to his _Lyrical Ballads_,
that it is no longer excusable to interchange the words. Imagination,
Pythagoras maintained to be the remembrance of precedent spiritual,
mental, and physical states, while fancy is the disorderly production
of the material brain.
From whatever aspect we view and question matter, the world-old
philosophy that it was vivified and fructified by the eternal idea,
or imagination—the abstract outlining and preparing the model for the
concrete form—is unavoidable. If we reject this doctrine, the theory
of a cosmos evolving gradually out of its chaotic disorder becomes an
absurdity; for it is highly unphilosophical to imagine inert matter,
solely moved by blind force, and directed by intelligence, forming
itself spontaneously into a universe of such admirable harmony. If the
soul of man is really an outcome of the essence of this universal soul,
an infinitesimal fragment of this first creative principle, it must
of necessity partake in degree of all the attributes of the demiurgic
power. As the creator, breaking up the chaotic mass of dead, inactive
matter, shaped it into form, so man, if he knew his powers, could,
to a degree, do the same. As Pheidias, gathering together the loose
particles of clay and moistening them with water, could give plastic
shape to the sublime idea evoked by his creative faculty, so the mother
who knows her power can fashion the coming child into whatever form she
likes. Ignorant of his powers, the sculptor produces only an inanimate
though ravishing figure of inert matter; while the soul of the mother,
violently affected by her imagination, blindly projects into the astral
light an image of the object which impressed it, and, by re-percussion,
that is stamped upon the fœtus. Science tells us that the law of
gravitation assures us that any displacement which takes place in the
very heart of the earth will be felt throughout the universe, “and we
may even imagine that the same thing will hold true of those molecular
motions which accompany thought.”[629] Speaking of the transmission
of energy throughout the universal ether or astral light, the same
authority says: “Continual photographs of all occurrences are thus
produced and retained. A large portion of the energy of the universe
may thus be said to be invested in such pictures.”
Dr. Fournié, of the National Deaf and Dumb Institute of France, in
chapter ii. of his work,[630] in discussing the question of the fœtus,
says that the most powerful microscope is unable to show us the
slightest difference between the ovarian cell of a mammifer and a man;
and, respecting the first or last movement of the ovule, asks: “What is
it? has it particular characters which distinguish it from every other
ovule?” and justly answers thus: “Until now, science has not replied to
these questions, and, without being a pessimist, I do not think _that
she ever will reply_; from the day when her methods of investigation
will permit her to surprise the hidden mechanism of the conflict of
the principle of life with matter, she will know life itself, and
be able to produce it.” If our author had read the sermon of Père
Felix, how appropriately he might utter his Amen! to the priest’s
exclamation—MYSTERY! MYSTERY!
Let us consider the assertion of Magendie in the light of recorded
instances of the power of imagination in producing monstrous
deformities, where the question does not involve pregnant women. He
admits that these occur daily in the offspring of the lower animals;
how does he account for the hatching of chickens with hawk-heads,
except upon the theory that the appearance of the hereditary enemy
acted upon the hen’s imagination, which, in its turn, imparted to the
matter composing the germ a certain motion which, before expanding
itself, produced the monstrous chicks? We know of an analogous case,
where a tame dove, belonging to a lady of our acquaintance, was
frightened daily by a parrot, and in her next brood of young there
were two squabs with parrots’ heads, the resemblance even extending to
the color of the feathers. We might also cite Columella, Youatt, and
other authorities, together with the experience of all animal breeders,
to show that by exciting the imagination of the mother, the external
appearance of the offspring can be largely controlled. These instances
in no degree affect the question of heredity, for they are simply
special variations of type artificially caused.
Catherine Crowe discusses at considerable length the question of the
power of the mind over matter, and relates, in illustration, many
well-authenticated instances of the same.[631] Among others, that most
curious phenomenon called the _stigmata_ have a decided bearing upon
this point. These marks come upon the bodies of persons of all ages,
and always as the result of exalted imagination. In the cases of the
Tyrolese ecstatic, Catherine Emmerich, and many others, the wounds of
the crucifixion are said to be as perfect as nature. A certain Mme. B.
von N. dreamed one night that a person offered her a red and a white
rose, and that she chose the latter. On awaking, she felt a burning
pain in her arm, and by degrees there appeared the figure of a rose,
perfect in form and color; it was rather raised above the skin. The
mark increased in intensity till the eighth day, after which it faded
away, and by the fourteenth, was no longer perceptible. Two young
ladies, in Poland, were standing by an open window during a storm; a
flash of lightning fell near them, and the gold necklace on the neck of
one of them was melted. A perfect image of it was impressed upon the
skin, and remained throughout life. The other girl, appalled by the
accident to her companion, stood transfixed with horror for several
minutes, and then fainted away. Little by little the same mark of a
necklace as had been instantaneously imprinted upon her friend’s body,
appeared upon her own, and remained there for several years, when it
gradually disappeared.
Dr. Justinus Kerner, the distinguished German author, relates a still
more extraordinary case. “At the time of the French invasion, a Cossack
having pursued a Frenchman into a _cul-de-sac_, an alley without an
outlet, there ensued a terrible conflict between them, in which the
latter was severely wounded. A person who had taken refuge in this
close, and could not get away, was so dreadfully frightened, that when
he reached home there broke out on his body the very same wounds that
the Cossack had inflicted on his enemy!”
In this case, as in those where organic disorders, and even physical
death result from a sudden excitement of the mind reacting upon the
body, Magendie would find it difficult to attribute the effect to
any other cause than the imagination; and if he were an occultist,
like Paracelsus, or Van Helmont, the question would be stripped of
its mystery. He would understand the power of the human will and
imagination—the former conscious, the latter involuntary—on the
universal agent to inflict injury, physical and mental, not only
upon chosen victims, but also, by reflex action, upon one’s self and
unconsciously. It is one of the fundamental principles of magic, that
if a current of this subtile fluid is not impelled with sufficient
force to reach the objective point, it will react upon the individual
sending it, as an India-rubber ball rebounds to the thrower’s hand from
the wall against which it strikes without being able to penetrate it.
There are many cases instanced where _would-be sorcerers_ fell victims
themselves. Van Helmont says: “The imaginative power of a woman vividly
excited produces an idea, which is the connecting medium between the
body and spirit. This transfers itself to the being with whom the woman
stands in the most immediate relation, and impresses upon it that image
which the most agitated herself.”
Deleuze has collected, in his _Bibliothèque du Magnétisme_ Animal, a
number of remarkable facts taken from Van Helmont, among which we will
content ourselves with quoting the following as pendants to the case
of the bird-hunter, Jacques Pelissier. He says that “men by looking
steadfastly at animals _oculis intentis_ for a quarter of an hour may
cause their death; which Rousseau confirms from his own experience in
Egypt and the East, as having killed several toads in this manner. But
when he at last tried this at Lyons, the toad, finding it could not
escape from his eye, turned round, blew itself up, and stared at him so
fiercely, without moving its eyes, that a weakness came over him even
to fainting, and he was for some time thought to be dead.”
But to return to the question of teratology. Wierus tells, in his _De
Prœstigiis Demonum_, of a child born of a woman who not long before
its birth was threatened by her husband, he saying that she had the
devil in her and that he would kill him. The mother’s fright was such
that her offspring appeared “well-shaped from the middle downward, but
upward spotted with blackened red spots, with eyes in his forehead, a
mouth like a Satyr, ears like a dog, and bended horns on its head like
a goat.” In a demonological work by Peramatus, there is a story of a
monster born at St. Lawrence, in the West Indies, in the year 1573, the
genuineness of which is certified to by the Duke of Medina-Sidonia.
The child, “besides the horrible deformity of its mouth, ears, and
nose, had two horns on the head, like those of young goats, long hair
on his body, a fleshy girdle about his middle, double, from whence
hung a piece of flesh like a purse, and a bell of flesh in his left
hand like those the Indians use when they dance, white boots of flesh
on his legs, doubled down. In brief, the whole shape was horrid and
diabolical, and conceived to proceed from some fright the mother had
taken from the antic dances of the Indians.”[632] Dr. Fisher rejects
all such instances as unauthenticated and fabulous.
But we will not weary the reader with further selections from the
multitude of teratological cases to be found recorded in the works
of standard authors; the above suffice to show that there is reason
to attribute these aberrations of physiological type to the mutual
reaction of the maternal mind and the universal ether upon each other.
Lest some should question the authority of Van Helmont, as a man of
science, we will refer them to the work of Fournié, the well-known
physiologist, where (at page 717) the following estimate of his
character will be found: “Van Helmont was a highly distinguished
chemist; he had particularly studied aëriform fluids, and gave them
the name of _gaz_; at the same time he pushed his piety to mysticism,
abandoning himself exclusively to a contemplation of the divinity....
Van Helmont is distinguished above all his predecessors by connecting
_the principle of life_, directly and in some sort experimentally, as
he tells us, with the most minute movements of the body. It is the
incessant action of this entity, in no way associated by him with the
material elements, but forming a distinct individuality, that we cannot
understand. Nevertheless, it is upon this entity that a famous school
has laid its principal foundation.”
Van Helmont’s “principle of life,” or _archæus_, is neither more nor
less than the astral light of all the kabalists, and the universal
ether of modern science. If the more unimportant signatures of the
fœtus are not due to the imaginations of the mother, to what other
cause would Magendie attribute the formation of horny scales, the horns
of goats and the hairy coats of animals, which we have seen in the
above instances marking monstrous progeny? Surely there were no latent
germs of these distinguishing features of the animal kingdom capable of
being developed under a sudden impulse of the maternal fancy. In short,
the only possible explanation is the one offered by the adepts in the
occult sciences.
Before leaving the subject, we wish to say a few words more respecting
the cases where the head, arm, and hand were instantly dissolved,
though it was evident that in each instance the entire body of the
child had been perfectly formed. Of what is a child’s body composed at
its birth? The chemists will tell us that it comprises a dozen pounds
of solidified gas, and a few ounces of ashy residuum, some water,
oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbonic acid, a little lime, magnesia,
phosphorus, and a few other minerals; that is all! Whence came they?
How were they gathered together? How were these particles which Mr.
Proctor tells us are drawn in from “the depths of space surrounding
us on all sides,” formed and fashioned into the human being? We have
seen that it is useless to ask the dominant school of which Magendie
is an illustrious representative; for he confesses that they know
nothing of the nutrition, digestion, or circulation of the fœtus; and
physiology teaches us that while the ovule is enclosed in the Graafian
vesicle it participates—forms an integral part of the general structure
of the mother. Upon the rupture of the vesicle, it becomes almost as
independent of her for what is to build up the body of the future
being as the germ in a bird’s egg after the mother has dropped it in
the nest. There certainly is very little in the demonstrated facts of
science to contradict the idea that the relation of the embryonic child
to the mother is much different from that of the tenant to the house,
upon whose shelter he depends for health, warmth, and comfort.
According to Demokritus, the soul[633] results from the aggregation of
atoms, and Plutarch describes his philosophy as follows: “That there
are substances infinite in number, indivisible, undisturbed, which are
without differences, without qualities, and which move in space, where
they are disseminated; that when they approach each other, they unite,
interlock, and form by their aggregation water, fire, a plant, or a
man.” That all these substances, which he calls _atoms_ by reason of
their solidity, can experience neither change nor alteration. “But,”
adds Plutarch, “we cannot make a color of that which is colorless, nor
a substance or soul of that which is without soul and without quality.”
Professor Balfour Stewart says that this doctrine, in the hands of
John Dalton, “has enabled the human mind to lay hold of the laws which
regulate chemical changes, as well as to picture to itself what is
there taking place.” After quoting, with approbation, Bacon’s idea that
men are perpetually investigating the extreme limits of nature, he then
erects a standard which he and his brother philosophers would do well
to measure their behavior by. “Surely we ought,” says he, “to be very
cautious before we dismiss any branch of knowledge or train of thought
as essentially unprofitable.”[634]
Brave words, these. But how many are the men of science who put them
into practice?
Demokritus of Abdera shows us space crammed with atoms, and our
contemporary astronomers allow us to see how these atoms form into
worlds, and afterward into the races, our own included, which people
them. Since we have indicated the existence of a power in the human
will, which, by concentrating currents of those atoms upon an objective
point, can create a child corresponding to the mother’s fancy, why is
it not perfectly credible that this same power put forth by the mother,
can, by an intense, albeit unconscious reversal of those currents,
dissipate and obliterate any portion or even the whole of the body of
her unborn child? And here comes in the question of false pregnancies,
which have so often completely puzzled both physician and patient.
If the head, arm, and hand of the three children mentioned by Van
Helmont could disappear, as a result of the emotion of horror, why
might not the same or some other emotion, excited in a like degree,
cause the entire extinction of the fœtus in so-called false pregnancy?
Such cases are rare, but they do occur, and moreover baffle science
completely. There certainly is no chemical solvent in the mother’s
circulation powerful enough to dissolve her child, without destroying
herself. We commend the subject to the medical profession, hoping that
as a class they will not adopt the conclusion of Fournié, who says:
“In this succession of phenomena we must confine ourselves _to the
office of historian_, as we have not even tried to explain the whys and
wherefores of these things, for there lie the inscrutable mysteries of
life, and in proportion as we advance in our exposition, we will be
obliged to recognize that this is to us _forbidden ground_.”[635]
Within the limits of his intellectual capabilities the true philosopher
knows no forbidden ground, and should be content to accept no mystery
of nature as inscrutable or inviolable.
No student of Hermetic philosophy, nor any spiritualist, will object
to the abstract principle laid down by Hume that a _miracle_ is
impossible; for to suppose such a possibility would make the universe
governed through special instead of general laws. This is one of the
fundamental contradictions between science and theology. The former,
reasoning upon universal experience, maintains that there is a general
uniformity of the course of nature, while the latter assumes that the
Governing Mind can be invoked to suspend general law to suit special
emergencies. Says John Stuart Mill,[636] “If we do not already believe
in supernatural agencies, no miracle can prove to us their existence.
The miracle itself, considered merely as an extraordinary fact, may be
satisfactorily certified by our senses or by testimony; but nothing
can ever prove that it is a miracle. There is still another possible
hypothesis, that of its being the result of some unknown natural cause;
and this possibility cannot be so completely shut out as to leave no
alternative but that of admitting the existence and intervention of a
being superior to nature.”
This is the very point which we have sought to bring home to our
logicians and physicists. As Mr. Mill himself says, “We cannot admit
a proposition as a law of nature, and yet believe a fact in real
contradiction to it. We must disbelieve the alleged fact, or believe
that we were mistaken in admitting the supposed law.” Mr. Hume cites
the “firm and _unalterable_ experience” of mankind, as establishing
the laws whose operation _ipso facto_ makes miracles impossible. The
difficulty lies in his use of the adjective which is Italicized, for
this is an assumption that our experience will never change, and
that, as a consequence, we will always have the same experiments and
observations upon which to base our judgment. It also assumes that
all philosophers will have the same facts to reflect upon. It also
entirely ignores such collected accounts of philosophical experiment
and scientific discovery as we may have been temporarily deprived of.
Thus, by the burning of the Alexandrian Library and the destruction of
Nineveh, the world has been for many centuries without the necessary
data upon which to estimate the real knowledge, esoteric and exoteric,
of the ancients. But, within the past few years, the discovery of the
Rosetta stone, the Ebers, d’Aubigney, Anastasi, and other _papyri_,
and the exhumation of the tile-libraries, have opened a field of
archæological research which is likely to lead to radical changes in
this “firm and unalterable experience.” The author of _Supernatural
Religion_ justly observes that “a person who believes anything
contradictory to a complete induction, merely on the strength of an
assumption which is incapable of proof, is simply credulous; but such
an assumption cannot affect the real evidence for that thing.”
In a lecture delivered by Mr. Hiram Corson, Professor of Anglo-Saxon
Literature at the Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y., before the alumni
of St. John’s College, Annapolis, in July, 1875, the lecturer thus
deservedly rebukes science:
“There are things,” he says, “which Science can never do, and which
it is arrogant in attempting to do. There was a time when Religion
and the Church went beyond their legitimate domain, and invaded and
harried that of Science, and imposed a burdensome tribute upon the
latter; but it would seem that their former relations to each other are
undergoing an entire change, and Science has crossed its frontiers and
is invading the domain of Religion and the Church, and instead of a
Religious Papacy, we are in danger of being brought under a Scientific
Papacy—we are in fact already brought under such a Papacy; and as
in the sixteenth century a protest was made, in the interests of
intellectual freedom, against a religious and ecclesiastical despotism,
so, in this nineteenth century, the spiritual and eternal interests of
man demand that a protest should be made against a rapidly-developing
scientific despotism, and that Scientists should not only keep within
their legitimate domain of the phenomenal and the conditioned, but
should ‘reëxamine their stock in trade, so that we may make sure how
far the stock of bullion in the cellar—on the faith of whose existence
so much paper has been circulating—is really the solid gold of Truth.’
“If this is not done in science as well as in ordinary business,
scientists are apt to put their capital at too high a figure, and
accordingly carry on a dangerously-inflated business. Even since Prof.
Tyndall delivered his Belfast Address, it has been shown, by the many
replies it has elicited, that the capital of the Evolution-School of
Philosophy to which he belongs, is not near so great as it was before
vaguely supposed to be by many of the non-scientific but intelligent
portion of the world. It is quite surprising to a non-scientific
person to be made aware of the large purely hypothetical domain which
surrounds that of established science, and of which scientists often
boast, as a part of their settled and available conquests.”
Exactly; and at the same time denying the same privilege to others.
They protest against the “miracles” of the Church, and repudiate, with
as much logic, modern phenomena. In view of the admission of such
scientific authorities as Dr. Youmans and others that modern science is
passing through a transitional period, it would seem that it is time
that people should cease to consider certain things incredible only
because they are marvellous, and because they seem to oppose themselves
to what we are accustomed to consider universal laws. There are not a
few well-meaning men in the present century who, desiring to avenge
the memory of such martyrs of science as Agrippa, Palissy, and Cardan,
nevertheless fail, through lack of means, to understand their ideas
rightly. They erroneously believe that the Neo-platonists gave more
attention to transcendental philosophy than to exact science.
“The failures that Aristotle himself so often exhibits,” remarks
Professor Draper, “are no proof of the unreliability of his method, but
rather of its trustworthiness. They are failures arising from want of a
sufficiency of facts.”[637]
What facts? we might inquire. A man of science cannot be expected
to admit that these facts can be furnished by occult science, since
he does not believe in the latter. Nevertheless, the future may
demonstrate this verity. Aristotle has bequeathed his inductive method
to our scientists; but until they supplement it with “the universals
of Plato,” they will experience still more “failures” than the great
tutor of Alexander. The universals are a matter of faith only so long
as they cannot be demonstrated by reason and based on uninterrupted
experience. Who of our present-day philosophers can prove by this
same inductive method that the ancients did _not_ possess such
demonstrations as a consequence of their esoteric studies? Their own
negations, unsupported as they are by proof, sufficiently attest that
they do not always pursue the inductive method they so much boast of.
Obliged as they are to base their theories, _nolens volens_, on the
groundwork of the ancient philosophers, their modern discoveries are
but the shoots put forth by the germs planted by the former. And yet
even these discoveries are generally incomplete, if not abortive. Their
cause is involved in obscurity and their ultimate effect unforeseen.“
We are not,” says Professor Youmans, “to regard past theories as mere
exploded errors, nor present theories as final. The living and growing
body of truth has only mantled its old integuments in the progress
to a higher and more vigorous state.”[638] This language, applied to
modern chemistry by one of the first philosophical chemists and most
enthusiastic scientific writers of the day, shows the transitional
state in which we find modern science; but what is true of chemistry is
true of all its sister sciences.
Since the advent of spiritualism, physicians and pathologists are
more ready than ever to treat great philosophers like Paracelsus and
Van Helmont as superstitious quacks and charlatans, and to ridicule
their notions about the _archæus_, or _anima mundi_, as well as the
importance they gave to a knowledge of the machinery of the stars. And
yet, how much of substantial progress has medicine effected since the
days when Lord Bacon classed it among the _conjectural_ sciences?
Such philosophers as Demokritus, Aristotle, Euripides, Epicurus, or
rather his biographer, Lucretius, Æschylus, and other ancient writers,
whom the materialists so willingly quote as authoritative opponents of
the dreamy Platonists, were only theorists, not adepts. The latter,
when they did write, either had their works burned by Christian mobs
or they worded them in a way to be intelligible only to the initiated.
Who of their modern detractors can warrant that he knows _all_ about
what they knew? Diocletian alone burned whole libraries of works upon
the “secret arts;” not a manuscript treating on the art of making
gold and silver escaped the wrath of this unpolished tyrant. Arts and
civilization had attained such a development at what is now termed
the archaic ages that we learn, through Champollion, that Athothi,
the _second_ king of the _first_ dynasty, wrote a work on anatomy,
and the king Necho on astrology and astronomy. Blantasus and Cynchrus
were two learned geographers of those pre-Mosaic days. Ælian speaks of
the Egyptian Iachus, whose memory was venerated for centuries for his
wonderful achievements in medicine. He stopped the progress of several
epidemics, merely with certain _fumigations_. A work of Apollonides,
surnamed Orapios, is mentioned by Theophilus, patriarch of Antioch,
entitled the _Divine Book_, and giving the secret biography and origin
of all the gods of Egypt; and Ammianus Marcellinus speaks of a secret
work in which was noted the _precise age of the bull Apis_—a key to
many a mystery and cyclic calculation. What has become of all these
books, and who knows the treasures of learning they may have contained?
We know but one thing for a certainty, and that is, that Pagan and
Christian Vandals destroyed such literary treasures _wherever they
could find them_; and that the emperor Alexander Severus went all over
Egypt to collect the sacred books on mysticism and mythology, pillaging
every temple; and that the Ethiopians—old as were the Egyptians in
arts and sciences—claimed a priority of antiquity as well as of
learning over them; as well they might, for they were known in India
at the earliest dawn of history. We also know that Plato learned more
secrets in Egypt than he was allowed to mention; and that, according
to Champollion, all that is really good and scientific in Aristotle’s
works—so prized in our day by our modern inductionists—is due to his
_divine_ Master; and that, as a logical sequence, Plato having imparted
the profound secrets he had learned from the priests of Egypt to
his initiated disciples orally—who in their turn passed it from one
generation to another of adepts—the latter _know more_ of the occult
powers of nature than our philosophers of the present day.
And here we may as well mention the works of Hermes Trismegistus.
Who, or how many have had the opportunity to read them as they were
in the Egyptian sanctuaries? In his _Egyptian Mysteries_, Iamblichus
attributes to Hermes 1,100 books, and Seleucus reckons no less than
20,000 of his works before the period of Menes. Eusebius saw but
forty-two of these “in his time,” he says, and the last of the six
books on medicine treated on that art as practiced in the darkest
ages;[639] and Diodorus says that it was the oldest of the legislators
Mnevis, the third successor of _Menes_, who received them from Hermes.
Of such manuscripts as have descended to us, most are but Latin
retranslations of Greek translations, made principally by the
Neo-platonists from the original books preserved by some adepts.
Marcilius Ficinus, who was the first to publish them in Venice, in
1488, has given us mere extracts, and the most important portions
seemed to have been either overlooked, or purposely omitted as too
dangerous to publish in those days of _Auto da fé_. And so it happens
now, that when a kabalist who has devoted his whole life to studying
occultism, and has conquered the great secret, ventures to remark
that the _Kabala_ alone leads to the knowledge of the Absolute in
the Infinite, and the Indefinite in the Finite, he is laughed at by
those who because they know the impossibility of squaring the circle
as a physical problem, deny the possibility of its being done in the
metaphysical sense.
Psychology, according to the greatest authorities on the subject, is a
department of science hitherto almost unknown. Physiology, according
to Fournié, one of its French authorities, is in so bad a condition as
to warrant his saying in the preface to his erudite work _Physiologie
du Système Nerveux_, that “we perceive at last that not only is the
physiology of the brain not worked out, but also that _no physiology
whatever of the nervous system exists_.” Chemistry has been entirely
remodelled within the past few years; therefore, like all new sciences,
the infant cannot be considered as very firm on its legs. Geology
has not yet been able to tell anthropology how long man has existed.
Astronomy, the most exact of sciences, is still speculating and
bewildered about cosmic energy, and many other things as important.
In anthropology, Mr. Wallace tells us, there exists a wide difference
of opinion on some of the most vital questions respecting the nature
and origin of man. Medicine has been pronounced by various eminent
physicians to be nothing better than scientific guess-work. Everywhere
incompleteness, nowhere perfection. When we look at these earnest men
groping around in the dark to find the missing links of their broken
chains, they seem to us like persons starting from a common, fathomless
abyss by divergent paths. Each of these ends at the brink of a chasm
which they cannot explore. On the one hand they lack the means to
descend into its hidden depths, and on the other they are repulsed at
each attempt by jealous sentries, who will not let them pass. And so
they go on watching the lower forces of nature and from time to time
initiating the public into their _great_ discoveries. Did they not
actually pounce upon vital force and catch her playing in her game of
correlation with chemical and physical forces? Indeed they did. But if
we ask them whence this vital force? How is it that they who had so
firmly believed, but a short time since, that matter was destructible
and passed out of existence, and now have learned to believe as firmly
that it does not, are unable to tell us more about it? Why are they
forced in this case as in many others to return to a doctrine taught
by Demokritus twenty-four centuries ago?[640] Ask them, and they will
answer: “Creation or destruction of matter, increase or diminution
of matter, lies _beyond the domain of science_ ... her domain is
confined entirely to the changes of matter ... the domain of science
lies within the limits of these changes—creation and annihilation lie
outside of her domain.”[641] Ah! no, they lie only outside the grasp of
materialistic _scientists_. But why affirm the same of science? And if
they say that “force is incapable of destruction, except by the same
power which created it,” then they tacitly admit the existence of such
a _power_, and have therefore _no right_ to throw obstacles in the way
of those who, bolder than themselves, try to penetrate _beyond_, and
find that they can only do so by _lifting the Veil of Isis_.
But, surely among all these inchoate branches of science, there must
be some one at least complete! It seems to us that we heard a great
clamor of applause, “as the voice of many waters,” over the discovery
of protoplasm. But, alas! when we turned to read Mr. Huxley, the
learned parent of the new-born infant is found saying: “In perfect
strictness, it is true that chemical investigation can tell us _little_
or _nothing_, directly, of the composition of living matter, and ... it
is also in strictness, true, that WE KNOW NOTHING about the composition
of any body whatever, as it is!”
This is a sad confession, indeed. It appears, then, that the
Aristotelian method of induction is a failure in some cases, after all.
This also seems to account for the fact that this model philosopher,
with all his careful study of particulars before rising to universals,
taught that the earth was _in the centre_ of the universe; while Plato,
who lost himself in the maze of Pythagorean “vagaries,” and started
from general principles, was perfectly versed in the heliocentric
system. We can easily prove the fact, by availing ourselves of the
said inductive method for Plato’s benefit. We know that the _Sodalian_
oath of the initiate into the Mysteries prevented his imparting his
knowledge to the world in so many plain words. “It was the dream of his
life,” says Champollion, “to write a work and record in it in full the
doctrines taught by the Egyptian hierophants; he often talked of it,
but found himself compelled to abstain on account of the ‘solemn oath.’”
And now, judging our modern-day philosophers on the _vice versa_
method—namely, arguing from _universals_ to _particulars_, and laying
aside scientists as individuals to merely give our opinion of them,
viewed as a whole—we are forced to suspect this highly respectable
association of extremely petty feelings toward their elder, ancient,
and archaic brothers. It really seems as if they bore always in mind
the adage, “Put out the _sun_, and the _stars_ will shine.”
We have heard a French Academician, a man of profound learning, remark,
that he would gladly sacrifice his own reputation to have the record of
the many ridiculous mistakes and failures of his colleagues obliterated
from the public memory. But these failures cannot be recalled _too_
often in considering our claims and the subject we advocate. The time
will come when the children of men of science, unless they inherit
the soul-blindness of their skeptical parents, will be ashamed of the
degrading materialism and narrow-mindedness of their fathers. To use an
expression of the venerable William Howitt, “They hate new truths as
the owl and the thief hate the sun.... Mere intellectual enlightenment
cannot recognize the spiritual. As the sun puts out a fire, so spirit
puts out the eyes of mere intellect.”
It is an old, old story. From the days when the preacher wrote, “the
eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing,”
scientists have deported themselves as if the saying were written to
describe their own mental condition. How faithfully Lecky, himself a
rationalist, unconsciously depicts this propensity in men of science
to deride all new things, in his description of the manner in which
“educated men” receive an account of a miracle having taken place!
“They receive it,” says he, “with an absolute and even derisive
incredulity, which dispenses with all examination of the evidences!”
Moreover, so saturated do they become with the fashionable skepticism
after once having fought their way into the Academy, that they turn
about and enact the role of persecutors in their turn. “It is a
curiosity of science,” says Howitt, “that Benjamin Franklin, who had
himself experienced the ridicule of his countrymen for his attempts
to identify lightning and electricity, should have been one of the
Committee of Savants, in Paris, in 1778, who examined the claims of
mesmerism, and condemned it as absolute quackery!”[642]
If men of science would confine themselves to the discrediting of new
discoveries, there might be some little excuse for them on the score
of their tendency to a conservatism begotten of long habits of patient
scrutiny; but they not only set up claims to originality not warranted
by fact, but contemptuously dismiss all allegations that the people of
ancient times knew as much and even more than themselves. Pity that
in each of their laboratories there is not suspended this text from
_Ecclesiastes_: “Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this
_is_ new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.”[643]
In the verse which follows the one here quoted, the wise man says,
“There is no remembrance of former things;” so that this utterance
may account for every new denial. Mr. Meldrum may exact praise for
his meteorological observation of Cyclones in the Mauritius, and Mr.
Baxendell, of Manchester, talk learnedly of the convection-currents of
the earth, and Dr. Carpenter and Commander Maury map out for us the
equatorial current, and Professor Henry show us how the moist wind
deposits its burden to form rivulets and rivers, only to be again
rescued from the ocean and returned to the hill-tops—but hear what
Koheleth says: “The wind goeth toward the south, and _turneth about_
unto the north; it _whirleth about_ continually, and the wind returneth
again according to his circuits.”[644]
“All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the
place from whence the rivers come, _thither they return again_.”[645]
The philosophy of the distribution of heat and moisture by means of
ascending and descending currents between the equator and the poles,
has a very recent origin; but here has the hint been lying unnoticed
in our most familiar book, for nearly three thousand years. And even
now, in quoting it, we are obliged to recall the fact that Solomon was
a kabalist, and in the above texts, simply repeats what was written
thousands of years before his time.
Cut off as they are from the accumulation of facts in one-half of the
universe, and that the most important, modern scholars are naturally
unable to construct a system of philosophy which will satisfy
themselves, let alone others. They are like men in a coal mine,
who work all day and emerge only at night, being thereby unable to
appreciate or understand the beauty and glory of the sunshine. Life to
them measures the term of human activity, and the future presents to
their intellectual perception only an abyss of darkness. No hope of an
eternity of research, achievement, and consequent pleasure, softens the
asperities of present existence; and no reward is offered for exertion
but the bread-earning of to-day, and the shadowy and profitless fancy
that their names may not be forgotten for some years after the grave
has closed over their remains. Death to them means extinction of the
flame of life, and the dispersion of the fragments of the lamp over
boundless space. Said Berzelius, the great chemist, at his last hour,
as he burst into tears: “Do not wonder that I weep. You will not
believe me a weak man, nor think I am alarmed by what the doctor has to
announce to me. I am prepared for all. But I have _to bid farewell to
science_; and you ought not to wonder that it costs me dear.”[646]
How bitter must be the reflections of such a great student of nature
as this, to find himself forcibly interrupted midway toward the
accomplishment of some great study, the construction of some great
system, the discovery of some mystery which had baffled mankind for
ages, but which the dying philosopher had dared hope that he might
solve! Look at the world of science to-day, and see the atomic
theorists, patching the tattered robes which expose the imperfections
of their separate specialties! See them mending the pedestals upon
which to set up again the idols which had fallen from the places where
they had been worshipped before this revolutionary theory had been
exhumed from the tomb of Demokritus by John Dalton! In the ocean of
material science they cast their nets, only to have the meshes broken
when some unexpected and monstrous problem comes their way. Its water
is like the Dead Sea—bitter to the taste; so dense, that they can
scarcely immerse themselves in it, much less dive to its bottom, having
no outlet, and no life beneath its waves, or along its margin. It is a
dark, forbidding, trackless waste; yielding nothing worth the having,
because what it yields is without life and without soul.
There was a period of time when the learned Academics made themselves
particularly merry at the simple enunciation of some marvels which the
ancients gave as having occurred under their own observations. What
poor dolts—perhaps liars, these appeared in the eyes of an enlightened
century! Did not they actually describe horses and other animals, the
feet of which presented some resemblance to the hands and feet of
men? And in A.D. 1876, we hear Mr. Huxley giving learned lectures in
which the _protohippus_, rejoicing in a quasi-human fore-arm, and the
_orohippus_ with his four toes and Eocene origin, and the hypothetical
_pedactyl equus_, maternal grand-uncle of the present horse, play
the most important part. The marvel is corroborated! Materialistic
Pyrrhonists of the nineteenth century avenge the assertions of
superstitious Platonists; the antediluvian _gobe-mouches_. And before
Mr. Huxley, Geoffroi St. Hilaire has shown an instance of a horse which
positively had fingers separated by membranes.[647] When the ancients
spoke of a pigmy race in Africa, they were taxed with falsehood. And
yet, pigmies like these were seen and examined by a French scientist
during his voyage in the Tenda Maia, on the banks of the Rio Grande in
1840;[648] by Bayard Taylor at Cairo, in 1874; and by M. Bond, of the
Indian Trigonometrical Survey, who discovered a wild dwarfish race,
living in the hill-jungles of the western Galitz, to the southwest
of the Palini Hills, a race, though often heard of, no trace of
which had previously been found by the survey. “This is a new pigmy
race, resembling the African Obongos of du Chaillu, the Akkas of
Schweinfurth, and the Dokos of Dr. Krapf, in their size, appearance,
and habits.”[649]
Herodotus was regarded as a lunatic for speaking of a people _who he
was told_ slept during a night which lasted six months. If we explain
the word “slept” by an easy misunderstanding it will be more than
easy to account for the rest as an allusion to the night of the Polar
Regions.[650] Pliny has an abundance of facts in his work, which until
very recently, were rejected as fables. Among others, he mentions a
race of small animals, the _males_ of which _suckle their young ones_.
This assertion afforded much merriment among our _savants_. In his
_Report of the Geological Survey of the Territories_, for 1872, Mr. C.
H. Merriam describes a rare and wonderful species of rabbit (_Lepus
Bairdi_) inhabiting the pine-regions about the head-waters of the Wind
and Yellowstone Rivers, in Wyoming.[651] Mr. Merriam secured five
specimens of this animal, “which ... are _the first individuals of the
species that have been brought before the scientific world_. One very
curious fact is that _all the males have teats_, and _take part in
suckling their young_! ... Adult males had large teats full of milk,
and the hair around the nipple of one was wet, and stuck to it, showing
that, when taken, he had been engaged in nursing his young.” In the
Carthaginian account of the early voyages of Hanno,[652] was found a
long description of “savage people ... whose bodies were hairy and whom
the interpreters called _gorillæ_;” ἄνθρωποι ἄγριοι, as the text reads,
clearly implying thereby that these wild men were monkeys. Until
our present century, the statement was considered an idle story, and
Dodwell rejected altogether the authenticity of the manuscript and its
contents.[653] The celebrated _Atlantis_ is attributed by the latest
modern commentator and translator of Plato’s works to one of Plato’s
“noble lies.”[654] Even the frank admission of the philosopher, in the
_Timæus_, that “_they say_, that in their time ... the inhabitants
of this island (Poseidon) preserved _a tradition_ handed down by
their ancestors concerning the existence of the Atlantic island of a
prodigious magnitude ... etc.”[655] does not save the great teacher
from the imputation of falsehood, by the “infallible modern school.”
Among the great mass of peoples plunged deep in the superstitious
ignorance of the mediæval ages, there were but a few students of the
Hermetic philosophy of old, who, profiting by what it had taught them,
were enabled to forecast discoveries which are the boast of our present
age; while at the same time the ancestors of our modern high-priests of
the temple of the Holy Molecule, were yet discovering the hoof-tracks
of Satan in the simplest natural phenomenon. Says Professor A. Wilder:
“Roger Bacon (sixteenth century), in his treatise on the _Admirable
Force of Art and Nature_, devotes the first part of his work to
natural facts. He gives us hints of gunpowder and predicts the use of
steam as a propelling power. The hydraulic press, the diving bell and
kaleidoscope are all described.”[656]
The ancients speak of waters metamorphosed _into blood_; of blood-rain,
of snow-storms during which the earth was covered to the extent of
many miles with snow _of blood_. This fall of crimson particles has
been proved, like everything else, to be but a natural phenomenon. It
has occurred at different epochs, but the cause of it remains a puzzle
until the present day.
De Candolle, one of the most distinguished botanists of this century,
sought to prove in 1825, at the time when the waters of the lake of
Morat had apparently turned into a thick blood, that the phenomenon
could be easily accounted for. He attributed it to the development of
myriads of those half vegetable, half-infusory animals which he terms
_Oscellatoria rubescens_, and which form the link between animal and
vegetable organisms.[657] Elsewhere we give an account of the red snow
which Captain Ross observed in the Arctic regions. Many memoirs have
been written on the subject by the most eminent naturalists, but no two
of them agree in their hypotheses. Some call it “pollen powder of a
species of pine;” others, small insects; and Professor Agardt confesses
very frankly that he is at a loss to either account for the cause of
such phenomena, or to explain the nature of the red substance.[658]
The unanimous testimony of mankind is said to be an irrefutable proof
of truth; and about what was ever testimony more unanimous than
that for thousands of ages among civilized people as among the most
barbarous, there has existed a firm and unwavering belief in magic?
The latter implies a contravention of the laws of nature only in
the minds of the ignorant; and if such ignorance is to be deplored
in the ancient uneducated nations, why do not our civilized and
_highly_-educated classes of fervent Christians, deplore it also in
themselves? The mysteries of the Christian religion have been no more
able to stand a crucial test than biblical miracles. Magic alone, in
the true sense of the word, affords a clew to the wonders of Aaron’s
rod, and the feats of the magi of Pharaoh, who opposed Moses; and it
does that without either impairing the general truthfulness of the
authors of the _Exodus_, or claiming more for the prophet of Israel
than for others, or allowing the possibility of a single instance in
which a “miracle” can happen in contravention of the laws of nature.
Out of many “miracles,” we may select for our illustration that of the
“river turned into blood.” The text says: “Take thy _rod_ and stretch
out thine hand (with the _rod_ in it) upon the waters, streams, etc....
that they may become blood.”
We do not hesitate to say that we have seen the same thing repeatedly
done on a small scale, the experiment not having been applied to
a river in these cases. From the time of Van Helmont, who, in the
seventeenth century, despite the ridicule to which he exposed
himself, was willing to give the true directions for the so-called
production of eels, frogs, and infusoria of various kinds, down to
the champions of spontaneous generation of our own century, it has
been known that such a quickening of germs is possible without calling
in the aid of miracle to contravene natural law. The experiments of
Pasteur and Spallanzani, and the controversy of the panspermists
with the heterogenists—disciples of Buffon, among them Needham—have
too long occupied public attention to permit us to doubt that beings
may be called into existence whenever there is air and favorable
conditions of moisture and temperature. The records of the official
meetings of the Academy of Sciences of Paris[659] contain accounts
of frequent appearances of such showers of blood-red snow and water.
These blood-spots were called _lepra vestuum_, and were but these
lichen-infusoria. They were first observed in 786 and 959, in both
of which years occurred great plagues. Whether these _zoöcarps_ were
plants or animals is undetermined to this day, and no naturalist would
risk stating as a certainty to what division of the organic kingdom
of nature they belong. No more can modern chemists deny that such
germs can be quickened, in a congenial element, in an incredibly short
space of time. Now, if chemistry has, on the one hand, found means of
depriving the air of its floating germs, and under opposite conditions
can develop, or allow these organisms to develop, why could not the
magicians of Egypt do so “with their _enchantments_?” It is far easier
to imagine that Moses, who, on the authority of Manetho, had been
an Egyptian priest, and had learned all the secrets of the land of
_Chemia_, produced “miracles” according to natural laws, than that God
Himself violated the established order of His universe. We repeat that
we have seen this sanguification of water produced by Eastern adepts.
It can be done in either of two ways: In one case the experimenter
employed a magnetic _rod_ strongly electrified, which he passed over a
quantity of water in a metallic basin, following a prescribed process,
which we have no right to describe more fully at present; the water
threw up in about ten hours a sort of reddish froth, which after two
hours more became a kind of lichen, like the _lepraria kermasina_ of
Baron Wrangel. It then changed into a blood-red jelly, which made of
the water a crimson liquid that, twenty-four hours later, swarmed with
living organisms. The second experiment consisted in thickly strowing
the surface of a sluggish brook, having a muddy bottom, with the powder
of a plant that had been dried in the sun and subsequently pulverized.
Although this powder was seemingly carried off by the stream, some
of it must have settled to the bottom, for on the following morning
the water thickened at the surface and appeared covered with what de
Candolle describes as _Oscellatoria rubescens_, of a crimson-red color,
and which he believes to be the connecting link between vegetable and
animal life.
Taking the above into consideration, we do not see why the learned
alchemists and physicists—_physicists_, we say—of the Mosaic period
should not also have possessed the natural secret of developing in a
few hours myriads of a kind of these bacteria, whose spores are found
in the air, the water, and most vegetable and animal tissues. The _rod_
plays as important a part in the hands of Aaron and Moses as it did in
all so-called “magic mummeries” of kabalist-magicians in the middle
ages, that are now considered superstitious foolery and charlatanism.
The rod of Paracelsus (his kabalistic trident) and the famous wands of
Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and Henry Kunrath, are no more to be
ridiculed than the graduating-rod of our electro-magnetic physicians.
Things which appeared preposterous and impossible to the ignorant
quacks and even learned scientists of the last century, now begin to
assume the shadowy outlines of probability, and in many cases are
accomplished facts. Nay, some learned quacks and ignorant scientists
even begin to admit this truth.
In a fragment preserved by Eusebius, Porphyry, in his _Letter to
Anebo_, appeals to Chœremon, the “hierogrammatist,” to prove that
the doctrine of the magic arts, whose adepts “could terrify even the
gods,” was really countenanced by Egyptian sages.[660] Now, bearing
in mind the rule of historical evidence propounded by Mr. Huxley,
in his Nashville address, two conclusions present themselves with
irresistible force: First, Porphyry, being in such unquestioned repute
as a highly moral and honorable man, not given to exaggeration in his
statements, was incapable of telling a lie about this matter, and
_did not_ lie; and second, that being so learned in every department
of human knowledge about which he treats,[661] it was most unlikely
that he should be imposed upon as regards the magic “arts,” and he was
_not_ imposed upon. Therefore, the doctrine of chances supporting the
theory of Professor Huxley, compels us to believe, 1, That there was
really such a thing as magic “arts;” and, 2, That they were known and
practiced by the Egyptian magicians and priests, whom even Sir David
Brewster concedes to have been men of profound scientific attainments.
CHAPTER XII.
“You never hear the really philosophical defenders of the
doctrine of uniformity speaking of _impossibilities_ in
nature. They never say what they are constantly charged with
saying, that it is impossible for the Builder of the universe
to alter his work.... No theory upsets them (the English
clergy).... Let the most destructive hypothesis be stated _only
in the language current among gentlemen_, and they look it
in the face.”—TYNDALL: _Lecture on the Scientific Use of the
Imagination_.
“The world will have a religion of some kind, even though
it should fly for it to the intellectual _whoredom of
Spiritualism_.”—TYNDALL: _Fragments of Science_.
“But first on earth as vampire sent
Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent, ...
And suck the blood of all thy race.”—LORD BYRON: _Giaour_.
We are now approaching the hallowed precincts of that Janus-god—the
molecular Tyndall. Let us enter them barefoot. As we pass the sacred
adyta of the temple of learning, we are nearing the blazing sun of the
Huxleyocentric system. Let us cast down our eyes, lest we be blinded.
We have discussed the various matters contained in this book, with
such moderation as we could command in view of the attitude which the
scientific and theological world have maintained for centuries toward
those from whom they have inherited the broad foundations of all the
actual knowledge which they possess. When we stand at one side, and, as
a spectator, see how much the ancients knew, and how much the moderns
think they know, we are amazed that the unfairness of our contemporary
schoolmen should pass undetected.
Every day brings new admissions of scientists themselves, and the
criticisms of well-informed lay observers. We find the following
illustrative paragraph in a daily paper:
“It is curious to note the various opinions which prevail among
scientific men in regard to some of the most ordinary natural
phenomena. The aurora is a notable case in point. Descartes considered
it a meteor falling from the upper regions of the atmosphere. Halley
attributed it to the magnetism of the terrestrial globe, and Dalton
agreed with this opinion. Coates supposed that the aurora was derived
from the fermentation of a matter emanating from the earth. Marion
held it to be a consequence of a contact between the bright atmosphere
of the sun and the atmosphere of our planet. Euler thought the aurora
proceeded from the vibrations of the ether among the particles of the
terrestrial atmosphere. Canton and Franklin regarded it as a purely
electrical phenomenon, and Parrot attributed it to the conflagration
of hydrogen-carbonide escaping from the earth in consequence of the
putrefaction of vegetable substances, and considered the shooting
stars as the initial cause of such conflagration. De la Rive and
Oersted concluded it to be an electro-magnetic phenomenon, but purely
terrestrial. Olmsted suspected that a certain nebulous body revolved
around the sun in a certain time, and that when this body came into the
neighborhood of the earth, a part of its gaseous material mixed with
our atmosphere, and that this was the origin of the phenomenon of the
aurora.” And so we might say of every branch of science.
Thus, it would seem that even as to the most ordinary natural
phenomena, scientific opinion is far from being unanimous. There is
not an experimentalist or theologian, who, in dealing with the subtile
relations between mind and matter, their genesis and ultimate, does not
draw a magical circle, the plane of which he calls _forbidden ground_.
Where faith permits a clergyman to go, he goes; for, as Tyndall says,
“they do not lack the positive element—namely, the love of truth;
but the negative element, the fear of error, preponderates.” But the
trouble is, that their dogmatic creed weighs down the nimble feet
of their intellect, as the ball and chain does the prisoner in the
trenches.
As to the advance of scientists, their very learning, moreover,
is impeded by these two causes—their constitutional incapacity to
understand the spiritual side of nature, and their dread of public
opinion. No one has said a sharper thing against them than Professor
Tyndall, when he remarks, “in fact, the greatest cowards of the
present day are not to be found among the clergy, but within the pale
of science itself.”[662] If there had been the slightest doubt of the
applicability of this degrading epithet, it was removed by the conduct
of Professor Tyndall himself; for, in his Belfast address, as President
of the British Association, he not only discerned in matter “_the
promise and potency_ of every form and quality of life,” but pictured
science as “wresting from theology the entire domain of cosmological
theory;” and then, when confronted with an angry public opinion,
issued a revised edition of the address in which he had modified his
expression, substituting for the words “_every form and quality of
life_,” _all terrestrial life_. This is more than cowardly—it is an
ignominious surrender of his professed principles. At the time of
the Belfast meeting, Mr. Tyndall had two pet aversions—Theology and
Spiritualism. What he thought of the former has been shown; the latter
he called “a degrading belief.” When hard pressed by the Church for
alleged atheism, he made haste to disclaim the imputation, and sue for
peace; but, as his agitated “nervous centres” and “cerebral molecules”
had to equilibrate by expanding their force in some direction, he turns
upon the helpless, because pusillanimous, spiritualists, and in his
_Fragments of Science_ insults their belief after this fashion: “The
world will have a religion of some kind, even though it should fly for
it to the intellectual _whoredom of Spiritualism_.” What a monstrous
anomaly, that some millions of intelligent persons should permit
themselves to be thus reviled by a leader in science, who, himself, has
told us that “the thing to be repressed both in science and out of it
is ‘dogmatism!’”
We will not encroach upon space by discussing the etymological value
of the epithet. While expressing the hope that it may not be adopted
in future ages by science as a _Tyndallism_, we will simply remind
the benevolent gentleman of a very characteristic feature in himself.
One of our most intelligent, honorable, and erudite spiritualists,
an author of no small renown,[663] has pointedly termed this feature
as “his (Tyndall’s) simultaneous coquetry with opposite opinions.”
If we are to accept the epithet of Mr. Tyndall in all its coarse
signification, it applies less to spiritualists, who are faithful to
their belief, than to the atheistical scientist who quits the loving
embraces of materialism to fling himself in the arms of a despised
theism; only because he finds his profit in it.
We have seen how Magendie frankly confesses the ignorance of
physiologists as to some of the most important problems of life,
and how Fournié agrees with him. Professor Tyndall admits that the
evolution-hypothesis does not solve, does not profess to solve, the
ultimate mystery.
We have also given as much thought as our natural powers will permit to
Professor Huxley’s celebrated lecture _On the Physical Basis of Life_,
so that what we may say in this volume as to the tendency of modern
scientific thought may be free from ignorant misstatement. Compressing
his theory within the closest possible limits, it may be formulated
thus: Out of cosmic matter all things are created; dissimilar forms
result from different permutations and combinations of this matter;
matter has “devoured spirit,” hence spirit does not exist; thought is
a property of matter; existing forms die that others may take their
place; the dissimilarity in organism is due only to varying chemical
action in the same life-matter—all protoplasm being identical.
As far as chemistry and microscopy goes, Professor Huxley’s system may
be faultless, and the profound sensation caused throughout the world
by its enunciation can be readily understood. But its defect is that
the thread of his logic begins nowhere, and ends in a void. He has
made the best possible use of the available material. Given a universe
crowded with molecules, endowed with active force, and containing in
themselves the principle of life, and all the rest is easy; one set of
inherent forces impel to aggregate into worlds, and another to evolve
the various forms of plant and animal organism. But what gave the
first impulse to those molecules and endowed them with that mysterious
faculty of life? What is this occult property which causes the
protoplasms of man, beast, reptile, fish, or plant, to differentiate,
each ever evolving its own kind, and never any other? And after the
physical body gives up its constituents to the soil and air, “whether
fungus or oak, worm or man,” what becomes of the life which once
animated the frame?
Is the law of evolution, so imperative in its application to the method
of nature, from the time when cosmic molecules are floating, to the
time when they form a human brain, to be cut short at that point, and
not allowed to develop more perfect entities out of this “preëxistent
law of form?” Is Mr. Huxley prepared to assert the impossibility of
man’s attainment to a state of existence after physical death, in
which he will be surrounded with new forms of plant and animal life,
the result of new arrangements of now sublimated matter?[664] He
acknowledges that he knows nothing about the phenomena of gravitation;
except that, in all human experience, as “stones, unsupported, have
fallen to the ground, there is no reason for believing that any stone
so circumstanced will not fall to the ground.” But, he utterly repels
any attempt to change this probability into a necessity, and in fact
says: “I utterly repudiate and anathematize the intruder. Facts I
know, and Law I know; but what is this necessity, save an empty shadow
of my own mind’s throwing?” It is this, only, that everything which
happens in nature is the result of necessity, and a law once operative
will continue to so operate indefinitely until it is neutralized by
an opposing law of equal potency. Thus, it is natural that the stone
should fall to the ground in obedience to one force, and it is equally
natural that it should not fall, or that having fallen, it should
rise again, in obedience to another force equally potent; which Mr.
Huxley may, or may not, be familiar with. It is natural that a chair
should rest upon the floor when once placed there, and it is equally
natural (as the testimony of hundreds of competent witnesses shows)
that it should rise in the air, untouched by any visible, mortal hand.
Is it not Mr. Huxley’s duty to first ascertain the reality of this
phenomenon, and then invent a new scientific name for the force behind
it?
“Facts I know,” says Mr. Huxley, “and Law I know.” Now, by what means
did he become acquainted with Fact and Law? Through his own senses,
no doubt; and these vigilant servants enabled him to discover enough
of what he considers truth to construct a system which he himself
confesses “appears almost shocking to common sense.” If his testimony
is to be accepted as the basis for a general reconstruction of
religious belief, when they have produced only a theory after all,
why is not the cumulative testimony of millions of people as to the
occurrence of phenomena which undermine its very foundations, worthy
of a like respectful consideration? Mr. Huxley is _not interested_
in these phenomena, but these millions are; and while he has been
digesting his “bread and mutton-protoplasms,” to gain strength for
still bolder metaphysical flights, they have been recognizing the
familiar handwriting of those they loved the best, traced by spiritual
hands, and discerning the shadowy simulacra of those who, having lived
here, and passed through the change of death, give the lie to his pet
theory.
So long as science will confess that her domain lies _within_ the
limits of these changes of matter; and that chemistry will certify that
matter, by changing its form “from the solid or liquid, to the gaseous
condition,” only changes from the visible to the _invisible_; and
that, amid all these changes, the same quantity of matter remains, she
has _no right_ to dogmatize. She is incompetent to say either yea or
nay, and must abandon the ground to persons more intuitional than her
representatives.
High above all other names in his Pantheon of Nihilism, Mr. Huxley
writes that of David Hume. He esteems that philosopher’s great service
to humanity to be his irrefragable demonstration of “the limits of
philosophical inquiry,” outside which lie the fundamental doctrines “of
spiritualism,” and other “_isms_.” It is true that the tenth chapter of
Hume’s _Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_ was so highly esteemed
by its author, that he considered that “with the wise and learned” it
would be an “everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion,”
which with him was simply a convertible term to represent a belief in
some phenomena previously unfamiliar and by him arbitrarily classified
as miracle. But, as Mr. Wallace justly observes, Hume’s apothegm, that
“a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature,” is imperfect; for in
the first place it assumes that we know all the laws of nature; and,
second, that an unusual phenomenon is a miracle. Mr. Wallace proposes
that a miracle should be defined as: “any act or event necessarily
implying the existence and agency of superhuman intelligences.” Now
Hume himself says that “a uniform experience amounts to a proof,” and
Huxley, in this famous essay of his, admits that all we can know of
the existence of the law of gravitation is that since, in all human
experience, stones unsupported have fallen to the ground, there is no
reason for believing that the same thing will not occur again, under
the same circumstances, but, on the contrary, every reason to believe
that it will.
If it were certain that the limits of human experience could never be
enlarged, then there might be some justice in Hume’s assumption that
he was familiar with all that could happen under natural law, and some
decent excuse for the contemptuous tone which marks all of Huxley’s
allusions to spiritualism. But, as it is evident from the writings of
both these philosophers, that they are ignorant of the possibilities of
psychological phenomena, too much caution cannot be used in according
weight to their dogmatic assertions. One would really suppose that
a person who should permit himself such rudeness of criticism upon
spiritualistic manifestations had qualified himself for the office of
censor by an adequate course of study; but, in a letter addressed to
the London Dialectical Society, Mr. Huxley, after saying that he had no
time to devote to the subject, and that it does not interest him, makes
the following confession, which shows us upon what slight foundation
modern scientists sometimes form very positive opinions. “_The only
case of spiritualism_,” he writes, “_I ever had the opportunity of
examining into_ for myself, was as gross an imposture as ever came
under my notice.”
What would this protoplasmic philosopher think of a spiritualist who,
having had but one opportunity to look through a telescope, and upon
that sole occasion had had some deception played upon him by a tricky
assistant at the observatory, should forthwith denounce astronomy as
a “degrading belief?” This fact shows that scientists, as a rule, are
useful only as collectors of physical facts; their generalizations from
them are often feebler and far more illogical than those of their lay
critics. And this also is why they misrepresent ancient doctrines.
Professor Balfour Stewart pays a very high tribute to the philosophical
intuition of Herakleitus, the Ephesian, who lived five centuries before
our era: the “crying” philosopher who declared that “fire was the
great cause, and that all things were in a perpetual flux.” “It seems
clear,” says the professor, “that Herakleitus must have had a vivid
conception of the innate restlessness and energy of the universe, a
conception allied in character to, and _only less precise_ than that
of modern philosophers who regard matter as essentially dynamical.” He
considers the expression _fire_ as very vague; and quite naturally, for
the evidence is wanting to show that either Prof. Balfour Stewart (who
seems less inclined to materialism than some of his colleagues) or any
of his contemporaries understand in what sense the word fire was used.
His opinions about the origin of things were the same as those of
Hippocrates. Both entertained the same views of a supreme power,[665]
and, therefore, if their notions of primordial fire, regarded as a
material force, in short, as one akin to Leibnitz’s _dynamism_, were
“less precise” than those of modern philosophers, a question which
remains to be settled yet, on the other hand their metaphysical views
of it were far more philosophical and rational than the one-sided
theories of our present-day scholars. Their ideas of fire were
precisely those of the later “fire-philosophers,” the Rosicrucians,
and the earlier Zoroastrians. They affirmed that the world was created
of fire, the _divine spirit_ of which was an omnipotent and omniscient
GOD. Science has condescended to corroborate their claims as to the
physical question.
Fire, in the ancient philosophy of all times and countries, including
our own, has been regarded as a triple principle. As water comprises a
visible fluid with invisible gases lurking within, and, behind all the
spiritual principle of nature, which gives them their dynamic energy,
so, in fire, they recognized: 1st. Visible flame; 2d. Invisible, or
astral fire—invisible when inert, but when active producing heat,
light, chemical force, and electricity, the molecular powers; 3d.
Spirit. They applied the same rule to each of the elements; and
everything evolved from their combinations and correlations, man
included, was held by them to be triune. Fire, in the opinion of the
Rosicrucians, who were but the successors of the theurgists, was the
source, not only of the material atoms, but also of the forces which
energize them. When a visible flame is extinguished it has disappeared,
not only from the sight but also from the conception of the
materialist, forever. But the Hermetic philosopher follows it through
the “partition-world of the knowable, across and out on the other side
into the unknowable,” as he traces the disembodied human spirit, “vital
spark of heavenly flame,” into the Æthereum, beyond the grave.[666]
This point is too important to be passed by without a few words of
comment. The attitude of physical science toward the spiritual half of
the cosmos is perfectly exemplified in her gross conception of fire.
In this, as in every other branch of science, their philosophy does
not contain one sound plank: every one is honeycombed and weak. The
works of their own authorities teeming with humiliating confessions,
give us the right to say that the floor upon which they stand is
so unstable, that at any moment some new discovery, by one of their
own number, may knock away the props and let them all fall in a heap
together. They are so anxious to drive spirit out of their conceptions
that, as Balfour Stewart says: “There is a tendency to rush into the
opposite extreme, and to work physical conceptions to an excess.”
He utters a timely warning in adding: “Let us be cautious that, in
avoiding Scylla, we do not rush into Charybdis. For the universe has
more than one point of view, and there are possibly regions which will
not yield their treasures to the most determined physicists, armed only
with kilogrammes and meters and standard clocks.”[667] In another place
he confesses: “We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the ultimate
structure and properties of matter, whether organic or inorganic.”
As to the other great question—we find in Macaulay, a still more
unreserved declaration: “The question what becomes of man after
death—we do not see that a highly educated European, left to his
unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackfoot
Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences in which we surpass the
Blackfoot Indians throws the smallest light on the state of the soul
after the animal life is extinct. In truth, all the philosophers,
ancient and modern, who have attempted, without the help of revelation,
to prove the immortality of man, from Plato down to Franklin, appear to
us to have failed deplorably.”
There are revelations of the spiritual senses of man which may be
trusted far more than all the sophistries of materialism. What was a
demonstration and a success in the eyes of Plato and his disciples is
now considered the overflow of a spurious philosophy and a failure.
The scientific methods are reversed. The testimony of the men of
old, who were nearer to truth, for they were nearer to the spirit
of nature—the only aspect under which the Deity will allow itself
to be viewed and understood—and their demonstrations, are rejected.
Their speculations—if we must believe the modern thinkers—are but
the expression of a redundance of the unsystematic opinions of men
unacquainted with the scientific method of the present century. They
foolishly based the little they knew of physiology on well-demonstrated
psychology, while the scholar of our day bases psychology—of which
he confesses himself utterly ignorant—on physiology, which to him
is as yet a closed book, and has not even a method of its own, as
Fournié tells us. As to the last objection in Macaulay’s argument, it
was answered by Hippocrates centuries ago: “All knowledge, all arts
are to be found in nature,” he says; “if we question her _properly_
she will reveal to us the truths to pertain to each of these and to
ourselves. What is nature in operation but the very divinity itself
manifesting its presence? How are we to interrogate her; and how is she
to answer us? We must proceed with _faith_, with the firm assurance
of discovering at last the whole of the truth; and nature will let us
know her answer, through our _inner_ sense, which with the help of our
knowledge of a certain _art_ or _science_, reveals to us the truth so
clearly that further doubt becomes impossible.”[668]
Thus, in the case in hand, the instinct of Macaulay’s Blackfoot Indian
is more to be trusted than the most instructed and developed reason,
as regards man’s _inner_ sense which assures him of his immortality.
Instinct is the universal endowment of nature by the Spirit of the
Deity itself; reason the slow development of our physical constitution,
an evolution of our adult material brain. Instinct, as a divine spark,
lurks in the unconscious nerve-centre of the ascidian mollusk, and
manifests itself at the first stage of action of its nervous system
as what the physiologist terms the reflex action. It exists in the
lowest classes of the acephalous animals as well as in those that have
distinct heads; it grows and develops according to the law of the
double evolution, physically and spiritually; and entering upon its
conscious stage of development and progress in the cephalous species
already endowed with a sensorium and symmetrically-arranged ganglia,
this reflex action, whether men of science term it _automatic_, as in
the lowest species, or _instinctive_, as in the more complex organisms
which act under the guidance of the sensorium and the stimulus
originating in distinct sensation, is still one and the same thing.
It is the _divine instinct_ in its ceaseless progress of development.
This instinct of the animals, which act from the moment of their birth
each in the confines prescribed to them by nature, and which know how,
save in accident proceeding from a higher instinct than their own, to
take care of themselves unerringly—this instinct may, for the sake of
exact definition, be termed automatic; but it must have either within
the animal which possesses it or _without_, something’s or some one’s
_intelligence_ to guide it.
This belief, instead of clashing with the doctrine of evolution and
gradual development held by eminent men of our day, simplifies and
completes it, on the contrary. It can readily dispense with special
creation for each species; for, where the first place must be allowed
to formless spirit, form and material substance are of a secondary
importance. Each perfected species in the physical evolution only
affords more scope to the directing intelligence to act within the
improved nervous system. The artist will display his waves of harmony
better on a royal Erard than he could have done on a spinet of the
sixteenth century. Therefore whether this _instinctive_ impulse was
directly impressed upon the nervous system of the first insect, or
each species has gradually had it developed in itself by instinctively
mimicking the acts of its like, as the more perfected doctrine of
Herbert Spencer has it, is immaterial to the present subject. The
question concerns _spiritual_ evolution only. And if we reject this
hypothesis as unscientific and undemonstrated, then will the physical
aspect of evolution have to follow it to the ground in its turn,
because the one is as undemonstrated as the other, and the spiritual
intuition of man is not allowed to dovetail the two, under the pretext
that it is “unphilosophical.” Whether we wish it or not, we will have
to fall back on the old query of Plutarch’s _Symposiacs_, whether it
was the bird or the egg which first made its appearance.
Now that the Aristotelean authority is shaken to its foundations with
that of Plato; and our men of science reject every authority—nay hate
it, except each his own; and the general estimate of human collective
wisdom is at the lowest discount, mankind, headed by science itself, is
still irrepressibly drawing back to the starting-point of the oldest
philosophies. We find our idea perfectly expressed by a writer in the
_Popular Science Monthly_. “The gods of sects and specialities,” says
Osgood Mason, “may perhaps be failing of their accustomed reverence,
but, in the mean time, there is dawning on the world, with a softer and
serener light, the conception, imperfect though it still may be, of a
conscious, originating, all-pervading active soul—the ‘Over-Soul,’ the
Cause, the Deity; unrevealed through human form or speech, but filling
and inspiring every living soul in the wide universe according to its
measure: _whose temple is Nature_, and whose worship is admiration.”
This is pure Platonism, Buddhism, and the exalted but just views of
the earliest Aryans in their deification of nature. And such is the
expression of the ground-thought of every theosophist, kabalist, and
occultist in general; and if we compare it with the quotation from
Hippocrates, which precedes the above, we will find in it exactly the
same thought and spirit.
To return to our subject. The child lacks reason, it being as yet
latent in him; and meanwhile he is inferior to the animal as to
instinct proper. He will burn or drown himself before he learns that
fire and water destroy and are dangerous for him; while the kitten will
avoid both instinctively. The little instinct the child possesses fades
away as reason, step by step, develops itself. It may be objected,
perhaps, that instinct cannot be a spiritual gift, because animals
possess it in a higher degree than man, and animals have _no souls_.
Such a belief is erroneous and based upon very insecure foundations.
It came from the fact that the inner nature of the animal could be
fathomed still less than that of man, who is endowed with speech and
can display to us his psychological powers.
But what proofs other than negative have we that the animal is without
a surviving, if not immortal, soul? On strictly scientific grounds
we can adduce as many arguments _pro_ as _contra_. To express it
clearer, neither man nor animal can offer either proof or disproof of
the survival of their souls after death. And from the point of view
of scientific experience, it is impossible to bring that which has no
objective existence under the cognizance of any exact law of science.
But Descartes and Bois-Raymond have exhausted their imaginations on
the subject, and Agassiz could not realize such a thing as a future
existence not shared by the animals we loved, and even the vegetable
kingdom which surrounds us. And it is enough to make one’s feelings
revolt against the claimed justice of the First Cause to believe that
while a heartless, cold-blooded villain has been endowed with an
immortal spirit, the noble, honest dog, often self-denying unto death;
that protects the child or master he loves at the peril of his life;
that never forgets him, but starves himself on his grave; the animal in
whom the sense of justice and generosity are sometimes developed to an
amazing degree, will be annihilated! No, away with the civilized reason
which suggests such heartless partiality. Better, far better to cling
to one’s _instinct_ in such a case, and believe with the Indian of
Pope, whose “untutored mind” can only picture to himself a heaven where
“ ... admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.”
Space fails us to present the speculative views of certain ancient and
mediæval occultists upon this subject. Suffice it that they antedated
Darwin, embraced more or less all his theories on natural selection and
the evolution of species, and largely extended the chain at both ends.
Moreover, these philosophers were explorers as daring in psychology as
in physiology and anthropology. They never turned aside from the double
parallel-path traced for them by their great master Hermes. “As above,
so below,” was ever their axiom; and their physical evolution was
traced out simultaneously with the spiritual one.
On one point, at least, our modern biologists are quite consistent:
unable, as yet, to demonstrate the existence of a distinct individual
soul in animals, they deny it to man. Reason has brought them to
the brink of Tyndall’s “impassable chasm,” between mind and matter;
instinct alone can teach them to bridge it. When in their despair of
ever being able to fathom the mystery of life, they will have come to
a dead stop, their instinct may reässert itself, and take them across
the hitherto fathomless abyss. This is the point which Professor John
Fiske and the authors of the _Unseen Universe_ seem to have reached;
and Wallace, the anthropologist and ex-materialist, to have been the
first to courageously step over. Let them push boldly on till they
discover that it is not spirit that dwells in matter, but _matter_
which clings temporarily to spirit; and that the latter alone is an
eternal, imperishable abode for all things visible and invisible.
Esoteric philosophers held that everything in nature is but a
materialization of spirit. The Eternal First Cause is latent spirit,
they said, and matter from the beginning. “In the beginning was the
word ... and the word was God.” While conceding the idea of such a God
to be an unthinkable abstraction to human reason, they claimed that
the unerring human instinct grasped it as a reminiscence of something
concrete to it though intangible to our physical senses. With the
first idea, which emanated from the double-sexed and hitherto-inactive
Deity, the first motion was communicated to the whole universe, and
the electric thrill was instantaneously felt throughout the boundless
space. Spirit begat force, and force matter; and thus the latent deity
manifested itself as a creative energy.
When; at what point of the eternity; or how? the question must always
remain unanswered, for human reason is unable to grasp the great
mystery. But, though spirit-matter was from all eternity, it was in the
latent state; the evolution of our visible universe must have had a
beginning. To our feeble intellect, this beginning may seem so remote
as to appear to us eternity itself—a period inexpressible in figures
or language. Aristotle argued that the world was eternal, and that it
will always be the same; that one generation of men has always produced
another, without ever having had a beginning that could be determined
by our intellect. In this, his teaching, in its exoteric sense, clashed
with that of Plato, who taught that “there was a time when mankind did
not perpetuate itself;” but in spirit both the doctrines agreed, as
Plato adds immediately: “This was followed by the _earthly human_ race,
in which the primitive history was gradually forgotten and man sank
deeper and deeper;” and Aristotle says: “If there has been a first man
he must have been born without father or mother—which is repugnant to
nature. For there could not have been a first egg to give a beginning
to birds, or there should have been a first bird which gave a beginning
to eggs; for a bird comes from an egg.” The same he held good for all
species, believing, with Plato, that everything before it appeared on
earth had first its being in spirit.
This mystery of first creation, which was ever the despair of science,
is unfathomable, unless we accept the doctrine of the Hermetists.
Though matter is coëternal with spirit, that matter is certainly
not our visible, tangible, and divisible matter, but its extreme
sublimation. Pure spirit is but one remove higher. Unless we allow man
to have been evolved out of this primordial spirit-matter, how can we
ever come to any reasonable hypothesis as to the genesis of animate
beings? Darwin begins his evolution of species at the lowest point and
traces upward. His only mistake may be that he applies his system at
the wrong end. Could he remove his quest from the visible universe into
the invisible, he might find himself on the right path. But then, he
would be following in the footsteps of the Hermetists.
That our philosophers—positivists—even the most learned among them,
never understood the spirit of the mystic doctrines taught by the old
philosophers—Platonists—is evident from that most eminent modern work,
_Conflict between Religion and Science_. Professor Draper begins his
fifth chapter by saying that “the Pagan Greeks and Romans believed that
the _spirit_ of man resembles his bodily form, varying its appearance
with his variations, and growing with his growth.” What the ignorant
masses thought is a matter of little consequence, though even they
could never have indulged in such speculations taken _à la lettre_. As
to Greek and Roman philosophers of the Platonic school, they believed
no such thing of the _spirit_ of man, but applied the above doctrine to
his soul, or psychical nature, which, as we have previously shown, is
not the divine spirit.
Aristotle, in his philosophical deduction _On Dreams_, shows this
doctrine of the two-fold soul, or soul and spirit, very plainly. “It
is necessary for us to ascertain _in what portion_ of the soul dreams
appear,” he says. All the ancient Greeks believed not only a double,
but even a _triple_ soul to exist in man. And even Homer we find
terming the animal soul, or the astral soul, called by Mr. Draper
“spirit,” θύμος, and the _divine_ one νοὺς—the name by which Plato also
designated the higher spirit.
The Hindu Jainas conceive the soul, which they call _Jiva_, to have
been united from all eternity to even two sublimated ethereal bodies,
one of which is invariable and consists of the divine powers of the
_higher_ mind; the other variable and composed of the grosser passions
of man, his sensual affections, and terrestrial attributes. When the
soul becomes purified after death it joins its _Vaycarica_, or divine
spirit, and becomes a god. The followers of the _Vedas_, the learned
Brahmins, explain the same doctrine in the _Vedanta_. The soul,
according to their teaching, as a portion of the divine universal
spirit or immaterial mind, is capable of uniting itself with the
essence of its highest Entity. The teaching is explicit; the _Vedanta_
affirms that whoever attains the thorough _knowledge of his god_
becomes a god while yet in his mortal body, and acquires supremacy over
all things.
Quoting from the Vedaic theology the verse which says: “There is in
truth but one Deity, the Supreme Spirit; he is of the same nature as
the soul of man,” Mr. Draper shows the Buddhistic doctrines as reaching
Eastern Europe through Aristotle. We believe the assertion unwarranted,
for Pythagoras, and after him Plato, taught them long before Aristotle.
If subsequently the later Platonists accepted in their dialectics the
Aristotelean arguments on emanation, it was merely because his views
coincided in some respect with those of the Oriental philosophers.
The Pythagorean number of harmony and Plato’s esoteric doctrines on
creation are inseparable from the Buddhistic doctrine of emanation; and
the great aim of the Pythagorean philosophy, namely, to free the astral
soul from the fetters of matter and sense, and make it thereby fit for
an eternal contemplation of spiritual things, is a theory identical
with the Buddhistic doctrine of final absorption. It is the Nirvana,
interpreted in its right sense; a metaphysical tenet that just begins
to be suspected now by our latest Sanscrit scholars.
If the doctrines of Aristotle have exercised on the later
Neo-platonists such a “dominating influence,” how is it that neither
Plotinus, nor Porphyry, nor Proclus ever accepted his theories on
dreams and prophetic soul-visions? While Aristotle held that most of
those who prophesy have “diseases of madness”[669]—thus furnishing some
American plagiarists and specialists with a few reasonable ideas to
disfigure—the views of Porphyry, hence those of Plotinus, were quite
the reverse. In the most vital questions of metaphysical speculations
Aristotle is constantly contradicted by the Neo-platonists.
Furthermore, either the Buddhistic Nirvana is not the nihilistic
doctrine, as it is now represented to be, or the Neo-platonists did
not accept it in this sense. Surely Mr. Draper will not take upon
himself to affirm that either Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, or any
other philosopher of their mystic school, did not believe in the soul’s
immortality? To say that either of them sought ecstasy as a “foretaste
of absorption into the universal mundane soul,” in the sense in which
the Buddhist Nirvana is understood by every Sanscrit scholar, is to
wrong these philosophers. Nirvana is _not_, as Mr. Draper has it, a
“reäbsorption in the _Universal Force_, eternal rest, and bliss;” but,
when taken literally by the said scholars, means the blowing out, _the
extinction_, complete _annihilation_, and not absorption.[670] No one,
so far as we know, has ever taken upon himself to ascertain the _true_
metaphysical meaning of this word, which is not to be found, even in
the _Lankâvatâra_,[671] which gives the different interpretations
of the Nirvana by the Brahmans—Tîrthakas. Therefore, for one who
reads this passage in Mr. Draper’s work, and bears in mind but the
usually-accepted meaning of the Nirvana, will naturally suppose that
Plotinus and Porphyry were _nihilists_. Such a page in the _Conflict_
gives us a certain right to suppose that either 1, the learned author
desired to place Plotinus and Porphyry on the same plane with Giordano
Bruno, of whom he makes, very erroneously, an atheist; or, 2, that he
never took the trouble of studying the lives of these philosophers and
their views.
Now, for one who knows Professor Draper, even by reputation, the
latter supposition is simply absurd. Therefore, we must think, with
deep regret, that his desire was to misrepresent their religious
aspirations. It is decidedly an awkward thing for modern philosophers,
whose sole aim seems to be the elimination of the ideas of God and
the immortal spirit from the mind of humanity, to have to treat with
historical impartiality the most celebrated of the Pagan Platonists. To
have to admit, on the one hand, their profound learning, their genius,
their achievements in the most abstruse philosophical questions, and
therefore their sagacity; and, on the other, their unreserved adhesion
to the doctrine of immortality, of the final triumph of spirit over
matter, and their implicit faith in God and the gods, or spirits; in
the return _of the dead_, apparitions, and other “spiritual” matters,
is a dilemma from which academical human nature could not reasonably be
expected to extricate itself so easily.
The plan resorted to by Lemprière,[672] in such an emergency as the
above, is coarser than Professor Draper’s, but equally effective. He
charges the ancient philosophers with deliberate falsehood, trickery,
and credulity. After painting to his readers Pythagoras, Plotinus, and
Porphyry as marvels of learning, morality, and accomplishments; as men
eminent for personal dignity, purity of lives, and self-abnegation
in the pursuit of divine truths, he does not hesitate to rank “this
celebrated philosopher” (Pythagoras) among impostors; while to Porphyry
he attributes “credulity, lack of judgment, and dishonesty.” Forced
by the facts of history to give them their just due in the course of
his narrative, he displays his bigoted prejudice in the parenthetical
comments which he allows himself. From this antiquated writer of the
last century we learn that a man may be honest, and at the same time an
impostor; pure, virtuous, and a great philosopher, and yet dishonest, a
liar, and a fool!
We have shown elsewhere that the “secret doctrine” does not concede
immortality to all men alike. “The eye would never see the sun, if
it were not of the nature of the sun,” said Plotinus. Only “through
the highest purity and chastity we shall approach nearer to God, and
receive in the contemplation of Him, the true knowledge and insight,”
writes Porphyry. If the human soul has neglected during its lifetime to
receive its illumination from its Divine Spirit, our _personal_ God,
then it becomes difficult for the gross and sensual man to survive for
a great length of time his physical death. No more than the misshapen
monster can live long after its physical birth, can the soul, once
that it has become _too_ material, exist after its birth into the
spiritual world. The viability of the astral form is so feeble, that
the particles cannot cohere firmly when once it is slipped out of the
unyielding capsule of the external body. Its particles, gradually
obeying the disorganizing attraction of universal space, finally fly
asunder beyond the possibility of reaggregation. Upon the occurrence
of such a catastrophe, the individual ceases to exist; his glorious
Augoeides has left him. During the intermediary period between his
bodily death and the disintegration of the astral form, the latter,
bound by magnetic attraction to its ghastly corpse, prowls about,
and sucks vitality from susceptible victims. The man having shut out
of himself every ray of the divine light, is lost in darkness, and,
therefore, clings to the earth and the earthy.
No astral soul, even that of a pure, good, and virtuous man, is
immortal in the strictest sense; “from elements it was formed—to
elements it must return.” Only, while the soul of the wicked vanishes,
and is absorbed without redemption, that of every other person, even
moderately pure, simply changes its ethereal particles for still more
ethereal ones; and, while there remains in it a spark of the _Divine_,
the individual man, or rather, his personal _ego_, cannot die. “After
death,” says Proclus, “the soul (the spirit) continueth to linger in
the aërial body (astral form), till it is entirely purified from all
angry and voluptuous passions ... then doth it put off by a _second
dying_ the aërial body as it did the earthly one. Whereupon, the
ancients say that there is a celestial body always joined with _the
soul_, and which is _immortal_, _luminous_, and _star-like_.”
But, we will now turn from our digression to further consider the
question of _reason_ and _instinct_. The latter, according to the
ancients, proceeded from the divine, the former from the purely human.
One (the instinct) is the product of the senses, a sagaciousness
shared by the lowest animals, even those who have no reason—it
is the αισθητικον; the other is the product of the reflective
faculties—νοητικόν, denoting judiciousness and human intellectuality.
Therefore, an animal devoid of reasoning powers has in its inherent
instinct an unerring faculty which is but that spark of the divine
which lurks in every particle of inorganic matter—itself materialized
spirit. In the Jewish _Kabala_, the second and third chapters of
_Genesis_ are explained thus: When the second Adam is created “out of
the dust,” matter has become so gross that it reigns supreme. Out of
its lusts evolves woman, and Lilith has the best of spirit. The Lord
God, “walking in the garden in _the cool of the day_” (the sunset of
spirit, or divine light obscured by the shadows of matter) curses not
only them who have committed the sin, but even the ground itself, and
all living things—the tempting serpent-matter above all.
Who but the kabalists are able to explain this seeming act of
injustice? How are we to understand this cursing of all created things,
innocent of any crime? The allegory is evident. The curse inheres in
matter itself. Henceforth, it is doomed to struggle against its own
grossness for purification; the latent spark of divine spirit, though
smothered, is still there; and its invincible attraction upward compels
it to struggle in pain and labor to free itself. Logic shows us that
as all matter had a common origin, it must have attributes in common,
and as the vital and divine spark is in man’s material body, so it
must lurk in every subordinate species. The latent mentality which, in
the lower kingdoms is recognized as semi-consciousness, consciousness,
and instinct, is largely subdued in man. Reason, the outgrowth of the
physical brain, develops at the expense of instinct—the flickering
reminiscence of a once divine omniscience—spirit. Reason, the badge of
the sovereignty of physical man over all other physical organisms, is
often put to shame by the instinct of an animal. As his brain is more
perfect than that of any other creature, its emanations must naturally
produce the highest results of mental action; but reason avails only
for the consideration of material things; it is incapable of helping
its possessor to a knowledge of spirit. In losing instinct, man loses
his intuitional powers, which are the crown and ultimatum of instinct.
Reason is the clumsy weapon of the scientists—intuition the unerring
guide of the seer. Instinct teaches plant and animal their seasons
for the procreation of their species, and guides the dumb brute to
find his appropriate remedy in the hour of sickness. Reason—the pride
of man—fails to check the propensities of his matter, and brooks no
restraint upon the unlimited gratification of his senses. Far from
leading him to be his _own_ physician, its subtile sophistries lead him
too often to his own destruction.
Nothing is more demonstrable than the proposition that the perfection
of matter is reached at the expense of instinct. The zoöphyte attached
to the submarine rock, opening its mouth to attract the food that
floats by, shows, proportionately with its physical structure, more
instinct than the whale. The ant, with its wonderful architectural,
social, and political abilities, is inexpressibly higher in the scale
than the subtile royal tiger watching its prey. “With awe and wonder,”
exclaims du Bois-Raymond, “must the student of nature regard that
microscopic molecule of nervous substance which is the seat of the
laborious, constructive, orderly, loyal, dauntless soul of the ant!”
Like everything else which has its origin in psychological mysteries,
instinct has been too long neglected in the domain of science. “We
see what indicated the way to man to find relief for all his physical
ailings,” says Hippocrates. “It is the instinct of the earlier races,
when cold reason had not as yet obscured man’s inner vision.... Its
indication must never be disdained, for it is to instinct alone that we
owe our first remedies.”[673] Instantaneous and unerring cognition of
an omniscient mind, instinct is in everything unlike the finite reason;
and in the tentative progress of the latter, the godlike nature of
man is often utterly engulfed, whenever he shuts out from himself the
divine light of intuition. The one crawls, the other flies; reason is
the power of the man, intuition the prescience of the woman!
Plotinus, the pupil of the great Ammonius Saccas, the chief founder
of the Neo-platonic school, taught that human knowledge had three
ascending steps: opinion, science, and _illumination_. He explained
it by saying that “the means or instrument of opinion is sense, or
perception; of science, dialectics; of illumination, _intuition_ (or
divine instinct). To the last, _reason is subordinate_; it is absolute
knowledge founded on the identification of the mind with the object
known.”
Prayer opens the spiritual sight of man, for prayer is desire, and
desire develops WILL; the magnetic emanations proceeding from the body
at every effort—whether mental or physical—produce self-magnetization
and ecstasy. Plotinus recommended solitude for prayer, as the most
efficient means of obtaining what is asked; and Plato advised those who
prayed to “remain silent in the presence of the divine ones, till they
remove the cloud from thy eyes, and enable thee to see _by the light
which issues from themselves_.” Apollonius always isolated himself from
men during the “conversation” he held with God, and whenever he felt
the necessity for divine contemplation and prayer, he wrapped himself,
head and all, in the drapery of his white woolen mantle. “When thou
prayest _enter into thy closet_, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray
to thy Father in secret,” says the Nazarene, the pupil of the Essenes.
Every human being is born with the rudiment of the inner sense called
_intuition_, which may be developed into what the Scotch know as
“second sight.” All the great philosophers, who, like Plotinus,
Porphyry, and Iamblichus employed this faculty, taught the doctrine.
“There is a faculty of the human mind,” writes Iamblichus, “which is
superior to all which is born or begotten. Through it we are enabled
to attain union with the superior intelligences, to being transported
beyond the scenes of this world, and to partaking the higher life and
peculiar powers of the heavenly ones.”
Were there no _inner sight_ or intuition, the Jews would never have had
their _Bible_, nor the Christians Jesus. What both Moses and Jesus gave
to the world was the fruit of their intuition or illumination. What
their subsequent elders and teachers allowed the world to understand
was—dogmatic misrepresentations, too often blasphemy.
To accept the Bible as a “revelation” and nail belief to a literal
translation, is worse than absurdity—it is a blasphemy against the
Divine majesty of the “Unseen.” If we had to judge of the Deity, and
the world of spirits, by its human interpreters, now that philology
proceeds with giant-strides on the fields of comparative religions,
belief in God and the soul’s immortality could not withstand the
attacks of _reason_ for one century more. That which supports the
faith of man in God and a spiritual life to come is _intuition_; that
divine outcome of our inner-self, which defies the mummeries of the
Roman Catholic priest, and his ridiculous idols; the thousand and one
ceremonies of the Brahman and his idols; and the Jeremiads of the
Protestant preacher, and his desolate and arid creed, with no idols,
but a boundless hell and damnation hooked on at the end. Were it not
for this intuition, undying though often wavering because so clogged
with matter, human life would be a parody and humanity a fraud. This
ineradicable feeling of the presence of some one _outside_ and _inside_
ourselves is one that no dogmatic contradictions, nor external form of
worship can destroy in humanity, let scientists and clergy do what they
may. Moved by such thoughts of the boundlessness and impersonality of
the Deity, Gautama-Buddha, the Hindu Christ, exclaimed: “As the four
rivers which fall in the Ganges lose their names as soon as they mingle
their waters with the holy river, so all who believe in Buddha cease to
be Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Sûdras!”
The _Old Testament_ was compiled and arranged from oral tradition; the
masses never knew its real meaning, for Moses was ordered to impart the
“hidden truths” but to his seventy elders on whom the “Lord” put of the
_spirit_ which was upon the legislator. Maimonides, whose authority and
whose knowledge of the sacred history can hardly be rejected, says:
“Whoever shall find out the true sense of _the book of Genesis_ ought
to take care not to divulge it.... If a person should discover _the
true meaning of it_ by himself, or by the aid of another, then he ought
to be silent; or, if he speaks of it, he ought to speak of it but
obscurely and in an enigmatical manner.”
This confession, that what is written in the Holy Writ is but an
allegory, was made by other Jewish authorities besides Maimonides; for
we find Josephus stating that Moses “_philosophized_” (spoke riddles
in figurative allegory), when writing the book of _Genesis_. Therefore
modern science, by neglecting to unriddle the true sense of the
_Bible_, and by allowing the whole of Christendom to go on believing
in the dead letter of the Jewish theology, tacitly constitutes herself
the confederate of the fanatical clergy. She has no right to ridicule
the records of a people who never wrote them with the idea that they
would receive such a strange interpretation at the hands of an inimical
religion. That their holiest texts should be turned against them and
that the dead men’s bones could have smothered the spirit of truth, is
the saddest feature of Christianity!
“The gods exist,” says Epicurus, “but they are _not_ what the rabble,
οὶ πολλοι, suppose them to be.” And yet Epicurus, judged as usual by
superficial critics, is set down and paraded as a materialist.
But neither the great First Cause nor its emanation—human, immortal
spirit—have left themselves “without a witness.” Mesmerism and modern
spiritualism are there to attest the great truths. For over fifteen
centuries, thanks to the blindly-brutal persecutions of those great
vandals of early Christian history, Constantine and Justinian, ancient
wisdom slowly degenerated until it gradually sank into the deepest mire
of monkish superstition and ignorance. The Pythagorean “knowledge of
things that are;” the profound erudition of the Gnostics; the world and
time-honored teachings of the great philosophers; all were rejected
as doctrines of Antichrist and Paganism, and committed to the flames.
With the last seven wise men of the Orient, the remnant group of the
Neo-platonists, Hermias, Priscianus, Diogenes, Eulalius, Damaskius,
Simplicius and Isidorus, who fled from the fanatical persecutions of
Justinian, to Persia, the reign of wisdom closed. The books of Thoth,
or (Hermes Trismegistus), which contain within their sacred pages the
spiritual and physical history of the creation and progress of our
world, were left to mould in oblivion and contempt for ages. They
found no interpreters in Christian Europe; the Philaletheians, or
wise “lovers of the truth,” were no more; they were replaced by the
light-fleers, the tonsured and hooded monks of Papal Rome, who dread
truth, in whatever shape and from whatever quarter it appears, if it
but clashes in the least with their dogmas.
As to skeptics—this is what Professor Alexander Wilder remarks of them
and their followers, in his sketches on _Neo-platonism and Alchemy_:
“A century has passed since the compilers of the French _Encyclopædia_
infused skepticism into the blood of the civilized world, and made
it disreputable to believe in the actual existence of anything that
cannot be tested in crucibles or demonstrated by critical reasoning.
Even now, it requires candor as well as courage to venture to treat
upon a subject which has been for many years discarded and contemned,
because it has not been well or correctly understood. The person
must be bold who accounts the Hermetic philosophy to be other than a
pretense of science, and so believing, demands for its enunciation a
patient hearing. Yet its professors were once the princes of learned
investigation, and heroes among common men. Besides, nothing is to
be despised which men have reverently believed; and disdain for the
earnest convictions of others is itself the token of ignorance, and of
an ungenerous mind.”
And now, encouraged by these words from a scholar who is neither a
fanatic nor a conservative, we will recall a few things reported by
travellers as having been seen by them in Thibet and India, and which
are treasured by the natives as practical proofs of the truth of the
philosophy and science handed down by their forefathers.
First we may consider that most remarkable phenomenon as seen in
the temples of Thibet and the accounts of which have reached Europe
from eye-witnesses other than Catholic missionaries—whose testimony
we will exclude for obvious reasons. Early in the present century a
Florentine scientist, a skeptic and a correspondent of the French
Institute, having been permitted to penetrate in disguise to the
hallowed precincts of a Buddhist temple, where the most solemn of all
ceremonies was taking place, relates the following as having been seen
by himself. An altar is ready in the temple to receive the resuscitated
Buddha, found by the initiated priesthood, and recognized by certain
secret signs to have reïncarnated himself in a new born infant. The
baby, but a few days old, is brought into the presence of the people
and reverentially placed upon the altar. Suddenly rising into a
sitting posture, the child begins to utter in a loud, manly voice, the
following sentences: “I am Buddha, I am his spirit; and I, Buddha, your
Dalai-Lama, have left my old, decrepit body, at the temple of ... and
selected the body of this young babe as my next earthly dwelling.” Our
scientist, being finally permitted by the priests to take, with due
reverence, the baby in his arms, and carry it away to such a distance
from them as to satisfy him that no ventriloquial deception is being
practiced, the infant looks at the grave academician with eyes that
“make his flesh creep,” as he expresses it, and repeats the words he
had previously uttered. A detailed account of this adventure, attested
with the signature of this eye-witness, was forwarded to Paris, but
the members of the Institute, instead of accepting the testimony of a
scientific observer of acknowledged credibility, concluded that the
Florentine _was either suffering under an attack of sunstroke_, or had
been deceived by a clever trick of acoustics.
Although, according to Mr. Stanislas Julien, the French translator of
the sacred Chinese texts, there is a verse in the Lotus[674] which
says that “A Buddha is as difficult to be found as the flowers of
Udumbara and Palâça,” if we are to believe several eye-witnesses, such
a phenomenon does happen. Of course its occurrence is rare, for it
happens but on the death of every great Dalai-Lama; and these venerable
old gentlemen live proverbially long lives.
The poor Abbé Huc, whose works of travel in Thibet and China are so
well-known, relates the same fact of the resuscitation of Buddha. He
adds, furthermore, the curious circumstance that the baby-oracle makes
good his claim to being an old mind in a young body by giving to those
who ask him, “and who knew him in his past life, the most exact details
of his anterior earthly existence.”
It is worthy of notice, that des Mousseaux, who expatiates at length
on the phenomenon, attributing it as a matter of course to the Devil,
gravely remarks of the Abbé himself, that the fact that he had been
unfrocked (_defroqué_) “is an accident which I (he) confess scarcely
tends to strengthen our confidence.” In our humble opinion this little
circumstance strengthens it all the more.
The Abbé Huc had his work placed on the _Index_ for the truth he told
about the similarity of the Buddhistical rites with the Roman Catholic
ones. He was moreover suspended in his missionary work for being too
_sincere_.
If this example of infant prodigy stood alone, we might reasonably
indulge in some hesitation as to accepting it; but, to say nothing
of the Camisard prophets of 1707, among whom was the boy of fifteen
months described by Jacques Dubois, who spoke in good French “as though
God were speaking through his mouth;” and of the Cevennes babies,
whose speaking and prophesying were witnessed by the first savants
of France—we have instances in modern times of quite as remarkable a
character. _Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper_, for March, 1875, contained an
account of the following phenomenon: “At Saar-Louis, France, a child
was born. The mother had just been confined, the midwife was holding
forth garrulously ‘on the blessed little creature,’ and the friends
were congratulating the father on his luck, when somebody asked what
time it was. Judge of the surprise of all, on hearing the new-born babe
reply distinctly ‘Two o’clock!’ But this was nothing to what followed.
The company were looking on the infant, with speechless wonder and
dismay, when it opened its eyes, and said: ‘I have been sent into the
world to tell you that 1875 will be a good year, but that 1876 will be
a year of blood.’ Having uttered this prophecy it turned on its side
and expired, aged half-an-hour.”
We are not aware that this prodigy has received official authentication
by the civil authority—of course we should look for none from the
clergy, since no profit or honor was to be derived from it—but even
if a respectable British commercial journal was not responsible for
the story, the result has given it special interest. The year 1876,
just passed (we write in February, 1877) was emphatically, and, from
the standpoint of March, 1875, unexpectedly—a year of blood. In the
Danubian principalities was written one of the bloodiest chapters of
the history of war and rapine—a chapter of outrages of Moslem upon
Christian that has scarcely been paralleled since Catholic soldiers
butchered the simple natives of North and South America by tens of
thousands, and Protestant Englishmen waded to the Imperial throne
of Delhi, step by step, through rivers of blood. If the Saar-Louis
prophecy was but a mere newspaper sensation, still the turn of events
elevated it into the rank of a fulfilled prediction; 1875 _was_ a year
of great plenty, and 1876, to the surprise of everybody, a year of
carnage.
But even if it should be found that the baby-prophet never opened
its lips, the instance of the Jencken infant still remains to puzzle
the investigator. This is one of the most surprising cases of
mediumship. The child’s mother is the famous Kate Fox, its father
H. D. Jencken, M.R.I., Barrister-at-law, in London. He was born in
London, in 1873, and before he was three months old showed evidences
of spirit-mediumship. Rappings occurred on his pillow and cradle, and
also on his father’s person, when he held the child in his lap and
Mrs. Jencken was absent from home. Two months later, a communication
of twenty words, exclusive of signature, was written through his hand.
A gentleman, a Liverpool solicitor, named J. Wason, was present at the
time, and united with the mother and nurse in a certificate which was
published in the London _Medium and Daybreak_ of May 8th, 1874. The
professional and scientific rank of Mr. Jencken make it in the highest
degree improbable that he would lend himself to a deception. Moreover,
the child was within such easy reach of the Royal Institution, of which
his father is a member, that Professor Tyndall and his associates had
no excuse for neglecting to examine and inform the world about this
psychological phenomenon.
The sacred baby of Thibet being so far away, they find their most
convenient plan to be a flat denial, with hints of sunstroke and
acoustical machinery. As for the London baby, the affair is still
easier; let them wait until the child has grown up and learned to
write, and then deny the story point-blank!
In addition to other travellers, the Abbé Huc gives us an account
of that wonderful tree of Thibet called the _Kounboum_; that is to
say, the tree of the 10,000 images and characters. It will grow in no
other latitude, although the experiment has sometimes been tried; and
it cannot even be multiplied from cuttings. The tradition is that it
sprang from the hair of one of the Avatars (the Lama Son—Ka-pa) one of
the incarnations of Buddha. But we will let the Abbé Huc tell the rest
of the story: “Each of its leaves, in opening, bears either a letter or
a religious sentence, written in sacred characters, and these letters
are, of their kind, of such a perfection that the type-foundries of
Didot contain nothing to excel them. Open the leaves, which vegetation
is about to unroll, and you will there discover, on the point of
appearing, the letters or the distinct words which are the marvel of
this unique tree! Turn your attention from the leaves of the plant
to the bark of its branches, and new characters will meet your eyes!
Do not allow your interest to flag; raise the layers of this bark,
and still OTHER CHARACTERS will show themselves below those whose
beauty had surprised you. For, do not fancy that these superposed
layers repeat the same _printing_. No, quite the contrary; for each
lamina you lift presents to view its distinct type. How, then, can we
suspect jugglery? I have done my best in that direction to discover the
slightest trace of human trick, and my baffled mind could not retain
the slightest suspicion.”
We will add to M. Huc’s narrative the statement that the characters
which appear upon the different portions of the Kounboum are in the
Sansar (or language of the Sun), characters (ancient Sanscrit); and
that the sacred tree, in its various parts, contains _in extenso_ the
whole history of the creation, and in substance the sacred books of
Buddhism. In this respect, it bears the same relation to Buddhism as
the pictures in the Temple of Dendera, in Egypt, do to the ancient
faith of the Pharaohs. The latter are briefly described by Professor W.
B. Carpenter, President of the British Association, in his Manchester
Lecture on _Egypt_. He makes it clear that the Jewish book of _Genesis_
is nothing more than an expression of the early Jewish ideas, based
upon the pictorial records of the Egyptians among whom they lived.
But he does not make it clear, except inferentially, whether, he
believes either the Dendera pictures or the Mosaic account to be an
allegory or a pretended historical narrative. How a scientist who
had devoted himself to the most superficial investigation of the
subject can venture to assert that the ancient Egyptians had the same
ridiculous notions about the world’s instantaneous creation as the
early Christian theologians, passes comprehension! How can he say
that because the Dendera picture happens to represent their cosmogony
in one allegory, they intended to show the scene as occurring in six
minutes or six millions of years? It may as well indicate allegorically
six successive epochs or æons, or eternity, as six days. Besides,
the _Books of Hermes_ certainly give no color to the charge, and the
_Avesta_ specifically names six periods, each embracing thousands of
years, instead of days. Many of the Egyptian hieroglyphics contradict
Dr. Carpenter’s theory, and Champollion has avenged the ancients in
many particulars. From what is gone before, it will, we think, be made
clear to the reader that the Egyptian philosophy had no room for any
such crude speculations, if the Hebrews themselves ever believed them;
their cosmogony viewed man as the result of evolution, and his progress
to be marked by immensely lengthened cycles. But to return to the
wonders of Thibet.
Speaking of pictures, the one described by Huc as hanging in a
certain Lamasery may fairly be regarded as one of the most wonderful
in existence. It is a simple canvas without the slightest mechanical
apparatus attached, as the visitor may prove by examining it at his
leisure. It represents a moon-lit landscape, but the moon is not at all
motionless and dead; quite the reverse, for, according to the abbé, one
would say that our moon herself, or at least her living double, lighted
the picture. Each phase, each aspect, each movement of our satellite,
is repeated in her _fac-simile_, in the movement and progress of the
moon in the sacred picture. “You see this planet in the painting
ride as a crescent, or full, shine brightly, pass behind the clouds,
peep out or set, in a manner corresponding in the most extraordinary
way with the real luminary. It is, in a word, a most servile and
resplendent reproduction of the pale queen of the night, which received
the adoration of so many people in the days of old.”
When we think of the astonishment that would inevitably be felt by one
of our self-complacent academicians at seeing such a picture—and it is
by no means the only one, for they have them in other parts of Thibet
and Japan also, which represent the sun’s movements—when we think, we
say, of his embarrassment at knowing that if he ventured to tell the
unvarnished truth to his colleagues, his fate would probably be like
that of poor Huc, and he flung out of the academical chair as a liar or
a lunatic, we cannot help recalling the anecdote of Tycho-Brahe, given
by Humboldt in his _Cosmos_.[675]
“One evening,” says the great Danish astronomer, “as, according to my
usual habit, I was considering the celestial vault, to my indescribable
amazement, I saw, close to the zenith, in Cassiopea, a radiant star
of extraordinary size. Struck with astonishment, I knew not whether
I could believe my own eyes. Some time after that, I learned that in
Germany, cartmen, and other persons of the lower classes had repeatedly
warned the scientists that a great apparition could be seen in the sky;
which fact afforded both the press and public one more opportunity to
indulge in their usual raillery against the men of science, who, in the
cases of several antecedent comets, had not predicted their appearance.”
From the days of the earliest antiquity, the Brahmans were known to
be possessed of wonderful knowledge in every kind of magic arts.
From Pythagoras, the first philosopher who studied wisdom with the
Gymnosophists, and Plotinus, who was initiated into the mystery of
uniting one’s self with the Deity through abstract contemplation,
down to the modern adepts, it was well known that in the land of the
Brahmans and Gautama-Buddha the sources of “hidden” wisdom are to be
sought after. It is for future ages to discover this grand truth, and
accept it as such, whereas now it is degraded as a low superstition.
What did any one, even the greatest scientists, know of India,
Thibet, and China, until the last quarter of this century? That most
untiring scholar, Max Müller, tells us that before then not a single
original document of the Buddhist religion had been accessible to
European philologists; that fifty years ago “there was not a single
scholar who could have translated a line of the _Veda_, a line of the
_Zend-Avesta_, or a line of the Buddhist _Tripitâka_,” let alone other
dialects or languages. And even now, that science is in possession of
various sacred texts, what they have are but very incomplete editions
of these works, and _nothing_, positively nothing of the secret sacred
literature of Buddhism. And the little that our Sanscrit scholars have
got hold of, and which at first was termed by Max Müller a dreary
“jungle of religious literature—the most excellent hiding-place for
Lamas and Dalai-Lamas,” is now beginning to shed a faint light on
the primitive darkness. We find this scholar stating that that which
appeared at the first glance into the labyrinth of the religions of the
world, all darkness, self deceit, and vanity begin to assume another
form. “It sounds,” he writes, “like a degradation of the very name
of religion, to apply it to the wild ravings of Hindu Yogins, and
the blank blasphemies of Chinese Buddhists.... But, as we slowly and
patiently wend our way through the dreary prisons, our own eyes seem to
expand, _and we perceive a glimmer of light_, where all was darkness at
first.”[676]
As an illustration of how little even the generation which directly
preceded our own was competent to judge the religions and beliefs of
the several hundred million Buddhists, Brahmans, and Parsees, let the
student consult the advertisement of a scientific work published in
1828 by a Professor Dunbar, the first scholar who has undertaken to
demonstrate that the _Sanscrit is derived from the Greek_. It appeared
under the following title:
“_An Inquiry into the structure and affinity of the Greek and Latin
languages; with occasional comparisons of the Sanscrit and Gothic; with
an Appendix, in which_ THE DERIVATION OF THE SANSCRIT FROM THE GREEK
_is endeavoured to be established. By George Dunbar, F.R. S.E., and
Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh. Price, 18s._”[677]
Had Max Müller happened to fall from the sky at that time, among the
scholars of the day, and with his present knowledge, we would like
to have compiled the epithets which would have been bestowed by the
learned academicians upon the daring innovator! One who, classifying
languages genealogically, says that “Sanscrit, as compared to Greek and
Latin, is an elder sister ... the earliest deposit of Aryan speech.”
And so, we may naturally expect that in 1976, the same criticisms will
be justly applied to many a scientific discovery, now deemed conclusive
and final by our scholars. That which is now termed the superstitious
_verbiage_ and gibberish of mere heathens and savages, composed many
thousands of years ago, may be found to contain the master-key to all
religious systems. The cautious sentence of St. Augustine, a favorite
name in Max Müller’s lectures, which says that “there is no false
religion which does not contain some elements of truth,” may yet be
triumphantly proved correct; the more so as, far from being original
with the Bishop of Hippo, it was borrowed by him from the works of
Ammonius Saccas, the great Alexandrian teacher.
This “god-taught” philosopher, the _theodidaktos_, had repeated
these same words to exhaustion, in his numerous works some 140 years
before Augustine. Acknowledging Jesus as “an excellent man, and the
friend of God,” he always maintained that his design was not to
abolish the intercourse with gods and demons (spirits), but simply
to purify the ancient religions; that “the religion of the multitude
went hand in hand with philosophy, and with her had shared the fate
of being by degrees corrupted and obscured with mere human conceits,
superstition, and lies: that it ought therefore to be brought back to
its _original purity_ by purging it of this dross and expounding it
upon philosophical principles; and that the whole which Christ had in
view was to reinstate and restore to its primitive integrity the wisdom
of the ancients.”[678]
It was Ammonius who first taught that every religion was based on
one and the same truth; which is the wisdom found in the Books of
Thoth (Hermes Trismegistus), from which books Pythagoras and Plato
had learned all their philosophy. And the doctrines of the former he
affirmed to have been identical with the earliest teachings of the
Brahmans—now embodied in the oldest _Vedas_. “The name Thoth,” says
Professor Wilder, “means a college or assembly,”[679] and “it is not
improbable that the books were so named as being the collected oracles
and doctrines of the sacerdotal fraternity of Memphis. Rabbi Wise had
suggested a similar hypothesis in relation to the divine utterances
recorded in the Hebrew Scripture. But the Indian writers assert, that
during the reign of king Kansa, _Yadus_ (_Judeans?_) or sacred tribe
left India and migrated to the West, carrying the four _Vedas_ with
them. There was certainly a great resemblance between the philosophical
doctrines and religious customs of the Egyptians and Eastern Buddhists;
but whether the Hermetic books and the four _Vedas_ were identical, is
not now known.”
But one thing is certainly known, and that is, that before the word
philosopher was first pronounced by Pythagoras at the court of the
king of the Philiasians, the “secret doctrine” or wisdom was identical
in every country. Therefore it is in the oldest texts—those least
polluted by subsequent forgeries—that we have to look for the truth.
And now that philology has possessed itself of Sanscrit texts which
may be boldly affirmed to be documents by far antedating the Mosaic
Bible, it is the duty of the scholars to present the world with truth,
and _nothing but the truth_. Without regard to either skeptical or
theological prejudice, they are bound to impartially examine both
documents—the oldest _Vedas_ and the _Old Testament_, and then decide
which of the two is the original _Sruti_ or _Revelation_, and which but
the _Smriti_, which, as Max Müller shows, only means recollection or
_tradition_.
Origen writes that the Brahmans were always famous for the wonderful
cures which they performed by certain words;[680] and in our own
age we find Orioli, a learned corresponding member of the French
Institute,[681] corroborating the statement of Origen in the third
century, and that of Leonard de Vair of the sixteenth, in which the
latter wrote: “There are also persons, who upon pronouncing a certain
sentence—a _charm_, walk bare-footed on red, burning coals, and on
the points of sharp _knives_ stuck in the ground; and, once poised
on them, _on one toe_, they will lift up in the air a heavy man or
any other burden of considerable weight. They will tame wild horses
likewise, and the most furious bulls, with a single word.”[682]
This word is to be found in the _Mantras_ of the Sanscrit _Vedas_,
say some adepts. It is for the philologists to decide for themselves
whether there is such a word in the _Vedas_. So far as human evidence
goes, it would seem that such magic words _do_ exist.
It appears that the reverend fathers of the Order of Jesuits have
picked up many such tricks in their missionary travels. Baldinger
gives them full credit for it. The _tschamping_—a Hindu word, from
which the modern word _shampooing_ is derived—is a well-known magical
manipulation in the East Indies. The native _sorcerers_ use it with
success to the present day, and it is from them that the father Jesuits
derived their wisdom.
Camerarius, in his _Horæ Subscecivæ_, narrates that once upon a
time there existed a great rivalry of “miracles” between the Austin
Friars and the Jesuits. A disputation having taken place between the
father-general of the Austin Friars, who was very learned, and the
general of the Jesuits, who was very _unlearned_, but full of _magical_
knowledge, the latter proposed to settle the question by trying their
subordinates, and finding out which of them would be the readiest to
obey his superiors. Thereupon, turning to one of his Jesuits, he said:
“Brother Mark, our companions are cold; I command you, in virtue of
the holy obedience you have sworn to me, to bring here instantly out
of the kitchen fire, and in your hands, some burning coals, that they
may warm themselves over your hands.” Father Mark instantly obeyed, and
brought in both his hands a supply of red, burning coals, and held them
till the company present had all warmed themselves, after which he took
them back to the kitchen hearth. The general of the Austin Friars found
himself crestfallen, for none of his subordinates would obey him so far
as that. The triumph of the Jesuits was thus accomplished.
If the above is looked upon as an anecdote unworthy of credence, we
will inquire of the reader what we must think of some modern “mediums,”
who perform the same while _entranced_. The testimony of several highly
respectable and trustworthy witnesses, such as Lord Adair and Mr. S.
C. Hall, is unimpeachable. “Spirits,” the spiritualists will argue.
Perhaps so, in the case of American and English _fire-proof_ mediums;
but not so in Thibet and India. In the West a “sensitive” has to be
entranced before being rendered invulnerable by the presiding “guides,”
and we defy any “medium,” in his or her normal physical state to bury
the arms to the elbows in glowing coals. But in the East, whether the
performer be a holy lama or a mercenary sorcerer (the latter class
being generally termed “jugglers”) he needs no preparation or abnormal
state to be able to handle fire, red-hot pieces of iron, or melted
lead. We have seen in Southern India these “jugglers” keep their hands
in a furnace of burning coals until the latter were reduced to cinders.
During the religious ceremony of Siva-Râtri, or the vigil-night of
Siva, when the people spend whole nights in watching and praying,
some of the Sivaites called in a Tamil juggler, who produced the most
wonderful phenomena by simply summoning to his help a spirit whom they
call _Kutti-Sâttan_—the little _demon_. But, far from allowing people
to think he was _guided_ or “controlled” by this gnome—for it was a
gnome, if it was anything—the man, while crouching over his fiery
pit, proudly rebuked a Catholic missionary, who took his opportunity
to inform the by-standers that the miserable sinner “had sold himself
to Satan.” Without removing his hands and arms from the burning coals
within which he was coolly refreshing them, the Tamil only turned his
head and gave one arrogant look at the flushed missionary. “My father
and my father’s father,” he said, “had this ‘little one’ at their
command. For two centuries the Kutti is a faithful servant in our home,
and now, sir, you would make people believe that _he_ is my master! But
they know better.” After this, he quietly withdrew his hands from the
fire, and proceeded with other performances.
As for the wonderful powers of prediction and clairvoyance possessed
by certain Brahmans, they are well known to every European resident
of India. If these upon their return to “civilized” countries, laugh
at such stories, and sometimes even deny them outright, they only
impugn their good faith, not the fact. These Brahmans live principally
in “sacred villages,” and secluded places, principally on the
western coast of India. They avoid populated cities, and especially
Europeans, and it is but rarely that the latter can succeed in making
themselves intimate with the “seers.” It is generally thought that the
circumstance is due to their religious observance of the caste; but we
are firmly convinced that in many cases this is not so. Years, perhaps
centuries, will roll away before the real reason is ascertained.
As to the lower castes, some of which are termed by the missionaries
devil-worshippers, notwithstanding the pious efforts on the part of
the Catholic missionaries to spread in Europe heart-rending reports of
the misery of these people “sold to the Arch-Enemy;” and like efforts,
perhaps only a trifle less ridiculous and absurd, of Protestant
missionaries, the word devil, in the sense understood by Christians,
is a nonentity for them. They believe in good and bad spirits; but
they neither worship nor dread the Devil. Their “worship” is simply a
ceremonial precaution against “terrestrial” and _human_ spirits, whom
they dread far more than the millions of elementals of various forms.
They use all kinds of music, incense, and perfumes, in their efforts
to drive away the “bad spirits” (the elementary). In this case, they
are no more to be ridiculed than the well-known scientist, a firm
spiritualist, who suggested the keeping of vitriol and powdered nitre
in the room to keep away “unpleasant spirits;” and no more than he,
are they wrong in so doing; for the experience of their ancestors,
extending over many thousands of years has taught them how to proceed
against this vile “spiritual horde.” That they are _human_ spirits is
shown by the fact that very often they try to humor and propitiate the
“larvæ” of their own daughters and relatives, when they have reason
to suspect that the latter did not die in the odor of sanctity and
chastity. Such spirits they name “Kanni,” _bad virgins_. The case was
noticed by several missionaries; Rev. E. Lewis,[683] among others.
But these pious gentlemen usually insist upon it that they worship
devils, whereas, they do nothing of the sort; for they merely try to
remain on good terms with them in order to be left unmolested. They
offer them cakes and fruit, and various kinds of food which they liked
while alive, for many of them have experienced the wickedness of these
returning “dead ones,” whose persecutions are sometimes dreadful. On
this principle likewise they act toward the spirits of all wicked men.
They leave on their tombs, if they were buried, or near the place
where their remains were burnt, food and liquors, with the object of
keeping them near these places, and with the idea that these vampires
will be prevented thereby from returning to their homes. This is no
worship; it is rather a _spiritualism_ of a practical sort. Until 1861,
there prevailed a custom among the Hindus of mutilating the feet of
executed murderers, under the firm belief that thereby the disembodied
soul would be prevented from wandering and doing more mischief.
Subsequently, they were prohibited, by the police, from continuing the
practice.
Another good reason why the Hindus should not worship the “Devil”
is that they have no word to convey such a meaning. They call these
spirits “_pûttâm_,” which answers rather to our “spook,” or malicious
imp; another expression they use is “_pey_” and the Sanscrit _pesâsu_,
both meaning ghosts or “returning ones” perhaps goblins, in some cases.
The _pûttâm_ are the most terrible, for they are literally “_haunting_
spooks,” who return on earth to torment the living. They are believed
to visit generally the places where their bodies were burnt. The “fire”
or “Siva-spirits” are identical with the Rosicrucian _gnomes_ and
_salamanders_; for they are pictured as dwarfs of a fiery appearance,
living in earth and fire. The Ceylonese demon called _Dewel_ is a
stout smiling female figure with a white Elizabethan frill around the
neck and a red jacket.
As Dr. Warton justly observes: “There is no character more strictly
Oriental than the dragons of romance and fiction; they are intermixed
with every tradition of early date and of themselves confer a species
of illustrative evidence of origin.” In no writings are these
characters more marked, than in the details of Buddhism; these record
particulars of the _Nagas_, or kingly snakes, inhabiting the cavities
under the earth, corresponding with the abodes of Tiresias and the
Greek seers, a region of mystery and darkness, wherein revolves much
of the system of divination and oracular response, connected with
inflation, or a sort of possession, designating the spirit of Python
himself, the dragon-serpent slain by Apollo. But the Buddhists no more
believe in the devil of the Christian system—that is, an entity as
distinct from humanity as the Deity itself—than the Hindus. Buddhists
teach that there are inferior gods who have been men either on this or
another planet, but still who were _men_. They believe in the Nagas,
who had been _sorcerers_ on earth, _bad people_, and who give the power
to other bad and yet living men to blight all the fruit they look upon,
and even human lives. When a Cinghalese has the reputation that if he
looks on a tree or on a person both will wither and die, he is said to
have the Naga-Raja, or king-serpent on him. The whole endless catalogue
of bad spirits are not _devils_ in the sense the Christian clergy wants
us to understand, but merely _spiritually incarnated_ sins, crimes, and
human thoughts, if we may so express it. The blue, green, yellow, and
purple god-demons, like the inferior gods of Jugandere, are more of
the kind of presiding genii, and many are as good and beneficient as
the Nat deities themselves, although the Nats reckon in their numbers,
giants, evil genii, and the like which inhabit the desert of Mount
Jugandere.
The true doctrine of Buddha says that the demons, when nature produced
the sun, moon, and stars, _were human beings_, but, on account of their
sins, they fell from the state of felicity. If they commit greater
sins, they suffer greater punishments, and condemned men are reckoned
by them among the _devils_; while, on the contrary, _demons who die_
(elemental spirits) and are born or incarnated as men, and commit no
more sin, can arrive at the state of celestial felicity. Which is a
demonstration, remarks Edward Upham, in his _History and Doctrine of
Buddhism_, that all beings, divine as well as human, are subject to
the laws of transmigration, which are operative on all, according to a
scale of moral deeds. This faith then, is a complete test of a code of
moral enactments and motives, applied to the regulation and government
of man an experiment, he adds, “which renders the study of Buddhism an
important and curious subject for the philosopher.”
The Hindus believe, as firmly as the Servians or Hungarians, in
vampires. Furthermore, their doctrine is that of Pierart, the famous
French spiritist and mesmerizer, whose school flourished some dozen
years ago. “The fact of a spectre returning to suck human blood,” says
this Doctor,[684] “is not so inexplicable as it seems, and here we
appeal to the spiritualists who admit the phenomenon of _bicorporeity_
or _soul-duplication_. The hands which we have pressed ... these
‘materialized’ limbs, so palpable ... prove clearly _how much is
possible for astral spectres under favorable conditions_.”
The honorable physician expresses the theory of the kabalists. The
_Shadim_ are the lowest of the spiritual orders. Maimonides, who
tells us that his countrymen were _obliged_ to maintain an intimate
intercourse with their departed ones, describes the feast of blood they
held on such occasions. They dug a hole, and _fresh blood_ was poured
in, over which was placed a table; after which the “spirits” came and
answered all their questions.[685]
Pierart, whose doctrine was founded on that of the theurgists, exhibits
a warm indignation against the superstition of the clergy which
requires, whenever a corpse is suspected of vampirism, that a stake
should be driven through the heart. So long as the astral form is not
entirely liberated from the body there is a liability that it may be
forced by magnetic attraction to reënter it. Sometimes it will be only
half-way out, when the corpse, which presents the appearance of death,
is buried. In such cases the terrified astral soul violently reënters
its casket; and then, one of two things happens—either the unhappy
victim will writhe in the agonizing torture of suffocation, or, if
he had been grossly material, he becomes a vampire. The bicorporeal
life begins; and these unfortunate buried cataleptics sustain their
miserable lives by having their astral bodies rob the life-blood from
living persons. The æthereal form can go wherever it pleases; and so
long as it does not break the link which attaches it to the body, it
is at liberty to wander about, either visible or invisible, and feed
on human victims. “According to all appearance, this ‘spirit’ then
transmits through a mysterious and invisible cord of connection, which
perhaps, some day may be explained, the results of the suction to the
material body which lies inert at the bottom of the tomb, aiding it, in
a manner, to perpetuate the state of catalepsy.”[686]
Brierre de Boismont gives a number of such cases, fully authenticated,
which he is pleased to term “hallucinations.” A recent inquest,
says a French paper, “has established that in 1871 two corpses were
submitted to the infamous treatment of popular superstition, at the
instigation of the clergy ... O blind prejudice!” But Dr. Pierart,
quoted by des Mousseaux, who stoutly adheres to vampirism, exclaims:
“Blind, you say? Yes, blind, as much as you like. But whence sprang
these prejudices? Why are they perpetuated in all ages, and in so many
countries? After a crowd of facts of vampirism so often proved, should
we say that there are no more and that they never had a foundation?
Nothing comes of nothing. Every belief, every custom springs from facts
and causes which gave it birth. If one had never seen appear, in the
bosom of families of certain countries, beings clothing themselves in
the shape of the familiar dead, coming thus to suck the blood of one
or of several persons, and if the death of the victims by emaciation
had not followed, they would never have gone to disinter the corpses
in cemeteries; we would never have had attested the incredible fact
of persons buried for several years being found with the corpse soft,
flexible, the eyes open, with rosy complexions, the mouth and nose
full of blood, and of the blood running in torrents under blows, from
wounds, and when decapitated.”[687]
One of the most important examples of vampirism figures in the private
letters of the philosopher, the Marquis d’Argens; and, in the _Revue
Britannique_, for March, 1837, the English traveller Pashley describes
some that came under his notice in the island of Candia. Dr. Jobard,
the anti-Catholic and anti-spiritual Belgian _savant_, testifies to
similar experiences.[688]
“I will not examine,” wrote the Bishop d’Avranches Huet, “whether the
facts of vampirism, which are constantly being reported, are true,
or the fruit of a popular error; but it is certain that they are
testified to by so many authors, able and trustworthy, and _by so many
eye-witnesses_, that no one ought to decide upon the question without a
good deal of caution.”[689]
The chevalier, who went to great pains to collect materials for his
demonological theory, brings the most thrilling instances to prove that
all such cases are produced by the Devil, who uses graveyard corpses
with which to clothe himself, and roams at night sucking people’s
blood. Methinks we could do very well without bringing this dusky
personage upon the scene. If we are to believe at all in the return of
spirits, there are plenty of wicked sensualists, misers, and sinners
of other descriptions—especially suicides, who could have rivalled
the Devil himself in malice in his best days. It is quite enough to be
actually forced to believe in what we do see, and _know to be a fact_,
namely spirits, without adding to our Pantheon of ghosts the Devil—whom
nobody ever saw.
Still, there are interesting particulars to be gathered in relation
to vampirism, since belief in this phenomenon has existed in all
countries, from the remotest ages. The Slavonian nations, the Greeks,
the Wallachians, and the Servians would rather doubt the existence of
their enemies, the Turks, than the fact that there are vampires. The
_broucolâk_, or _vourdalak_, as the latter are called, are but too
familiar guests at the Slavonian fireside. Writers of the greatest
ability, men as full of sagacity as of high integrity, have treated of
the subject and believed in it. Whence, then, such a _superstition_?
Whence that unanimous credence throughout the ages, and whence that
identity in details and similarity of description as to that one
particular phenomenon which we find in the testimony—generally sworn
evidence—of peoples foreign to each other and differing widely in
matters concerning other _superstitions_.
“There are,” says Dom Calmet, a skeptical Benedictine monk of the last
century, “two different ways to destroy the belief in these pretended
ghosts.... The first would be _to explain the_ prodigies of vampirism
by physical causes. The second way is to _deny totally_ the truth of
all such stories; and the latter plan would be undoubtedly the most
certain, as the most wise.”[690]
The first way—that of explaining it by physical, though occult causes,
is the one adopted by the Pierart school of mesmerism. It is certainly
not the spiritualists who have a right to doubt the plausibility of
this explanation. The second plan is that adopted by scientists and
skeptics. They deny point-blank. As des Mousseaux remarks, there is
no better or surer way, and none exacts less of either philosophy or
science.
The spectre of a village herdsman, near Kodom, in Bavaria, began
appearing to several inhabitants of the place, and either in
consequence of their fright or some other cause, every one of them
died during the following week. Driven to despair, the peasants
disinterred the corpse, and pinned it to the ground with a long stake.
The same night he appeared again, plunging people into convulsions of
fright, and suffocating several of them. Then the village authorities
delivered the body into the hands of the executioner, who carried it to
a neighboring field and burned it. “The corpse,” says des Mousseaux,
quoting Dom Calmet, “howled like a madman, kicking and tearing as if
he had been alive. When he was run through again with sharp-pointed
stakes, he uttered piercing cries, and vomited masses of crimson blood.
The apparitions of this spectre ceased only after the corpse had been
reduced to ashes.”[691]
Officers of justice visited the places said to be so haunted; the
bodies were exhumed, and in nearly every case it was observed that the
corpse suspected of vampirism looked healthy and rosy, and the flesh
was in no way decaying. The objects which had belonged to these ghosts
were observed moving about the house without any one touching them.
But the legal authorities generally refused to resort to cremation
and beheading before they had observed the strictest rules of legal
procedure. Witnesses were summoned to appear, and evidence was heard
and carefully weighed. After that the exhumed corpses were examined;
and if they exhibited the unequivocal and characteristic signs of
vampirism, they were handed over to the executioner.
“But,” argues Dom Calmet,[692] “the principal difficulty consists
in learning _how_ these vampires can quit their tombs, and how they
reënter them, without appearing _to have disturbed the earth in the
least_; how is it that they are seen with their usual clothing; how
can they go about, and walk, and _eat_?... If this is all imagination
on the part of those who believe themselves molested by such vampires,
how happens it that the accused ghosts are subsequently found in their
graves ... exhibiting no signs of decay, full of blood, supple and
fresh? How explain the cause _of their feet found muddy and covered
with dirt on the day following the night_ they had appeared and
frightened their neighbors, while nothing of the sort was ever found on
other corpses buried in the same cemetery?[693] How is it again that
once burned they never reappear? and that these cases should happen
_so often_ in this country that it is found impossible to cure people
from this prejudice; for, instead of being destroyed, daily experience
only fortifies the superstition in the people, and increases belief in
it.”[694]
There is a phenomenon in nature unknown, and therefore rejected by
physiology and psychology in our age of unbelief. This phenomenon is a
state of _half-death_. Virtually, the body is dead; and, in cases of
persons in whom matter does not predominate over spirit and wickedness
not so great as to destroy spirituality, if left alone, their astral
soul will disengage itself by gradual efforts, and, when the last
link is broken, it finds itself separated forever from its earthly
body. Equal magnetic polarity will violently repulse the ethereal man
from the decaying organic mass. The whole difficulty lies in that 1,
the ultimate moment of separation between the two is believed to be
that when the body is declared _dead_ by science; and 2, a prevailing
unbelief in the existence of either soul or spirit in man, by the same
science.
Pierart tries to demonstrate that in every case it is dangerous to
bury people too soon, even though the body may show undoubted signs
of putrefaction. “Poor dead cataleptics,” says the doctor, “buried
as if _quite_ dead, in cold and dry spots where _morbid causes are
incapable to effect the destruction of their bodies_, their (astral)
spirit enveloping itself with a _fluidic_ body (ethereal) is prompted
to quit the precincts of its tomb, and to exercise on living beings
acts peculiar to physical life, especially that of _nutrition_, the
result of which, by a mysterious link between soul and body, which
spiritualistic science will explain some day, is forwarded to the
material body lying still in its tomb, and the latter thus helped to
perpetuate its vital existence.”[695] These spirits, in their ephemeral
bodies, have been often seen _coming out from the graveyard_; they are
known to have clung to their living neighbors, and have sucked their
blood. Judicial inquiry has established that from this resulted an
emaciation of the victimized persons, which often terminated in death.
Thus, following the pious advice of Dom Calmet, we must either go on
denying, or, if human and legal testimonies are worth anything, accept
the only explanation possible. “That souls departed are embodied in
aërial or ætherial vehicles is most fully and plainly proved by those
excellent men, Dr. C. and Dr. More,” says Glanvil, “and they have
largely shown that this was the doctrine of the greatest philosophers
and most ancient and aged fathers.”[696]
Görres, the German philosopher, says to the same effect, that “God
never created man as a dead corpse, but as an animal _full of life_.
Once He had thus produced him, finding him ready to receive the
immortal breath, He breathed him in the face, and thus man became a
double masterpiece in His hands. It is in the centre of life itself
that this mysterious insufflation took place in the first man (race?);
and thence were united the _animal soul_ issued from earth, and the
_spirit_ emanating from heaven.”[697]
Des Mousseaux, in company with other Roman Catholic writers, exclaims:
“This proposition is utterly anti-Catholic!” Well, and suppose it is?
It may be archi-anti-Catholic, and still be logic, and offer a solution
for many a psychological puzzle. The sun of science and philosophy
shines for every one; and if Catholics, who hardly number one-seventh
part of the population of the globe, do not feel satisfied, perhaps the
many millions of people of other religions who outnumber them, will.
And now, before parting with this repulsive subject of vampirism,
we will give one more illustration, without other voucher than the
statement that it was given to us by apparently trustworthy witnesses.
About the beginning of the present century, there occurred in Russia,
one of the most frightful cases of vampirism on record. The governor of
the Province of Tch—— was a man of about sixty years, of a malicious,
tyrannical, cruel, and jealous disposition. Clothed with despotic
authority, he exercised it without stint, as his brutal instincts
prompted. He fell in love with the pretty daughter of a subordinate
official. Although the girl was betrothed to a young man whom she
loved, the tyrant forced her father to consent to his having her marry
him; and the poor victim, despite her despair, became his wife. His
jealous disposition exhibited itself. He beat her, confined her to
her room for weeks together, and prevented her seeing any one except
in his presence. He finally fell sick and died. Finding his end
approaching, he made her swear never to marry again; and with fearful
oaths, threatened that, in case she did, he would return from his grave
and kill her. He was buried in the cemetery across the river; and the
young widow experienced no further annoyance, until, nature getting the
better of her fears, she listened to the importunities of her former
lover, and they were again betrothed.
On the night of the customary betrothal-feast, when all had retired,
the old mansion was aroused by shrieks proceeding from her room. The
doors were burst open, and the unhappy woman was found lying on her
bed, in a swoon. At the same time a carriage was heard rumbling out
of the courtyard. Her body was found to be black and blue in places,
as from the effect of pinches, and from a slight puncture on her neck
drops of blood were oozing. Upon recovering, she stated that her
deceased husband had suddenly entered her room, appearing exactly as in
life, with the exception of a dreadful pallor; that he had upbraided
her for her inconstancy, and then beaten and pinched her most cruelly.
Her story was disbelieved; but the next morning, the guard stationed at
the other end of the bridge which spans the river, reported that, just
before midnight, a black coach and six had driven furiously past them,
toward the town, without answering their challenge.
The new governor, who disbelieved the story of the apparition, took
nevertheless the precaution of doubling the guards across the bridge.
The same thing happened, however, night after night; the soldiers
declaring that the toll-bar at their station near the bridge would
rise of itself, and the spectral equipage sweep by them despite their
efforts to stop it. At the same time every night, the coach would
rumble into the courtyard of the house; the watchers, including the
widow’s family, and the servants, would be thrown into a heavy sleep;
and every morning the young victim would be found bruised, bleeding,
and swooning as before. The town was thrown into consternation. The
physicians had no explanations to offer; priests came to pass the night
in prayer, but as midnight approached, all would be seized with the
terrible lethargy. Finally, the archbishop of the province came, and
performed the ceremony of exorcism in person, but the following morning
the governor’s widow was found worse than ever. She was now brought to
death’s door.
The governor was finally driven to take the severest measures to stop
the ever-increasing panic in the town. He stationed fifty Cossacks
along the bridge, with orders to stop the spectre-carriage at all
hazards. Promptly at the usual hour, it was heard and seen approaching
from the direction of the cemetery. The officer of the guard, and a
priest bearing a crucifix, planted themselves in front of the toll-bar,
and together shouted: “In the name of God, and the Czar, who goes
there?” Out of the coach-window was thrust a well-remembered head,
and a familiar voice responded: “The Privy Councillor of State and
Governor, C——!” At the same moment, the officer, the priest, and the
soldiers were flung aside as by an electric shock, and the ghostly
equipage passed by them, before they could recover breath.
The archbishop then resolved, as a last expedient, to resort to the
time-honored plan of exhuming the body, and pinning it to the earth
with an oaken stake driven through its heart. This was done with great
religious ceremony in the presence of the whole populace. The story
is that the body was found gorged with blood, and with red cheeks and
lips. At the instant that the first blow was struck upon the stake,
a groan issued from the corpse, and a jet of blood spurted high into
the air. The archbishop pronounced the usual exorcism, the body was
reïnterred, and from that time no more was heard of the vampire.
How far the facts of this case may have been exaggerated by tradition,
we cannot say. But we had it years ago from an eye-witness; and at
the present day there are families in Russia whose elder members will
recall the dreadful tale.
As to the statement found in medical books that there are frequent
cases of inhumation while the subjects are but in a cataleptic state,
and the persistent denials of specialists that such things happen,
except very rarely, we have but to turn to the daily press of every
country to find the horrid fact substantiated. The Rev. H. R. Haweis,
M. A., author of _Ashes to Ashes_,[698] enumerates in his work, written
in advocacy of cremation, some very distressing cases of premature
burial. On page forty-six occurs the following dialogue:
“But do you know of many cases of premature burial?”
“Undoubtedly I do. I will not say that in our temperate climate they
are frequent, but they do occur. Hardly a graveyard is opened but
coffins are found containing bodies not only turned, but skeletons
contorted in the last hopeless struggle for life underground. The
turning may be due to some clumsy shaking of the coffin, _but not the
contortion_.”
After this he proceeds to give the following recent cases:
“At Bergerac (Dordogne), in 1842, the patient took a sleeping draught
... but he woke not.... They bled him, and he woke not.... At last they
declared him to be dead, and buried him. After a few days, remembering
the sleeping draught, they opened the grave. The body had turned and
_struggled_.”
“The _Sunday Times_, December 30, 1838, relates that at Tonneins, Lower
Garonne, a man was buried, when an indistinct noise proceeded from
the coffin; the reckless grave-digger fled.... The coffin was hauled
up and burst open. A face stiffened in terror and despair, a torn
winding-sheet, contorted limbs, told the sad truth—_too late_.”
“The _Times_, May, 1874, states that in August of 1873, a young lady
died soon after her marriage.... Within a year the husband married
again, and the mother of his first bride resolved to remove her
daughter’s body to Marseilles. They opened the vault and found the
poor girl’s body prostrate, her hair dishevelled, her shroud torn to
pieces.”[699]
As we will have to refer to the subject once more in connection with
Bible miracles, we will leave it for the present, and return to magical
phenomena.
If we were to give a full description of the various manifestations
which take place among adepts in India and other countries, we might
fill volumes, but this would be profitless, as there would remain no
space for explanation. Therefore we select in preference such as either
find their parallels in modern phenomena or are authenticated by legal
inquiry. Horst tried to present an idea of certain Persian spirits
to his readers, and failed; for the bare mention of some of them is
calculated to set the brains of a believer in a whirl. There are the
Devs and their specialities; the Darwands and their gloomy tricks; the
Shadim and Djinnas; the whole vast legion of spirits, demons, goblins,
and elves of the Persian calendar; and, on the other hand, the Jewish
Seraphim, Cherubim, Izeds, Amshaspands, Sephiroth, Malachim, Elohim;
and, adds Horst, “the millions of astral and elementary spirits, of
intermediary spirits, ghosts, and imaginary beings of all races and
colors.”[700]
But the majority of these spirits have naught to do with the phenomena
consciously and deliberately produced by the Eastern magicians. The
latter repudiate such an accusation and leave to sorcerers the help
even of elemental spirits and the elementary spooks. The adept has an
unlimited power over both, but he rarely uses it. For the production of
physical phenomena he summons the nature-spirits as obedient _powers_,
not as intelligences.
As we always like to strengthen our arguments by testimonies other than
our own, it may be well to present the opinion of a daily paper, the
Boston _Herald_, as to phenomena in general and mediums in particular.
Having encountered sad failures with some dishonest persons, who may or
may not be mediumistic, the writer went to the trouble of ascertaining
as to some wonders said to be produced in India, and compares them with
those of modern thaumaturgy.
“The medium of the present day,” he says, “bears a closer resemblance,
in methods and manipulations, to the well-known conjurer of history,
than any other representative of the magic art. How far short he still
remains of the performances of his prototypes is illustrated below. In
1615 a delegation of highly-educated and distinguished men from the
English East India Company visited the Emperor Jehangire. While on
their mission they witnessed many most wonderful performances, almost
causing them to discredit their senses, and far beyond any hint even of
solution. A party of Bengalese conjurers and jugglers, showing their
art before the emperor, were desired to produce upon the spot, and from
seed, ten mulberry trees. They immediately planted ten seeds, which,
in a few minutes produced as many trees. The ground divided over the
spot where a seed was planted, tiny leaves appeared, at once followed
by slender shoots, which rapidly gained elevation, putting out leaves
and twigs and branches, finally spreading wide in the air, budding,
blossoming and yielding fruit, which matured upon the spot, and was
found to be excellent. And this before the beholder had turned away
his eyes. Fig, almond, mango, and walnut trees were at the same time
under like conditions produced, yielding the fruit which belonged to
each. Wonder succeeded wonder. The branches were filled with birds of
beautiful plumage flitting about among the leaves and singing sweet
notes. The leaves turned to russet, fell from their places, branches
and twigs withered, and finally the trees sank back into the earth,
out of which they had all sprang within the hour.
“Another had a bow and about fifty steel-pointed arrows. He shot an
arrow into the air, when, lo! the arrow became fixed in space at a
considerable height. Another and another arrow was sent off, each
fixing itself in the shaft of the preceding, until all formed a chain
of arrows in the air, excepting the last shot, which, striking the
chain, brought the whole to the ground in detachments.
“They set up two common tents facing each other, and about a bowshot
apart. These tents were critically examined by the spectators, as are
the cabinets of the mediums, and pronounced empty. The tents were
fastened to the ground all around. The lookers-on were then invited to
choose what animals or birds they would have issue from these tents to
engage in a battle. Khaun-e-Jahaun incredulously asked to see a fight
between ostriches. In a few minutes an ostrich came out from each tent,
rushed to combat with deadly earnestness, and from them the blood soon
began to stream; but they were so nearly matched that neither could
win the victory, and they were at last separated by the conjurers
and conveyed within the tents. After this the varied demands of the
spectators for birds and animals were exactly complied with, always
with the same results.
“A large cauldron was set, and into it a quantity of rice thrown.
Without the sign of fire this rice soon began to boil, and out from the
cauldron was taken more than one hundred platters of cooked rice, with
a stewed fowl at the top of each. This trick is performed on a smaller
scale by the most ordinary fakirs of the present day.
“But space fails to give opportunity for illustrating, from the records
of the past, how the miserably tame performances—by comparison—of the
mediums of the present day were pale and overshadowed by those of other
days and more adroit peoples. There is not a wonderful feature in any
of the so-called phenomena or manifestations which was not, nay, which
is not now more than duplicated by other skilful performers, whose
connection with earth, and earth alone, is too evident to be doubted,
even if the fact was not supported by their own testimony.”
It is an error to say that fakirs or jugglers will always claim that
they are helped by spirits. In quasi-religious evocations, such as
Jacolliot’s Kovindasami is described to have produced before this
French gentleman, when the parties desire to see real “spiritual”
manifestations, they will resort to Pitris, their disembodied
ancestors, and other _pure_ spirits. These they can evoke but through
prayer. As to all other phenomena, they are produced by the magician
and fakir at will. Notwithstanding the state of apparent abjectness in
which the latter lives, he is often an initiate of the temples, and is
as well acquainted with occultism as his richer brethren.
The Chaldeans, whom Cicero counts among the oldest magicians, placed
the basis of all magic in the inner powers of man’s soul, and by the
discernment of magic properties in plants, minerals, and animals.
By the aid of these they performed the most wonderful “miracles.”
Magic, with them, was synonymous with religion and science. It is but
later that the religious myths of the Magdean dualism, disfigured by
Christian theology and euhemerized by certain fathers of the Church,
assumed the disgusting shape in which we find them expounded by such
Catholic writers as des Mousseaux. The objective reality of the
mediæval incubus and succubus, that abominable superstition of the
middle ages which cost so many human lives, advocated by this author
in a whole volume, is the monstrous production of religious fanaticism
and epilepsy. It can have no _objective_ form; and to attribute its
effects to the Devil is blasphemy: implying that God, after creating
Satan, would allow him to adopt such a course. If we are forced to
believe in vampirism, it is on the strength of two irrefragable
propositions of occult psychological science: 1. The astral soul is
a separable distinct entity of our _ego_, and can roam far away from
the body without breaking the thread of life. 2. The corpse is not
_utterly_ dead, and while it can yet be reëntered by its tenant, the
latter can gather sufficient material emanations from it to enable
itself to appear in a quasi-terrestrial shape. But to uphold, with des
Mousseaux and de Mirville, that the Devil, whom the Catholics endow
with a power which, in antagonism, equals that of the Supreme Deity,
transforms himself into wolves, snakes, and dogs, to satisfy his lust
and procreate monsters, is an idea within which lie hidden the germs
of devil-worship, lunacy, and sacrilege. The Catholic Church, which
not only teaches us to believe in this monstrous fallacy, but forces
her missionaries to preach such a dogma, need not revolt against the
devil-worship of some Parsee and South India sects. Quite the reverse;
for when we hear the Yezides repeat the well-known proverb: “Keep
friends with the demons; give them your property, your blood, your
service, and you need not care about God—_He will not harm you_,” we
find him but consistent with his belief and reverential to the Supreme;
his logic is sound and rational; he reveres God too deeply to imagine
that He who created the universe and its laws is able to hurt him, poor
atom; but the _demons_ are there; they are _imperfect_, and therefore
he has good reasons to dread them.
Therefore, the Devil, in his various transformations, can be but a
fallacy. When we imagine that we see, and hear, and feel him, it
is but too often the reflection of our own wicked, depraved, and
polluted soul that we see, hear, and feel. Like attracts like, they
say; thus, according to the mood in which our astral form oozes out
during the hours of sleep, according to our thoughts, pursuits, and
daily occupations, all of which are fairly impressed upon the plastic
capsule called the _human soul_, the latter attracts around itself
spiritual beings congenial to itself. Hence some dreams and visions
that are pure and beautiful, others fiendish and beastly. The person
awakes, and either hastens to the confessional, or laughs in callous
indifference at the thought. In the first case, he is promised final
salvation, at the cost of some indulgences (which he has to purchase
from the church), and perhaps a little taste of purgatory, or even
of hell. What matter? is he not safe to be eternal and immortal, do
what he may? It is the Devil. Away with him, with bell, book, and holy
sprinkler! But the “Devil” comes back, and often the true believer is
forced to disbelieve in God, when he clearly perceives that the Devil
has the best of his Creator and Master. Then he is left to the second
emergency. He remains indifferent, and gives himself up entirely to the
Devil. He dies, and the reader has learned the sequel in the preceding
chapters.
The thought is beautifully expressed by Dr. Ennemoser: “Religion did
not here [Europe and China] strike root so deeply as among the Hindus,”
says he, arguing upon this superstition. “The spirit of the Greeks
and Persians was more volatile.... The philosophical idea in the good
and bad principle, and of the spiritual world ... must have assisted
tradition in forming visions of heavenly and hellish shapes, and the
most frightful distortions, which in India were much more simply
produced by a more enthusiastic fanaticism; there the seer _received by
divine light_; here he lost himself in a multitude of outward objects,
with which he confounded his own identity. Convulsions, accompanied
by the mind’s absence from the body, in distant countries, were here
common, for the imagination was less firm, and also less spiritual.
“The outward causes are also different; the modes of life, geographical
position, and artificial means producing various modifications. The
mode of life in Western countries has always been very variable, and
therefore disturbs and distorts the occupation of the senses, _and the
outward life is therefore reflected_ upon the inner dream-world. The
spirits, therefore, are of endless varieties of shape, and incline men
to gratify their passions, showing them the means of so doing, and
descending even to the minutest particulars, _which was so far below_
the elevated natures of Indian seers.”
Let the student of occult sciences make his own nature as pure and his
thoughts as elevated as those of these Indian seers, and he may sleep
unmolested by vampire, incubus, or succubus. Around the insensible
form of such a sleeper the immortal spirit sheds a power divine that
protects it from evil approaches, as though it were a crystal wall.
“Hæc murus æneus esto: nil conscire sibi, nulla pallascere culpa.”
CHAPTER XIII.
“ALCHYMIST. Thou always speakest riddles. Tell me if thou art
that fountain of which Bernard Lord Trevigan writ?
“MERCURY. I am not that fountain, but I am the water. The
fountain compasseth me about.”
—SANDIVOGIUS, _New Light of Alchymy_.
“All that we profess to do is this: to find out the secrets of
the human frame, to know why the parts ossify and the blood
stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effects
of time. _This is not magic_; it is the art of medicine rightly
understood.”—BULWER-LYTTON.
“Lo, warrior! now the cross of Red
Points to the grave of the mighty dead;
Within it burns a wondrous light,
To chase the spirits that love the night.
That lamp shall burn unquenchably
Until the eternal doom shall be.”
* * * * *
“No earthly flame blazed e’er so bright.”—SIR WALTER SCOTT.
There are persons whose minds would be incapable of appreciating the
intellectual grandeur of the ancients, even in physical science, were
they to receive the most complete demonstration of their profound
learning and achievements. Notwithstanding the lesson of caution which
more than one unexpected discovery has taught them, they still pursue
their old plan of denying, and, what is still worse, of ridiculing
that which they have no means of either proving or disproving. So, for
instance, they will pooh-pooh the idea of talismans having any efficacy
one way or the other. That the seven spirits of the _Apocalypse_
have direct relation to the seven occult powers in nature, appears
incomprehensible and absurd to their feeble intellects; and the
bare thought of a magician claiming to work wonders through certain
kabalistic rites convulses them with laughter. Perceiving only a
geometrical figure traced upon a paper, a bit of metal, or other
substance, they cannot imagine how any reasonable being should ascribe
to either any occult potency. But those who have taken the pains to
inform themselves know that the ancients achieved as great discoveries
in psychology as in physics, and that their explorations left few
secrets to be discovered.
For our part, when we realize that a pentacle is a synthetic figure
which expresses in concrete form a profound truth of nature, we can
see nothing more ridiculous in it than in the figures of Euclid, and
nothing half so comical as the symbols in a modern work on chemistry.
What to the uninitiated reader can appear more absurd than that the
symbol NA₂CO₃—means soda! and that C₂H₆O is but another
way of writing alcohol! How very amusing that the alchemists should
express their Azoth, or creative principle of nature (astral light), by
the symbol
T
│
│
O──── ──——A
│
│
R[Transcriber’s note: R upside-down, A sideways]
which embraces three things: 1st, The divine hypothesis; 2d, The
philosophical synthesis; 3d, The physical synthesis—that is to say, a
belief, an idea, and a force. But how perfectly natural that a modern
chemist who wishes to indicate to the students in his laboratory the
reaction of a sodic-carbonate with cream-of-tartar in solution, should
employ the following symbol:
(Na₂CO₃ + 2HKC₄H₄O₆ + Aq)=
(2NaKC₄H₄O₆ + H₂O + Aq) + CO₂
If the uninspired reader may be pardoned for looking aghast at this
abracadabra of chemical science, why should not its teachers restrain
their mirth until they have learned the philosophical value of the
symbolism of the ancients? At least they might spare themselves from
being as ridiculous as Monsieur de Mirville, who, confounding the Azoth
of the Hermetic philosophers with the azote of the chemists, asserted
that the former worshipped nitrogen gas![701]
Apply a piece of iron to a magnet, and it becomes imbued with its
subtile principle and capable of imparting it to other iron in its
turn. It neither weighs more nor appears different from what it
was before. And yet, one of the most subtile potencies of nature
has entered into its substance. A talisman, in itself perhaps a
worthless bit of metal, a scrap of paper, or a shred of any fabric,
has nevertheless been imbued by the influence of that greatest of
all magnets, the human will, with a potency for good or ill just
as recognizable and as real in its effects as the subtile property
which the iron acquired by contact with the physical magnet. Let
the bloodhound snuff an article of clothing that has been worn by
the fugitive, and he will track him through swamp and forest to
his hiding-place. Give one of Professor Buchanan’s “psychometers”
a manuscript, no matter how old, and he will describe to you the
character of the writer, and perhaps even his personal appearance.
Hand a clairvoyant a lock of hair or some article that has been in
contact with the person of whom it is desired to know something, and
she will come into sympathy with him so intimate that she may trace him
through his whole life.
Breeders tell us that young animals should not be herded with old
ones; and intelligent physicians forbid parents to have young children
occupy their own beds. When David was old and feeble his vital forces
were recruited by having a young person brought in close contact with
him so that he could absorb her strength. The late Empress of Russia,
the sister of the present German Emperor, was so feeble the last
years of her life that she was seriously advised by her physicians
to keep in her bed at night a robust and healthy young peasant-girl.
Whoever has read the description given by Dr. Kerner of the Seeress
of Prevost, Mme. Hauffe, must well remember her words. She repeatedly
stated that she supported life merely on the atmosphere of the people
surrounding her and their _magnetic emanations_, which were quickened
in an extraordinary way by her presence. The seeress was very plainly
a magnetic _vampire_, who absorbed by drawing to herself the life of
those who were strong enough to spare her their vitality in the shape
of _volatilized_ blood. Dr. Kerner remarks that these persons were all
more or less affected by this forcible loss.
With these familiar illustrations of the possibility of a subtile fluid
communicated from one individual to another, or to substances which he
touches, it becomes less difficult to understand that by a determined
concentration of the will an otherwise inert object may become imbued
with protective or destructive power according to the purpose directing.
A magnetic emanation, unconsciously produced, is sure to be overpowered
by any stronger one with which it may come into opposition. But when an
intelligent and powerful will directs the blind force, and concentrates
it upon a given spot, the weaker emanation will often master the
stronger. A human _will_ has the same effect on the _Akâsa_.
Upon one occasion, we witnessed in Bengal an exhibition of will-power
that illustrates a highly interesting phase of the subject. An adept
in magic made a few passes over a piece of common tin, the inside
of a dish-cover, that lay conveniently by, and while regarding it
attentively for a few moments, seemed to grasp the imponderable fluid
by handfuls and throw it against the surface. When the tin had been
exposed to the full glare of light for about six seconds, the bright
surface was suddenly covered as with a film. Then patches of a darker
hue began coming out on its surface; and when in about three minutes
the tin was handed back to us, we found imprinted upon it a picture,
or rather a photograph, of the landscape that stretched out before us;
faithful as nature itself, and every color perfect. It remained for
about forty-eight hours and then slowly faded away.
This phenomenon is easily explained. The will of the adept condensed
upon the tin a film of _akâsa_ which made it for the time being like a
sensitized photographic plate. Light did the rest.
Such an exhibition as this of the potency of the will to effect even
objective physical results, will prepare the student to comprehend its
efficacy in the cure of disease by imparting the desired virtue to
inanimate objects which are placed in contact with the patient. When we
see such psychologists as Maudsley[702] quoting, without contradiction,
the stories of some miraculous cures effected by Swedenborg’s
father—stories which do not differ from hundreds of other cures by
other “fanatics” as he calls them—magicians, and natural healers, and,
without attempting to explain their facts, stooping to laugh at the
intensity of their faith, without asking himself whether the secret of
that healing potency were not in the control given by that faith over
occult forces—we grieve that there should be so much learning and so
little philosophy, in our time.
Upon our word, we cannot see that the modern chemist is any less a
magician than the ancient theurgist or Hermetic philosopher, except in
this: that the latter, recognizing the duality of nature, had twice as
wide a field for experimental research as the chemist. The ancients
animated statues, and the Hermetists called into being, out of the
elements, the shapes of salamanders, gnomes, undines, and sylphs, which
they did not pretend to create, but simply to make visible by holding
open the door of nature, so that, under favoring conditions, they might
step into view. The chemist brings into contact two elements contained
in the atmosphere, and by developing a latent force of affinity,
creates a new body—water. In the spheroidal and diaphanous pearls which
are born of this union of gases, come the germs of organic life, and
in their molecular interstices lurk heat, electricity, and light, just
as they do in the human body. Whence comes this life into the drop
of water just born of the union of two gases? And what is the water
itself? Have the oxygen and hydrogen undergone some transformation
which obliterates their qualities simultaneously with the obliteration
of their form? Here is the answer of modern science: “Whether the
oxygen and hydrogen exist as such, in the water, or whether they
are produced by some unknown and unconceived transformation of its
substance, is a question about which we may speculate, but in regard to
which we have no knowledge.”[703] Knowing nothing about so simple a
matter as the molecular constitution of water, or the deeper problem of
the appearance of life within it, would it not be well for Mr. Maudsley
to exemplify his own principle, and “maintain a _calm acquiescence in
ignorance until light comes_?”[704]
The claims of the friends of esoteric science, that Paracelsus
produced, chemically, _homunculi_ from certain combinations as yet
unknown to exact science, are, as a matter of course, relegated to the
storehouse of exploded humbugs. But why should they? If the _homunculi_
were not made by Paracelsus they were developed by other adepts, and
that not a thousand years ago. They were produced, in fact, upon
exactly the same principle as that by which the chemist and physicist
calls to life his _animalcula_. A few years ago, an English gentleman,
Andrew Crosse, of Somersetshire, produced _acari_ in the following
manner: “Black flint burned to redness and reduced to powder was mixed
with carbonate of potash, and exposed to a strong heat for fifteen
minutes; and the mixture was poured into a blacklead crucible in an air
furnace. It was reduced to powder while warm, mixed with boiling water;
kept boiling for some minutes, and then hydrochloric acid was added to
supersaturation. After being exposed to voltaic action for twenty-six
days, a perfect insect of the _acari_ tribe made its appearance, and
in the course of a few weeks about a hundred more. The experiment was
repeated with other chemical fluids with like results. A Mr. Weeks also
produced the _acari_ in ferrocyanide of potassium.
This discovery produced a great excitement. Mr. Crosse was now accused
of impiety and aiming at creation. He replied, denying the implication
and saying he considered ”_to create was to form a something out of a
nothing_.”[705]
Another gentleman, considered by several persons as a man of great
science, has told us repeatedly that he was on the eve of proving that
even unfructified eggs could be hatched by having a negative electric
current caused to pass through them.
The mandrakes (_dudim_ or love-fruit) found in the field by Reuben,
Jacob’s son, which excited the fancy of Rachel, was the kabalistic
_mandragora_, notwithstanding denial; and the verses which refer to it
belong to the _crudest_ passages, in their esoteric meaning, of the
whole work. The mandrake is a plant having the rudimentary shape of a
human creature; with a head, two arms, and two legs forming roots. The
superstition that when pulled out of the ground it cries with a human
voice, is not utterly baseless. It does produce a kind of squeaking
sound, on account of the resinous substance of its root, which it is
rather difficult to extract; and it has more than one hidden property
in it perfectly unknown to the botanist.
The reader who would obtain a clear idea of the commutation of forces
and the resemblance between the life-principles of plants, animals,
and human beings, may profitably consult a paper on the correlation
of nervous and mental forces by Professor Alexander Bain, of the
University of Aberdeen. This mandragora seems to occupy upon earth the
point where the vegetable and animal kingdoms touch, as the zoöphites
and polypi do in the sea; the boundary being in each case so indistinct
as to make it almost imperceptible where the one ceases and the other
begins. It may seem improbable that there should be _homunculi_, but
will any naturalist, in view of the recent expansion of science, dare
say it is impossible? “Who,” says Bain, “is to limit the possibilities
of existence?”
The unexplained mysteries of nature are many and of those presumably
explained hardly one may be said to have become absolutely
intelligible. There is not a plant or mineral which has disclosed the
last of its properties to the scientists. What do the naturalists know
of the intimate nature of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms? How can
they feel confident that for every one of the discovered properties
there may not be many powers concealed in the _inner_ nature of the
plant or stone? And that they are only waiting to be brought in
relation with some other plant, mineral, or force of nature to manifest
themselves in what is termed a “supernatural manner.” Wherever Pliny,
the naturalist, Ælian, and even Diodorus, who sought with such a
laudable perseverance to extricate historical truth from its medley of
exaggerations and fables, have attributed to some plant or mineral an
occult property unknown to our modern botanists and physicists, their
assertions have been laid aside without further ceremony as absurd, and
no more referred to.
It has been the speculation of men of science from time immemorial
what this vital force or life-principle is. To our mind the “secret
doctrine” alone is able to furnish the clew. Exact science recognizes
only five powers in nature—one _molar_, and four _molecular_;
kabalists, seven; and in these two additional ones is enwrapped
the whole mystery of life. One of these is immortal spirit, whose
reflection is connected by invisible links even with inorganic
matter; the other, we leave to every one to discover for himself.
Says Professor Joseph Le Conte: “What is the nature of the difference
between the living organism and the dead organism? We can detect
_none_, physical or chemical. All the physical and chemical forces
withdrawn from the common fund of nature, and embodied in the living
organism, seem to be still embodied in the dead, until little by
little it is returned by decomposition. Yet the difference is immense,
is inconceivably great. What is the nature of this difference expressed
in the formula of material science? What is that that is gone, and
whither is it gone? There is something here that science cannot yet
understand. Yet it is just this loss which takes place in death, and
before decomposition, which is in the highest sense vital force!”[706]
Difficult, nay impossible, as it seems to science to find out the
invisible, universal motor of all—_Life_, to explain its nature, or
even to suggest a reasonable hypothesis for the same, the mystery
is but half a mystery, not merely for the great adepts and seers,
but even for true and firm believers in a spiritual world. To the
simple believer, unblessed with a personal organism, the delicate,
nervous sensitiveness of which would enable him—as it enables a
seer—to perceive the visible universe reflected as in a clear glass
in the Invisible one, and, as it were, objectively, there remains
divine _faith_. The latter is firmly rooted in his inner senses; in
his unerring intuition, with which cold reason has naught to do, he
_feels_ it cannot play him false. Let human-born, erroneous dogmas,
and theological sophistry contradict each other; let one crowd off the
other, and the subtile casuistry of one creed fell to the ground the
crafty reasoning of another one; truth remains one, and there is not a
religion, whether Christian or heathen, that is not firmly built upon
the rock of ages—God and immortal spirit.
Every animal is more or less endowed with the faculty of perceiving,
if not spirits, at least something which remains for the time being
invisible to common men, and can only be discerned by a clairvoyant. We
have made hundreds of experiments with cats, dogs, monkeys of various
kinds, and, once, with a tame tiger. A round black mirror, known as the
“magic crystal,” was strongly mesmerized by a native Hindu gentleman,
formerly an inhabitant of Dindigul, and now residing in a more secluded
spot, among the mountains known as the Western Ghauts. He had tamed
a young cub, brought to him from the Malabar coast, in which part
of India the tigers are proverbially ferocious; and it is with this
interesting animal that we made our experiments.
Like the ancient Marsi and Psylli, the renowned serpent-charmers, this
gentleman claimed to be possessed of the mysterious power of taming any
kind of animal. The tiger was reduced to a chronic _mental numbness_,
so to say; he had become as inoffensive and harmless as a dog. Children
could tease and pull him by the ears, and he would only shake himself
and howl like a dog. But whenever forced to look into the “magic
mirror,” the poor animal was instantly excited to a sort of frenzy.
His eyes became full of a _human_ terror; howling in despair, unable
to turn away from the mirror to which his gaze seemed riveted as by
a magnetic spell, he would writhe and tremble till he convulsed with
fear at some vision which to us remained unknown. He would then lie
down, feebly groaning but still gazing in the glass. When it was taken
away from him, the animal would lie panting and seemingly prostrated
for about two hours. What did he see? What spirit-picture from his own
invisible, _animal_-world, could produce such a terrific effect on the
wild and naturally ferocious and daring beast? Who can tell? Perhaps
_he_ who produced the scene.
The same effect on animals was observed during spiritual _seances_
with some holy mendicants; the same when a Syrian, half-heathen and
half-Christian, from Kunankulam (Cochin State), a reputed sorcerer, who
was invited to join us for the sake of experimenting.
We were nine persons in all—seven men and two women, one of the
latter a native. Besides us, there were in the room, the young tiger,
intensely occupied on a bone; a _wânderoo_, or lion-monkey, which,
with its black coat and snow-white goatee and whiskers, and cunning,
sparkling eyes, looked the personification of mischief; and a beautiful
golden oriole, quietly cleaning its radiant-colored tail on a perch,
placed near a large window of the veranda. In India, “spiritual”
seances are not held in the dark, as in America; and no conditions,
but perfect silence and harmony, are required. It was in the full
glare of daylight streaming through the opened doors and windows, with
a far-away buzz of life from the neighboring forests, and jungles
sending us the echo of myriads of insects, birds, and animals. We sat
in the midst of a garden in which the house was built, and instead of
breathing the stifling atmosphere of a seance-room, we were amid the
fire-colored clusters of the erythrina—the coral tree—inhaling the
fragrant aromas of trees and shrubs, and the flowers of the bignonia,
whose white blossoms trembled in the soft breeze. In short, we were
surrounded with light, harmony, and perfumes. Large nosegays of flowers
and shrubs, sacred to the native gods, were gathered for the purpose,
and brought into the rooms. We had the sweet basil, the Vishnu-flower,
without which no religious ceremony in Bengal will ever take place; and
the branches of the _Ficus religiosa_, the tree dedicated to the same
bright deity, intermingling their leaves with the rosy blossoms of the
sacred lotos and the Indian tuberose, profusely ornamented the walls.
While the “blessed one” represented by a very dirty, but, nevertheless,
really holy fakir—remained plunged in self-contemplation, and some
spiritual wonders were taking place under the direction of his will,
the monkey and the bird exhibited but few signs of restlessness. The
tiger alone visibly trembled at intervals, and stared around the
room, as if his phosphorically-shining green orbs were following some
invisible presence as it floated up and down. That which was as yet
unperceived by human eyes, must have therefore been _objective_ to him.
As to the wânderoo, all its liveliness had fled; it seemed drowsy,
and sat crouching and motionless. The bird gave few, if any, signs of
uneasiness. There was a sound as of gently-flapping wings in the air;
the flowers went travelling about the room, displaced by invisible
hands; and, as a glorious azure-tinted flower fell on the folded paws
of the monkey, it gave a nervous start, and sought refuge under its
master’s white robe. These displays lasted for an hour, and it would be
too long to relate all of them; the most curious of all, being the one
which closed that season of wonders. Somebody complaining of the heat,
we had a shower of delicately-perfumed dew. The drops fell fast and
large, and conveyed a feeling of inexpressible refreshment, drying the
instant after touching our persons.
When the fakir had brought his exhibition of _white_ magic to a close,
the “sorcerer,” or conjurer, as they are called, prepared to display
his power. We were treated to a succession of the wonders that the
accounts of travellers have made familiar to the public; showing,
among other things, the fact that animals naturally possess the
clairvoyant faculty, and even, it would seem, the ability to discern
between the good and the bad spirits. All of the sorcerer’s feats were
preceded by fumigations. He burned branches of resinous trees and
shrubs, which sent up volumes of smoke. Although there was nothing
about this calculated to affright an animal using only his natural
eyes, the tiger, monkey, and bird exhibited an indescribable terror.
We suggested that the animals might be frightened at the blazing
brands, the familiar custom of burning fires round the camp to keep
off wild beasts, recurring to our mind. To leave no doubt upon this
point, the Syrian approached the crouching tiger with a branch of the
Bael-tree[707] (sacred to Siva), and waved it several times over his
head, muttering, meanwhile, his incantations. The brute instantly
displayed a panic of terror beyond description. His eyes started
from their sockets like blazing fire-balls; he foamed at the mouth;
he flung himself upon the floor, as if seeking some hole in which to
hide himself; he uttered scream after scream, that awoke a hundred
responsive echoes from the jungle and the woods. Finally, taking a
last look at the spot from which his eyes had never wandered, he made
a desperate plunge, which snapped his chain, and dashed through the
window of the veranda, carrying a piece of the frame-work with him. The
monkey had fled long before, and the bird fell from the perch as though
paralyzed.
We did not ask either the fakir or sorcerer for an explanation of
the method by which their respective phenomena were effected. If
we had, unquestionably they would have replied as did a fakir to a
French traveller, who tells his story in a recent number of a New York
newspaper, called the _Franco-Americain_, as follows:
“Many of these Hindu jugglers who live in the silence of the pagodas
perform feats far surpassing the prestidigitations of Robert Houdin,
and there are many others who produce the most curious phenomena in
magnetism and catalepsy upon the first objects that come across their
way, that I have often wondered whether the Brahmans, with their occult
sciences, have not made great discoveries in the questions which have
recently been agitated in Europe.
“On one occasion, while I and others were in a café with Sir Maswell,
he ordered his dobochy to introduce the charmer. In a few moments
a lean Hindu, almost naked, with an ascetic face and bronzed color
entered. Around his neck, arms, thighs, and body were coiled serpents
of different sizes. After saluting us, he said, ‘God be with you, I am
Chibh-Chondor, son of Chibh-Gontnalh-Mava.’
“‘We desire to see what you can do,’ said our host.
“‘I obey the orders of Siva, who has sent me here,’ replied the fakir,
squatting down on one of the marble slabs.
“The serpents raised their heads and hissed, but without showing any
anger. Then taking a small pipe, attached to a wick in his hair,
he produced scarcely audible sounds, imitating the _tailapaca_, a
bird that feeds upon bruised cocoanuts. Here the serpents uncoiled
themselves, and one after another glided to the floor. As soon as
they touched the ground they raised about one-third of their bodies,
and began to keep time to their master’s music. Suddenly the fakir
dropped his instrument and made several passes with his hands over the
serpents, of whom there were about ten, all of the most deadly species
of Indian cobra. His eye assumed a strange expression. We all felt an
undefinable uneasiness, and sought to turn away our gaze from him. At
this moment a small shocra[708] (monkey) whose business was to hand
fire in a small brasier for lighting cigars, yielded to his influence,
lay down, and fell asleep. Five minutes passed thus, and we felt that
if the manipulations were to continue a few seconds more we should all
fall asleep. Chondor then rose, and making two more passes over the
shocra, said to it: ‘Give the commander some fire.’ The young monkey
rose, and without tottering, came and offered fire to its master.
It was pinched, pulled about, till there was no doubt of its being
actually asleep. Nor would it move from Sir Maswell’s side till ordered
to do so by the fakir.
“We then examined the cobras. Paralyzed by magnetic influence, they lay
at full length on the ground. On taking them up we found them stiff
as sticks. They were in a state of complete catalepsy. The fakir then
awakened them, on which they returned and again coiled themselves round
his body. We inquired whether he could make us feel his influence. He
made a few passes over our legs, and instantly we lost the use of these
limbs; we could not leave our seats. He released us as easily as he had
paralyzed us.
“Chibh-Chondor closed his seance by experimenting upon inanimate
objects. By mere passes with his hands in the direction of the
object to be acted upon, and without leaving his seat, he paled and
extinguished lights in the furthest parts of the room, moved the
furniture, including the divans upon which we sat, opened and closed
doors. Catching sight of a Hindu who was drawing water from a well in
the garden, he made a pass in his direction, and the rope suddenly
stopped in its descent, resisting all the efforts of the astonished
gardener. With another pass the rope again descended.
“I asked Chibh-Chondor: ‘Do you employ the same means in acting upon
inanimate objects that you do upon living creatures?’
“He replied, ‘I have only one means.’
“‘What is it?’
“‘The will. Man, who is the end of all intellectual and material
forces, must dominate over all. The Brahmans know nothing besides
this.’”
“Sanang Setzen,” says Colonel Yule,[709] “enumerates a variety of the
wonderful acts which could be performed through the _Dharani_ (mystic
Hindu charms). Such were sticking a peg into solid rock; restoring the
dead to life; turning a dead body into gold; penetrating everywhere _as
air does_ (in astral form); flying; catching wild beasts with the hand;
reading thoughts; making water flow backward; eating tiles; sitting in
the air with the legs doubled under, etc.” Old legends ascribe to Simon
Magus precisely the same powers. “He made statues to walk; leaped into
the fire without being burned; flew in the air; made bread of stones;
changed his shape; assumed two faces at once; converted himself into a
pillar; caused closed doors to fly open spontaneously; made the vessels
in a house move of themselves, etc.” The Jesuit Delrio laments that
credulous princes, otherwise of pious repute, should have allowed
_diabolical_ tricks to be played before them, “as for example, things
of iron, and silver goblets, or other heavy articles, to be moved by
bounds, from one end of the table to the other, _without the use of a
magnet_, or of any attachment.”[710] We believe WILL-POWER the most
powerful of magnets. The existence of such magical power in certain
persons _is proved_, but the existence of the Devil is a fiction, which
no theology is able to demonstrate.
“There are certain men whom the Tartars honor above all in the world,”
says Friar Ricold, “viz., the _Baxitæ_, who are a kind of idol-priests.
These are men from India, persons of deep wisdom, _well-conducted and
of the gravest morals_. They are usually with magic arts ... they
exhibit many illusions, and predict future events. For instance, one of
eminence among them was said to fly; but the truth, however, was as it
proved, that he did not fly, but did walk close to the surface of the
ground without touching it; _and would seem to sit down without having
any substance to support him_.[711] This last performance was witnessed
by Ibn Batuta, at Delhi,” adds Colonel Yule, who quotes the friar
in the _Book of Ser Marco Polo_, “in the presence of Sultan Mahomet
Tughlak; and it was professedly exhibited by a Brahman at Madras in
the present century, a descendant doubtless of those Brahmans whom
Apollonius saw walking two cubits from the ground. It is also described
by the worthy Francis Valentyn, as a performance known and practiced in
his own day in India. It is related, he says, that “a man will first
go and sit on three sticks put together so as to form a tripod; after
which, first one stick, then a second, then a third shall be removed
from under him, and the man shall not fall but shall still remain
sitting in the air! Yet I have spoken with two friends who had seen
this at one and the same time; and one of them, I may add, mistrusting
his own eyes, had taken the trouble to feel about with a long stick
if there were nothing on which the body rested; yet, as the gentleman
told me, he could neither feel nor see any such thing. We have stated
elsewhere that the same thing was accomplished last year, before the
Prince of Wales and his suite.
Such feats as the above are nothing in comparison to what is done by
professed jugglers; “feats,” remarks the above-quoted author, “which
might be regarded as simply inventions if told by one author only, but
which seem to deserve _prominent notice_ from being recounted by a
series of authors, certainly independent of one another, and writing
at long intervals of time and place. Our first witness is Ibn Batuta,
and it will be necessary to quote him as well as the others in full,
in order to show how closely their evidence tallies. The Arab traveller
was present at a great entertainment at the court of the Viceroy of
Khansa. “That same night a juggler, who was one of the Khan’s slaves,
made his appearance, and the Amir said to him, ‘Come and show us some
of your marvels.’ Upon this he took a wooden ball, with several holes
in it, through which long thongs were passed, and laying hold of one of
these, slung it into the air. It went so high that we lost sight of it
altogether.... (We were in the middle of the palace-court.) There now
remained only a little of the end of a thong in the conjurer’s hand,
and he desired one of the boys who assisted him to lay hold of it and
mount. He did so, climbing by the thong, and we lost sight of him also!
The conjurer then called to him three times, but, getting no answer,
he snatched up a knife as if in a great rage, laid hold of the thong,
and disappeared also! By and bye, he threw down one of the boy’s hands,
then a foot, then the other hand, and then the other foot, then the
trunk, and last of all the head! Then he came down himself, puffing and
panting, and with his clothes all bloody kissed the ground before the
Amir, and said something to him in Chinese. The Amir gave some order in
reply, and our friend then took the lad’s limbs, laid them together in
their places, and gave a kick, when, presto! there was the boy, who got
up and stood before us! All this astonished me beyond measure, and I
had an attack of palpitation like that which overcame me once before in
the presence of the Sultan of India, when he showed me something of the
same kind. They gave me a cordial, however, which cured the attack. The
Kaji Afkharuddin was next to me, and quoth he, ‘Wallah! ‘tis my opinion
there has been neither going up nor coming down, neither marring, nor
mending! ’Tis all _hocus-pocus_!’
And who doubts but that it is a “hocus-pocus,” an illusion, or _Maya_,
as the Hindus express it? But when such an illusion can be forced on,
say, ten thousand people at the same time, as we have seen it performed
during a public festival, surely the means by which such an astounding
hallucination can be produced merits the attention of science! When
by such _magic_ a man who stands before you, in a room, the doors of
which you have closed and of which the keys are in your hand, suddenly
disappears, vanishes like a flash of light, and you see him _nowhere_
but hear his voice from different parts of the room addressing you and
laughing at your perplexity, surely such an art is not unworthy either
of Mr. Huxley or Dr. Carpenter. Is it not quite as well worth spending
time over, as the lesser mystery—why barnyard cocks crow at midnight?
What Ibn Batuta, the Moor, saw in China about the year 1348, Colonel
Yule shows Edward Melton, “an Anglo-Dutch traveller,” witnessing in
Batavia about the year 1670: “One of the same gang” (of conjurers),
says Melton,[712] “took a small ball of cord, and grasping one end of
the cord in his hand slung the other up into the air with such force
that its extremity was beyond reach of our sight. He then climbed up
the cord with indescribable swiftness.... I stood full of astonishment,
not conceiving where he had disappeared; when lo! a leg came tumbling
down out of the air. A moment later a hand came down, etc.... In short,
all the members of the body came successively tumbling from the air and
were cast together by the attendant into the basket. The last fragment
of all was the head, and no sooner had that touched the ground than he
who had snatched up all the limbs and put them in the basket, turned
them all out again topsy turvy. Then straightway we saw _with these
eyes all those limbs creep together_ again, and, in short, form a whole
man, who at once could stand and go just as before without showing the
least damage!... Never in my life was I so astonished ... and I doubted
now no longer that these misguided men did it by the help of the Devil.”
In the memoirs of the Emperor Jahangire, the performances of seven
jugglers from Bengal, who exhibited before him, are thus described:
“_Ninth._ They produced a man whom they divided limb from limb,
actually severing his head from the body. They scattered these
mutilated members along the ground, and in this state they lay some
time. They then extended a sheet over the spot, and one of the men
putting himself under the sheet, in a few minutes came from below,
followed by the individual supposed to have been cut into joints,
in perfect health and condition.... _Twenty-third._ They produced a
chain of fifty cubits in length, and in my presence threw one end of
it toward the sky, _where it remained as if fastened to something
in the air_. A dog was then brought forward and being placed at the
lower end of the chain, immediately ran up, and reaching the other
end, _immediately disappeared in the air_. In the same manner a hog, a
panther, a lion, and a tiger were successively sent up the chain, and
all equally disappeared at the upper end of the chain. At last they
took down the chain, and put it into the bag, no one ever discovering
in what way the different animals were made to vanish into the air in
the mysterious manner above described.”[713]
We have in our possession a picture painted from such a Persian
conjurer, with a man, or rather the various limbs of what was a minute
before a man, scattered before him. We have seen such conjurers, and
witnessed such performances more than once and in various places.
Bearing ever in mind that we repudiate the idea of a miracle and
returning once more to phenomena more serious, we would now ask what
logical objection can be urged against the claim that the reänimation
of the dead was accomplished by many thaumaturgists? The fakir
described in the _Franco-Americain_, might have gone far enough to say
that this will-power of man is so tremendously potential that it can
reänimate a body apparently dead, by drawing back the flitting soul
that has not yet quite ruptured the thread that through life had bound
the two together. Dozens of such fakirs have allowed themselves to be
buried alive before thousands of witnesses, and weeks afterward have
been resuscitated. And if fakirs have the secret of this artificial
process, identical with, or analogous to, hibernation, why not allow
that their ancestors, the Gymnosophists, and Apollonius of Tyana, who
had studied with the latter in India, and Jesus, and other prophets and
seers, who all knew more about the mysteries of life and death than
any of our modern men of science, might have resuscitated dead men
and women? And being quite familiar with that power—that mysterious
_something_ “that science cannot yet understand,” as Professor Le Conte
confesses—knowing, moreover, “whence it came and whither it was going,”
Elisha, Jesus, Paul, and Apollonius, enthusiastic ascetics and learned
initiates, might have recalled to life with ease any man who “was not
dead but sleeping,” and that without any miracle.
If the molecules of the cadaver are imbued with the physical and
chemical forces of the living organism,[714] what is to prevent them
from being set again in motion, provided we know the nature of the
vital force, and who to command it? The materialist can certainly
offer no objection, for with him it is no question of reïnfusing a
soul. For him the soul has no existence, and the human body may be
regarded simply as a vital engine—a locomotive which will start upon
the application of heat and force, and stop when they are withdrawn. To
the theologian the case offers greater difficulties, for, in his view,
death cuts asunder the tie which binds soul and body, and the one can
no more be returned into the other without miracle than the born infant
can be compelled to resume its fœtal life after parturition and the
severing of the umbilicus. But the Hermetic philosopher stands between
these two irreconcilable antagonists, _master of the situation_. He
knows the nature of the soul—a form composed of nervous fluid and
atmospheric ether—and knows how the vital force can be made active
or passive at will, so long as there is no final destruction of some
necessary organ. The claims of Gaffarilus—which, by the bye, appeared
so preposterous in 1650[715]—were later corroborated by science. He
maintained that every object existing in nature, provided it was not
artificial, when once burned still retained its form in the ashes, in
which it remained till raised again. Du Chesne, an eminent chemist,
assured himself of the fact. Kircher, Digby, and Vallemont have
demonstrated that the forms of plants could be resuscitated from their
ashes. At a meeting of naturalists in 1834, at Stuttgart, a receipt for
producing such experiments was found in a work of Oetinger.[716] Ashes
of burned plants contained in vials, when heated, exhibited again their
various forms. “A small obscure cloud gradually rose in the vial, took
a defined form, and presented to the eye the flower or plant the ashes
consisted of.” “The earthly husk,” wrote Oetinger, “remains in the
retort, while the volatile essence ascends, _like a spirit_, perfect in
form, but void of substance.”[717]
And, if the astral form of even a plant when its body is dead still
lingers in the ashes, will skeptics persist in saying that the soul of
_man_, the _inner_ ego, is after the death of the grosser form at once
dissolved, and is no more? “At death,” says the philosopher, “the one
body exudes from the other, by osmose and through the brain; it is held
near its old garment by a double attraction, physical and spiritual,
until the latter decomposes; and if the proper conditions are given
the soul can reïnhabit it and resume the suspended life. It does it
in sleep; it does it more thoroughly in trance; most surprisingly at
the command and with the assistance of the Hermetic adept. Iamblichus
declared that a person endowed with such resuscitating powers is ‘full
of God.’ All the subordinate spirits of the upper spheres are at his
command, for he is no longer a mortal, but himself a god. In his
_Epistle to the Corinthians_, Paul remarks that ‘the spirits of the
prophets _are subject to the prophets_.’”
Some persons have the natural and some the acquired power of
withdrawing the _inner_ from the _outer_ body, at will, and causing it
to perform long journeys, and be seen by those whom it visits. Numerous
are the instances recorded by unimpeachable witnesses of the “doubles”
of persons having been seen and conversed with, hundreds of miles from
the places where the persons themselves were known to be. Hermotimus,
if we may credit Pliny and Plutarch,[718] could at will fall into a
trance and then his _second_ soul proceeded to any distant place he
chose.
The Abbé Fretheim, the famous author of _Steganographie_, who lived in
the seventeenth century, could converse with his friends by the mere
power of his will. “I can make my thoughts known to the initiated,”
he wrote, “at a distance of many hundred miles, without word, writing,
or cipher, by any messenger. The latter cannot betray me, for he
knows nothing. If needs be, I can dispense with the messenger. If any
correspondent should be buried in the deepest dungeon, I could still
convey to him my thoughts as clearly and as frequently as I chose, and
this quite simply, without superstition, without the aid of spirits.”
Cordanus could also send his spirit, or any messages he chose. When
he did so, he felt “as if a door was opened, and I myself immediately
passed through it, leaving the body behind me.”[719] The case of a high
German official, a counsellor Wesermann, was mentioned in a scientific
paper.[720] He claimed to be able to cause any friend or acquaintance,
at any distance, to dream of every subject he chose, or see any person
he liked. His claims were proved good, and testified to on several
occasions by skeptics and learned professional persons. He could also
cause his double to appear wherever he liked; and be seen by several
persons at one time. By whispering in their ears a sentence prepared
and agreed upon beforehand by unbelievers, and for the purpose, his
power to project the double was demonstrated beyond any cavil.
According to Napier, Osborne, Major Lawes, Quenouillet, Nikiforovitch,
and many other modern witnesses, fakirs are now proved to be able,
by a long course of diet, preparation, and repose, to bring their
bodies into a condition which enables them to be buried six feet under
ground for an indefinite period. Sir Claude Wade was present at the
court of Rundjit Singh, when the fakir, mentioned by the Honorable
Captain Osborne, was buried alive for six weeks, in a box placed in
a cell three feet below the floor of the room.[721] To prevent the
chance of deception, a guard comprising two companies of soldiers had
been detailed, and four sentries “were furnished and relieved every
two hours, night and day, to guard the building from intrusion.... On
opening it,” says Sir Claude, “we saw a figure enclosed in a bag of
white linen fastened by a string over the head ... the servant then
began pouring warm water over the figure ... the legs and arms of the
body were shrivelled and stiff, the face, full, the head reclining
on the shoulder like that of a corpse. I then called to the medical
gentleman who was attending me, to come down and inspect the body,
which he did, but could discover no pulsation in the heart, the
temples, or the arm. There was, however, _a heat about the region of
the brain_, which no other part of the body exhibited.”
Regretting that the limits of our space forbid the quotation of the
details of this interesting story, we will only add, that the process
of resuscitation included bathing with hot water, friction, the removal
of wax and cotton pledgets from the nostrils and ears, the rubbing of
the eyelids with ghee or clarified butter, and, what will appear most
curious to many, the application of a hot wheaten cake, about an inch
thick “to the top of the head.” After the cake had been applied for
the third time, the body was violently convulsed, the nostrils became
inflated, the respiration ensued, and the limbs assumed a natural
fulness; but the pulsation was still faintly perceptible.“ The tongue
was then anointed with ghee; the eyeballs became dilated and recovered
their natural color, and the fakir recognized those present and
spoke.” It should be noticed that not only had the nostrils and ears
been plugged, but the tongue had been thrust back so as to close the
gullet, thus effectually stopping the orifices against the admission
of atmospheric air. While in India, a fakir told us that this was done
not only to prevent the action of the air upon the organic tissues,
but also to guard against the deposit of the germs of decay, which in
case of suspended animation would cause decomposition exactly as they
do in any other meat exposed to air. There are also localities in which
a fakir would refuse to be buried; such as the many spots in Southern
India infested with the white ants, which annoying termites are
considered among the most dangerous enemies of man and his property.
They are so voracious as to devour everything they find except perhaps
metals. As to wood, there is no kind through which they would not
burrow; and even bricks and mortar offer but little impediment to their
formidable armies. They will patiently work through mortar, destroying
it particle by particle; and a fakir, however holy himself, and strong
his temporary coffin, would not risk finding his body devoured when it
was time for his resuscitation.
Then, here is a case, only one of many, substantiated by the testimony
of two English noblemen—one of them an army officer—and a Hindu Prince,
who was as great a skeptic as themselves. It places science in this
embarrassing dilemma: it must either give the lie to many unimpeachable
witnesses, or admit that if one fakir can resuscitate after six
weeks, any other fakir can also; and if a fakir, why not a Lazarus, a
Shunamite boy, or the daughter of Jairus?[722]
And now, perhaps, it may not be out of place to inquire what assurance
can any physician have, beyond _external_ evidence, that the body
is really dead? The best authorities agree in saying that there are
none. Dr. Todd Thomson, of London,[723] says most positively that “the
immobility of the body, even its cadaverous aspect, the coldness of
surface, the absence of respiration and pulsation, and the sunken state
of the eye, are no unequivocal evidences that life is wholly extinct.”
Nothing but total decomposition is an irrefutable proof that _life_
has fled for ever and that the tabernacle is tenantless. Demokritus
asserted that there existed no _certain_ signs of real death.[724]
Pliny maintained the same.[725] Asclepiades, a learned physician and
one of the most distinguished men of his day, held that the assurance
was still more difficult in the cases of women than in those of men.
Todd Thomson, above quoted, gives several remarkable cases of such
a suspended animation. Among others he mentions a certain Francis
Neville, a Norman gentleman, who twice apparently died, and was
twice in the act of being buried. But, at the moment when the coffin
was being lowered in the grave, he spontaneously revived. In the
seventeenth century, Lady Russell, to all appearance died, and was
about to be buried, but as the bell was tolling for her funeral, she
sat up in her coffin and exclaimed, “It is time to go to church!”
Diemerbroese, mentions a peasant who gave no signs of life for three
days, but when placed in his coffin, near the grave, revived and lived
many years afterward. In 1836, a respectable citizen of Brussels
fell into a profound lethargy on a Sunday morning. On Monday, as his
attendants were preparing to screw the lid of the coffin, the supposed
corpse sat up, rubbed his eyes, and called for his coffee and a
newspaper.[726]
Such cases of apparent death are not very infrequently reported in
the newspaper press. As we write (April, 1877), we find in a London
letter to the New York _Times_, the following paragraph: “Miss Annie
Goodale, the actress, died three weeks ago. Up to yesterday she was
not buried. The corpse is warm and limp, and the features as soft and
mobile as when in life. Several physicians have examined her, and have
ordered that the body shall be watched night and day. The poor lady is
evidently in a trance, but whether she is destined to come to life it
is impossible to say.”
Science regards man as an aggregation of atoms temporarily united by
a mysterious force called the life-principle. To the materialist, the
only difference between a living and a dead body is, that in the one
case, that force is active, in the other latent. When it is extinct or
entirely latent the molecules obey a superior attraction, which draws
them asunder and scatters them through space.
This dispersion must be death, if it is possible to conceive such a
thing as death, where the very molecules of the dead body manifest an
intense vital energy. If death is but the stoppage of a digesting,
locomotive, and thought-grinding machine, how can death be actual
and not relative, before that machine is thoroughly broken up and
its particles dispersed? So long as any of them cling together, the
centripetal vital force may overmatch the dispersive centrifugal
action. Says Eliphas Levi: “Change attests movement, and movement only
reveals life. The corpse would not decompose if it were dead; all the
molecules which compose it are living and struggle to separate. And
would you think that the spirit frees itself first of all to exist no
more? That thought and love can die when the grossest forms of matter
do not die? If the change should be called death, we die and are born
again every day, for every day our forms undergo change.”[727]
The kabalists say that a man is not dead when his body is entombed.
Death is never sudden; for, according to Hermes, nothing goes in nature
by violent transitions. Everything is gradual, and as it required a
long and gradual development to produce the living human being, so time
is required to completely withdraw vitality from the carcass.“ Death
can no more be an absolute end, than birth a real beginning. Birth
proves the preëxistence of the being, as death proves immortality,”
says the same French kabalist.
While implicitly believing in the restoration of the daughter of
Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, and in other Bible-miracles,
well-educated Christians, who otherwise would feel indignant at being
called superstitious, meet all such cases as that of Apollonius and the
girl said by his biographer to have been recalled to life by him, with
scornful skepticism. Diogenes Laërtius, who mentions a woman restored
to life by Empedocles, is treated with no more respect; and the name of
Pagan thaumaturgist, in the eyes of Christians, is but a synonym for
impostor. Our scientists are at least one degree more rational; they
embrace all Bible prophets and apostles, and the heathen miracle-doers
in two categories of hallucinated fools and deceitful tricksters.
But Christians and materialists might, with a very little effort
on their part, show themselves fair and logical at the same time.
To produce such a miracle, they have but to consent to understand
what they read, and submit it to the unprejudiced criticism of their
best judgment. Let us see how far it is possible. Setting aside the
incredible fiction of Lazarus, we will select two cases: the ruler’s
daughter, recalled to life by Jesus, and the Corinthian bride,
resuscitated by Apollonius. In the former case, totally disregarding
the significant expression of Jesus—“_She is not dead but sleepeth_,”
the clergy force their god to become a breaker of his own laws and
grant unjustly to one what he denies to all others, and with no better
object in view than to produce a useless miracle. In the second case,
notwithstanding the words of the biographer of Apollonius, so plain
and precise that there is not the slightest cause to misunderstand
them, they charge Philostratus with deliberate imposture. Who could be
fairer than he, who less open to the charge of mystification, when, in
describing the resuscitation of the young girl by the Tyanian sage, in
the presence of a large concourse of people, the biographer says, “she
had _seemed_ to die.”
In other words, he very clearly indicates a case of suspended
animation; and then adds immediately, “as the rain fell very fast on
the young girl,” while she was being carried to the pile, “with her
face turned upwards, this, _also_, might have excited her senses.”[728]
Does this not show most plainly that Philostratus saw _no_ miracle in
that resuscitation? Does it not rather imply, if anything, the great
learning and skill of Apollonius, “who like Asclepiades had the merit
of distinguishing at a glance between real and apparent death?”[729]
A resuscitation, after the soul and spirit have entirely separated from
the body, and the last electric thread is severed, is as impossible as
for a once disembodied spirit to reïncarnate itself once more on this
earth, except as described in previous chapters. “A leaf, once fallen
off, does not reättach itself to the branch,” says Eliphas Levi. “The
caterpillar becomes a butterfly, but the butterfly does not again
return to the grub. Nature closes the door behind all that passes, and
pushes life forward. Forms pass, thought remains, and does not recall
that which it has once exhausted.”[730]
Why should it be imagined that Asclepiades and Apollonius enjoyed
exceptional powers for the discernment of actual death? Has any modern
school of medicine this knowledge to impart to its students? Let their
authorities answer for them. These prodigies of Jesus and Apollonius
are so well attested that they appear authentic. Whether in either or
both cases life was simply suspended or not, the important fact remains
that by some power, peculiar to themselves, both the wonder-workers
recalled the _seemingly dead_ to life in an instant.[731]
Is it because the modern physician has not yet found the secret which
the theurgists evidently possessed that its possibility is denied?
Neglected as psychology now is, and with the strangely chaotic state
in which physiology is confessed to be by its most fair students,
certainly it is not very likely that our men of science will soon
rediscover the lost knowledge of the ancients. In the days of old,
when prophets were not treated as charlatans, nor thaumaturgists as
impostors, there were colleges instituted for teaching prophecy and
occult sciences in general. Samuel is recorded as the chief of such an
institution at Ramah; Elisha, also, at Jericho. The schools of _hazim_,
prophets or seers, were celebrated throughout the country. Hillel had a
regular academy, and Socrates is well known to have sent away several
of his disciples to study _manticism_. The study of magic, or wisdom,
included every branch of science, the metaphysical as well as the
physical, psychology and physiology in their common and occult phases,
and the study of alchemy was universal, for it was both a physical and
a spiritual science. Therefore why doubt or wonder that the ancients,
who studied nature under its double aspect, achieved discoveries which
to our modern physicists, who study but its dead letter, are a closed
book?
Thus, the question at issue is not whether a _dead_ body can be
resuscitated—for, to assert that would be to assume the possibility
of a miracle, which is absurd—but, to assure ourselves whether the
medical authorities pretend to determine the precise moment of death.
The kabalists say that death occurs at the instant when both the astral
body, or life-principle, and the spirit part forever with the corporeal
body. The scientific physician who denies both astral body and spirit,
and admits the existence of nothing more than the life-principle,
judges death to occur when life is apparently extinct. When the beating
of the heart and the action of the lungs cease, and _rigor mortis_ is
manifested, and especially when decomposition begins, they pronounce
the patient dead. But the annals of medicine teem with examples of
“suspended animation” as the result of asphyxia by drowning, the
inhalation of gases and other causes; life being restored in the case
of drowning persons even after they had been apparently dead for twelve
hours.
In cases of somnambulic trance, none of the ordinary signs of death
are lacking; breathing and the pulse are extinct; animal-heat has
disappeared; the muscles are rigid, the eye glazed, and the body is
colorless. In the celebrated case of Colonel Townshend, he threw
himself into this state in the presence of three medical men; who,
after a time, were persuaded that he was really dead, and were about
leaving the room, when he slowly revived. He describes his peculiar
gift by saying that he “could die or expire when he pleased, and yet,
by an effort, or _somehow_, he could come to life again.”
There occurred in Moscow, a few years since, a remarkable instance of
apparent death. The wife of a wealthy merchant lay in the cataleptic
state seventeen days, during which the authorities made several
attempts to bury her; but, as decomposition had not set in, the family
averted the ceremony, and at the end of that time she was restored to
life.
The above instances show that the most learned men in the medical
profession are unable to be certain when a person is dead. What they
call “suspended animation,” is that state from which the patient
spontaneously recovers, through an effort of his own spirit, which
may be provoked by any one of many causes. In these cases, the astral
body has not parted from the physical body; its external functions
are simply suspended; the subject is in a state of torpor, and the
restoration is nothing but a recovery from it.
But, in the case of what physiologists would call “real death,” but
which is not actually so, the astral body has withdrawn; perhaps local
decomposition has set in. How shall the man be brought to life again?
The answer is, the interior body must be forced back into the exterior
one, and vitality reawakened in the latter. The clock has run down,
it must be wound. If death is absolute; if the organs have not only
ceased to act, but have lost the susceptibility of renewed action, then
the whole universe would have to be thrown into chaos to resuscitate
the corpse—a miracle would be demanded. But, as we said before, the
man is not dead when he is cold, stiff, pulseless, breathless, and
even showing signs of decomposition; he is not dead when buried, nor
afterward, until a certain point is reached. That point is, _when
the vital organs have become so decomposed, that if reänimated, they
could not perform their customary functions_; when the mainspring and
cogs of the machine, so to speak, are so eaten away by rust, that
they would snap upon the turning of the key. Until that point is
reached, the astral body may be caused, without miracle, to reënter
its former tabernacle, either by an effort of its own will, or under
the resistless impulse of the will of one who knows the potencies of
nature and how to direct them. The spark is not extinguished, but only
latent—latent as the fire in the flint, or the heat in the cold iron.
In cases of the most profound cataleptic clairvoyance, such as obtained
by Du Potet, and described very graphically by the late Prof. William
Gregory, in his _Letters on Animal Magnetism_, the spirit is so
far disengaged from the body that it would be impossible for it to
re-enter it without an effort of the mesmerizer’s will. The subject
is practically dead, and, if left to itself, the spirit would escape
forever. Although independent of the torpid physical casing, the
half-freed spirit is still tied to it by a magnetic cord, which is
described by clairvoyants as appearing dark and smoky by contrast with
the ineffable brightness of the astral atmosphere through which they
look. Plutarch, relating the story of Thespesius, who fell from a great
height, and lay three days apparently dead, gives us the experience
of the latter during his state of partial decease. “Thespesius,” says
he, “then observed that he was different from the dead by whom he was
surrounded.... They were transparent and environed by a radiance, but
he seemed to trail after him a dark radiation or line of shadow.” His
whole description, minute and circumstantial in its details, appears
to be corroborated by the clairvoyants of every period, and, so far as
this class of testimony can be taken, is important. The kabalists, as
we find them interpreted by Eliphas Levi, in his _Science des Esprits_,
say that, “When a man falls into the last sleep, he is plunged at first
into a sort of dream, before gaining consciousness in the other side
of life. He sees, then, either in a beautiful vision, or in a terrible
nightmare, the paradise or hell, in which he believed during his mortal
existence. This is why it often happens, that the affrighted soul
breaks violently back into the terrestrial life it has just left, and
why some who were really dead, _i. e._, who, if left alone and quiet,
would have peaceably passed away forever in a state of unconscious
lethargy, when entombed too soon, reäwake to life in the grave.”
In this connection, the reader may perhaps recall the well-known case
of the old man who had left some generous gifts in his will to his
orphaned nieces; which document, just before his death, he had confided
to his rich son, with injunctions to carry out his wishes. But, he had
not been dead more than a few hours before the son, finding himself
alone with the corpse, tore the will and burned it. The sight of this
impious deed apparently recalled the hovering spirit, and the old man,
rising from his couch of death, uttered a fierce malediction upon the
horror-stricken wretch, and then fell back again, and yielded up his
spirit—this time forever. Dion Boucicault makes use of an incident of
this kind in his powerful drama _Louis XI._; and Charles Kean created
a profound impression in the character of the French monarch, when
the dead man revives for an instant and clutches the crown as the
heir-apparent approaches it.
Levi says that resuscitation is not impossible while the vital
organism remains undestroyed, and the astral spirit is yet within
reach. “Nature,” he says, “accomplishes nothing by sudden jerks, and
eternal death is always preceded by a state which partakes somewhat
of the nature of lethargy. It is a torpor which a great shock or the
magnetism of a powerful will can overcome.” He accounts in this manner
for the resuscitation of the dead man thrown upon the bones of Elisha.
He explains it by saying that the soul was hovering at that moment
near the body; the burial party, according to tradition, were attacked
by robbers; and their fright communicating itself sympathetically to
it, the soul was seized with horror at the idea of its remains being
desecrated, and “reëntered violently into its body to raise and save
it.” Those who believe in the survival of the soul can see in this
incident nothing of a supernatural character—it is only a perfect
manifestation of natural law. To narrate to the materialist such a
case, however well attested, would be but an idle talk; the theologian,
always looking beyond nature for a special providence, regards it as a
prodigy. Eliphas Levi says: “They attributed the resuscitation to the
contact with the bones of Elisha; and worship of relics dates logically
from his epoch.”
Balfour Stewart is right—scientists “know nothing, or next to nothing,
of the ultimate structure and properties of matter, whether organic or
inorganic.”
We are now on such firm ground, that we will take another step in
advance. _The same knowledge and control of the occult forces,
including the vital force which enabled the fakir temporarily to leave
and then reënter his body, and Jesus, Apollonius, and Elisha to recall
their several subjects to life, made it possible for the ancient
hierophants to animate statues, and cause them to act and speak like
living creatures._ It is the same knowledge and power which made it
possible for Paracelsus to create his homunculi; for Aaron to change
his rod into a serpent and a budding branch; Moses to cover Egypt with
frogs and other pests; and the Egyptian theurgist of our day to vivify
his pigmy Mandragora, which has physical life but no soul. It was no
more wonderful that upon presenting the necessary conditions Moses
should call into life large reptiles and insects, than that, under like
favoring conditions, the physical scientist should call into life the
small ones which he names bacteria.
And now, in connection with ancient miracle-doers and prophets, let us
bring forward the claims of the modern mediums. Nearly every form of
phenomena recorded in the sacred and profane histories of the world
we find them claiming to reproduce in our days. Selecting, among
the variety of seeming wonders, levitation of ponderable inanimate
objects as well as of human bodies, we will give our attention to the
conditions under which the phenomenon is manifested. History records
the names of Pagan theurgists, Christian saints, Hindu fakirs, and
spiritual mediums who have been thus levitated, and who remained
suspended in the air, sometimes for a considerable time. The phenomenon
has not been confined to one country or epoch, but almost invariably
the subjects have been religious ecstatics, adepts in magic, or, as
now, spiritual mediums.
We assume the fact to be so well established as to require no labored
effort on our part at this time to furnish proof that unconscious
manifestations of spirit-power, as well as conscious feats of
high magic, have happened in all countries, in all ages, and with
hierophants as well as through irresponsible mediums. When the present
perfected European civilization was yet in an inchoate state, occult
philosophy, already hoary with age, speculated upon the attributes of
man by analogy with those of his Creator. Individuals later, whose
names will remain forever immortal, inscribed on the portal of the
spiritual history of man, have afforded in their persons examples of
how far could be developed the godlike powers of the _microcosmos_.
Describing the _Doctrines and Principal Teachers of the Alexandrian
School_, Professor A. Wilder says: “Plotinus taught that there was in
the soul a returning impulse, love, which attracted it inward toward
its origin and centre, the eternal good. While the person who does not
understand how the soul contains the beautiful within itself will seek
by laborious effort to realize beauty without, the wise man recognizes
it within himself, develops the idea by withdrawal into himself,
concentrating his attention, and so floating upward toward the divine
fountain, the stream of which flows within him. The infinite is not
known through the reason ... but by a faculty superior to reason, by
entering upon a state in which the individual, so to speak, ceases to
be his finite self, in which state divine essence is communicated to
him. This is ECSTASY.”
Of Apollonius, who asserted that he could see “the present and the
future in a clear mirror,” on account of his abstemious mode of life,
the professor very beautifully observes: “This is what may be termed
_spiritual photography_. The soul is the camera in which facts and
events, future, past, and present, are alike fixed; and the mind
becomes conscious of them. Beyond our every-day world of limits, all is
as one day or state, the past and future comprised in the present.”[732]
Were these God-like men “mediums,” as the orthodox spiritualists
will have it? By no means, if by the term we understand those
“sick-sensitives” who are born with a peculiar organization, and who in
proportion as their powers are developed become more and more subject
to the irresistible influence of miscellaneous spirits, purely human,
elementary, or elemental. Unquestionably so, if we consider every
individual a medium in whose magnetic atmosphere the denizens of higher
invisible spheres can move, and act, and live. In such a sense every
person is a medium. Mediumship may be either 1st, self-developed; 2d,
by extraneous influences; or 3d, may remain latent throughout life.
_The reader must bear in mind the definition of the term, for, unless
this is clearly understood, confusion will be inevitable._ Mediumship
of this kind may be either active or passive, repellent or receptive,
positive or negative. Mediumship is measured by the quality of the aura
with which the individual is surrounded. This may be dense, cloudy,
noisome, mephitic, nauseating to the pure spirit, and attract only
those foul beings who delight in it, as the eel does in turbid waters,
or, it may be pure, crystalline, limpid, opalescent as the morning dew.
All depends upon the moral character of the medium.
About such men as Apollonius, Iamblichus, Plotinus, and Porphyry, there
gathered this heavenly nimbus. It was evolved by the power of their own
souls in close unison with their spirits; by the superhuman morality
and sanctity of their lives, and aided by frequent interior ecstatic
contemplation. Such holy men pure spiritual influences could approach.
Radiating around an atmosphere of divine beneficence, they caused evil
spirits to flee before them. Not only is it not possible for such to
exist in their aura, but they cannot even remain in that of obsessed
persons, if the thaumaturgist exercises his will, or even approaches
them. This is MEDIATORSHIP, not _mediumship_. Such persons are temples
in which dwells the spirit of the living God; but if the temple is
defiled by the admission of an evil passion, thought or desire, the
mediator falls into the sphere of sorcery. The door is opened; the pure
spirits retire and the evil ones rush in. This is still mediatorship,
evil as it is; the sorcerer, like the pure magician, forms his own aura
and subjects to his will congenial inferior spirits.
But mediumship, as now understood and manifested, is a different
thing. Circumstances, independent of his own volition, may, either
at birth or subsequently, modify a person’s aura, so that strange
manifestations, physical or mental, diabolical or angelic, may take
place. Such mediumship, as well as the above-mentioned mediatorship,
has existed on earth since the first appearance here of living man.
The former is the yielding of weak, mortal flesh to the control
and suggestions of spirits and intelligences other than one’s own
immortal demon. It is literally _obsession_ and _possession_; and
mediums who pride themselves on being the faithful slaves of their
“guides,” and who repudiate with indignation the idea of “controlling”
the manifestations, “could not very well deny the fact without
inconsistency. This mediumship is typified in the story of Eve
succumbing to the reasonings of the serpent; of Pandora peeping in the
forbidden casket and letting loose on the world, sorrow and evil, and
by Mary Magdalene, who from having been obsessed by ‘seven devils’ was
finally redeemed by the triumphant struggle of her immortal spirit,
touched by the presence of a holy mediator, against the dweller.” This
mediumship, whether beneficent or maleficent, is always _passive_.
Happy are the pure in heart, who repel unconsciously, by that very
cleanness of their inner nature, the dark spirits of evil. For verily
they have no other weapons of defense but that inborn goodness and
purity. Mediumism, as practiced in our days, is a more undesirable gift
than the robe of Nessus.
“The tree is known by its fruits.” Side by side with passive mediums
in the progress of the world’s history, appear active mediators. We
designate them by this name for lack of a better one. The ancient
witches and wizards, and those who had a “familiar spirit,” generally
made of their gifts a trade; and the Obeah woman of En-Dor, so well
defined by Henry More, though she may have killed her calf for Saul,
accepted hire from other visitors. In India, the jugglers, who by
the way are less so than many a modern medium, and the _Essaoua_ or
sorcerers and serpent-charmers of Asia and Africa, all exercise their
gifts for money. Not so with the mediators, or hierophants. Buddha was
a mendicant and refused his father’s throne. The “Son of Man had not
where to lay his head;” the chosen apostles provided “neither gold, nor
silver, nor brass in their purses.” Apollonius gave one half of his
fortune to his relatives, the other half to the poor; Iamblichus and
Plotinus were renowned for charity and self-denial; the fakirs, or holy
mendicants, of India are fairly described by Jacolliot; the Pythagorean
Essenes and Therapeutæ believed their hands defiled by the contact of
money. When the apostles were offered money to impart their spiritual
powers, Peter, notwithstanding that the Bible shows him a coward and
thrice a renegade, still indignantly spurned the offer, saying: “Thy
money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God
may be purchased with money.” These men were mediators, guided merely
by their own personal spirit, or divine soul, and availing themselves
of the help of spirits but so far as these remain in the right path.
Far from us be the thought of casting an unjust slur on physical
mediums. Harassed by various intelligences, reduced by the
overpowering influence—which their weak and nervous natures are unable
to shake off—to a morbid state, which at last becomes chronic, they
are impeded by these “influences” from undertaking other occupation.
They become mentally and physically unfit for any other. Who can judge
them harshly when, driven to the last extremity, they are constrained
to accept mediumship as a business? And heaven knows, as recent events
have too well proved, whether the calling is one to be envied by any
one! It is not mediums, real, _true_, and genuine mediums that we would
ever blame, but their patrons, the spiritualists.
Plotinus, when asked to attend public worship of the gods, is said
to have proudly answered: “It is for them (the spirits) to come to
me.” Iamblichus asserted and proved in his own case, that our soul
can attain communion with the highest intelligences, with “natures
loftier than itself,” and carefully drove away from his theurgical
ceremonies[733] every inferior spirit, or bad dæmon, which he taught
his disciples to recognize. Proclus, who “elaborated the entire
theosophy and theurgy of his predecessors into a complete system,”[734]
according to Professor Wilder, “believed with Iamblichus in the
attaining of a divine power, which, overcoming the mundane life,
rendered the individual an organ of the Deity.” He even taught that
there was a “mystic password that would carry a person from one order
of spiritual beings to another, higher and higher, till he arrived at
the absolute divine.” Apollonius spurned the sorcerers and “common
soothsayers,” and declared that it was his “peculiar abstemious mode
of life” which “produced such an acuteness of the senses and created
other faculties, so that the greatest and most remarkable things can
take place.” Jesus declared man _the lord of the Sabbath_, and at
his command the terrestrial and elementary spirits fled from their
temporary abodes; a power which was shared by Apollonius and many of
the Brotherhood of the Essenes of Judea and Mount Carmel.
It is undeniable that there must have been some good reasons why the
ancients persecuted _unregulated_ mediums. Otherwise why, at the time
of Moses and David and Samuel, should they have encouraged prophecy
and divination, astrology and soothsaying, and maintained schools and
colleges in which these natural gifts were strengthened and developed,
while witches and those who divined by the spirit of _Ob_ were put to
death? Even at the time of Christ, the poor oppressed mediums were
driven to the tombs and waste places without the city walls. Why this
apparent gross injustice? Why should banishment, persecution, and
death be the portion of the physical mediums of those days, and whole
communities of thaumaturgists—like the Essenes—be not merely tolerated
but revered? It is because the ancients, unlike ourselves, could “try”
the spirits and discern the difference between the good and the evil
ones, the human and the elemental. They also knew that unregulated
spirit intercourse brought ruin upon the individual and disaster to the
community.
This view of mediumship may be novel and perhaps repugnant to many
modern spiritualists; but still it is the view taught in the ancient
philosophy, and supported by the experience of mankind from time
immemorial.
It is erroneous to speak of a medium having _powers_ developed. A
passive medium has no power. He has a certain moral and physical
condition which induces emanations, or an aura, in which his
controlling intelligences can live, and by which they manifest
themselves. He is only the vehicle through which _they_ display their
power. This aura varies day by day, and, as would appear from Mr.
Crookes’ experiments, even hour by hour. It is an external effect
resulting from interior causes. The medium’s moral state determines
the kind of spirits that come; and the spirits that come reciprocally
influence the medium, intellectually, physically, and morally.
The perfection of his mediumship is in ratio to his passivity,
and the danger he incurs is in equal degree. When he is fully
“developed” perfectly passive—his own astral spirit may be benumbed, and
even crowded out of his body, which is then occupied by an elemental,
or, what is worse, by a human fiend of the eighth sphere, who proceeds
to use it as his own. But too often the cause of the most celebrated
crime is to be sought in such possessions.
Physical mediumship depending upon passivity, its antidote suggests
itself naturally; _let the medium cease being passive_. Spirits never
control persons of positive character who are determined to resist
all extraneous influences. The weak and feeble-minded whom they can
make their victims they drive into vice. If these miracle-making
elementals and disembodied devils called elementary were indeed the
guardian angels that they have passed for, these last thirty years,
why have they not given their faithful mediums at least good health
and domestic happiness? Why do they desert them at the most critical
moments of trial when under accusations of fraud? It is notorious
that the best physical mediums are either sickly or, sometimes, what
is still worse, inclined to some abnormal vice or other. Why do not
these healing “guides,” who make their mediums play the therapeutists
and thaumaturgists to others, give them the boon of robust physical
vigor? The ancient thaumaturgist and apostle, generally, if not
invariably, enjoyed good health; their magnetism never conveyed to the
sick patient any physical or moral taint; and they never were accused
of VAMPIRISM, which a spiritual paper very justly charges upon some
medium-healers.[735]
If we apply the above law of mediumship and mediatorship to the subject
of levitation, with which we opened our present discussion, what
shall we find? Here we have a medium and one of the mediator-class
levitated—the former at a seance, the latter at prayer, or in ecstatic
contemplation. The medium being passive must _be lifted_ up; the
ecstatic being active must levitate himself. The former is elevated by
his familiar spirits—whoever or whatever they may be—the latter, by the
power of his own aspiring soul. Can both be indiscriminately termed
_mediums_?
But nevertheless we may be answered that the same phenomena are
produced in the presence of a modern medium as of an ancient saint.
Undoubtedly; and so it was in the days of Moses; for we believe that
the triumph claimed for him in _Exodus_ over Pharaoh’s magicians is
simply a national boast on the part of the “chosen people.” That the
power which produced his phenomena produced that of the magicians also,
who were moreover the first tutors of Moses and instructed him in their
“wisdom,” is most probable. But even in those days they seemed to have
well appreciated the difference between phenomena apparently identical.
The tutelar national deity of the Hebrews (who is _not_ the Highest
Father)[736] forbids expressly, in _Deuteronomy_,[737] his people
“to learn to do after the abominations of other nations.... To pass
through _the fire_, or use _divination_, or be an observer of times or
an enchanter, or a witch, or a consulter _with familiar spirits_, or a
necromancer.”
What difference was there then between all the above-enumerated
phenomena as performed by the “other nations” and when enacted by the
prophets? Evidently, there was some good reason for it; and we find
it in John’s _First Epistle_, iv., which says: “believe not _every_
spirit, but _try_ the spirits, whether they are of God, because many
false prophets are gone out into the world.”
The only standard within the reach of spiritualists and present-day
mediums by which they can _try_ the spirits, is to judge 1, by their
actions and speech; 2, by their readiness to manifest themselves;
and 3, whether the object in view is worthy of the apparition of a
“_disembodied_” spirit, or can excuse any one for disturbing _the
dead_. Saul was on the eve of destruction, himself and his sons, yet
Samuel inquired of him: “Why hast thou _disquieted_ me, to bring me
up?”[738] But the “intelligences” that visit the circle-rooms, come at
the beck of every trifler who would while away a tedious hour.
In the number of the _London Spiritualist_ for July 14th, we find a
long article, in which the author seeks to prove that “the marvellous
wonders of the present day, which belong to so-called modern
spiritualism, are identical in character with the experiences of the
patriarchs and apostles of old.”
We are forced to contradict, point-blank, such an assertion. They
are identical only so far that the same forces and occult powers of
nature produce them. But though these powers and forces may be, and
most assuredly are, all directed by unseen intelligences, the latter
differ more in essence, character, and purposes than mankind itself,
composed, as it now stands, of white, black, brown, red, and yellow
men, and numbering saints and criminals, geniuses and idiots. The
writer may avail himself of the services of a tame orang-outang or a
South Sea islander; but the fact alone that he has a servant makes
neither the latter nor himself identical with Aristotle and Alexander.
The writer compares Ezekiel “lifted up” and taken into the “east gate
of the Lord’s house,”[739] with the levitations of certain mediums,
and the three Hebrew youths in the “burning fiery furnace,” with other
_fire-proof_ mediums; the John King “spirit-light” is assimilated
with the “burning lamp” of Abraham; and finally, after many such
comparisons, the case of the Davenport Brothers, released from the jail
of Oswego, is confronted with that of Peter delivered from prison by
the “angel of the Lord!”
Now, except the story of Saul and Samuel, there is not a case
instanced in the _Bible_ of the “_evocation_ of the dead.” As to being
lawful, the assertion is contradicted by every prophet. Moses issues
a decree of death against those who raise the spirits of the dead,
the “necromancers.” Nowhere throughout the _Old Testament_, nor in
Homer, nor Virgil is communion with the dead termed otherwise than
necromancy. Philo Judæus makes Saul say, that if he banishes from the
land every diviner and necromancer his name will survive him.
One of the greatest reasons for it was the doctrine of the ancients,
that no soul from the “abode of the blessed” will return to earth,
unless, indeed, upon rare occasions its apparition might be required
to accomplish some great object in view, and so bring benefit upon
humanity. In this latter instance the “soul” has no need to be
_evoked_. It sent its portentous message either by an evanescent
_simulacrum_ of itself, or through _messengers_, who could appear in
_material_ form, and personate faithfully the departed. The souls
that could so easily be evoked were deemed neither safe nor useful to
commune with. They were the souls, or _larvæ_ rather, from the infernal
region of the limbo—the _sheol_, the region known by the kabalists as
the eighth sphere, but far different from the orthodox Hell or Hades
of the ancient mythologists. Horace describes this evocation and the
ceremonial accompanying it, and Maimonides gives us particulars of the
Jewish rite. Every necromantic ceremony was performed on high places
and hills, and blood was used for the purpose of placating these human
_ghouls_.[740]
“I cannot prevent the witches from picking up their bones,” says the
poet. “See the blood they pour in the ditch to allure the _souls_ that
will utter their oracles!”[741] “_Cruor in fossam confusus, ut inde
manes elicirent, animas responsa daturas._”
“The _souls_,” says Porphyry, “prefer, to everything else,
_freshly-spilt blood_, which seems for a short time to restore to them
some of the faculties of life.”[742]
As for materializations, they are many and various in the sacred
records. But, were they effected under the same conditions as at modern
seances? Darkness, it appears, was not required in those days of
patriarchs and magic powers. The three angels who appeared to Abraham
drank in the full blaze of the sun, for “he sat in the tent-door _in
the heat of the day_,”[743] says the book of _Genesis_. The spirits of
Elias and Moses appeared equally in daytime, as it is not probable that
Christ and the Apostles would be climbing a high mountain during the
night. Jesus is represented as having appeared to Mary Magdalene in the
garden in the early morning; to the Apostles, at three distinct times,
and generally by day; once “when the morning was come” (_John_ xxi. 4).
Even when the ass of Balaam saw the “materialized” angel, it was in the
full light of noon.
We are fully prepared to agree with the writer in question, that we
find in the life of Christ—and we may add in the _Old Testament_, too—
too—“an uninterrupted record of spiritualistic manifestations,” but
nothing _mediumistic_, of a physical character though, if we except
the visit of Saul to Sedecla, the Obeah woman of En-Dor. This is a
distinction of vital importance.
True, the promise of the Master was clearly stated: “Aye, and greater
works than these shall ye do” works of mediatorship. According to Joel,
the time would come when there would be an outpouring of the divine
spirit: “Your sons and your daughters,” says he, “shall prophesy, your
old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.” The
time has come and they do all these things now; Spiritualism has its
seers and martyrs, its prophets and healers. Like Moses, and David,
and Jehoram, there are mediums who have direct writings from genuine
planetary and human spirits; and the best of it brings the mediums
no pecuniary recompense. The greatest friend of the cause in France,
Leymarie, now languishes in a prison-cell, and, as he says with
touching pathos, is “no longer a man, but a _number_” on the prison
register.
There are a few, a very few, orators on the spiritualistic platform
who speak by inspiration, and if they know what is said at all they
are in the condition described by Daniel: “And I retained no strength.
Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his
words, then was I in a deep sleep.”[744] And there are mediums, these
whom we have spoken of, for whom the prophecy in Samuel might have
been written: “The spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, thou shalt
prophesy with them, and shalt be _turned into another man_.”[745]
But where, in the long line of Bible-wonders, do we read of flying
guitars, and tinkling tambourines, and jangling bells being offered in
pitch-dark rooms as evidences of immortality?
When Christ was accused of casting out devils by the power of
Beelzebub, he denied it, and sharply retorted by asking, “By whom do
your sons or disciples cast them out?” Again, spiritualists affirm that
Jesus was a medium, that he was controlled by one or many spirits; but
when the charge was made to him direct he said that he was nothing
of the kind. “Say we not well, that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a
devil?” daimonion, an Obeah, or familiar spirit in the Hebrew text.
Jesus answered, “I have not a devil.”[746]
The writer from whom we have above quoted, attempts also a parallel
between the aerial flights of Philip and Ezekiel and of Mrs. Guppy and
other modern mediums. He is ignorant or oblivious of the fact that
while levitation occurred as an effect in both classes of cases, the
producing causes were totally dissimilar. The nature of this difference
we have adverted to already. Levitation may be produced consciously
or unconsciously to the subject. The juggler determines beforehand
that he will be levitated, for how long a time, and to what height;
he regulates the occult forces accordingly. The fakir produces the
same effect by the power of his aspiration and will, and, except when
in the ecstatic state, keeps control over his movements. So does the
priest of Siam, when, in the sacred pagoda, he mounts fifty feet in the
air with taper in hand, and flits from idol to idol, lighting up the
niches, self-supported, and stepping as confidently as though he were
upon solid ground. This, persons have seen and testify to. The officers
of the Russian squadron which recently circumnavigated the globe, and
was stationed for a long time in Japanese waters, relate the fact that,
besides many other marvels, they saw jugglers walk in mid-air from
tree-top to tree-top, without the slightest support.[747] They also
saw the pole and tape-climbing feats, described by Colonel Olcott in
his _People from the Other World_, and which have been so much called
in question by certain spiritualists and mediums whose zeal is greater
than their learning. The quotations from Col. Yule and other writers,
elsewhere given in this work, seem to place the matter beyond doubt
that these effects are produced.
Such phenomena, when occurring apart from religious rites, in India,
Japan, Thibet, Siam, and other “heathen” countries, phenomena a hundred
times more various and astounding than ever seen in civilized Europe
or America, are never attributed to the spirits of the departed. The
Pitris have naught to do with such public exhibitions. And we have but
to consult the list of the principal demons or elemental spirits to
find that their very names indicate their professions, or, to express
it clearly, the tricks to which each variety is best adapted. So we
have the Mâdan, a generic name indicating wicked elemental spirits,
half brutes, half monsters, for Mâdan signifies one that looks like
a cow. He is the friend of the malicious sorcerers and helps them to
effect their evil purposes of revenge by striking men and cattle with
sudden illness and death.
The _Shudâla-Mâdan_, or graveyard fiend, answers to our ghouls. He
delights where crime and murder were committed, near burial-spots and
places of execution. He helps the juggler in all the fire-phenomena as
well as Kutti Shâttan, the little juggling imps. Shudâla, they say, is
a half-fire, half-water demon, for he received from Siva permission to
assume any shape he chose, transform one thing into another; and when
he is not in fire, he is in water. It is he who blinds people “to see
that which _they do not_ see.” _Shûla Mâdan_, is another mischievous
spook. He is the _furnace_-demon, skilled in pottery and baking. If
you keep friends with him, he will not injure you; but woe to him who
incurs his wrath. Shûla likes compliments and flattery, and as he
generally keeps underground it is to him that a juggler must look to
help him raise a tree from a seed in a quarter of an hour and ripen its
fruit.
_Kumil-Mâdan_, is the _undine_ proper. He is an elemental spirit of the
water, and his name means _blowing like a bubble_. He is a very merry
imp; and will help a friend in anything relative to his department; he
will shower rain and show the future and the present to those who will
resort to hydromancy or divination by water.
_Poruthû Mâdan_, is the “wrestling” demon; he is the strongest of all;
and whenever there are feats shown in which physical force is required,
such as _levitations_, or taming of wild animals, he will help the
performer by keeping him above the soil or will overpower a wild beast
before the tamer has time to utter his incantation. So, every “physical
manifestation” has its own class of elemental spirits to superintend
them.
Returning now to levitations of human bodies and inanimate bodies,
in modern circle-rooms, we must refer the reader to the Introductory
chapter of this work. (See “Æthrobasy.”) In connection with the story
of Simon the Magician, we have shown the explanation of the ancients as
to how the levitation and transport of heavy bodies could be produced.
We will now try and suggest a hypothesis for the same in relation to
_mediums, i. e._, persons supposed to be unconscious at the moment of
the phenomena, which the believers claim to be produced by disembodied
“spirits.” We need not repeat that which has been sufficiently
explained before. Conscious æthrobasy under magneto-electrical
conditions is possible only to _adepts_ who can never be overpowered by
an influence foreign to themselves, but remain sole masters of their
WILL.
Thus levitation, we will say, must always occur in obedience to law—a
law as inexorable as that which makes a body unaffected by it remain
upon the ground. And where should we seek for that law outside of the
theory of molecular attraction? It is a scientific hypothesis that the
form of force which first brings nebulous or star matter together into
a whirling vortex is electricity; and modern chemistry is being totally
reconstructed upon the theory of electric polarities of atoms. The
waterspout, the tornado, the whirlwind, the cyclone, and the hurricane,
are all doubtless the result of electrical action. This phenomenon has
been studied from above as well as from below, observations having been
made both upon the ground and from a balloon floating above the vortex
of a thunder-storm.
Observe now, that this force, under the conditions of a dry and warm
atmosphere at the earth’s surface, can accumulate a dynamic energy
capable of lifting enormous bodies of water, of compressing the
particles of atmosphere, and of sweeping across a country, tearing
up forests, lifting rocks, and scattering buildings in fragments
over the ground. Wild’s electric machine causes induced currents of
magneto-electricity so enormously powerful as to produce light by which
small print may be read, on a dark night, at a distance of two miles
from the place where it is operating.
As long ago as the year 1600, Gilbert, in his _De Magnete_, enunciated
the principle that the globe itself is one vast magnet, and some of
our advanced electricians are now beginning to realize that man,
too, possesses this property, and that the mutual attractions and
repulsions of individuals toward each other may at least in part find
their explanation in this fact. The experience of attendants upon
spiritualistic circles corroborates this opinion. Says Professor
Nicholas Wagner, of the University of St. Petersburg: “Heat, or
_perhaps the electricity of the investigators_ sitting in the circle,
must concentrate itself in the table and gradually develop into
motions. At the same time, or a little afterward, the psychical force
unites to assist the two other powers. By _psychical force_, I mean
that which evolves itself out of all the other forces of our organism.
The combination into one general something of several separate forces,
and capable, when combined, of manifesting itself in degree, according
to the individuality.” The progress of the phenomena he considers
to be affected by the cold or the dryness of the atmosphere. Now,
remembering what has been said as to the subtler forms of energy which
the Hermetists have proved to exist in nature, and accepting the
hypothesis enunciated by Mr. Wagner that “the power which calls out
these manifestations is centred in the mediums,” may not the medium,
by furnishing in himself a nucleus as perfect in its way as the system
of permanent steel magnets in Wild’s battery, produce astral currents
sufficiently strong to lift in their vortex a body even as ponderable
as a human form? It is not necessary that the object lifted should
assume a gyratory motion, for the phenomenon we are observing, unlike
the whirlwind, is directed by an intelligence, which is capable
of keeping the body to be raised within the ascending current and
preventing its rotation.
Levitation in this case would be a purely mechanical phenomenon. The
inert body of the passive medium is lifted by a vortex created either
by the elemental spirits—possibly, in some cases, by human ones, and
sometimes through purely morbific causes, as in the cases of Professor
Perty’s sick somnambules. The levitation of the adept is, on the
contrary, a magneto-electric effect, as we have just stated. He has
made the polarity of his body opposite to that of the atmosphere, and
identical with that of the earth; hence, attractable by the former,
retaining his consciousness the while. A like phenomenal levitation is
possible, also, when disease has changed the corporeal polarity of a
patient, as disease always does in a greater or lesser degree. But, in
such case, the lifted person would not be likely to remain conscious.
In one series of observations upon whirlwinds, made in 1859, in the
basin of the Rocky Mountains, “a newspaper was caught up ... to a
height of some two hundred feet; and there it oscillated to and fro
across the track for some considerable time, whilst accompanying the
onward motion.”[748] Of course scientists will say that a parallel
cannot be instituted between this case and that of human levitation;
that no vortex can be formed in a room by which a medium could be
raised; but this is a question of astral light and spirit, which have
their own peculiar dynamical laws. Those who understand the latter,
affirm that a concourse of people laboring under mental excitement,
which reäcts upon the physical system, throw off electro-magnetic
emanations, which, when sufficiently intense, can throw the whole
circumambient atmosphere into perturbation. Force enough may actually
be generated to create an electrical vortex, sufficiently powerful to
produce many a strange phenomenon. With this hint, the whirling of
the dervishes, and the wild dances, swayings, gesticulations, music,
and shouts of devotees will be understood as all having a common
object in view—namely, the creation of such astral conditions as favor
psychological and physical phenomena. The _rationale_ of religious
revivals will also be better understood if this principle is borne in
mind.
But there is still another point to be considered. If the medium is
a nucleus of magnetism and a conductor of that force, he would be
subject to the same laws as a metallic conductor, and be attracted to
his magnet. If, therefore, a magnetic centre of the requisite power
was formed directly over him by the unseen powers presiding over the
manifestations, why should not his body be lifted toward it, despite
terrestrial gravity? We know that, in the case of a medium who is
unconscious of the progress of the operation, it is necessary to first
admit the fact of such an intelligence, and next, the possibility
of the experiment being conducted as described; but, in view of the
multifarious evidences offered, not only in our own researches, which
claim no authority, but also in those of Mr. Crookes, and a great
number of others, in many lands and at different epochs, we shall not
turn aside from the main object of offering this hypothesis in the
profitless endeavor to strengthen a case which scientific men will not
consider with patience, even when sanctioned by the most distinguished
of their own body.
As early as 1836, the public was apprised of certain phenomena which
were as extraordinary, if not more so than all the manifestations
which are produced in our days. The famous correspondence between two
well-known mesmerizers, Deleuze and Billot, was published in France,
and the wonders discussed for a time in every society. Billot firmly
believed in the apparition of spirits, for, as he says, he has both
seen, heard, and felt them. Deleuze was as much convinced of this truth
as Billot, and declared that man’s immortality and the return of the
dead, or rather of their shadows, was the best demonstrated fact in his
opinion. Material objects were brought to him from distant places by
invisible hands, and he communicated on most important subjects with
the invisible intelligences. “In regard to this,” he remarks, “I cannot
conceive how spiritual beings are able to carry material objects.” More
skeptical, less intuitional than Billot, nevertheless, he agreed with
the latter that “the question of spiritualism is not one of opinions,
but _of facts_.”
Such is precisely the conclusion to which Professor Wagner, of St.
Petersburg, was finally driven. In the second pamphlet on _Mediumistic
Phenomena_, issued by him in December, 1875, he administers the
following rebuke to Mr. Shkliarevsky, one of his materialistic critics:
“So long as the spiritual manifestations were weak and sporadic, we
men of science could afford to deceive ourselves with theories of
unconscious muscular action, or unconscious cerebrations of our brains,
and tumble the rest into one heap as juggleries.... But now these
wonders have grown too striking; the spirits show themselves in the
shape of tangible, materialized forms, which can be touched and handled
at will by any learned skeptic like yourself, and even be weighed and
measured. We can struggle no longer, for every resistance becomes
absurd—it threatens lunacy. Try then to realize this, and to humble
yourself before the possibility of impossible facts.”
Iron is only magnetized temporarily, but steel permanently, by contact
with the lodestone. Now steel is but iron which has passed through a
carbonizing process, and yet that process has quite changed the nature
of the metal, so far as its relations to the lodestone are concerned.
In like manner, it may be said that the medium is but an ordinary
person who is magnetized by influx from the astral light; and as the
permanence of the magnetic property in the metal is measured by its
more or less steel-like character, so may we not say that the intensity
and permanency of mediumistic power is in proportion to the saturation
of the medium with the magnetic or astral force?
This condition of saturation may be congenital, or brought about in
any one of these ways:—by the mesmeric process; by spirit-agency; or
by self-will. Moreover, the condition seems hereditable, like any
other physical or mental peculiarity; many, and we may even say most
great mediums having had mediumship exhibited in some form by one or
more progenitors. Mesmeric subjects easily pass into the higher forms
of clairvoyance and mediumship (now so called), as Gregory, Deleuze,
Puysegur, Du Potet, and other authorities inform us. As to the process
of self-saturation, we have only to turn to the account of the priestly
devotees of Japan, Siam, China, India, Thibet, and Egypt, as well as of
European countries, to be satisfied of its reality. Long persistence
in a fixed determination to subjugate matter, brings about a condition
in which not only is one insensible to external impressions, but even
death itself may be simulated, as we have already seen. The ecstatic so
enormously reïnforces his will-power, as to draw into himself, as into
a vortex, the potencies resident in the astral light to supplement his
own natural store.
The phenomena of mesmerism are explicable upon no other hypothesis
than the projection of a current of force from the operator into
the subject. If a man can project this force by an exercise of the
will, what prevents his attracting it toward himself by reversing the
current? Unless, indeed, it be urged that the force is generated within
his body and cannot be attracted from any supply without. But even
under such an hypothesis, if he can generate a superabundant supply to
saturate another person, or even an inanimate object by his will, why
cannot he generate it in excess for self-saturation?
In his work on _Anthropology_, Professor J. R. Buchanan notes the
tendency of the natural gestures to follow the direction of the
phrenological organs; the attitude of combativeness being downward and
backward; that of hope and spirituality upward and forward; that of
firmness upward and backward; and so on. The adepts of Hermetic science
know this principle so well that they explain the levitation of their
own bodies, whenever it happens unawares, by saying that the thought
is so intently fixed upon a point above them, that when the body is
thoroughly imbued with the astral influence, it follows the mental
aspiration and rises into the air as easily as a cork held beneath
the water rises to the surface when its buoyancy is allowed to assert
itself. The giddiness felt by certain persons when standing upon the
brink of a chasm is explained upon the same principle. Young children,
who have little or no active imagination, and in whom experience has
not had sufficient time to develop fear, are seldom, if ever, giddy;
but the adult of a certain mental temperament, seeing the chasm and
picturing in his imaginative fancy the consequences of a fall, allows
himself to be drawn by the attraction of the earth, and _unless the
spell of fascination_ be broken, his body will follow his thought to
the foot of the precipice.
That this giddiness is purely a temperamental affair, is shown in the
fact that some persons never experience the sensation, and inquiry will
probably reveal the fact that such are deficient in the imaginative
faculty. We have a case in view—a gentleman who, in 1858, had so firm
a nerve that he horrified the witnesses by standing upon the coping of
the _Arc de Triomphe_, in Paris, with folded arms, and his feet half
over the edge; but, having since become short-sighted, was taken with
a panic upon attempting to cross a plank-walk over the courtyard of a
hotel, where the footway was more than two feet and a half wide, and
there was no danger. He looked at the flagging below, gave his fancy
free play, and would have fallen had he not quickly sat down.
It is a dogma of science that perpetual motion is impossible; it is
another dogma, that the allegation that the Hermetists discovered
the elixir of life, and that certain of them, by partaking of it,
prolonged their existence far beyond the usual term, is a superstitious
absurdity. And the claim that the baser metals have been transmuted
into gold, and that the universal solvent was discovered, excites
only contemptuous derision in a century which has crowned the edifice
of philosophy with a copestone of protoplasm. The first is declared
a _physical impossibility_; as much so, according to Babinet, the
astronomer, as the “levitation of an object without contact;”[749]
the second, a physiological vagary begotten of a disordered mind; the
third, a chemical absurdity.
Balfour Stewart says that while the man of science cannot assert that
“he is intimately acquainted with all the forces of nature, and cannot
prove that perpetual motion is impossible; for, in truth, he knows very
little of these forces ... he does think _that he has entered into
the spirit and design of nature_, and therefore he denies at once the
possibility of such a machine.”[750] If he has discovered the design of
nature, he certainly has not _the spirit_, for he denies its existence
in one sense; and denying spirit he prevents that perfect understanding
of universal law which would redeem modern philosophy from its thousand
mortifying dilemmas and mistakes. If Professor B. Stewart’s negation is
founded upon no better analogy than that of his French contemporary,
Babinet, he is in danger of a like humiliating catastrophe. The
universe itself illustrates the actuality of perpetual motion; and the
atomic theory, which has proved such a balm to the exhausted minds of
our cosmic explorers, is based upon it. The telescope searching through
space, and the microscope probing the mysteries of the little world in
a drop of water, reveal the same law in operation; and, as everything
below is like everything above, who would presume to say that when the
conservation of energy is better understood, and the two additional
forces of the kabalists are added to the catalogue of orthodox science,
it may not be discovered how to construct a machine which shall run
without friction and supply itself with energy in proportion to its
wastes? “Fifty years ago,” says the venerable Mr. de Lara, “a Hamburg
paper, quoting from an English one an account of the opening of the
Manchester and Liverpool Railway, pronounced it a gross fabrication;
capping the climax by saying, ‘even so far extends the credulity of the
English;’” the moral is apparent. The recent discovery of the compound
called METALLINE, by an American chemist, makes it appear probable that
friction can, in a large degree, be overcome. One thing is certain,
when a man shall have discovered the perpetual motion he will be able
to understand by analogy all the secrets of nature; progress in direct
ratio with resistance.
We may say the same of the elixir of life, by which is understood
physical life, the soul being of course deathless only by reason of
its divine immortal union with spirit. But _continual_ or _perpetual_
does not mean endless. The kabalists have never claimed that either
an endless physical life or unending motion is possible. The Hermetic
axiom maintains that only the First Cause and its direct emanations,
our spirits (scintillas from the eternal central sun which will be
reäbsorbed by it at the end of time) are incorruptible and eternal.
But, in possession of a knowledge of occult natural forces, yet
undiscovered by the materialists, they asserted that both physical
life and mechanical motion could be prolonged indefinitely. The
philosophers’ stone had more than one meaning attached to its
mysterious origin. Says Professor Wilder: “The study of alchemy was
even more universal than the several writers upon it appear to have
known, and was always the auxiliary, if not identical with, the occult
sciences of magic, necromancy, and astrology; probably from the same
fact that they were originally but forms of a spiritualism which was
generally extant in all ages of human history.”
Our greatest wonder is, that the very men who view the human body
simply as a “digesting machine,” should object to the idea that if
some equivalent for metalline could be applied between its molecules,
it should run without friction. Man’s body is taken from the earth,
or dust, according to _Genesis_; which allegory bars the claims of
modern analysts to original discovery of the nature of the inorganic
constituents of human body. If the author of _Genesis_ knew this, and
Aristotle taught the identity between the life-principle of plants,
animals, and men, our affiliation with mother earth seems to have been
settled long ago.
Elie de Beaumont has recently reasserted the old doctrine of Hermes
that there is a terrestrial circulation comparable to that of the blood
of man. Now, since it is a doctrine as old as time, that nature is
continually renewing her wasted energies by absorption from the source
of energy, why should the child differ from the parent? Why may not
man, by discovering the source and nature of this recuperative energy,
extract from the earth herself the juice or quintessence with which to
replenish his own forces? This _may_ have been the great secret of the
alchemists. Stop the circulation of the terrestrial fluids and we have
stagnation, putrefaction, death; stop the circulation of the fluids in
man, and stagnation, absorption, calcification from old age, and death
ensue. If the alchemists had simply discovered some chemical compound
capable of keeping the channels of our circulation unclogged, would
not all the rest easily follow? And why, we ask, if the surface-waters
of certain mineral springs have such virtue in the cure of disease and
the restoration of physical vigor, is it illogical to say that if we
could get the first runnings from the alembic of nature in the bowels
of the earth, we might, perhaps, find that the fountain of youth was no
myth after all. Jennings asserts that the elixir was produced out of
the secret chemical laboratories of nature by some adepts; and Robert
Boyle, the chemist, mentions a medicated wine or cordial which Dr.
Lefevre tried with wonderful effect upon an old woman.
_Alchemy is as old as tradition itself._ “The first authentic record
on this subject,” says William Godwin, “is an edict of Diocletian,
about 300 years after Christ, ordering a diligent search to be made
in Egypt for all the ancient books which treated of the art of making
gold and silver, that they might be consigned to the flames. This
edict necessarily presumes a certain antiquity to the pursuit; and
_fabulous_ history has recorded Solomon, Pythagoras, and Hermes among
its distinguished votaries.”
And this question of transmutation—this alkahest or universal solvent,
which comes next after the elixir vitæ in the order of the three
alchemical agents? Is the idea so absurd as to be totally unworthy of
consideration in this age of chemical discovery? How shall we dispose
of the historical anecdotes of men who actually made gold and gave it
away, and of those who testify to having seen them do it? Libavius,
Geberus, Arnoldus, Thomas Aquinas, Bernardus Comes, Joannes Penotus,
Quercetanus Geber, the Arabian father of European alchemy, Eugenius
Philalethes, Baptista Porta, Rubeus, Dornesius, Vogelius, Irenæus
Philaletha Cosmopolita, and many mediæval alchemists and Hermetic
philosophers assert the fact. Must we believe them all visionaries
and lunatics, these otherwise great and learned scholars? Francesco
Picus, in his work _De Auro_, gives eighteen instances of gold being
produced in his presence by artificial means; and Thomas Vaughan,[751]
going to a goldsmith to sell 1,200 marks worth of gold, when the man
suspiciously remarked that the gold was too pure to have ever come
out of a mine, ran away, leaving the money behind him. In a preceding
chapter we have brought forward the testimony of a number of authors to
this effect.
Marco Polo tells us that in some mountains of Thibet, which he
calls _Chingintalas_, there are veins of the substance from which
_Salamander_ is made: “For the real truth is, that the salamander is
no beast, as they allege in our parts of the world, but is a substance
found in the earth.”[752] Then he adds that a Turk of the name of
Zurficar, told him that he had been procuring salamanders for the Great
Khan, in those regions, for the space of three years. “He said that
the way they got them was by digging in that mountain till they found
a certain vein. The substance of this vein was then taken and crushed,
and, when so treated, it divides, as it were, into fibres of wool,
which they set forth to dry. When dry, these fibres were pounded and
washed, so as to leave only the fibres, like fibres of wool. These were
then spun.... When first made, these napkins are not very white, but,
by putting them into the fire for a while, they come out as white as
snow.”
Therefore, as several authorities testify, this mineral substance
is the famous _Asbestos_,[753] which the Rev. A. Williamson says is
found in Shantung. But, it is not only incombustible thread which is
made from it. An oil, having several most extraordinary properties,
is extracted from it, and the secret of its virtues remains with
certain lamas and Hindu adepts. When rubbed into the body, it leaves no
external stain or mark, but, nevertheless, after having been so rubbed,
the part can be scrubbed with soap and hot or cold water, without
the virtue of the ointment being affected in the least. The person
so rubbed may boldly step into the hottest fire; unless suffocated,
he will remain uninjured. Another property of the oil is that, when
combined with _another substance_, that we are not at liberty to
name, and left stagnant under the rays of the moon, on certain nights
indicated by native astrologers, it will breed strange creatures.
Infusoria we may call them in one sense, but then these grow and
develop. Speaking of Kashmere, Marco Polo observes that they have an
astonishing acquaintance with the _devilries_ of enchantment, insomuch
that they _make their idols to speak_.
To this day, the greatest magian mystics of these regions may be found
in Kashmere. The various religious sects of this country were always
credited with preternatural powers, and were the resort of adepts and
sages. As Colonel Yule remarks, “Vambery tells us that even in our day,
the Kasmiri dervishes are preëminent among their Mahometan brethren for
_cunning_, secret arts, skill in exorcisms and magic.”[754]
But, all modern chemists are not equally dogmatic in their negation of
the possibility of such a transmutation. Dr. Peisse, Desprez, and even
the all-denying Louis Figuier, of Paris, seem to be far from rejecting
the idea. Dr. Wilder says: “The possibility of reducing the elements to
their primal form, as they are supposed to have existed in the igneous
mass from which the earth-crust is believed to have been formed, is not
considered by physicists to be so absurd an idea as has been intimated.
There is a relationship between metals, often so close as to indicate
an original identity. Persons called alchemists may, therefore, have
devoted their energies to investigations into these matters, as
Lavoisier, Davy, Faraday, and others of our day have explained the
mysteries of chemistry.”[755] A learned Theosophist, a practicing
physician of this country, one who has studied the occult sciences and
alchemy for over thirty years, has succeeded in reducing the elements
to their primal form, and made what is termed “the pre-Adamite earth.”
It appears in the form of an earthy precipitate from pure water, which,
on being disturbed, presents the most opalescent and vivid colors.
“The secret,” say the alchemists, as if enjoying the ignorance of the
uninitiated, “is an amalgamation of the salt, sulphur, and mercury
combined three times in Azoth, by a triple sublimation and a triple
fixation.”
“How ridiculously absurd!” will exclaim a learned modern chemist. Well,
the disciples of the great Hermes understand the above as well as a
graduate of Harvard University comprehends the meaning of his Professor
of Chemistry, when the latter says: “With one hydroxyl group we can
only produce monatomic compounds; use two hydroxyl groups, and we can
form around the same skeleton a number of diatomic compounds. ...
Attach to the nucleus three hydroxyl groups, and there result triatomic
compounds, among which is a very familiar substance—
H H H
| | |
H-O-C-C-C-O-H
| | |
H H H
|
H
_Glycerine_.”
“Attach thyself,” says the alchemist, “to the four letters of the
tetragram disposed in the following manner: The letters of the
ineffable name are there, although thou mayest not discern them at
first. The incommunicable axiom is kabalistically contained therein,
and this is what is called the magic arcanum by the masters.” The
arcanum—the fourth emanation of the Akâsa, the principle of LIFE, which
is represented in its third transmutation by the fiery sun, the eye of
the world, or of Osiris, as the Egyptians termed it. An eye tenderly
watching its youngest daughter, wife, and sister—Isis, our mother
earth. See what Hermes, the thrice-great master, says of her: “Her
father is the sun, her mother is the moon.” It attracts and caresses,
and then repulses her by a projectile power. It is for the Hermetic
student to watch its motions, to catch its subtile currents, to guide
and direct them with the help of the _athanor_, the Archimedean lever
of the alchemist. What is this mysterious athanor? Can the physicist
tell us—he who sees and examines it daily? Aye, he sees; but does he
comprehend the secret-ciphered characters traced by the divine finger
on every sea-shell in the ocean’s deep; on every leaf that trembles in
the breeze; in the bright star, whose stellar lines are in his sight
but so many more or less luminous lines of hydrogen?
[Illustration: Three geometrical shapes]
“God _geometrizes_,” said Plato.[756] “The laws of nature are the
thoughts of God;” exclaimed Oërsted, 2,000 years later. “His
thoughts are immutable,” repeated the solitary student of Hermetic
lore, “therefore it is in the perfect harmony and equilibrium of all
things that we must seek the truth.” And thus, proceeding from the
indivisible unity, he found emanating from it two contrary forces,
each acting through the other and producing equilibrium, and the
three were but one, the Pythagorean Eternal Monad. The primordial
point is a circle; the circle squaring itself from the four cardinal
points becomes a quaternary, the perfect square, having at each of
its four angles a letter of the mirific name, the sacred TETRAGRAM.
It is the four Buddhas who came and have passed away; the Pythagorean
_tetractys_—absorbed and resolved by the one eternal NO-BEING.
Tradition declares that on the dead body of Hermes, at Hebron, was
found by an Isarim, an initiate, the tablet known as the _Smaragdine_.
It contains, in a few sentences, the essence of the Hermetic wisdom. To
those who read but with their bodily eyes, the precepts will suggest
nothing new or extraordinary, for it merely begins by saying that it
speaks not fictitious things, but that which is true and most certain.
“What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is
similar to that which is below to accomplish the wonders of one thing.
“As all things were produced by the mediation of one being, so all
things were produced from this one _by adaptation_.
“Its father is the sun, its mother is the moon.
“It is the cause of all perfection throughout the whole earth.
“Its power is perfect _if it is changed into earth_.
“Separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross, acting
prudently and with judgment.
“Ascend with the greatest sagacity from the earth to heaven, and then
descend again to earth, and unite together the power of things inferior
and superior; thus you will possess the light of the whole world, and
all obscurity will fly away from you.
“This thing has more fortitude than fortitude itself, because _it will
overcome every subtile thing_ and _penetrate every solid thing_.
“By it the world was formed.”
This mysterious thing is the universal, magical agent, the astral
light, which in the correlations of its forces furnishes the alkahest,
the philosopher’s stone, and the elixir of life. Hermetic philosophy
names it Azoth, the soul of the world, the celestial virgin, the
great Magnes, etc., etc. Physical science knows it as “heat, light,
electricity, and magnetism;” but ignoring its spiritual properties and
the occult potency contained in ether, rejects everything it ignores.
It explains and depicts the crystalline forms of the snow-flakes, their
modifications of an hexagonal prism which shoot out an infinity of
delicate needles. It has studied them so perfectly that it has even
calculated, with the most wondrous mathematical precision, that all
these needles diverge from each other at an angle of 60°. Can it tell
us as well the cause of this “endless variety of the most exquisite
forms,”[757] each of which is a most perfect geometrical figure in
itself? These frozen, star-like and flower-like blossoms, may be,
for all materialistic science knows, a shower of messages snowed by
spiritual hands from the worlds above for spiritual eyes below to read.
The philosophical cross, the two lines running in opposite directions,
the horizontal and the perpendicular, the height and breadth, which
the geometrizing Deity divides at the intersecting point, and which
forms the magical as well as the scientific quaternary, when it is
inscribed within the perfect square, is the basis of the occultist.
Within its mystical precinct lies the master-key which opens the door
of every science, physical as well as spiritual. It symbolizes our
human existence, for the circle of life circumscribes the four points
of the cross, which represent in succession birth, life, death, and
IMMORTALITY. Everything in this world is a trinity completed by the
quaternary,[758] and every element is divisible on this same principle.
Physiology can divide man _ad infinitum_, as physical science has
divided the four primal and principal elements in several dozens of
others; she will not succeed in changing either. Birth, life, and death
will ever be a trinity completed only at the cyclic end. Even were
science to change the longed-for immortality into annihilation, it
still will ever be a quaternary; for God “geometrizes!”
Therefore, perhaps alchemy will one day be allowed to talk of her salt,
mercury, sulphur, and azoth, her symbols and mirific letters, and
repeat, with the exponent of the _Synthesis of Organic Compounds_, that
“it must be remembered that the grouping is _no play of fancy_, and
that a good reason can be given for the position of every letter.”[759]
Dr. Peisse, of Paris, wrote in 1863, the following:
“One word, _a propos_, of alchemy. What must we think of the Hermetic
art? Is it lawful to believe that we can transmute metals, make
gold? Well, positive men, _esprits forts_ of the nineteenth century,
know that Mr. Figuier, doctor of science and medicine, chemical
analyst in the School of Pharmacy, of Paris, does not wish to express
himself upon the subject. He doubts, he hesitates. He knows several
alchemists (for there are such) who, basing themselves upon modern
chemical discoveries, and especially on the singular circumstance of
the equivalents demonstrated by M. Dumas, pretend that metals are
not simple bodies, true elements in the absolute sense, and that in
consequence they may be produced by the process of decomposition....
This encourages me to take a step further, and candidly avow that I
would be only moderately surprised to see some one make gold. I have
only one reason to give, but sufficient it seems; which is, that gold
has not always existed; it has been made by some chemical travail or
other in the bosom of the fused matter of our globe;[760] perhaps some
of it may be even now in process of formation. The pretended simple
bodies of our chemistry are very probably secondary products, in the
formation of the terrestrial mass. It has been proved so with water,
one of the most respectable elements of ancient physics. To-day, we
create water. Why should we not make gold? An eminent experimentalist,
Mr. Desprez, has made the diamond. True, this diamond is only _a
scientific diamond_, a philosophical diamond, which would be worth
nothing; but, no matter, my position holds good. Besides, we are not
left to simple conjectures. There is a man living, who, in a paper
addressed to the scientific bodies, in 1853, has underscored these
words—I have discovered the method of producing artificial gold, I
have made gold. This adept is Mr. Theodore Tiffereau, ex-preparator of
chemistry in the _École Professionelle et Supérieure_ of Nantes.”[761]
Cardinal de Rohan, the famous victim of the diamond necklace
conspiracy, testified that he had seen the Count Cagliostro make both
gold and diamonds. We presume that those who agree with Professor T.
Sterry Hunt, F.R.S., will have no patience with the theory of Dr.
Peisse, for they believe that all of our metalliferous deposits are
due to the action of organic life. And so, until they do come to some
composition of their differences, so as to let us know for a certainty
the nature of gold, and whether it is the product of interior volcanic
alchemy or surface segregation and filtration; we will leave them to
settle their quarrel between themselves, and give credit meanwhile to
the old philosophers.
Professor Balfour Stewart, whom no one would think of classing among
illiberal minds; who, with far more fairness and more frequently than
any of his colleagues admits the failings of modern science, shows
himself, nevertheless, as biassed as other scientists on this question.
Perpetual light being only another name for perpetual motion, he
tells us, and the latter being impossible because we have no means of
equilibrating the waste of combustible material, a Hermetic light is,
therefore, an impossibility.[762] Noting the fact that a “perpetual
light was supposed to result from _magical_ powers,” and remarking
further that such a light is “certainly not of this earth, where light
and all other forms of superior energy are essentially evanescent,”
this gentleman argues as though the Hermetic philosophers had always
claimed that the flame under discussion was an ordinary earthly flame,
resulting from the combustion of luminiferous material. In this the
philosophers have been constantly misunderstood and misrepresented.
How many great minds—unbelievers from the start—after having studied
the “secret doctrine,” have changed their opinions and found out how
mistaken they were. And how contradictory it seems to find one moment
Balfour Stewart quoting some philosophical morals of Bacon—whom he
terms the father of experimental science—and saying “ ... surely we
ought to learn a lesson from these remarks ... and be very cautious
_before we dismiss any branch of knowledge_ or train of thought as
essentially unprofitable,” and then dismissing the next moment, as
_utterly impossible_, the claims of the alchemists! He shows Aristotle
as “entertaining the idea that light is not any body, or the emanation
of any body, and that therefore light is an energy or act;” and yet,
although the ancients were the first to show, through Demokritus, to
John Dalton the doctrine of atoms, and through Pythagoras and even the
oldest of the Chaldean oracles, that of ether as a universal agent,
their ideas, says Stewart, “were not prolific.” He admits that they
“possessed great genius and intellectual power,” but adds that “they
were deficient in physical conceptions, and, in consequence, their
ideas were not prolific.”[763]
The whole of the present work is a protest against such a loose way
of judging the ancients. To be thoroughly competent to criticise
their ideas, and assure one’s self whether their ideas were distinct
and “appropriate to the facts,” one must have sifted these ideas to
the very bottom. It is idle to repeat that which we have frequently
said, and that which every scholar ought to know; namely, that the
quintessence of their knowledge was in the hands of the priests, who
never wrote them, and in those of the “initiates” who, like Plato,
_did not dare_ write them. Therefore, those few speculations on the
material and spiritual universes, which they did put in writing, could
not enable posterity to judge them rightly, even had not the early
Christian Vandals, the later crusaders, and the fanatics of the middle
ages destroyed three parts of that which remained of the Alexandrian
library and its later schools. Professor Draper shows that the Cardinal
Ximenes alone “delivered to the flames in the squares of Granada,
80,000 Arabic manuscripts, many of them translations of classical
authors.” In the Vatican libraries, whole passages in the most rare and
precious treatises of the ancients were found erased and blotted out,
for the sake of interlining them with absurd psalmodies!
Who then, of those who turn away from the “secret doctrine” as being
“unphilosophical” and, therefore, unworthy of a scientific thought,
has a right to say that he studied the ancients; that he is aware of
all that they knew, and knowing now far more, knows also that they
knew little, if anything. This “secret doctrine” contains the alpha
and the omega of universal science; therein lies the corner and the
keystone of all the ancient and modern knowledge; and alone in this
“unphilosophical” doctrine remains buried the _absolute_ in the
philosophy of the dark problems of life and death.
“The great energies of Nature are known to us only by their effects,”
said Paley. Paraphrasing the sentence, we will say that the great
achievements of the days of old are known to posterity only by
their effects. If one takes a book on alchemy, and sees in it the
speculations on gold and light by the brothers of the Rosie Cross, he
will find himself certainly startled, for the simple reason that he
will not understand them at all. “The Hermetic gold,” he may read,
“is the outflow of the sunbeam, or of light suffused invisibly and
magically into the body of the world. Light is sublimated gold, rescued
magically by invisible stellar attraction, out of material depths.
Gold is thus the deposit of light, which of itself generates. Light in
the celestial world is subtile, vaporous, magically exalted gold, or
‘_spirit of flame_.’ Gold draws inferior natures in the metals, and
intensifying and multiplying, converts into itself.”[764]
Nevertheless, facts are facts; and, as Billot says of spiritualism,
we will remark of occultism generally and of alchemy in particular—it
is not a matter of opinion but of _facts_, men of science call an
inextinguishable lamp an _impossibility_, but nevertheless persons
in our own age as well as in the days of ignorance and superstition
have found them burning bright in old vaults shut up for centuries;
and other persons there are who possess the secret of keeping such
fires for several ages. Men of science say that ancient and modern
spiritualism, magic, and mesmerism, are charlatanry or delusion; but
there are 800 millions on the face of the globe, of perfectly sane men
and women, who believe in all these. Whom are we to credit?
“Demokritus,” says Lucian,[765] “believed in no (miracles) ... he
applied himself to discover the method by which the theurgists could
produce them; in a word, his philosophy brought him to the conclusion
that magic was entirely confined to the application and _the imitation_
of the laws and the works of nature.”
Now, the opinion of the “laughing philosopher” is of the greatest
importance to us, since the Magi left by Xerxes, at Abdera, were his
instructors, and he had studied magic, moreover, for a considerably
long time with the Egyptian priests.[766] For nearly ninety years
of the one hundred and nine of his life, this great philosopher had
made experiments, and noted them down in a book, which, according
to Petronius,[767] _treated of nature_—facts that he had verified
himself. And we find him not only disbelieving in and utterly
rejecting _miracles_, but asserting that every one of those that were
authenticated by eye-witnesses, had, and could have taken place; for
all, even the most _incredible_, was produced according to the “_hidden
laws of nature_.”[768]
“The day will never come, when any one of the propositions of Euclid
will be denied,”[769] says Professor Draper, exalting the Aristoteleans
at the expense of the Pythagoreans and Platonists. Shall we, in such a
case, disbelieve a number of well-informed authorities (Lemprière among
others), who assert that the fifteen books of the _Elements_ are not
to be wholly attributed to Euclid; and that many of the most valuable
truths and demonstrations contained in them owe their existence to
Pythagoras, Thales, and Eudoxus? That Euclid, notwithstanding his
genius, was _the first_ who reduced them to order, and only interwove
theories of his own to render the whole a complete and connected system
of geometry? And if these authorities are right, then it is again to
that central sun of metaphysical science—Pythagoras and his school,
that the moderns are indebted directly for such men as Eratosthenes,
the world-famous geometer and cosmographer, Archimedes, and even
Ptolemy, notwithstanding his obstinate errors. Were it not for the
exact science of such men, and for fragments of their works that they
left us to base Galilean speculations upon, the great priests of the
nineteenth century might find themselves, perhaps, still in the
bondage of the Church; and philosophizing, in 1876, on the Augustine
and Bedean cosmogony, the rotation of the canopy of heaven round the
earth, and the majestic flatness of the latter.
The nineteenth century seems positively doomed to humiliating
confessions. Feltre (Italy) erects a public statue “to _Panfilo
Castaldi, the illustrious inventor of movable printing types_,” and
adds in its inscription the generous confession that Italy renders to
him “_this tribute of honor too long deferred_.” But no sooner is the
statue placed, than the Feltreians are advised by Colonel Yule to “burn
it _in honest lime_.” He proves that many a traveller beside Marco
Polo had brought home from China movable wooden types and specimens of
Chinese books, the entire text of which was printed with such wooden
blocks.[770] We have seen in several Thibetan lamaseries, where they
have printing-offices, such blocks preserved as curiosities. They
are known to be of the greatest antiquity, inasmuch as types were
perfected, and the old ones abandoned contemporaneously with the
earliest records of Buddhistic lamaism. Therefore, they must have
existed in China before the Christian era.
Let every one ponder over the wise words of Professor Roscoe, in his
lecture on _Spectrum Analysis_. “The infant truths must be made useful.
Neither you nor I, perhaps, can see the _how_ or the _when_, but that
the time may come at any moment, when the most obscure of nature’s
secrets shall at once be employed for the benefit of mankind, no one
who knows anything of science, can for one instant doubt. Who could
have foretold that the discovery that a dead frog’s legs jump when they
are touched by two different metals, should have led in a few short
years to the discovery of the electric telegraph?”
Professor Roscoe, visiting Kirchhoff and Bunsen when they were making
their great discoveries of the nature of the Fraunhoffer lines,
says that it _flashed_ upon his mind at once that there is iron in
the sun; therein presenting one more evidence to add to a million
predecessors, that great discoveries usually come with a _flash_,
and not by induction. There are many more flashes in store for us.
It may be found, perhaps, that one of the last sparkles of modern
science—the beautiful green spectrum of silver—is nothing new, but was,
notwithstanding the paucity “and great inferiority of their optical
instruments,” well known to the ancient chemists and physicists. Silver
and green were associated together as far back as the days of Hermes.
Luna, or Astartè (the Hermetic silver), is one of the two chief symbols
of the Rosicrucians. It is a Hermetic axiom, that “the cause of the
splendor and variety of colors lies deep in the affinities of nature;
and that there is a singular and mysterious alliance between color and
sound.” The kabalists place their “middle nature” in direct relation
with the moon; and the green ray occupies the centre point between
the others, being placed in the middle of the spectrum. The Egyptian
priests chanted the _seven_ vowels as a hymn addressed to Serapis;[771]
and at the sound of the _seventh_ vowel, as at the “_seventh_ ray” of
the rising sun, the statue of Memnon responded. Recent discoveries have
proved the wonderful properties of the blue-violet light—the _seventh_
ray of the prismatic spectrum, the most powerfully chemical of all,
which corresponds with the highest note in the musical scale. The
Rosicrucian theory, that the whole universe is a musical instrument,
is the Pythagorean doctrine of the music of the spheres. Sounds and
colors are all spiritual numerals; 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.
“Happy is he who comprehends the spiritual numerals, and perceives
their mighty influence!” exclaims Plato. And happy, we may add, is he
who, treading the maze of force-correlations, does not neglect to trace
them to this invisible Sun!
Future experimenters will reap the honor of demonstrating that musical
tones have a wonderful effect upon the growth of vegetation. And
with the enunciation of this unscientific fallacy, we will close the
chapter, and proceed to remind the patient reader of certain things
that the ancients knew, and the moderns _think_ they know.
CHAPTER XIV.
“The transactions of this our city of Saïs, are recorded in our
sacred writings during a period of 8,000 years.”—PLATO: _Timæus_.
“The Egyptians assert that from the reign of Heracles to that
of Amasis, 17,000 years elapsed.”—HERODOTUS, lib. ii., c. 43.
“Can the theologian derive no light from the pure, primeval
faith that glimmers from Egyptian hieroglyphics, to illustrate
the immortality of the soul? Will not the historian deign to
notice the prior origin of every art and science in Egypt, a
thousand years before the Pelasgians studded the isles and
capes of the Archipelago with their forts and temples?”—GLIDDON.
How came Egypt by her knowledge? When broke the dawn of that
civilization whose wondrous perfection is suggested by the bits and
fragments supplied to us by the archæologists? Alas! the lips of Memnon
are silent, and no longer utter oracles; the Sphinx has become a
greater riddle in her speechlessness than was the enigma propounded to
Œdipus.
What Egypt taught to others she certainly did not acquire by the
international exchange of ideas and discoveries with her Semitic
neighbors, nor from them did she receive her stimulus. “The more we
learn of the Egyptians,” observes the writer of a recent article,
“the more marvellous they seem!” From whom could she have learned
her wondrous arts, the secrets of which died with her? She sent no
agents throughout the world to learn what others knew; but to her
the wise men of neighboring nations resorted for knowledge. Proudly
secluding herself within her enchanted domain, the fair queen of the
desert created wonders as if by the sway of a magic staff. “Nothing,”
remarks the same writer, whom we have elsewhere quoted, “proves that
civilization and knowledge then rise and progress with her as in the
case of other peoples, but everything seems to be referable, in the
same perfection, _to the earliest dates_. That no nation knew as much
as herself, is a fact demonstrated by history.”
May we not assign as a reason for this remark the fact that until
very recently nothing was known of Old India? That these two nations,
India and Egypt, were akin? That they were the oldest in the group of
nations; and that the Eastern Ethiopians—the mighty builders—had come
from India as a matured people, bringing their civilization with them,
and colonizing the perhaps unoccupied Egyptian territory? But we defer
a more complete elaboration of this theme for our second volume.[772]
“Mechanism,” says Eusebe Salverte, “was carried by the ancients to
a point of perfection that has never been attained in modern times.
We would inquire if their inventions have been surpassed in our age?
Certainly not; and at the present day, with all the means that the
progress of science and modern discovery have placed in the hands
of the mechanic, have we not been assailed by numerous difficulties
in striving to place on a pedestal one of those monoliths that the
Egyptians forty centuries ago erected in such numbers before their
sacred edifices.”
As far back as we can glance into history, to the reign of Menes, the
most ancient of the kings that we know anything about, we find proofs
that the Egyptians were far better acquainted with hydrostatics and
hydraulic engineering than ourselves. The gigantic work of turning
the course of the Nile—or rather of its three principal branches—and
bringing it to Memphis, was accomplished during the reign of that
monarch, who appears to us as distant in the abyss of time as a
far-glimmering star in the heavenly vault. Says Wilkinson: “Menes
took accurately the measure of the power which he had to oppose, and
he constructed a dyke whose lofty mounds and enormous embankments
turned the water eastward, and since that time the river is contained
in its new bed.” Herodotus has left us a poetical, but still accurate
description of the lake Mœris, so called after the Pharaoh who caused
this artificial sheet of water to be formed.
The historian has described this lake as measuring 450 miles in
circumference, and 300 feet in depth. It was fed through artificial
channels by the Nile, and made to store a portion of the annual
overflow for the irrigation of the country, for many miles round.
Its numerous flood gates, dams, locks, and convenient engines were
constructed with the greatest skill. The Romans, at a far later period,
got their notions on hydraulic constructions from the Egyptians, but
our latest progress in the science of hydrostatics has demonstrated
the fact of a great deficiency on their part in some branches of that
knowledge. Thus, for instance, if they were acquainted with that which
is called in hydrostatics the great law, they seem to have been less
familiar with what our modern engineers know as water tight joints.
Their ignorance is sufficiently proved by their conveying the water
through large level aqueducts, instead of doing it at a less expense by
iron pipes beneath the surface. But the Egyptians evidently employed
a far superior method in their channels and artificial water-works.
Notwithstanding this, the modern engineers employed by Lesseps for the
Suez Canal, who had learned from the ancient Romans all their art could
teach them, deriving, in their turn, their knowledge from Egypt—scoffed
at the suggestion that they should seek a remedy for some imperfections
in their work by studying the contents of the various Egyptian museums.
Nevertheless, the engineers succeeded in giving to the banks of that
“long and ugly ditch,” as Professor Carpenter calls the Suez Canal,
sufficient strength to make it a navigable water-way, instead of a
mud-trap for vessels as it was at first.
The alluvial deposits of the Nile, during the past thirty centuries,
have completely altered the area of the Delta, so that it is
continually growing seaward, and adding to the territory of the
Khedive. In ancient times, the principal mouth of the river was called
Pelusian; and the canal cut by one of the kings—the canal of Necho—led
from Suez to this branch. After the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra,
at Actium, it was proposed that a portion of the fleet should pass
through the canal to the Red Sea, which shows the depth of water that
those early engineers had secured. Settlers in Colorado and Arizona
have recently reclaimed large tracts of barren land by a system of
irrigation; receiving from the journals of the day no little praise
for their ingenuity. But, for a distance of 500 miles above Cairo,
there stretches a strip of land reclaimed from the desert, and made,
according to Professor Carpenter, “the most fertile on the face of
the earth.” He says, “for thousands of years these branch canals have
conveyed fresh water from the Nile, to fertilize the land of this long
narrow strip, as well as of the Delta.” He describes “the net-work of
canals over the Delta, which dates from an early period of the Egyptian
monarchs.”
The French province of Artois has given its name to the Artesian well,
as though that form of engineering had been first applied in that
district; but, if we consult the Chinese records, we find such wells to
have been in common use ages before the Christian era.
If we now turn to architecture, we find displayed before our eyes,
wonders which baffle all description. Referring to the temples of
Philoe, Abu Simbel, Dendera, Edfu, and Karnak, Professor Carpenter
remarks that “these stupendous and beautiful erections ... these
gigantic pyramids and temples” have a “vastness and beauty” which are
“still impressive after the lapse of thousands of years.” He is amazed
at “the admirable character of the workmanship; the stones in most
cases being fitted together with astonishing nicety, so that a knife
could hardly be thrust between the joints.” He noticed in his amateur
archæological pilgrimage, another of those “curious coincidences”
which his Holiness, the Pope, may feel some interest in learning. He
is speaking of the Egyptian _Book of the Dead_, sculptured on the old
monuments, and the ancient belief in the immortality of the soul.
“Now, it is most remarkable,” says the professor, “to see that not only
this belief, but the language in which it was expressed in the ancient
Egyptian times, anticipated that of the Christian Revelation. For, in
this _Book of the Dead_, there are used the very phrases we find in the
_New Testament_, in connection with the day of judgment;” and he admits
that this hierogram was “engraved, probably, 2,000 years before the
time of Christ.”
According to Bunsen, who is considered to have made the most exact
calculations, the mass of masonry in the great Pyramid of Cheops
measures 82,111,000 feet, and would weigh 6,316,000 tons. The immense
numbers of squared stones show us the unparalleled skill of the
Egyptian quarrymen. Speaking of the great pyramid, Kenrick says: “The
joints are scarcely perceptible, not wider than the thickness of
silver paper, and the cement is so tenacious, that fragments of the
casing-stones still remain in their original position, notwithstanding
the lapse of many centuries, and the violence by which they were
detached.” Who, of our modern architects and chemists, will rediscover
the indestructible cement of the oldest Egyptian buildings?
“The skill of the ancients in quarrying,” says Bunsen, “is displayed
the most in the extracting of the huge blocks, out of which obelisks
and colossal statues were hewn—obelisks ninety feet high, and statues
forty feet high, made out of one stone!” There are many such. They did
not blast out the blocks for these monuments, but adopted the following
scientific method: Instead of using huge iron wedges, which would have
split the stone, they cut a small groove for the whole length of,
perhaps, 100 feet, and inserted in it, close to each other, a great
number of dry wooden wedges; after which they poured water into the
groove, and the wedges swelling and bursting simultaneously, with a
tremendous force, broke out the huge stone, as neatly as a diamond cuts
a pane of glass.
Modern geographers and geologists have demonstrated that these
monoliths were brought from a prodigious distance, and have been at
a loss to conjecture how the transport was effected. Old manuscripts
say that it was done by the help of portable rails. These rested upon
inflated bags of hide, rendered indestructible by the same process as
that used for preserving the mummies. These ingenious air-cushions
prevented the rails from sinking in the deep sand. Manetho mentions
them, and remarks that they were so well prepared that they would
endure wear and tear for centuries.
The date of the hundreds of pyramids in the Valley of the Nile is
impossible to fix by any of the rules of modern science; but Herodotus
informs us that each successive king erected one to commemorate his
reign, and serve as his sepulchre. But, Herodotus did not tell all,
although he knew that the _real_ purpose of the pyramid was very
different from that which he assigns to it. Were it not for his
religious scruples, he might have added that, externally, it symbolized
the creative principle of nature, and illustrated also the principles
of geometry, mathematics, astrology, and astronomy. Internally, it was
a majestic fane, in whose sombre recesses were performed the Mysteries,
and whose walls had often witnessed the initiation-scenes of members
of the royal family. The porphyry sarcophagus, which Professor Piazzi
Smyth, Astronomer Royal of Scotland, degrades into a corn-bin, was the
_baptismal font_, upon emerging from which, the neophyte was “born
again,” and became an _adept_.
Herodotus gives us, however, a just idea of the enormous labor expended
in transporting one of these gigantic blocks of granite. It measured
thirty-two feet in length, twenty-one feet in width, and twelve feet in
height. Its weight he estimates to be rising 300 tons, and it occupied
2,000 men for three years to move it from Syene to the Delta, down the
Nile. Gliddon, in his _Ancient Egypt_, quotes from Pliny a description
of the arrangements for moving the obelisk erected at Alexandria by
Ptolemæus Philadelphus. A canal was dug from the Nile to the place
where the obelisk lay. Two boats were floated under it; they were
weighted with stones containing one cubic foot each, and the weight
of the obelisk having been calculated by the engineers, the cargo
of the boats was exactly proportioned to it, so that they should be
sufficiently submerged to pass under the monolith as it lay across the
canal. Then, the stones were gradually removed, the boats rose, lifted
the obelisk, and it was floated down the river.
In the Egyptian section of the Dresden, or Berlin Museum, we forget
which, is a drawing which represents a workman ascending an unfinished
pyramid, with a basket of sand upon his back. This has suggested to
certain Egyptologists the idea that the blocks of the pyramids were
chemically manufactured _in loco_. Some modern engineers believe
that Portland cement, a double silicate of lime and alumina, is
the imperishable cement of the ancients. But, on the other hand,
Professor Carpenter asserts that the pyramids, with the exception of
their granite casing, is formed of what “geologists call _nummulitic_
limestone. This is newer than the old chalk, and is made of the shells
of animals called nummulites—like little pieces of money about the size
of a shilling.” However this moot question may be decided, no one, from
Herodotus and Pliny down to the last wandering engineer who has gazed
upon these imperial monuments of long-crumbled dynasties, has been
able to tell us how the gigantic masses were transported and set up
in place. Bunsen concedes to Egypt an antiquity of 20,000 years. But
even in this matter we would be left to conjecture if we depended upon
modern authorities. They can neither tell us for what the pyramids were
constructed, under what dynasty the first was raised, nor the material
of which they are built. All is conjecture with them.
Professor Smyth has given us by far the most accurate mathematical
description of the great pyramid to be found in literature. But after
showing the astronomical bearings of the structure, he so little
appreciates ancient Egyptian thought that he actually maintains
that the porphyry sarcophagus of the king’s chamber is the unit of
measure for the two most enlightened nations of the earth—“England
and America.” One of the _books_ of _Hermes_ describes certain of the
pyramids as standing upon the sea-shore, “the waves of which dashed in
powerless fury against its base.” This implies that the geographical
features of the country have been changed, and may indicate that
we must accord to these ancient “granaries,” “magico-astrological
observatories,” and “royal sepulchres,” an origin antedating the
upheaval of the Sahara and other deserts. This would imply rather more
of an antiquity than the poor few thousands of years, so generously
accorded to them by Egyptologists.
Dr. Rebold, a French archæologist of some renown, gives his readers a
glimpse of the culture which prevailed 5,000 (?) years b. c., by saying
that there were at that time no less than “thirty or forty colleges of
the priests who studied occult sciences and practical magic.”
A writer in the _National Quarterly Review_ (Vol. xxxii., No. lxiii.,
December, 1875) says that, “The recent excavations made among the
ruins of Carthage have brought to light traces of a civilization, a
refinement of art and luxury, which must even have outshone that of
ancient Rome; and when the fiat went forth, _Delenda est Carthago_,
the mistress of the world well knew that she was about to destroy a
greater than herself, for, while one empire swayed the world by force
of arms alone, the other was the last and most perfect representative
of a race who had, for centuries before Rome was dreamed of, directed
the civilization, the learning, and the intelligence of mankind.” This
Carthage is the one which, according to Appian, was standing as early
as B. C. 1234, or fifty years before the taking of Troy, and not the
one popularly supposed to have been built by Dido (Elissa or Astartè)
four centuries later.
Here we have still another illustration of the truth of the doctrine
of cycles. Draper’s admissions as to the astronomical erudition of
the ancient Egyptians are singularly supported by an interesting fact
quoted by Mr. J. M. Peebles, from a lecture delivered in Philadelphia,
by the late Professor O. M. Mitchell, the astronomer. Upon the coffin
of a mummy, now in the British Museum, was delineated the zodiac
with the exact positions of the planets at the time of the autumnal
equinox, in the year 1722 B.C. Professor Mitchell calculated the exact
position of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system at the
time indicated. “The result,” says Mr. Peebles, “I give in his own
words: ‘To my astonishment ... it was found that on the 7th of October,
1722 B.C., the moon and planets had occupied the exact points in the
heavens marked upon the coffin in the British Museum.’”[773]
Professor John Fiske, in his onslaught on Dr. Draper’s _History of
the Intellectual Development of Europe_, sets his pen against the
doctrine of cyclical progression, remarking that “we have never
known the beginning or the end of an historic cycle, and have no
inductive warrant for believing that we are now traversing one.”[774]
He chides the author of that eloquent and thoughtful work for the
“odd disposition exhibited throughout his work, not only to refer the
best part of Greek culture to an Egyptian source, but uniformly to
exalt the non-European civilization at the expense of the European.”
We believe that this “odd disposition” might be directly sanctioned
by the confessions of great Grecian historians themselves. Professor
Fiske might, with profit, read Herodotus over again. The “Father of
History” confesses more than once that Greece owes everything to Egypt.
As to his assertion that the world has never known the beginning or
the end of an historical cycle, we have but to cast a retrospective
glance on the many glorious nations which have passed away, _i.e._,
reached the end of their great national cycle. Compare the Egypt of
that day, with its perfection of art, science, and religion, its
glorious cities and monuments, and its swarming population, with the
Egypt of to-day, peopled with strangers; its ruins the abode of bats
and snakes, and a few Copts the sole surviving heirs to all this
grandeur—and see whether the cyclical theory does not reässert itself.
Says Gliddon, who is now contradicted by Mr. Fiske: “Philologists,
astronomers, chemists, painters, architects, physicians, must return
to Egypt to learn the origin of language and writing; of the calendar
and solar motion; of the art of cutting granite with a copper chisel,
and of giving elasticity to a copper sword; of making glass with the
variegated hues of the rainbow; of moving single blocks of polished
syenite, _nine hundred tons_ in weight, for any distance, by land
and water; of building arches, rounded and pointed, with masonic
precision unsurpassed at the present day, and antecedent by 2,000 years
to the ‘Cloaca Magna’ of Rome; of sculpturing a Doric column 1,000
years before the Dorians are known in history; of fresco painting
in imperishable colors; of practical knowledge in anatomy; and of
time-defying pyramid-building.”
“Every craftsman can behold, in Egyptian monuments, the progress of
his art 4,000 years ago; and whether it be a wheelwright building a
chariot, a shoemaker drawing his twine, a leather-cutter using the
self-same form of knife of old as is considered the best form now,
a weaver throwing the same hand-shuttle, a whitesmith using that
identical form of blow-pipe but lately recognized to be the most
efficient, the seal-engraver cutting, in hieroglyphics, such names as
Schooho’s, above 4,300 years ago—_all these_, and many more astounding
evidences of Egyptian priority, now require but a glance at the plates
of Rossellini.”
“Truly,” exclaims Mr. Peebles, “these Ramsean temples and tombs were as
much a marvel to the Grecian Herodotus as they are to us!”[775]
But, even then, the merciless hand of time had left its traces upon
their structures, and some of them, whose very memory would be lost
were it not for the _Books of Hermes_, had been swept away into the
oblivion of the ages. King after king, and dynasty after dynasty
had passed in a glittering pageant before the eyes of succeeding
generations and their renown had filled the habitable globe. The same
pall of forgetfulness had fallen upon them and their monuments alike,
before the first of our historical authorities, Herodotus, preserved
for posterity the remembrance of that wonder of the world, the great
Labyrinth. The long accepted Biblical chronology has so cramped
the minds of not only the clergy, but even our scarce-unfettered
scientists, that in treating of prehistoric remains in different parts
of the world, a constant fear is manifested on their part to trespass
beyond the period of 6,000 years, hitherto allowed by theology as the
age of the world.
Herodotus found the Labyrinth already in ruins; but nevertheless his
admiration for the genius of its builders knew no bounds. He regarded
it as far more marvellous than the pyramids themselves, and, as an
eye-witness, minutely describes it. The French and Prussian savants,
as well as other Egyptologists, agree as to the emplacement, and
identified its noble ruins. Moreover, they confirm the account given
of it by the old historian. Herodotus says that he found therein
3,000 chambers; half subterranean and the other half above-ground.
“The upper chambers,” he says, “I myself passed through and examined
in detail. In the underground ones (which _may exist till now_, for
all the archæologists know), the keepers of the building would not
let me in, for they contain the sepulchres of the kings who built the
Labyrinth, and also those of the sacred crocodiles. The upper chambers
I saw and examined with my own eyes, and found them to excel all other
human productions.” In Rawlinson’s translation, Herodotus is made to
say: “The passages through the houses and the varied windings of the
paths across the courts, excited in me infinite admiration as I passed
from the courts into the chambers, and from thence into colonnades,
and from colonnades into other houses, and again into courts unseen
before. The roof was throughout of stone like the walls, and both were
exquisitely carved all over with figures. Every court was surrounded
with a colonnade, which was built of white stones, sculptured most
exquisitely. At the corner of the Labyrinth stands a pyramid forty
fathoms high, with large figures engraved on it, and it is entered by a
vast subterranean passage.”
If such was the Labyrinth, when viewed by Herodotus, what, in such
a case, was ancient Thebes, the city destroyed far earlier than
the period of Psammeticus, who himself reigned 530 years after the
destruction of Troy? We find that in his time Memphis was the capital,
while of the glorious Thebes there remained but _ruins_. Now, if we,
who are enabled to form our estimate only by the ruins of what was
already ruins so many ages before our era—are stupefied in their
contemplation, what must have been the general aspect of Thebes in
the days of its glory? Karnak—temple, palace, ruins, or whatsoever
the archæologists may term it—is now its only representative. But
solitary and alone as it stands, fit emblem of majestic empire, as if
forgotten by time in the onward march of the centuries, it testifies
to the art and skill of the ancients. He must be indeed devoid of the
spiritual perception of genius, who fails to feel as well as to see the
intellectual grandeur of the race that planned and built it.
Champollion, who passed almost his entire life in the exploration of
archæological remains, gives vent to his emotions in the following
descriptions of Karnak: “The ground covered by the mass of remaining
buildings is square; and each side measures 1,800 feet. One is
astounded and _overcome by the grandeur_ of the sublime remnants, the
prodigality and magnificence of workmanship to be seen everywhere.” No
people of ancient or modern times has conceived the art of architecture
upon a scale so sublime, so grandiose as it existed among the ancient
Egyptians; and the imagination, which in Europe soars far above our
porticos, arrests itself _and falls powerless_ at the foot of the
hundred and forty columns of the hypostyle of Karnak! In one of its
halls, the Cathedral of Notre Dame might stand and not touch the
ceiling, but be considered as a small ornament in the centre of the
hall.
A writer in a number of an English periodical, of 1870, evidently
speaking with the authority of a traveller who describes what he has
seen, expresses himself as follows: “Courts, halls, gateways, pillars
obelisks, monolithic figures, sculptures, long rows of sphinxes, are
found in such profusion at Karnak, that the sight is too much for
modern comprehension.”
Says Denon, the French traveller: “It is hardly possible to believe,
after seeing it, in the reality of the existence of so many buildings
collected together on a single point, in their dimensions, in the
resolute perseverance which their construction required, and in the
incalculable expenses of so much magnificence! It is necessary that the
reader should fancy what is before him to be a dream, as he who views
the objects themselves occasionally yields to the doubt whether he be
perfectly awake.... There are lakes and mountains _within the periphery
of the sanctuary_. These two edifices are selected as examples from a
list _next to inexhaustible_. The whole valley and delta of the Nile,
from the cataracts to the sea, was covered with temples, palaces,
tombs, pyramids, obelisks, and pillars. The execution of the sculptures
is beyond praise. The mechanical perfection with which artists wrought
in granite, serpentine, breccia, and basalt, is wonderful, according
to all the experts ... animals and plants look as good as natural, and
artificial objects are beautifully sculptured; battles by sea and land,
and scenes of domestic life are to be found in all their _bas-reliefs_.”
“The monuments,” says an English author, “which there strike the
traveller, fill his mind with great ideas. At the sight of the
colossuses and superb obelisks, which seem to surpass the limits of
human nature, he cannot help exclaiming, ‘This was the work of man,’
and this sentiment seems to ennoble his existence.”[776]
In his turn, Dr. Richardson, speaking of the Temple of Dendera, says:
“The female figures are so extremely well executed, that they do all
but speak; they have a mildness of feature and expression that never
was surpassed.”
_Every one of these stones is covered with hieroglyphics, and the more
ancient they are, the more beautifully we find them chiselled._ Does
not this furnish a new proof that history got its first glimpse of the
ancients when the arts were already fast degenerating among them? The
obelisks have their inscriptions cut two inches, and sometimes more,
in depth, and they are cut with the highest degree of perfection.
Some idea may be formed of their depth, from the fact that the
Arabs, for a small fee, will climb sometimes to the very top of an
obelisk, by inserting their toes and fingers in the excavations of the
hieroglyphics. That all of these works, in which solidity rivals the
beauty of their execution, were done before the days of the Exodus,
there remains no historical doubt whatever. (All the archæologists now
agree in saying that, the further back we go in history, the better and
finer become these arts.) These views clash again with the individual
opinion of Mr. Fiske, who would have us believe that “the sculptures
upon these monuments (of Egypt, Hindustan, and Assyria), moreover,
betoken a very _undeveloped_ condition of the artistic faculties.”[777]
Nay, the learned gentleman goes farther. Joining his voice in the
opposition against the claims of learning—which belongs by right to
the sacerdotal castes of antiquity—to that of Lewis, he contemptuously
remarks that “the extravagant theory of a profound science possessed
by the Egyptian priesthood from a remote antiquity, and imparted to
itinerant Greek philosophers, has been utterly destroyed (?) by Sir G.
C. Lewis[778] ... while, with regard to Egypt and Hindustan, as well as
Assyria, it may be said that the colossal monuments which have adorned
these countries since prehistoric times, bear witness to the former
prevalence of a barbaric despotism, totally incompatible with social
nobility, and, therefore, with well sustained progress.”[779]
A curious argument, indeed. If the size and grandeur of public
monuments are to serve to our posterity as a standard by which to
approximately estimate the “progress of civilization” attained by
their builders, it may be prudent, perhaps, for America, so proud
of her alleged progress and freedom, to dwarf her buildings at once
to one story. Otherwise, according to Professor Fiske’s theory, the
archæologists of A.D. 3877 will be applying to the “Ancient America”
of 1877, the rule of Lewis—and say the _ancient_ United States “may
be considered as a great _latifundium_, or plantation, cultivated by
the entire population, as the king’s (president’s) slaves.” Is it
because the white-skinned Aryan races were never born “builders,”
like the Eastern Æthiopians, or dark-skinned Caucasians,[780] and,
therefore, never able to compete with the latter in such colossal
structures, that we must jump at the conclusion that these grandiose
temples and pyramids could only have been erected under the whip of
a merciless despot? Strange logic! It would really seem more prudent
to hold to the “rigorous canons of criticism” laid down by Lewis and
Grote, and honestly confess at once, that we really know little about
these ancient nations, and that, except so far as purely hypothetical
speculations go, unless we study in the same direction as the ancient
priests did, we have as little chance in the future. We only know what
they allowed the uninitiated to know, but the little we do learn of
them by deduction, ought to be sufficient to assure us that, even in
the nineteenth century, with all our claims to supremacy in arts and
sciences, we are totally unable, we will not say to build anything like
the monuments of Egypt, Hindustan, or Assyria, but even to rediscover
the least of the ancient “_lost_ arts.” Besides, Sir Gardner Wilkinson
gives forcible expression to this view of the exhumed treasures of old,
by adding that, “he can trace no _primitive mode_ of life, no barbarous
customs, but a sort of stationary civilization _from the most remote
periods_.” Thus far, archæology disagrees with geology, which affirms
that the further they trace the remains of men, the more barbarous they
find them. It is doubtful if geology has even yet exhausted the field
of research afforded her in the caves, and the views of geologists,
which are based upon present experience, may be radically modified,
when they come to discover the remains of the ancestors of the people
whom they now style the cave-dwellers.
What better illustrates the theory of cycles than the following fact?
Nearly 700 years B.C., in the schools of Thales and Pythagoras was
taught the doctrine of the true motion of the earth, its form, and the
whole heliocentric system. And in 317 A.D., we find Lactantius, the
preceptor of Crispus Cæsar, son of Constantine the Great, teaching
his pupil that the earth was a plane surrounded by the sky, which is
composed of fire and water, and warning him against the heretical
doctrine of the earth’s globular form!
Whenever, in the pride of some new discovery, we throw a look into
the past, we find, to our dismay, certain vestiges which indicate the
possibility, if not certainty, that the alleged discovery was not
totally unknown to the ancients.
It is generally asserted that neither the early inhabitants of the
Mosaic times, nor even the more civilized nations of the Ptolemaic
period were acquainted with electricity. If we remain undisturbed in
this opinion, it is not for lack of proofs to the contrary. We may
disdain to search for a profounder meaning in some characteristic
sentences of Servius, and other writers; we cannot so obliterate them
but that, at some future day, that meaning will appear to us in all
its significant truths. “The first inhabitants of the earth,” says he,
“never carried fire to their altars, but by their prayers they brought
down the heavenly fire.”[781] “Prometheus discovered and revealed to
man the art of bringing down lightning; and by the method which he
taught to them, they brought down fire from the region above.”
If, after pondering these words, we are still willing to attribute
them to the phraseology of mythological fables, we may turn to the
days of Numa, the king-philosopher, so renowned for his esoteric
learning, and find ourselves more embarrassed to deal with his case.
We can neither accuse him of ignorance, superstition, nor credulity;
for, if history can be believed at all, he was intently bent on
destroying polytheism and idol-worship. He had so well dissuaded the
Romans from idolatry that for nearly two centuries neither statues nor
images appeared in their temples. On the other hand old historians
tell us that the knowledge which Numa possessed in natural physics was
remarkable. Tradition says that he was initiated by the priests of the
Etruscan divinities, and instructed by them in the secret of forcing
Jupiter, the Thunderer, to descend upon earth.[782] Ovid shows that
Jupiter Elicius began to be worshipped by the Romans from that time.
Salverte is of the opinion that before Franklin discovered his refined
electricity, Numa had experimented with it most successfully, and
that Tullus Hostilius was the first victim of the dangerous “heavenly
guest” recorded in history. Titus Livy and Pliny narrate that this
prince, having found in the _Books of Numa_, instructions on the
secret sacrifices offered to Jupiter Elicius, made a mistake, and, in
consequence of it, “he was struck by lightning and consumed in his own
palace.”[783]
Salverte remarks that Pliny, in the exposition of Numa’s scientific
secrets, “makes use of expressions which seem to indicate two distinct
processes;” the one obtained thunder (_impetrare_), the other forced
it to lightning (_cogere_).[784] “Guided by Numa’s book,” says Lucius,
quoted by Pliny, “Tullus undertook to invoke the aid of Jupiter....
But having performed the rite imperfectly, he perished, struck by
thunder.”[785]
Tracing back the knowledge of thunder and lightning possessed by the
Etruscan priests, we find that Tarchon, the founder of the theurgism of
the former, desiring to preserve his house from lightning, surrounded
it by a hedge of the white bryony,[786] a climbing plant which has
the property of averting thunderbolts. Tarchon the theurgist was much
anterior to the siege of Troy. The pointed metallic lightning-rod,
for which we are seemingly indebted to Franklin, is probably a
_re-discovery_ after all. There are many medals which seem to strongly
indicate that the principle was anciently known. The temple of Juno had
its roof covered with a quantity of pointed blades of swords.[787]
If we possess but little proof of the ancients having had any clear
notions as to _all_ the effects of electricity, there is very strong
evidence, at all events, of their having been perfectly acquainted
with electricity itself. “Ben David,” says the author of _The Occult
Sciences_, “has asserted that Moses possessed some knowledge of the
phenomena of electricity.” Professor Hirt, of Berlin, is of this
opinion. Michaelis, remarks—_firstly_: “that there is no indication
that lightning ever struck the temple of Jerusalem, during a thousand
years. _Secondly_, that according to Josephus,[788] a forest of points
... of gold, and very sharp, covered the roof of the temple. _Thirdly_,
that this roof communicated with the caverns in the hill upon which the
temple was situated, by means of pipes in connection with the gilding
which covered all the exterior of the building; in consequence of which
the points would act as conductors.”[789]
Ammianus Marcellinus, a famous historian of the fourth century, a
writer generally esteemed for the fairness and correctness of his
statements, tells that “The magii, preserved perpetually in their
furnaces fire that they miraculously got from heaven.”[790] There is
a sentence in the Hindu _Oupnek-hat_, which runs thus: “To know fire,
the sun, the moon, and lightning, is three-fourths of the science of
God.”[791]
Finally, Salverte shows that in the days of Ktesias, “India was
acquainted with the use of conductors of lightning.” This historian
plainly states that “iron placed at the bottom of a fountain ... and
made in the form of a sword, _with the point upward_, possessed, as
soon as it was thus fixed in the ground, the property of averting
storms and lightnings.”[792] What can be plainer?
Some modern writers deny the fact that a great mirror was placed in the
light-house of the Alexandrian port, for the purpose of discovering
vessels at a distance at sea. But the renowned Buffon believed in
it; for he honestly confesses that “If the mirror really existed,
as I firmly believe it did, to the ancients belong the honor of the
invention _of the telescope_.”[793]
Stevens, in his work on the East, asserts that he found railroads
in Upper Egypt whose grooves were coated with iron. Canova, Powers,
and other celebrated sculptors of our modern age deem it an honor to
be compared with Pheidias of old, and strict truth would, perhaps,
hesitate at such a flattery.
Professor Jowett discredits the story of the Atlantis, in the _Timæus_;
and the records of 8,000 and 9,000 years appear to him an ancient
swindle. But Bunsen remarks: “There is nothing improbable in itself
in reminiscences and records of great events in Egypt 9,000 years B.
C., for ... the Origines of Egypt go back to the ninth millennium
before Christ.[794] Then how about the primitive Cyclopean fortresses
of ancient Greece? Can the walls of Tiryns, about which, according to
archæological accounts, “even among the ancients it was reported to
have been the work of the Cyclops,”[795] be deemed posterior to the
pyramids? Masses of rock, some equal to a cube of six feet, and the
smallest of which, Pausanias says, could never be moved by a yoke of
oxen, laid up in walls of solid masonry twenty-five feet thick and over
forty feet high, still believed to be the work of men of the races
known to our history!
Wilkinson’s researches have brought to light the fact that many
inventions of what we term modern, and upon which we plume ourselves,
were perfected by the ancient Egyptians. The newly-discovered papyrus
of Ebers, the German archæologist, proves that neither our modern
chignons, skin-beautifying pearl powders, nor _eaux dentifrices_ were
secrets to them. More than one modern physician—even among those
who advertise themselves as having “made a speciality of nervous
disorders” may find his advantage in consulting the _Medical Books of
Hermes_, which contain prescriptions of real therapeutic value.
The Egyptians, as we have seen, excelled in all arts. They made paper
so excellent in quality as to be timeproof. “They took out the pith
of the papyrus,” says our anonymous writer, previously mentioned,
“dissected and opened the fibre, and flattening it by a process
known to them, made it as thin as our foolscap paper, but far more
durable.... They sometimes cut it into strips and glued it together;
many of such written documents are yet in existence.” The papyrus
found in the tomb of the queen’s mummy, and another one found in the
sarcophagus of the “Chambre de la Reine,” at Ghizeh, present the
appearance of the finest glossy white muslin, while it possesses the
durability of the best calf-parchment. “For a long time the _savants_
believed the papyrus to have been introduced by Alexander the Great—as
they erroneously imagined a good many more things—but Lepsius found
rolls of papyri in tombs and monuments of the twelfth dynasty;
sculptured pictures of papyri were found later, on monuments of the
fourth dynasty, and now it is proved that the art of writing was known
and used as early as the days of Menes, the protomonarch;” and thus it
was finally discovered that the art and their system of writing were
perfect and complete _from the very first_.
It is to Champollion that we owe the first interpretation of their
weird writing; and, but for his life-long labor, we would till now
remain uninformed as to the meaning of all these pictured letters,
and the ancients would still be considered ignorant by the moderns
whom they so greatly excelled in some arts and sciences. “He was the
first to find out what wondrous tale the Egyptians had to tell, for
one who could read their endless manuscripts and records. They left
them on every spot and object capable of receiving characters....
They engraved, and chiselled, and sculptured them on monuments; they
traced them on furniture, rocks, stones, walls, coffins, and tombs,
as on the papyrus.... The pictures of their daily lives, in their
smallest details, are being now unravelled before our dazzled eyes in
the most wondrous way.... Nothing, of what we know, seems to have been
overlooked by the ancient Egyptians.... The history of ‘Sesostris’
shows us how well he and his people were versed in the art and
practice of war.... The pictures show how formidable they were when
encountered in battle. They constructed war-engines.... Homer says that
through each of the 100 gates of Thebes issued 200 men with horses
and chariots; the latter were magnificently constructed, and very
light in comparison with our modern heavy, clumsy, and uncomfortable
artillery wagons.” Kenrick describes them in the following terms: “In
short, as all the essential principles which regulate the construction
and draught of carriages are exemplified in the war-chariots of the
Pharaohs, so there is nothing which modern taste and luxury have
devised for their decoration to which we do not find a prototype
in the monuments of the eighteenth dynasty.” Springs—_metallic_
springs—have been found in them, and, notwithstanding Wilkinson’s
superficial investigation in that direction, and description of these
in his studies, we find proofs that such were used to prevent the
jolting in the chariots in their too rapid course. The bas-reliefs
show us certain melées and battles in which we can find and trace
their uses and customs to the smallest details. The heavily-armed men
fought in coats of mail, the infantry had quilted tunics and felt
helmets, with metallic coverings to protect them the better. Muratori,
the modern Italian inventor who, some ten years ago, introduced his
“impenetrable cuirasse,” has but followed in his invention what he
could make out of the ancient method which suggested to him the
idea. The process of rendering such objects as card-board, felt, and
other tissues, impenetrable to the cuts and thrusts of any sharp
weapon, is now numbered among the lost arts. Muratori succeeded but
imperfectly in preparing such felt cuirasses, and, notwithstanding the
boasted achievements of modern chemistry he could derive from it no
preparation adequate to effect his object, and failed.
To what perfection chemistry had reached in ancient times, may be
inferred from a fact mentioned by Virey. In his dissertations, he shows
that Asclepiadotus, a general of Mithradates, reproduced chemically the
deleterious exhalations of the sacred grotto. These vapors, like those
of Cumæ, threw the Pythoness into the mantic frenzy.
Egyptians used bows, double-edged swords and daggers, javelins,
spears, and pikes. The light troops were armed with darts and slings;
charioteers wielded maces and battle-axes; in siege-operations they
were perfect. “The assailants,” says the anonymous writer, “advanced,
forming a narrow and long line, the point being protected by a
triple-sided, impenetrable engine pushed before them on a kind of
roller, by an invisible squad of men. They had covered underground
passages with trap-doors, scaling ladders, and the art of escalade and
military strategy was carried by them to perfection.... The battering
ram was familiar to them as other things; being such experts in
quarrying they knew how to set a mine to a wall and bring it down.” The
same writer remarks, that it is a great deal safer for us to mention
what the Egyptians _did_ than what they _did not_ know, for every day
brings some new discovery of their wonderful knowledge; “and if,” he
adds, “we were to find out that they used Armstrong guns, this fact
would not be much more astonishing than many of the facts brought out
to light already.”
The proof that they were proficient in mathematical sciences, lies
in the fact that those ancient mathematicians whom we honor as the
fathers of geometry went to Egypt to be instructed. Says Professor
Smyth, as quoted by Mr. Peebles, “the geometrical knowledge of the
pyramid-builders began where Euclid’s ended.” Before Greece came
into existence, the arts, with the Egyptians, were ripe and old.
Land-measuring, an art resting on geometry, the Egyptians certainly
knew well, as, according to the _Bible_, Joshua, after conquering
the Holy Land, had skill enough to divide it. And how could a people
so skilled in natural philosophy as the Egyptians were, not be
proportionately skilled in psychology and spiritual philosophy? The
temple was the nursery of the highest civilization, and it alone
possessed that higher knowledge of magic which was in itself the
quintessence of natural philosophy. The occult powers of nature
were taught in the greatest secresy and the most wonderful cures
were performed during the performing of the Mysteries. Herodotus
acknowledges[796] that the Greeks learned all they knew, including
the sacred services of the temple, from the Egyptians, and because of
that, their principal temples were consecrated to Egyptian divinities.
Melampus, the famous healer and soothsayer of Argos, had to use his
medicines “after the manner of the Egyptians,” from whom he had gained
his knowledge, whenever he desired his cure to be thoroughly effective.
He healed Iphiclus of his impotency and debility by _the rust of iron_,
according to the directions of Mantis, his _magnetic sleeper_, or
oracle. Sprengel gives many wonderful instances of such _magical_ cures
in his _History of Medicine_ (see p. 119).
Diodorus, in his work on the Egyptians (lib. i.), says that Isis has
deserved immortality, for all nations of the earth bear witness to
the power of this goddess to cure diseases by her influence. “This is
proved,” he says, “not by fable as among the Greeks, but by authentic
facts.” Galen records several remedial means which were preserved in
the healing wards of the temples. He mentions also a universal medicine
which in his time was called _Isis_.[797]
The doctrines of several Greek philosophers, who had been instructed in
Egypt, demonstrates their profound learning. Orpheus, who, according
to Artapanus, was a disciple of Moyses (Moses),[798] Pythagoras,
Herodotus, and Plato owe their philosophy to the same temples in which
the wise Solon was instructed by the priests. “Antiklides relates,”
says Pliny, “that the letters were invented in Egypt by a person whose
name was Menon, fifteen years before Phoroneus the most ancient king
of Greece.”[799] Jablonski proves that the heliocentric system, as
well as the earth’s sphericity, were known by the priests of Egypt
from immemorial ages. “This theory,” he adds, “Pythagoras took from
the Egyptians, who had it from the Brachmans of India.”[800] Fénelon,
the illustrious Archbishop of Cambray, in his _Lives of the Ancient
Philosophers_, credits Pythagoras with this knowledge, and says that
besides teaching his disciples that as the earth was round there were
antipodes, since it was inhabited everywhere, the great mathematician
was the first to discover that the morning and evening star was the
same. If we now consider that Pythagoras lived in about the 16th
Olympiad, over 700 years B.C., and taught this fact at such an early
period, we must believe that it was known by others before him. The
works of Aristotle, Laërtius, and several others in which Pythagoras is
mentioned, demonstrate that he had learned from the Egyptians about the
obliquity of the ecliptic, the starry composition of the milky way, and
the borrowed light of the moon.
Wilkinson, corroborated later by others, says that the Egyptians
divided time, knew the true length of the year, and the precession of
the equinoxes. By recording the rising and setting of the stars, they
understood the particular influences which proceed from the positions
and conjunctions of all heavenly bodies, and therefore their priests,
prophesying as accurately as our modern astronomers, meteorological
changes, could, _en plus_, astrologize through astral motions. Though
the sober and eloquent Cicero may be partially right in his indignation
against the exaggerations of the Babylonian priests, who “assert
that they have preserved upon monuments observations extending back
during an interval of 470,000 years,”[801] still, the period at which
astronomy had arrived at its perfection with the ancients is _beyond_
the reach of modern calculation.
A writer in one of our scientific journals observes “that every
science in its growth passes through three stages: First, we have the
stage of observation, when facts are collected and registered by many
minds in many places. Next, we have the stage of generalization, when
these carefully verified facts are arranged methodically, generalized
systematically, and classified logically, so as to deduce and elucidate
from them the laws that regulate their rule and order. Lastly, we have
the stage of prophecy, when these laws are so applied that events can
be predicted to occur with unerring accuracy.” If several thousand
years B.C., Chinese and Chaldean astronomers predicted eclipses—the
latter, whether by the cycle of Saros, or other means, matters not—the
fact remains the same. They had reached the last and highest stage of
astronomical science—they _prophesied_. If they could, in the year 1722
B.C., delineate the zodiac with the exact positions of the planets
at the time of the autumnal equinox, and so unerringly as Professor
Mitchell, the astronomer, proved, then they knew the laws that regulate
“carefully-verified facts” to perfection, and applied them with as much
certainty as our modern astronomers. Moreover, astronomy is said to
be in our century “the only science which has thoroughly reached the
_last stage_ ... other sciences are yet in various stages of growth;
electricity, in some branches, has reached the third stage, but in
many branches is still in its infantine period.”[802] This we know, on
the exasperating confessions of men of science themselves, and we can
entertain no doubt as to this sad reality in the nineteenth century,
as we belong ourselves to it. Not so in relation to the men who lived
in the days of the glory of Chaldæa, Assyria, and Babylon. Of the
stages they reached in other sciences we know _nothing_, except that
in astronomy they stood equal with us, for they had also reached the
_third_ and last stage. In his lecture on the _Lost Arts_, Wendell
Phillips very artistically describes the situation. “We seem to
imagine,” says he, “that whether knowledge will die with us or not,
it certainly began with us.... We have a pitying estimate, a tender
pity for the narrowness, ignorance, and darkness of the bygone ages.”
To illustrate our own idea with the closing sentence of the favorite
lecturer, we may as well confess that we undertook this chapter,
which in one sense interrupts our narrative, to inquire of our men of
science, whether they are sure that they are boasting “_on the right
line_.”
Thus we read of a people, who, according to some learned writers,[803]
had just emerged from the bronze age into the succeeding age of iron.
“If Chaldea, Assyria, and Babylon presented _stupendous and venerable
antiquities reaching far back into_ the night of time, Persia was not
without her wonders of a later date. The pillared halls of Persepolis
were filled with miracles of art—carvings, sculptures, enamels,
alabaster libraries, obelisks, sphinxes, colossal bulls. Ecbatana,
in Media, the cool summer retreat of the Persian kings, was defended
by seven encircling walls of hewn and polished blocks, the interior
ones in succession of increasing height, and of different colors, in
astrological accordance with the seven planets. The palace was roofed
_with silver tiles_; its beams were plated with gold. At midnight, in
its halls, the sun was rivalled by many a row of naphtha cressets.
A paradise, that luxury of the monarchs of the East, was planted in
the midst of the city. The Persian empire was truly the garden of the
world.... In Babylon there still remained its walls, once more than
sixty miles in compass and, after the ravages of three centuries and
three conquerors, still more than eighty feet in height; there were
still the ruins of the temple of the cloud-encompassed Bel; on its top
was planted the observatory wherein the weird Chaldean astronomers had
held nocturnal communion with the stars; still there were vestiges of
the two palaces with their hanging gardens, in which were trees growing
in mid-air, and the wreck of the hydraulic machinery that had supplied
them from the river. Into the artificial lake, with its vast apparatus
of aqueducts and sluices, the melted snows of the Armenian mountains
found their way and were confined in their course through the city by
the embankments of the Euphrates. Most wonderful of all, perhaps, was
_the tunnel under the river-bed_.”[804] In his _First Traces of Man
in Europe_, Albrecht Müller proposes a name descriptive of the age
in which we live, and suggests that “the age of paper” is perhaps as
good as any that can be discussed. We do not agree with the learned
professor. Our firm opinion is, that succeeding generations will term
ours, at best, the age of _brass_; at worst, that of albata or of
oroide.
The thought of the present-day commentator and critic as to the ancient
learning, is limited to and runs round the _exoterism_ of the temples;
his insight is either unwilling or unable to penetrate into the solemn
adyta of old, where the hierophant instructed the neophyte to regard
the public worship in its true light. No ancient sage would have taught
that man is the king of creation, and that the starry heaven and our
mother earth were created for his sake. He, who doubts the assertion,
may turn to the _Magical and Philosophical Precepts_ of Zoroaster, and
find its corroboration in the following:[805]
“Direct not thy mind to the vast measures of the earth;
For the plant of truth is not upon ground.
Nor measure the measures of the sun, collecting rules,
For he is carried by the eternal will of the Father, _not for your
sake_,
Dismiss the impetuous course of the moon;
For she runs always by work of necessity.
The progression of the stars _was not generated for your sake_.”
A rather strange teaching to come from those who are universally
believed to have worshipped the sun, and moon, and the starry host,
as gods. The sublime profundity of the Magian precepts being _beyond_
the reach of modern materialistic thought, the Chaldean philosophers
are accused, together with the ignorant masses, of Sabianism and
sun-worship.
There was a vast difference between the _true_ worship taught to those
who showed themselves worthy, and the state religions. The magians are
accused of all kinds of superstition, but this is what a _Chaldean
Oracle_ says:
“The wide aërial flight of birds _is not true_,
Nor the dissections of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys,
The _basis of mercenary fraud_; flee from these
If you would open the sacred paradise of piety
Where virtue, wisdom, and equity, are assembled.”[806]
Surely, it is not those who warn people against “mercenary fraud”
who can be accused of it; and if they accomplished acts which seem
miraculous, who can with fairness presume to deny that it was done
merely because they possessed a knowledge of natural philosophy and
psychological science to a degree unknown to our schools?
What did they not know? It is a well-demonstrated fact that the true
meridian was correctly ascertained before the first pyramid was
built. They had clocks and dials to measure time; their cubit was
the established unit of linear measure, being 1,707 feet of English
measure; according to Herodotus the unit of weight was also known; as
money, they had gold and silver rings valued by weight; they had the
decimal and duodecimal modes of calculation from the earliest times,
and were proficient in algebra. “How could they otherwise,” says an
unknown author, “bring into operation such immense mechanical powers,
if they had not thoroughly understood the philosophy of what we term
the mechanical powers?”
The art of making linen and fine fabrics is also proved to have
been one of their branches of knowledge, for the _Bible_ speaks of
it. Joseph was presented by Pharaoh with a vesture of fine linen, a
golden chain, and many more things. The linen of Egypt was famous
throughout the world. The mummies are all wrapped in it and the linen
is beautifully preserved. Pliny speaks of a certain garment sent 600
years B. C., by King Amasis to Lindus, every single thread of which
was composed of 360 minor threads twisted together. Herodotus gives us
(book i.), in his account of Isis and the Mysteries performed in her
honor, an idea of the beauty and “admirable softness of the linen worn
by the priests.” The latter wore shoes made of papyrus and garments
of _fine linen_, because this goddess first taught the use of it; and
thus, besides being called _Isiaci_, or priests of Isis, they were also
known as _Linigera_, or the “linen-wearing.” This linen was spun and
dyed in those brilliant and gorgeous colors, the secret of which is
likewise now among the lost arts. On the mummies we often find the most
beautiful embroidery and bead-work ornamenting their shirts; several of
such can be seen in the museum of Bulak (Cairo), and are unsurpassable
in beauty; the designs are exquisite, and the labor seems immense.
The elaborate and so much vaunted Gobelins tapestry, is but a gross
production when compared with some of the embroidery of the ancient
Egyptians. We have but to refer to _Exodus_ to discover how skilful
was the workmanship of the Israelitish pupils of the Egyptians upon
their tabernacle and sacred ark. The sacerdotal vestments, with their
decorations of “pomegranates and golden bells,” and the thummim, or
jewelled breastplate of the high priest, are described by Josephus as
being of unparalleled beauty and of wonderful workmanship; and yet we
find beyond doubt that the Jews adopted their rites and ceremonies, and
even the special dress of their Levites, from the Egyptians. Clemens
Alexandrinus acknowledges it very reluctantly, and so does Origen and
other Fathers of the Church, some of whom, as a matter of course,
attribute the coincidence to a clever trick of Satan in anticipation
of events. Proctor, the astronomer, says in one of his books, “The
remarkable breastplate worn by the Jewish high priest was derived
directly from the Egyptians.” The word _thummim_ itself is evidently
of Egyptian origin, borrowed by Moses, like the rest; for further on
the same page, Mr. Proctor says that, “In the often-repeated picture
of judgment the deceased Egyptian is seen conducted by the god Horus
(?), while Anubis places on one of the balances a vase supposed to
contain his good actions, and in the other is the emblem of truth, a
representation of Thmèi, the goddess of truth, which was also worn on
the judicial breastplate.” Wilkinson, in his _Manners and Customs of
the Ancient Egyptians_, shows that the Hebrew _thummim_ is a plural
form of the word Thmèi.[807]
All the ornamental arts seem to have been known to the Egyptians. Their
jewelry of gold, silver, and precious stones are beautifully wrought;
so was the cutting, polishing, and setting of them executed by their
lapidaries in the finest style. The finger-ring of an Egyptian mummy—if
we remember aright—was pronounced the most artistic piece of jewelry in
the London Exhibition of 1851. Their imitation of precious stones in
glass is far above anything done at the present day; and the emerald
may be said to have been imitated to perfection.
In Pompeii, says Wendell Phillips, they discovered a room full
of glass; there was ground-glass, window-glass, cut-glass, and
colored-glass of every variety. Catholic priests who broke into China
200 years ago, were shown a glass, transparent and colorless, which
was filled with liquor made by the Chinese, and which appeared to be
colorless like water. “This liquor was poured into the glass, and then
looking through, it seemed to be filled with fishes. They turned it out
and repeated the experiment and again it was filled with fishes.” In
Rome they show a bit of glass, a transparent glass, which they light up
so as to show you that there is nothing concealed, but in the centre
of the glass is a drop of colored glass, perhaps as large as a pea,
mottled like a duck, and which even a miniature pencil could not do
more perfectly. “It is manifest that this drop of liquid glass must
have been poured, because there is no joint. This must have been done
by a greater heat than the annealing process, because that process
shows breaks.” In relation to their wonderful art of imitating precious
stones, the lecturer speaks of the “celebrated vase of the Genoa
Cathedral,” which was considered for long centuries “a solid emerald.”
“The Roman Catholic legend of it was that it was one of the treasures
that the Queen of Sheba gave to Solomon, and that it was the identical
cup out of which the Saviour drank at the Last Supper.” Subsequently
it was found not to be an emerald, but an imitation; and when Napoleon
brought it to Paris and gave it to the Institute, the scientists were
obliged to confess that it _was not a stone_, and that they could not
tell what it was.
Further, speaking of the skill of the ancients in metal works, the same
lecturer narrates that “when the English plundered the Summer Palace of
the Emperor of China, the European artists were surprised at seeing the
curiously-wrought metal vessels of every kind, far exceeding all the
boasted skill of the workmen of Europe.” African tribes in the interior
of the country gave travellers _better razors_ than they had. “George
Thompson told me,” he adds, “he saw a man in Calcutta throw a handful
of floss silk into the air, and a Hindu sever it into pieces with his
sabre of native steel.” He concludes by the apt remark that “the steel
is the greatest triumph of metallurgy, and metallurgy is the glory of
chemistry.” So with the ancient Egyptians and Semitic races. They dug
gold and separated it with the utmost skill. Copper, lead, and iron
were found in abundance near the Red Sea.
In a lecture delivered in 1873, on the _Cave-Men of Devonshire_, Mr.
W. Pengelly, F.R.S., stated on the authority of some Egyptologists
that the first iron used in Egypt was _meteoric_ iron, as the earliest
mention of this metal is found in an Egyptian document, in which it
is called the “stone from heaven.” This would imply the idea that the
only iron which was in use in days of old was meteorite. This may
have been the case at the commencement of the period embraced in our
present geological explorations, but till we can compute with at least
approximate accuracy the age of our excavated relics, who can tell
but that we are making a blunder of possibly several hundred thousand
years? The injudiciousness of dogmatizing upon what the ancient
Chaldeans and Egyptians did _not_ know about mining and metallurgy is
at least partially shown by the discoveries of Colonel Howard Vyse.
Moreover, many of such precious stones as are only found at a great
depth in mines are mentioned in Homer and the Hebrew Scriptures. Have
scientists ascertained the precise time when mining-shafts were first
sunk by mankind? According to Dr. A. C. Hamlin, in India, the arts
of the goldsmith and lapidary have been practiced from an “unknown
antiquity.” That the Egyptians either knew from the remotest ages
how to temper steel, or possessed something still better and more
perfect than the implement necessary in our days for chiselling, is an
alternative from which the archæologists cannot escape. How else could
they have produced such artistic chiselling, or wrought such sculpture
as they did? The critics may take their choice of either; according to
them, steel tools of the most exquisite temper, or some other means of
cutting sienite, granite, and basalt; which, in the latter case, must
be added to the long catalogue of lost arts.
Professor Albrecht Müller says: “We may ascribe the introduction of
bronze manufacture into Europe to a great race immigrant from Asia some
6,000 years ago, called Aryas or Aryans.... Civilization of the East
preceded that of the West by many centuries.... There are many proofs
that a considerable degree of culture existed at its very beginning.
Bronze was yet in use, _but iron as well_. Pottery was not only shaped
on the lathe, but burned a good red. Manufactures in glass, gold, and
silver, are found for the first time. In lonely mountain places are
yet found dross, and the remains of iron-furnaces.... To be sure, this
dross is sometimes ascribed to volcanic action, but it is met with
where volcanoes never could have existed.”
But it is in the process of preparing mummies that the skill of this
wonderful people is exemplified in the highest degree. None but those
who have made special study of the subject, can estimate the amount of
skill, patience, and knowledge exacted for the accomplishment of this
indestructible work, which occupied several months. Both chemistry and
surgery were called into requisition. The mummies, if left in the dry
climate of Egypt, seem to be practicably imperishable; and even when
removed after a repose of several thousand years, show no signs of
change. “The body,” says the anonymous writer, “was filled with myrrh,
cassia, and other gums, and after that, saturated with natron.... Then
followed the marvellous swathing of the embalmed body, so artistically
executed, that professional modern bandagists are lost in admiration at
its excellency.” Says Dr. Grandville: “ ... there is not a single form
of bandage known to modern surgery, of which _far better and cleverer
examples_ are not seen in the swathings of the Egyptian mummies. The
strips of linen are found without one single joint, extending to 1,000
_yards_ in length.” Rossellini, in Kenrick’s _Ancient Egypt_, gives a
similar testimony to the wonderful variety and skill with which the
bandages have been applied and interlaced. There was not a fracture
in the human body that could not be repaired successfully by the
sacerdotal physician of those remote days.
Who but well remembers the excitement produced some twenty-five years
ago by the discovery of anæsthesia? The nitrous oxide gas, sulphuric
and chloric ether, chloroform, “laughing gas,” besides various other
combinations of these, were welcomed as so many heavenly blessings to
the suffering portion of humanity. Poor Dr. Horace Wells, of Hartford,
in 1844, was the discoverer, and Drs. Morton and Jackson reaped the
honors and benefits in 1846, as is usual in such cases. The anæsthetics
were proclaimed “the greatest discovery ever made.” And, though the
famous _Letheon_ of Morton and Jackson (a compound of sulphuric
ether), the chloroform of Sir James Y. Simpson, and the nitrous oxide
gas, introduced by Colton, in 1843, and by Dunham and Smith, were
occasionally checked by fatal cases, it still did not prevent these
gentlemen from being considered public benefactors. The patients
successfully put to sleep sometimes awoke no more; what matters that,
so long as others were relieved? Physicians assure us that accidents
are now but rarely apprehended. Perhaps it is because the beneficent
anæsthetic agents are so parsimoniously applied as to fail in their
effects one-half of the time, leaving the sufferer paralyzed for a few
seconds in his external movements, but feeling the pain as acutely as
ever. On the whole, however, chloroform and laughing gas are beneficent
discoveries. But, are they the first anæsthetics ever discovered,
strictly speaking? Dioscorides speaks of the stone of Memphis (_lapis
Memphiticus_), and describes it as a small pebble—round, polished, and
very sparkling. When ground into powder, and applied as an ointment
to that part of the body on which the surgeon was about to operate,
either with his scalpel or fire, it preserved that part, and _only
that part_ from any pain of the operation. In the meantime, it was
perfectly harmless to the constitution of the patient, who retained
his consciousness throughout, in no way dangerous from its effects,
and acted so long as it was kept on the affected part. When taken in
a mixture of wine or water, all feeling of suffering was perfectly
deadened.[808] Pliny gives also a full description of it.[809]
From time immemorial, the Brahmans have had in their possession
secrets quite as valuable. The widow, bent on the self-sacrifice of
con-cremation, called _Sahamaranya_, has no dread of suffering the
least pain, for the fiercest flames will consume her, without one pang
of agony being experienced by her. The holy plants which crown her
brow, as she is conducted in ceremony to the funeral pile; the sacred
root culled at the midnight hour on the spot where the Ganges and the
Yumna mingle their waters; and the process of anointing the body of the
self-appointed victim with ghee and sacred oils, after she has bathed
in all her clothes and finery, are so many _magical_ anæsthetics.
Supported by those she is going to part with in body, she walks thrice
around her fiery couch, and, after bidding them farewell, is cast on
the dead body of her husband, and leaves this world without a single
moment of suffering. “The semi-fluid,” says a missionary writer, an
eye-witness of several such ceremonies—“the ghee, is poured upon the
pile; it is instantly inflamed, and the _drugged_ widow dies quickly of
_suffocation_ before the fire reaches her body.”[810]
No such thing, if the sacred ceremony is only conducted strictly after
the prescribed rites. The widows are never drugged in the sense we
are accustomed to understand the word. Only precautionary measures
are taken against a useless physical martyrdom—the atrocious agony
of burning. Her mind is as free and clear as ever, and even more so.
Firmly believing in the promises of a future life, her whole mind is
absorbed in the contemplation of the approaching bliss—the beatitude
of “freedom,” which she is about to attain. She generally dies with
the smile of heavenly rapture on her countenance; and if some one is
to suffer at the hour of retribution, it is not the earnest devotee
of her faith, but the crafty Brahmans who know well enough that no
such ferocious rite was ever prescribed.[811] As to the victim, after
having been consumed, she becomes a _sati_—transcendent purity—and is
canonized after death.
Egypt is the birthplace and the cradle of chemistry. Kenrick shows
the root of the word to be _chemi_ or chem, which was the name of the
country (_Psalms_ cv. 27). The chemistry of colors seems to have been
thoroughly well known in that country. Facts are facts. Where among our
painters are we to search for the artist who can decorate our walls
with imperishable colors? Ages after our pigmy buildings will have
crumbled into dust, and the cities enclosing them will themselves have
become shapeless heaps of brick and mortar, with forgotten names—long
after that will the halls of Karnak and Luxor (El-Uxor) be still
standing; and the gorgeous mural paintings of the latter will doubtless
be as bright and vivid 4,000 years hence, as they were 4,000 years
ago, and are to-day. “Embalming and fresco-painting,” says our author,
“was not a chance discovery with the Egyptians, but brought out from
definitions and maxims like any induction of Faraday.”
Our modern Italians boast of their Etruscan vases and paintings; the
decorative borders found on Greek vases provoke the admiration of the
lovers of antiquity, and are ascribed to the Greeks, while in fact
“they were but copies from the Egyptian vases.” Their figures can be
found any day on the walls of a tomb of the age of Amunoph I., a period
at which Greece was not even in existence.
Where, in our age, can we point to anything comparable to the
rock-temples of Ipsambul in Lower Nubia? There may be seen sitting
figures seventy feet high, carved out of the living rock. The torso of
the statue of Rameses II., at Thebes, measures sixty feet around the
shoulders, and elsewhere in proportion. Beside such titanic sculpture
our own seems that of pigmies. Iron was known to the Egyptians at least
long before the construction of the first pyramid, which is over 20,000
years ago, according to Bunsen. The proof of this had remained hidden
for many thousands of years in the pyramid of Cheops, until _Colonel
Howard Vyse found it in the shape of a piece of iron, in one of the
joints, where it had evidently been placed at the time this pyramid was
first built_. Egyptologists adduce many indications that the ancients
were perfectly well acquainted with metallurgy in prehistoric times.
“To this day we can find at Sinai large heaps of scoriæ, produced
by smelting.”[812] Metallurgy and chemistry, as practiced in those
days, were known as _alchemy_, and were at the bottom of prehistoric
magic. Moreover, Moses proved his knowledge of alchemical chemistry by
pulverizing the golden calf, and strewing the powder upon the water.
If now we turn to navigation, we will find ourselves able to prove,
on good authorities, that Necho II. fitted out a fleet on the Red Sea
and despatched it for exploration. The fleet was absent above two
years and instead of returning through the Straits of Babelmandel, as
was wont, sailed back through the Straits of Gibraltar. Herodotus was
not at all swift to concede to the Egyptians a maritime achievement
so vast as this. They had, he says, been spreading the report that
“returning homewards, they had the sunrise on their right hands; a
thing which to me is incredible.” “And yet,” remarks the author of
the heretofore-mentioned article, “this incredible assertion is now
proved _incontestable_, as may well be understood by any one who has
doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Thus it is proved that the most ancient
of these people performed a feat which was attributed to Columbus many
ages later. They say they anchored twice on their way; sowed corn,
reaped it and, sailing away, steered in triumph through the Pillars of
Hercules and eastward along the Mediterranean. “There was a people,” he
adds, “much more deserving of the term ‘_veteres_’ than the Romans and
Greeks. The Greeks, young in their knowledge, sounded a trumpet before
these and called upon all the world to admire their ability. Old Egypt,
grown gray in her wisdom, was so secure of her acquirements that, she
did not invite admiration and cared no more for the opinion of the
flippant Greek than we do to-day for that of a Feejee islander.”
“O Solon, Solon,” said the oldest Egyptian priest to that sage. “You
Greeks are ever childish, having no ancient opinion, no discipline of
any long standing!” And very much surprised, indeed, was the great
Solon, when he was told by the priests of Egypt that so many gods and
goddesses of the Grecian Pantheon were but the disguised gods of Egypt.
Truly spoke Zonaras: “All these things came to us from Chaldea to
Egypt; and from thence were derived to the Greeks.”
Sir David Brewster gives a glowing description of several automata; and
the eighteenth century takes pride in that masterpiece of mechanical
art, the “flute-player of Vaucanson.” The little we can glean of
positive information on that subject, from ancient writers, warrants
the belief that the learned mechanicians in the days of Archimedes,
and some of them much anterior to the great Syracusan, were in no wise
more ignorant or less ingenious than our modern inventors. Archytas, a
native of Tarentum, in Italy, the instructor of Plato, a philosopher
distinguished for his mathematical achievements and wonderful
discoveries in practical mechanics, constructed a wooden dove. It must
have been an extraordinarily ingenious mechanism, as it flew, fluttered
its wings, and sustained itself for a considerable time in the air.
This skilful man, who lived 400 years B.C., invented besides the wooden
dove, the screw, the crane, and various hydraulic machines.[813]
Egypt pressed her own grapes and made wine. Nothing remarkable in
that, so far, but she brewed her own beer, and in great quantity—our
Egyptologist goes on to say. The Ebers manuscript proves now, beyond
doubt, that the Egyptians used beer 2,000 years B.C. Their beer must
have been strong and excellent—like everything they did. Glass was
manufactured in all its varieties. In many of the Egyptian sculptures
we find scenes of glass-blowing and bottles; occasionally, during
archæological researches, glasses and glassware are found, and very
beautiful they seem to have been. Sir Gardner Wilkinson says that
the Egyptians cut, ground, and engraved glass, and possessed the art
of introducing gold between the two surfaces of the substance. They
imitated with glass, pearls, emeralds, and all the precious stones to a
great perfection.
Likewise, the most ancient Egyptians cultivated the musical arts, and
understood well the effect of musical harmony and its influence on the
human spirit. We can find on the oldest sculptures and carvings scenes
in which musicians play on various instruments. Music was used in the
Healing Department of the temples for the cure of nervous disorders. We
discover on many monuments men playing in bands in concert; the leader
beating time by clapping his hands. Thus far we can prove that they
understood the laws of harmony. They had their sacred music, domestic
and military. The lyre, harp, and flute were used for the sacred
concerts; for festive occasions they had the guitar, the single and
double pipes, and castanets; for troops, and during military service,
they had trumpets, tambourines, drums, and cymbals. Various kinds of
harps were invented by them, such as the lyre, _sambuc_, _ashur_; some
of these had upward of twenty strings. The superiority of the Egyptian
lyre over the Grecian is an admitted fact. The material out of which
were made such instruments was often of very costly and rare wood, and
they were beautifully carved; they imported it sometimes from very
distant countries; some were painted, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and
ornamented with colored leather. They used catgut for strings as we
do. Pythagoras learned music in Egypt and made a regular science of it
in Italy. But the Egyptians were generally considered in antiquity as
the best music-teachers in Greece. They understood thoroughly well how
to extract harmonious sounds out of an instrument by adding strings to
it, as well as the multiplication of notes by shortening the strings
upon its neck; which knowledge shows a great progress in the musical
art. Speaking of harps, in a tomb at Thebes, Bruce remarks that, “they
overturn all the accounts hitherto given of the earliest state of music
and musical instruments in the East, and are altogether, in their
form, ornaments and compass, an incontestable proof, _stronger than
a thousand Greek quotations_, that geometry, drawing, mechanics, and
music were at the greatest perfection when these instruments were made;
and that the period from which we date the invention of these arts was
only _the beginning of the era of their restoration_.”
On the walls of the palace of Amenoph II. at Thebes, the king is
represented as playing chess with the queen. This monarch reigned long
before the Trojan war. In India the game is known to have been played
at least 5,000 years ago.
As to their knowledge in medicine, now that one of the lost _Books
of Hermes_ has been found and translated by Ebers, the Egyptians can
speak for themselves. That they understood about the circulation of
the blood, appears certain from the _healing manipulations_ of the
priests, who knew how to draw blood downward, stop its circulation for
awhile, etc. A more careful study of their _bas-reliefs_ representing
scenes taking place in the healing hall of various temples will easily
demonstrate it. They had their dentists and oculists, and no doctor
was allowed to practice more than one specialty; which certainly
warrants the belief that they lost fewer patients in those days than
our physicians do now. It is also asserted by some authorities that the
Egyptians were the first people in the world who introduced trial by
jury; although we doubt this ourselves.
But the Egyptians were not the only people of remote epochs whose
achievements place them in so commanding a position before the view
of posterity. Besides others whose history is at present shut in
behind the mists of antiquity—such as the prehistoric races of the two
Americas, of Crete, of the Troäd, of the Lacustrians, of the submerged
continent of the fabled Atlantis, now classed with myths—the deeds of
the Phœnicians stamp them with almost the character of demi-gods.
The writer in the _National Quarterly Review_, previously quoted, says
that the Phœnicians were the earliest navigators of the world, founded
most of the colonies of the Mediterranean, and voyaged to whatever
other regions were inhabited. They visited the Arctic regions, whence
they brought accounts of eternal days without a night, which Homer
has preserved for us in the _Odyssey_. From the British Isles they
imported tin into Africa, and Spain was a favorite site for their
colonies. The description of Charybdis so completely answers to the
maëlstrom that, as this writer says: “It is difficult to imagine it to
have had any other prototype.” Their explorations, it seems, extended
in every direction, their sails whitening the Indian Ocean, as well
as the Norwegian fiords. Different writers have accorded to them the
settlement of remote localities; while the entire southern coast of
the Mediterranean was occupied by their cities. A large portion of
the African territory is asserted to have been peopled by the races
expelled by Joshua and the children of Israel. At the time when
Procopius wrote, columns stood in Mauritania Tingitana, which bore the
inscription, in Phœnician characters, “We are those who fled before the
brigand Joshua, the son of Nun or Navè.”
Some suppose these hardy navigators of Arctic and Antarctic waters
have been the progenitors of the races which built the temples and
palaces of Palenque and Uxmal, of Copan and Arica.[814] Brasseur de
Bourbourg gives us much information about the manners and customs,
architecture and arts, and especially of the magic and magicians of
the ancient Mexicans. He tells us that Votan, their fabulous hero
and the greatest of their magicians, returning from a long voyage,
visited King Solomon at the time of the building of the temple. This
Votan appears to be identical with the dreaded Quetzo-Cohuatl who
appears in all the Mexican legends; and curiously enough these legends
bear a striking resemblance, insomuch as they relate to the voyages
and exploits of the Hittim, with the Hebrew _Bible_ accounts of the
Hivites, the descendants of Heth, son of Chanaan. The record tells
us that Votan “furnished to Solomon the most valuable particulars
as to the men, animals, and plants, the gold and precious woods of
the Occident,” but refused point-blank to afford any clew to the
route he sailed, or the manner of reaching the mysterious continent.
Solomon himself gives an account of this interview in his _History
of the Wonders of the Universe_, the chief Votan figuring under the
allegory of the _Navigating Serpent_. Stephens, indulging in the
anticipation “that a key surer than that of the Rosetta-stone will
be discovered,” by which the American hieroglyphs may be read,[815]
says that the descendants of the Caciques and the Aztec subjects
are believed to survive still in the inaccessible fastnesses of the
Cordilleras—“wildernesses, which have never yet been penetrated by a
white man, ... living as their fathers did, erecting the same buildings
... with ornaments of sculpture and plastered; large courts, and lofty
towers with high ranges of steps, and still carving on tablets of stone
the same mysterious hieroglyphics.” He adds, “I turn to that vast and
unknown region, untraversed by a single road, wherein fancy pictures
that mysterious city seen from the topmost range of the Cordilleras of
unconquered, unvisited, and unsought aboriginal inhabitants.”
Apart from the fact that this mysterious city has been seen from
a great distance by daring travellers, there is no intrinsic
improbability of its existence, for who can tell what became of the
primitive people who fled before the rapacious brigands of Cortez and
Pizarro? Dr. Tschuddi, in his work on Peru, tells us of an Indian
legend that a train of 10,000 llamas, laden with gold to complete the
unfortunate Inca’s ransom, was arrested in the Andes by the tidings
of his death, and the enormous treasure was so effectually concealed
that not a trace of it has ever been found. He, as well as Prescott and
other writers, informs us that the Indians to this day preserve their
ancient traditions and sacerdotal caste, and obey implicitly the orders
of rulers chosen among themselves, while at the same time nominally
Catholics and actually subject to the Peruvian authorities. Magical
ceremonies practiced by their forefathers still prevail among them, and
magical phenomena occur. So persistent are they in their loyalty to the
past, that it seems impossible but that they should be in relations
with some central source of authority which constantly supports and
strengthens their faith, keeping it alive. May it not be that the
sources of this undying faith lie in this mysterious city, with which
they are in secret communication? Or must we think that all of the
above is again but a “curious coincidence?”
The story of this mysterious city was told to Stephens by a Spanish
Padre, in 1838-9. The priest swore to him that he had seen it with his
own eyes, and gave Stephens the following details, which the traveller
firmly believed to be true. “The Padre of the little village near the
ruins of Santa Cruz del Quichè, had heard of the unknown city at the
village of Chajul.... He was then young, and climbed with much labor to
the naked summit of the topmost ridge of the sierra of the Cordillera.
When arrived at a height of ten or twelve thousand feet, he looked
over an immense plain extending to Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico, and
saw, at a great distance, a large city spread over a great space, and
with turrets white and glittering in the sun. Tradition says that no
white man has ever reached this city; that the inhabitants speak the
Maya language, know that strangers have conquered their whole land,
and murder any white man who attempts to enter their territory....
They have no coin; no horses, cattle, mules, or other domestic animals
except fowls, and the cocks they keep underground to prevent their
crowing being heard.”
Nearly the same was given us personally about twenty years ago, by an
old native priest, whom we met in Peru, and with whom we happened to
have business relations. He had passed all his life vainly trying to
conceal his hatred toward the conquerors—“brigands,” he termed them;
and, as he confessed, kept friends with them and the Catholic religion
for the sake of his people, but he was as truly a sun-worshipper in his
heart as ever he was. He had travelled in his capacity of a _converted_
native missionary, and had been at Santa Cruz and, as he solemnly
affirmed, had been also to see some of his people by a “subterranean
passage” leading into the mysterious city. We believe his account; for
a man who is about to die, will rarely stop to invent idle stories; and
this one we have found corroborated in Stephen’s _Travels_. Besides,
we know of two other cities utterly unknown to European travellers;
not that the inhabitants particularly desire to hide themselves; for
people from Buddhistic countries come occasionally to visit them. But
their towns are not set down on the European or Asiatic maps; and, on
account of the too zealous and enterprising Christian missionaries,
and perhaps for more mysterious reasons of their own, the few natives
of other countries who are aware of the existence of these two cities
never mention them. Nature has provided strange nooks and hiding-places
for her favorites; and unfortunately it is but far away from so-called
civilized countries that man is free to worship the Deity in the way
that his fathers did.
Even the erudite and sober Max Müller is somehow unable to get rid of
_coincidences_. To him they come in the shape of the most unexpected
discoveries. These Mexicans, for instance, whose obscure origin,
according to the laws of probability, has no connection with the
Aryans of India, nevertheless, like the Hindus, represent an eclipse
of the moon as “the moon being devoured by a dragon.”[816] And though
Professor Müller admits that an historical intercourse between the
two people was suspected by Alexander von Humboldt, and he himself
considers it possible, still the occurrence of such a fact he adds,
“need not be the result of any historical intercourse. As we have
stated above, the origin of the aborigines of America is a very
vexed question for those interested in tracing out the affiliation
and migrations of peoples.” Notwithstanding the labor of Brasseur de
Bourbourg, and his elaborate translation of the famous _Popol-Vuh_,
alleged to be written by Ixtlilxochitl, after weighing its contents,
the antiquarian remains as much in the dark as ever. We have read the
_Popol-Vuh_ in its original translation, and the review of the same
by Max Müller, and out of the former find shining a light of such
brightness, that it is no wonder that the matter-of-fact, skeptical
scientists should be blinded by it. But so far as an author can be
judged by his writings, Professor Max Müller is no unfair skeptic; and,
moreover, very little of importance escapes his attention. How is it
then that a man of such immense and rare erudition, accustomed as he
is to embrace at one eagle glance the traditions, religious customs,
and superstitions of a people, detecting the slightest similarity,
and taking in the smallest details, failed to give any importance or
perhaps even suspect what the humble author of the present volume,
who has neither scientific training nor erudition, to any extent,
apprehended at first view? Fallacious and unwarranted as to many may
seem this remark, it appears to us that science loses more than she
gains by neglecting the ancient and even mediæval esoteric literature,
or rather what remains of it. To one who devotes himself to such study
many a coincidence is transformed into a natural result of demonstrable
antecedent causes. We think we can see how it is that Professor Müller
confesses that “now and then ... one imagines one sees certain periods
and landmarks, but in the next page all is chaos again.”[817] May it
not be barely possible that this chaos is intensified by the fact
that most of the scientists, directing the whole of their attention
to history, skip that which they treat as “vague, contradictory,
miraculous, absurd.” Notwithstanding the feeling that there was “a
groundwork of noble conceptions which has been covered and distorted
by an aftergrowth of fantastic nonsense,” Professor Müller cannot help
comparing this nonsense to the tales of the _Arabian Nights_.
Far be from us the ridiculous pretension of criticising a scientist so
worthy of admiration for his learning as Max Müller. But we cannot help
saying that even among the fantastic nonsense of the _Arabian Nights’
Entertainments_ anything would be worthy of attention, if it should
help toward the evolving of some historical truth. Homer’s _Odyssey_
surpasses in fantastic nonsense all the tales of the _Arabian Nights_
combined; and notwithstanding that, many of his myths are now proved
to be something else besides the creation of the old poet’s fancy.
The Læstrygonians, who devoured the companions of Ulysses, are traced
to the huge cannibal[818] race, said in primitive days to inhabit the
caves of Norway. Geology verified through her discoveries some of
the assertions of Homer, supposed for so many ages to have been but
poetical hallucinations. The perpetual daylight enjoyed by this race
of Læstrygonians indicates that they were inhabitants of the North
Cape, where, during the whole summer, there is perpetual daylight. The
Norwegian fiords are perfectly described by Homer in his _Odyssey_, x.
110; and the gigantic stature of the Læstrygonians is demonstrated by
human bones of unusual size found in caves situated near this region,
and which the geologists suppose to have belonged to a race extinct
long before the Aryan immigration. Charybdis, as we have seen, has
been recognized in the maëlstrom; and the Wandering Rocks[819] in the
enormous icebergs of the Arctic seas.
If the consecutive attempts at the creation of man described in the
_Quichè Cosmogony_ suggests no comparison with some Apocrypha, with
the Jewish sacred books, and the kabalistic theories of creation, it
is indeed strange. Even the _Book of Jasher_, condemned as a gross
forgery of the twelfth century, may furnish more than one clew to
trace a relation between the population of Ur of the Kasdeans, where
Magism flourished before the days of Abraham, and those of Central and
North America. The divine beings, “brought down to the level of human
nature,” perform no feats or tricks more strange or incredible than the
miraculous performances of Moses and of Pharaoh’s magicians, while many
of these are exactly similar in their nature. And when, moreover, in
addition to this latter fact, we find so great a resemblance between
certain kabalistic terms common to both hemispheres, there must be
something else than mere accident to account for the circumstance.
Many of such feats have clearly a common parentage. The story of the
two brothers of Central America, who, before starting on their journey
to Xibalba, “plant each a cane in the middle of their grandmother’s
house, that she may know by its flourishing or withering whether they
are alive or dead,”[820] finds its analogy in the beliefs of many
other countries. In the _Popular Tales and Traditions_, by Sacharoff
(Russia), one can find a similar narrative, and trace this belief in
various other legends. And yet these fairy tales were current in Russia
many centuries before America was discovered.
In recognizing in the gods of Stonehenge the divinities of Delphos and
Babylon, one need feel little surprised. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo
and Python, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names, and have
travelled far and wide. The Both-al of Ireland points directly to its
first parent, the Batylos of the Greeks and the Beth-el of Chanaan.
“History,” says H. de la Villemarque, “which took no notes at those
distant ages, can plead ignorance, but the science of languages
affirms. Philology, with a daily-increasing probability, has again
linked together the chain hardly broken between the Orient and the
Occident.”[821]
No more remarkable is the discovery of a like resemblance between the
Oriental myths and ancient Russian tales and traditions, for it is
entirely natural to look for a similarity between the beliefs of the
Semitic and Aryan families. But when we discover an almost perfect
identity between the character of Zarevna Militrissa, with a _moon_
in her forehead, who is in constant danger of being devoured by _Zmeÿ
Gorenetch_ (the Serpent or Dragon), who plays such a prominent part
in all popular Russian tales, and similar characters in the Mexican
legends—extending to the minutest details—we may well pause and ask
ourselves whether there be not here more than a simple coincidence.
This tradition of the Dragon and the Sun—occasionally replaced by the
Moon—has awakened echoes in the remotest parts of the world. It may be
accounted for with perfect readiness by the once universal heliolatrous
religion. There was a time when Asia, Europe, Africa, and America
were covered with the temples sacred to the sun and the dragons. The
priests assumed the names of their deities, and thus the tradition of
these spread like a net-work all over the globe: “Bel and the Dragon
being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion
as uniformly assuming the name of his god.”[822] But still, “if the
original conception is natural and intelligible ... and its occurrence
need not be the result of any historical intercourse,” as Professor
Müller tells us, the details are so strikingly similar that we cannot
feel satisfied that the riddle is entirely solved. The origin of this
universal symbolical worship being concealed in the night of time, we
would have far more chance to arrive at the truth by tracing these
traditions to their very source. And where is this source? Kircher
places the origin of the Ophite and heliolatrous worship, the shape
of conical monuments and the obelisks, with the Egyptian Hermes
Trismegistus.[823] Where, then, except in Hermetic books, are we to
seek for the desired information? Is it likely that modern authors can
know more, or as much, of ancient myths and cults as the men who taught
them to their contemporaries? Clearly two things are necessary: first,
to find the missing books of Hermes; and second, the key by which to
_understand_ them, for reading is not sufficient. Failing in this, our
savants are abandoned to unfruitful speculations, as for a like reason
geographers waste their energies in a vain quest of the sources of the
Nile. Truly the land of Egypt is another abode of mystery!
Without stopping to discuss whether Hermes was the “Prince of
postdiluvian magic,” as des Mousseaux calls him, or the antediluvian,
which is much more likely, one thing is certain: The authenticity,
reliability, and usefulness of the _Books of Hermes_—or rather of
what remains of the thirty-six works attributed to the Egyptian
magician—are fully recognized by Champollion, junior, and corroborated
by Champollion-Figeac, who mentions it. Now, if by carefully looking
over the kabalistical works, which are all derived from that universal
storehouse of esoteric knowledge, we find the fac-similes of many
so-called miracles wrought by magical art, equally reproduced by the
Quichès; and if even in the fragments left of the original _Popol-Vuh_,
there is sufficient evidence that the religious customs of the
Mexicans, Peruvians, and other American races are nearly identical
with those of the ancient Phœnicians, Babylonians, and Egyptians; and
if, moreover, we discover that many of their religious terms have
etymologically the same origin; how are we to avoid believing that
they are the descendants of those whose forefathers “fled before the
brigand, Joshua, the son of Nun?” “Nuñez de la Vega says that Nin, or
Imos, of the Tzendales, was the Ninus of the Babylonians.”[824]
It is possible that, so far, it may be a coincidence; as the
identification of one with the other rests but upon a poor argument.
“But it is known,” adds de Bourbourg, “that this prince, and according
to others, his father, Bel, or Baal, received, like the Nin of the
Tzendales, the homages of his subjects under the shape of a serpent.”
The latter assertion, besides being fantastic, is nowhere corroborated
in the Babylonian records. It is very true that the Phœnicians
represented the sun under the image of a dragon; but so did all the
other people who symbolized their sun-gods. Belus, the first king
of the Assyrian dynasty was, according to Castor, and Eusebius who
quotes him, deified, _i. e._, he was ranked among the gods “after his
death” only. Thus, neither himself nor his son, Ninus, or Nin, could
have received their subjects under the shape of a serpent, whatever
the Tzendales did. Bel, according to Christians, is Baal; and Baal is
the Devil, since the Bible prophets began so designating every deity
of their neighbors; therefore Belus, Ninus, and the Mexican Nin are
serpents and devils; and, as the Devil, or father of evil, is one
under many forms, therefore, under whatever name the serpent appears,
it is the Devil. Strange logic! Why not say that Ninus the Assyrian,
represented as husband and victim of the ambitious Semiramis, was
high priest as well as king of his country? That as such he wore on
his tiara the sacred emblems of the dragon and the sun? Moreover,
as the priest generally assumed the name of his god, Ninus was said
to receive his subject as the representative of this serpent-god.
The idea is preëminently Roman Catholic, and amounts to very little,
as all their inventions do. If Nuñez de la Vega was so anxious to
establish an affiliation between the Mexicans and the biblical
sun-and serpent-worshippers, why did he not show another and a better
similarity between them without tracing in the Ninevites and the
Tzendales the hoof and horn of the Christian Devil?
And to begin with, he might have pointed to the _Chronicles_ of
Fuentes, of the kingdom of Guatemala, and to the _Manuscript_ of
Don Juan Torres, the grandson of the last king of the Quichès.
This document, which is said to have been in the possession of the
lieutenant-general appointed by Pedro de Alvarado, states that
the Toltecas themselves descended from the house of Israel, who
were released by Moses, and who, after crossing the Red Sea, fell
into idolatry. After that, having separated themselves from their
companions, and under the guidance of a chief named Tanub, they set out
wandering, and from one continent to another they came to a place named
the Seven Caverns, in the Kingdom of Mexico, where they founded the
famous town of Tula, etc.[825]
If this statement has never obtained more credit than it has, it is
simply due to the fact that it passed through the hands of Father
Francis Vasques, historian of the Order of San Francis, and this
circumstance, to use the expression employed by des Mousseaux in
connection with the work of the poor, unfrocked Abbé Huc, “is not
calculated to strengthen our confidence.” But there is another point as
important, if not more so, as it seems to have escaped falsification
by the zealous Catholic padres, and rests chiefly on Indian tradition.
A famous Toltecan king, whose name is mixed up in the weird legends
of Utatlan, the ruined capital of the great Indian kingdom, bore the
biblical appellation of Balam Acan; the first name being preëminently
Chaldean, and reminding one immediately of Balaam and his human-voiced
ass. Besides the statement of Lord Kingsborough, who found such a
striking similarity between the language of the Aztecs (the mother
tongue) and the Hebrew, many of the figures on the bas-reliefs of
Palenque and idols in _terra cotta_, exhumed in Santa Cruz del Quichè,
have on their heads bandelets with a square protuberance on them, in
front of the forehead, very similar to the phylacteries worn by the
Hebrew Pharisees of old, while at prayers, and even by devotees of
the present day, particularly the Jews of Poland and Russia. But as
this may be but a fancy of ours, after all, we will not insist on the
details.
Upon the testimony of the ancients, corroborated by modern discoveries,
we know that there were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldea, some
of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of them were the
subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on
the western side of the Nile, extended toward the Libyan desert, and
were known as the _Serpent’s_ catacombs, or passages. It was there
that were performed the sacred mysteries of the _kúklos ànágkés_, the
“Unavoidable Cycle,” more generally known as the “circle of necessity;”
the inexorable doom imposed upon every soul after the bodily death, and
when it had been judged in the Amenthian region.
In de Bourbourg’s book, Votan, the Mexican demi god, in narrating his
expedition, describes a subterranean passage, which ran underground,
and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this passage was
a snake’s hole, “_un ahugero de colubra_;” and that he was admitted to
it because he was himself “a son of the snakes,” or a serpent.[826]
This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the _snake’s
hole_ is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The
hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, as of Babylon, generally styled
themselves the “Sons of the Serpent-god,” or “Sons of the Dragon;” not
because—as des Mousseaux would have his readers believe—they were the
progeny of Satan-incubus, the old serpent of Eden, but because, in the
Mysteries, the serpent was the symbol of WISDOM and immortality. “The
Assyrian priest bore always the name of his god,” says Movers.[827] The
Druids of the Celto-Britannic regions also called themselves snakes.
“I am a Serpent, I am a Druid!” they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak
is twin-brother to the Carnac of Bretagné, the latter Carnac meaning
the serpent’s mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the
globe, and these temples were sacred to the dragon, only because it
was the symbol of the sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the
highest god—the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as
El Elion.[828] Besides the surname of serpents, they were called the
“builders,” the “architects;” for the immense grandeur of their temples
and monuments was such, that even now the pulverized remains of them
“frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,” says
Taliesin.[829]
De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the
Quetzo-Cohuatl, or serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants
of Ham and Canaan. “I am Hivim,” they say. “Being a Hivim, I am of
the great race of the Dragon (snake). I am a snake myself, for I am a
Hivim.”[830] And des Mousseaux, rejoicing because he believes himself
fairly on the serpent’s, or rather, devil’s trail, hurries to explain:
“According to the most learned commentators of our sacred books, the
Chivim or Hivim, or _Hevites_, descend from Heth, son of Canaan, son of
Ham ... _the accursed_!”[831]
But modern research has demonstrated, on unimpeachable evidence, that
the whole genealogical table of the tenth chapter of _Genesis_ refers
to imaginary heroes, and that the closing verses of the ninth are
little better than a bit of Chaldean allegory of Sisuthrus and the
mythical flood, compiled and arranged to fit the Noachian frame. But,
suppose the descendants of these Canaanites, “the accursed,” were to
resent for once the unmerited outrage? It would be an easy matter
for them to reverse the tables, and answer to this fling, based on a
_fable_, by a _fact_ proved by archæologists and symbologists—namely,
that Seth, Adam’s third son, and the forefather of all Israel, the
ancestor of Noah, and the progenitor of the “chosen people,” is but
Hermes, the god of wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and
_Sat-an_; and that he was, furthermore, when viewed under his bad
aspect, Typhon, the Egyptian Satan, who was also _Set_. For the Jewish
people, whose well-educated men, no more than Philo, or Josephus, the
historian, regard their Mosaic books as otherwise than an allegory,
such a discovery amounts to but little. But for Christians, who, like
des Mousseaux, very unwisely accept the _Bible_ narratives as literal
history, the case stands very different.
As far as affiliation goes, we agree with this pious writer; and we
feel every day as certain that some of the peoples of Central America
will be traced back to the Phœnicians and the Mosaic Israelites, as we
do that the latter will be proved to have as persistently stuck to the
same idolatry—if idolatry there is—of the sun and serpent-worship, as
the Mexicans. There is evidence—biblical evidence—that two of Jacob’s
sons, Levi and Dan, as well as Judah, married Canaanite women, and
followed the worship of their wives. Of course, every Christian will
protest, but the proof may be found even in the translated _Bible_,
pruned as it now stands. The dying Jacob thus describes his sons:
“Dan,” says he, “shall be a _serpent_ by the way, an _adder_ in the
path, that biteth the horse-heels, so that his rider shall fall
backward.... I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord!” Of Simeon and
Levi, the patriarch (or Israel) remarks that they “ ... _are_ brethren;
instruments of _cruelty_ are in their habitations. O my soul, come not
thou into _their secret_; unto _their assembly_.”[832] Now, in the
original, the words “their secret,” read—their SOD.[833] And Sod was
the name for the great Mysteries of Baal, Adonis, and Bacchus who were
all sun-gods and had serpents for symbols. The kabalists explain the
allegory of the fiery serpents by saying, that this was the name given
to the tribe of Levi, to all the _Levites_ in short, and that Moses was
the chief of the _Sodales_.[834] And here is the moment to prove our
statements.
Moses is mentioned by several old historians as an Egyptian priest;
Manetho says he was a hierophant of Hieropolis, and a priest of the
sun-god Osiris, and that his name was Osarsiph. Those moderns, who
accept it as a fact that he “was learned in _all_ the wisdom” of
the Egyptians, must also submit to the right interpretation of the
word wisdom, which was throughout the world known as a synonym of
_initiation_ into the secret mysteries of the _Magi_. Did the idea
never strike the reader of the _Bible_, that an alien born and brought
up in a foreign country _could not_ and _would not_ possibly have been
admitted—we will not say to the final initiation, the grandest mystery
of all, but even to share the knowledge of the minor priesthood,
those who belonged to the _lesser_ mysteries? In _Genesis_ xliii. 32,
we read, that no Egyptian could seat himself to eat bread with the
brothers of Joseph, “for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians.”
But that the Egyptians ate “with _him_ (Joseph) by themselves.” The
above proves two things: 1, that Joseph, whatever he was in his
heart, had, in appearance at least, changed his religion, married the
daughter of a priest of the “idolatrous” nation, and become himself an
Egyptian; otherwise, the natives would not have eaten bread with him.
And 2, that subsequently Moses, if not an Egyptian by birth, became
one through being admitted into the priesthood, and thus was a SODALE.
As an induction, the narrative of the “brazen serpent” (the Caduceus
of Mercury or Asclepios, the son of the sun-god Apollo-Python) becomes
logical and natural. We must bear in mind that Pharaoh’s daughter, who
saved Moses and adopted him, is called by Josephus _Thermuthis_; and
the latter, according to Wilkinson, is the name of the _asp_ sacred to
Isis;[835] moreover, Moses is said to descend from the tribe of _Levi_.
We will explain the kabalistic ideas as to the books of Moses and the
great prophet himself more fully in Volume II.
If Brasseur de Bourbourg and the Chevalier des Mousseaux, had so much
at heart to trace the identity of the Mexicans with the Canaanites,
they might have found far better and weightier proofs than by showing
both the “accursed” descendants of Ham. For instance, they might have
pointed to the Nargal, the Chaldean and Assyrian chief of the Magi
(Rab-Mag) and the Nagal, the chief sorcerer of the Mexican Indians.
Both derive their names from Nergal-Sarezer, the Assyrian god, and both
have the same faculties, or powers to have an attendant _dæmon_ with
whom they identify themselves completely. The Chaldean and Assyrian
Nargal kept his dæmon, in the shape of some animal considered sacred,
inside the temple; the Indian Nagal keeps his wherever he can—in the
neighboring lake, or wood, or in the house, under the shape of a
household animal.[836]
We find the _Catholic World_, newspaper, in a recent number, bitterly
complaining that the old Pagan element of the aboriginal inhabitants of
America does not seem to be utterly dead in the United States. Even
where tribes have been for long years under the care of Christian
teachers, heathen rites are practiced in secret, and crypto-paganism,
or _nagualism_, flourishes now, as in the days of Montezuma. It says:
“Nagualism and voodoo-worship” as it calls these two strange sects—“are
direct _devil-worship_. A report addressed to the Cortes in 1812, by
Don Pedro Baptista Pino, says: ‘All the pueblos have their _artufas_—so
the natives call subterranean rooms with only a single door, where
they assemble to perform their feasts, and hold meetings. These are
impenetrable temples ... and the doors are always closed on the
Spaniards.
“‘All these pueblos, in spite of the sway which religion has had over
them, cannot forget a part of the beliefs which have been transmitted
to them, and which they are careful to transmit to their descendants.
Hence come the adoration they render the sun and moon, and other
heavenly bodies, the respect they entertain for fire, etc.
“‘The pueblo chiefs seem to be at the same time priests; they perform
various simple rites, by which the power of the sun and of Montezuma is
recognized, as well as the power (according to some accounts) of the
Great Snake, to whom, by order of Montezuma, they are to look for life.
They also officiate in certain ceremonies with which they pray for
rain. There are painted representations of the Great Snake, together
with that of a misshapen, red-haired man, declared to stand for
Montezuma. Of this last there was also, in the year 1845, in the pueblo
of Laguna, a rude effigy or idol, intended, apparently, to represent
only the head of the deity.’”[837]
The perfect identity of the rites, ceremonies, traditions, and even
the names of the deities, among the Mexicans and ancient Babylonians
and Egyptians, are a sufficient proof of South America being peopled
by a colony which mysteriously found its way across the Atlantic.
When? at what period? History is silent on that point; but those who
consider that there is no tradition, sanctified by ages, without
a certain sediment of truth at the bottom of it, believe in the
_Atlantis_-legend. There are, scattered throughout the world, a handful
of thoughtful and solitary students, who pass their lives in obscurity,
far from the rumors of the world, studying the great problems of the
physical and spiritual universes. They have their secret records in
which are preserved the fruits of the scholastic labors of the long
line of recluses whose successors they are. The knowledge of their
early ancestors, the sages of India, Babylonia, Nineveh, and the
imperial Thebes; the legends and traditions commented upon by the
masters of Solon, Pythagoras, and Plato, in the marble halls of
Heliopolis and Saïs; traditions which, in their days, already seemed
to hardly glimmer from behind the foggy curtain of the past;—all this,
and much more, is recorded on indestructible parchment, and passed
with jealous care from one adept to another. These men believe the
story of the Atlantis to be no fable, but maintain that at different
epochs of the past huge islands, and even continents, existed where now
there is but a wild waste of waters. In those submerged temples and
libraries the archæologist would find, could he but explore them, the
materials for filling all the gaps that now exist in what we imagine is
_history_. They say that at a remote epoch a traveller could traverse
what is now the Atlantic Ocean, almost the entire distance by land,
crossing in boats from one island to another, where narrow straits then
existed.
Our suspicion as to the relationship of the cis-Atlantic and
trans-Atlantic races is strengthened upon reading about the wonders
wrought by Quetzo-Cohuatl, the Mexican magician. His wand must be
closely-related to the traditional sapphire-stick of Moses, the stick
which bloomed in the garden of Raguel-Jethro, his father-in-law, and
upon which was engraved the ineffable name. The “four men” described as
the real four ancestors of the human race, “who were neither begotten
by the gods, nor born of woman,” but whose “creation was a wonder
wrought by the Creator,” and who were made after three attempts at
manufacturing men had failed, equally present some striking points of
similarity with the esoteric explanations of the Hermetists;[838] they
also undeniably recall the four sons of God of the Egyptian theogony.
Moreover, as any one may infer, the resemblance of this myth to the
narrative related in _Genesis_, will be apparent to even a superficial
observer. These four ancestors “could reason and speak, their sight
was unlimited, and they knew all things at once.”[839] When “they
had rendered thanks to their Creator for their existence, _the gods
were frightened_, and they breathed a cloud over the eyes of men that
they might see a certain distance only, and not be _like the gods
themselves_.” This bears directly upon the sentence in _Genesis_,
“Behold, _the man is become as one of us_, to know good and evil; and
now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life,”
etc. Then, again, “While _they were asleep_ God gave them wives,” etc.
We disclaim the least intention to disrespectfully suggest ideas to
those who are so wise as to need no hint. But we must bear in mind that
authentic treatises upon ancient magic of the Chaldean and Egyptian
lore are not scattered about in public libraries, and at auction sales.
That such exist is nevertheless a fact for many students of the arcane
philosophy. Is it not of the greatest importance for every antiquarian
to be acquainted at least superficially with their contents? “The four
ancestors of the race,” adds Max Müller, “seem to have had a long life,
and when at last they came to die, they disappeared in a mysterious
manner, and left to their sons what is called the _hidden majesty_,
which was never to be opened by human hands. What it was we do not
know.”
If there is no relationship between this hidden majesty and the hidden
glory of the Chaldean _Kabala_, which we are told was left behind
him by Enoch when he was translated in such a mysterious way, then
we must discredit all circumstantial evidence. But is it not barely
possible that these “four ancestors” of the Quichè race typify in
their esoteric sense the four successive progenitors of men, mentioned
in _Genesis_ i., ii., and vi.? In the first chapter, the first man
is bi-sexual—“male and female created he them” and answers to the
hermaphrodite deities of the subsequent mythologies; the second, Adam,
made out of “the dust of the ground” and uni-sexual and answering to
the “sons of God” of chapter vi.; the third, the giants, or _nephilim_,
who are only hinted at in the _Bible_, but fully explained elsewhere;
the fourth, the parents of men “whose daughters were fair.”
Taking the admitted facts that the Mexicans had their magicians from
the remote periods; that the same remark applies to all the ancient
religions of the world; that a strong resemblance prevails not only in
the forms of their ceremonial worship, but also in the very names used
to designate certain magical implements; and finally that all other
clews, in accordance with scientific deductions, have failed (some
because swallowed up in the bottomless pit of coincidences), why should
we not turn to the great authorities upon magic, and see whether,
under this “aftergrowth of fantastic nonsense,” there may not be a
deep substratum of truth? Here we are not willing to be misunderstood.
We do not send the scientists to the _Kabala_ and the Hermetic books
to study magic, but to the authorities on magic to discover materials
for history and science. We have no idea of incurring the wrathful
denunciations of the Academicians, by an indiscretion like that of poor
des Mousseaux, when he tried to force them to read his demonological
_Memoire_ and investigate the Devil.
The _History of Bernal Diaz de Castilla_, a follower of Cortez, gives
us some idea of the extraordinary refinement and intelligence of the
people whom they conquered; but the descriptions are too long to be
inserted here. Suffice it to say, that the Aztecs appeared in more than
one way to have resembled the ancient Egyptians in civilization and
refinement. Among both peoples magic or the arcane natural philosophy
was cultivated to the highest degree. Add to this that Greece,
the “later cradle of the arts and sciences,” and India, cradle of
religions, were and are still devoted to its study and practice—and who
shall venture to discredit its dignity as a study, and its profundity
as a science?
There never was, nor can there be more than one universal religion;
for there can be but one truth concerning God. Like an immense chain
whose upper end, the alpha, remains invisibly emanating from a Deity—in
_statu abscondito_ with every primitive theology—it encircles our globe
in every direction; it leaves not even the darkest corner unvisited,
before the other end, the omega, turns back on its way to be again
received where it first emanated. On this divine chain was strung the
exoteric symbology of every people. Their variety of form is powerless
to affect their substance, and under their diverse ideal types of
the universe of matter, symbolizing its vivifying principles, the
uncorrupted immaterial image of the spirit of being guiding them is the
same.
So far as human intellect can go in the ideal interpretation of the
spiritual universe, its laws and powers, the last word was pronounced
ages since; and, if the _ideas_ of Plato can be simplified for the
sake of easier comprehension, the spirit of their substance can
neither be altered, nor removed without material damage to the truth.
Let human brains submit themselves to torture for thousands of years
to come; let theology perplex faith and mime it with the enforcing
of incomprehensible dogmas in metaphysics; and science strengthen
skepticism, by pulling down the tottering remains of spiritual
intuition in mankind, with her demonstrations of its fallibility,
eternal truth can never be destroyed. We find its last possible
expression in our human language in the Persian Logos, the _Honover_,
or the living _manifested_ Word of God. The Zoroastrian _Enoch-Verihe_
is identical with the Jewish “_I am_;” and the “Great Spirit” of
the poor, untutored Indian, is the manifested Brahma of the Hindu
philosopher. One of the latter, Tcharaka, a Hindu physician, who is
said to have lived 5,000 years B. C., in his treatise on the origin of
things, called _Usa_, thus beautifully expresses himself: “Our Earth
is, like all the luminous bodies that surround us, one of the atoms
of the immense Whole of which we show a slight conception by terming
it—the Infinite.”
“There is but one light, and there is but one darkness,” says a Siamese
proverb. _Dæmon est Deus inversus_, the Devil is the shadow of God,
states the universal kabalistic axiom. Could light exist but for
primeval darkness? And did not the brilliant, sunny universe first
stretch its infant arms from the swaddling bands of dark and dreary
chaos? If the Christian “_fulness of Him that filleth all in all_” is
a revelation, then we must admit that, if there is a devil, he must
be included in this _fulness_, and be a part of that which “filleth
all in all.” From time immemorial the justification of the Deity, and
His separation from the existing evil was attempted, and the object
was reached by the old Oriental philosophy in the foundation of the
_theodiké_; but their metaphysical views on the _fallen spirit_,
have never been disfigured by the creation of an anthropomorphic
personality of the Devil as was done subsequently by the leading lights
of Christian theology. A personal fiend, who opposes the Deity, and
impedes progress on its way to perfection, is to be sought only on
earth amid humanity, not in heaven.
Thus is it that all the religious monuments of old, in whatever land
or under whatever climate, are the expression of the same identical
thoughts, the key to which is in the esoteric doctrine. It would be
vain, without studying the latter, to seek to unriddle the mysteries
enshrouded for centuries in the temples and ruins of Egypt and Assyria,
or those of Central America, British Columbia, and the Nagkon-Wat of
Cambodia. If each of these was built by a different nation; and neither
nation had had intercourse with the others for ages, it is also certain
that all were planned and built under the direct supervision of the
priests. And the clergy of every nation, though practicing rites and
ceremonies which may have differed externally, had evidently been
initiated into the same traditional mysteries which were taught all
over the world.
In order to institute a better comparison between the specimens of
prehistoric architecture to be found at the most opposite points of the
globe, we have but to point to the grandiose Hindu ruins of Ellora in
the Dekkan, the Mexican Chichen-Itza, in Yucatan, and the still grander
ruins of Copan, in Guatemala. They present such features of resemblance
that it seems impossible to escape the conviction that they were built
by peoples moved by the same religious ideas, and that had reached an
equal level of highest civilization in arts and sciences.
There is not, perhaps, on the face of the whole globe, a more imposing
mass of ruins than Nagkon-Wat, the wonder and puzzle of European
archæologists who venture into Siam. And when we say ruins, the
expression is hardly correct; for nowhere are there buildings of such
tremendous antiquity to be found in a better state of preservation than
Nagkon-Wat, and the ruins of Angkorthôm, the great temple.
Hidden far away in the province of Siamrap—eastern Siam—in the midst of
a most luxuriant tropical vegetation, surrounded by almost impenetrable
forests of palms, cocoa-trees, and betel-nut, “the general appearance
of the wonderful temple is beautiful and romantic, as well as
impressive and grand,” says Mr. Vincent, a recent traveller.[840]
“We whose good fortune it is to live in the nineteenth century, are
accustomed to boast of the perfection and preëminence of our modern
civilization; of the grandeur of our attainments in science, art,
literature, and what not, as compared with those whom we call ancients;
but still we are compelled to admit that they have far excelled our
recent endeavors in many things, and notably in the fine arts of
painting, architecture, and sculpture. We were but just looking upon a
most wonderful example of the two latter, for in style and beauty of
architecture, solidity of construction, and magnificent and elaborate
carving and sculpture, the Great Nagkon-Wat has no superior, certainly
no rival standing at the present day. The first view of the ruins is
overwhelming.”
Thus the opinion of another traveller is added to that of many
preceding ones, including archæologists and other competent critics,
who have believed that the ruins of the past Egyptian splendor deserve
no higher eulogium than Nagkon-Wat.
According to our plan, we will allow more impartial critics than
ourselves to describe the place, since, in a work professedly
devoted to a vindication of the ancients, the testimony of so
enthusiastic an advocate as the present writer may be questioned. We
have, nevertheless, seen Nagkon-Wat under exceptionally favorable
circumstances, and can, therefore, certify to the general correctness
of Mr. Vincent’s description. He says:
“We entered upon an immense causeway, the stairs of which were flanked
with six huge griffins, each carved from a single block of stone. The
causeway is ... 725 feet in length, and is paved with stones each
of which measures four feet in length by two in breadth. On either
side of it are artificial lakes fed by springs, and each covering
about five acres of ground.... The outer wall of Nagkon-Wat (the city
of monasteries) is half a mile square, with gateways ... which are
handsomely carved with figures of gods and dragons. The foundations are
ten feet in height.... The entire edifice, including the roof, is of
stone, _but without cement, and so closely fitting are the joints as
even now to be scarcely discernible_.... The shape of the building is
oblong, being 796 feet in length, and 588 in width, while the highest
central pagoda rises some 250 odd feet above the ground, and four
others, at the angles of the court, are each about 150 feet in height.”
The above underscored lines are suggestive to travellers who have
remarked and admired the same wonderful mason-work in the Egyptian
remains. If the same workmen did not lay the courses in both countries
we must at least think that the secret of this matchless wall-building
was equally known to the architects of every land.
“Passing, we ascend a platform ... and enter the temple itself through
a columned portico, the _façade_ of which is beautifully carved
in _basso-relievo_ with ancient mythological subjects. From this
doorway, on either side, runs a corridor with a double row of columns,
cut—base and capital—from single blocks, with a double, oval-shaped
roof, covered with carving and consecutive sculptures upon the outer
wall. This gallery of sculptures, which forms the exterior of the
temple, consists of over half a mile of continuous pictures, cut in
_basso-relievo_ upon sandstone slabs six feet in width, and represents
subjects taken from Hindu mythology, from the _Ramayana_—the Sanscrit
epic poem of India, with its 25,000 verses describing the exploits of
the god Rama, and the son of the King of Oudh. The contests of the
King of Ceylon, and Hanouma,[841] the monkey-god, are graphically
represented. There is _no keystone_ used in the arch of this corridor.
On the walls are sculptured the immense number of 100,000 separate
figures. One picture from the _Ramayâna_ ... occupies 240 feet of the
wall.... In the _Nagkon-Wat_ as many as 1,532 solid columns have been
counted, and among the entire ruins of Angkor ... the immense number
of 6,000, almost all of them hewn from single blocks and artistically
carved....
“But who built _Nagkon-Wat_? and when was it built?” Learned men
have attempted to form opinions from studies of its construction,
and especially “ornamentation,” and have failed. “Native Cambodian
historians,” adds Vincent, “reckon 2,400 from the building of the
temple.... I asked one of them how long _Nagkon-Wat_ had been built....
‘None can tell when.... I do not know; it must have either sprung up
from the ground or been built by giants, or perhaps by the angels’ ...
was the answer.”
When Stephens asked the native Indians “Who built Copan?... what nation
traced the hieroglyphic designs, sculptured these elegant figures and
carvings, these emblematical designs?” the dull answer he received was
“_Quien Sabe?_” who knows! “All is mystery; dark, impenetrable mystery,”
writes Stephens. “In Egypt, the colossal skeletons of gigantic temples
stand in all the nakedness of desolation. Here, an immense forest
shrouded the ruins, hiding them from sight.”[842]
But there are perhaps many circumstances, trifling for archæologists
unacquainted with the “idle and fanciful” legends of old, hence
overlooked; otherwise the discovery might have sent them on a new train
of thought. One is the invariable presence in the Egyptian, Mexican,
and Siamese ruined temples, of the monkey. The Egyptian cynocephalus
assumes the same postures as the Hindu and Siamese Hanoumā; and
among the sculptured fragments of Copan, Stephens found the remains
of colossal apes or baboons, “strongly resembling in outline and
appearance the four monstrous animals which once stood in front,
attached to the base of the obelisk of Luxor, now in Paris,[843] and
which, under the name of the cynocephali, were worshipped at Thebes.”
In almost every Buddhist temple there are idols of huge monkeys kept,
and some people have in their houses white monkeys on purpose “to keep
_bad_ spirits away.”
“Was civilization,” writes Louis de Carné,[844] “in the complex meaning
we give that word, in keeping among the ancient Cambodians with what
such prodigies of architecture seem to indicate? The age of Pheidias
was that of Sophocles, Socrates, and Plato; Michael Angelo and Raphael
succeeded Dante. There are luminous epochs during which the human mind,
developing itself in every direction, triumphs in all, and creates
masterpieces _which spring from the same inspiration_.” “Nagkon-Wat,”
concludes Vincent, “must be ascribed to other than ancient Cambodians.
But to whom?... There exist _no credible_ traditions; _all is absurd
fable or legend_.”
The latter sentence has become of late a sort of cant phrase in the
mouths of travellers and archæologists. When they have found that no
clew is attainable unless it can be found in popular legends, they
turn away discouraged, and a final verdict is withheld. At the same
time Vincent quotes a writer who remarks that these ruins “are as
imposing as the ruins of Thebes, or Memphis, but more mysterious.”
Mouhot thinks they were erected “by some ancient Michael Angelo,” and
adds that Nagkon-Wat “is grander than anything left to us by Greece or
Rome.” Furthermore Mouhot ascribes the building again to some of _the
lost tribes of Israel_, and is corroborated in that opinion by Miche,
the French Bishop of Cambodia, who confesses that he is struck “by the
Hebrew character of the faces of many of the savage Stiêns.” Henri
Mouhot believes that, “without exaggeration, the oldest parts of Angkor
may be fixed at more than 2,000 years ago.” This, then, in comparison
with the pyramids, would make them quite modern; the date is the more
incredible, because the pictures on the walls may be proved to belong
to those archaic ages when Poseidon and the Kabeiri were worshipped
throughout the continent. Had Nagkon-Wat been built, as Dr. Adolf
Bastian[845] will have it, “for the reception of the learned patriarch,
Buddhagosa, who brought the holy books of the _Trai-Pidok_ from Ceylon;
or, as Bishop Pallegoix, who “refers the erection of this edifice to
the reign of Phra Pathum Suriving,” when “the sacred books of the
Buddhists were brought from Ceylon, and Buddhism became the religion of
the Cambodians,” how is it possible to account for the following?
“We see in this same temple carved images of Buddha, four, and
even thirty-two-armed, and two and sixteen-headed gods, the Indian
Vishnu, gods _with wings_, Burmese heads, Hindu figures, and Ceylon
mythology.... You see warriors riding upon elephants and in chariots,
foot soldiers with shield and spear, boats, tigers, griffins ...
serpents, fishes, crocodiles, bullocks ... soldiers of immense physical
development, with helmets, and some people with beards—probably Moors.
The figures,” adds Mr. Vincent, “stand somewhat like those on the great
Egyptian monuments, the side partly turned toward the front ... and I
noticed, besides, five horsemen, armed with spear and sword, riding
abreast, like those seen upon the Assyrian tablets in the British
Museum.”[846]
For our part, we may add, that there are on the walls several
repetitions of Dagon, the man-fish of the Babylonians, and of the
Kabeirian gods of Samothrace. This may have escaped the notice of
the few archæologists who examined the place; but upon stricter
inspection they will be found there, as well as the reputed father of
the Kabeiri—Vulcan with his bolts and implements, having near him a
king with a sceptre in his hand, which is the counterpart of that of
Cheronæa, or the “sceptre of Agamemnon,” so-called, said to have been
presented to him by the lame god of Lemnos. In another place we find
Vulcan, recognizable by his hammer and pincers, but under the shape of
a monkey, as usually represented by the Egyptians.
Now, if Nagkon-Wat is essentially a Buddhist temple, how comes it
to have on its walls _basso-relievos_ of completely an Assyrian
character; and Kabeirian gods which, though universally worshipped
as the most ancient of the Asiatic mystery-gods, had already been
abandoned 200 years B.C., and the Samothracian mysteries themselves
completely altered? Whence the popular tradition concerning the Prince
of Roma among the Cambodians, a personage mentioned by all the native
historians, who attribute to him the foundation of the temple? Is it
not barely possible that even the _Ramayâna_, itself, the famous epic
poem, is but the original of Homer’s _Iliad_, as it was suggested some
years ago? The beautiful Paris, carrying off Helen, looks very much
like Râvana, king of the giants, eloping with Sita, Râma’s wife? The
Trojan war is a counterpart of the _Ramayâna_ war; moreover, Herodotus
assures us that the Trojan heroes and gods date in Greece only from the
days of the _Iliad_. In such a case even Hanoumā, the monkey-god, would
be but Vulcan in disguise; the more so that the Cambodian tradition
makes the founder of Angkor come from _Roma_, which they place at the
western end of the world, and that the Hindu Roma also apportions the
west to the descendants of Hanoumā.
Hypothetical as the suggestion may now seem, it is worthy of
consideration, if even for the sake of being refuted. The Abbé
Jaquenet, a Catholic missionary in Cochin China, ever ready to
connect the least glimmer of historical light with that of Christian
revelation, writes, “Whether we consider the commercial relations of
the Jews ... when, in the height of their power, the combined fleets
of Hiram and Solomon went to seek the treasures of Ophir, or whether
we come lower down, to the dispersion of the ten tribes who, instead
of returning from captivity, set out from the banks of the Euphrates,
and reached the shores of the ocean ... the shining of the light of
revelation in the far East is not the less incontestable.”
It looks certainly “incontestable” enough if we reverse the position
and admit that all the light that ever shone on the Israelites came
to them from this “far East,” passing first through the Chaldeans
and Egyptians. The first thing to settle, is to find out who were
the Israelites themselves; and that is the most vital question. Many
historians seem to claim, with good reason, that the Jews were similar
or identical with the ancient Phœnicians, but the Phœnicians were
beyond any doubt an Æthiopian race; moreover, the present race of
Punjaub are hybridized with the Asiatic Æthiopians. Herodotus traces
the Hebrews to the Persian Gulf; and south of that place were the
Himyarites (the Arabians); beyond, the early Chaldeans and Susinians,
the great builders. This seems to establish pretty well their Æthiopian
affinity. Megasthenes says that the Jews were an Indian sect called
_Kalani_, and their theology resembled that of the Indians. Other
authors also suspect that the colonized Jews or the Judeans were the
Yadus from Afghanistan—the old India.[847] Eusebius tells us that
“the Æthiopians came from the river Indus and settled near Egypt.”
More research may show that the Tamil Hindus, who are accused by the
missionaries of worshipping the Devil—Kutti-Sattan—only honor, after
all, Seth or Satan, worshipped by the biblical Hittites.
But if the Jews were in the twilight of history the Phœnicians, the
latter may be traced themselves to the nations who used the old
Sanscrit language. Carthage was a Phœnician city, hence its name; for
Tyre was equally _Kartha_. In the _Bible_ the words _Kir_, _Kirjath_
are frequently found. Their tutelar god was styled _Mel-Kartha_ (Mel,
Baal), or tutelar lord of the city. In Sanscrit a city or communal
was a _cûl_ and its lord was _Heri_.[848] Her-culeus is therefore
the translation of Melkarth and Sanscrit in origin. Moreover all
the Cyclopean races were Phœnicians. In the _Odyssey_ the Kuklopes
(Cyclops) are the Libyan shepherds; and Herodotus describes them as
miners and great builders. They are the ancient Titans or giants, who
in Hesiod forge bolts for Zeus. They are the biblical _Zamzummim_ from
the land of the giants, the Anakim.
Now it is easy to see that the excavators of Ellora, the builders of
the old Pagodas, the architects of Copan and of the ruins of Central
America, those of Nagkon-Wat, and those of the Egyptian remains
were, if not of the same race, at least of the same religion—the one
taught in the oldest Mysteries. Besides, the figures on the walls of
Angkor are purely archaic, and have nothing to do with the images
and idols of Buddha, who may be of a far later origin. “What gives a
peculiar interest to this section,” says Dr. Bastian, “is the fact
that the artist has represented the different nationalities in all
their distinctive characteristic features, from the flat-nosed savage
in the tasselled garb of the Pnom and the short-haired Lao, to the
straight-nosed Rajaput, with sword and shield, and _the bearded Moor_,
giving a catalogue of nationalities, like another _column of Trajan_,
in the predominant physical conformation of each race. On the whole,
there is such a prevalence of _Hellenic_ cast in features and profiles,
as well as in the elegant attitude of the horsemen, that one might
suppose Xenocrates of old, after finishing his labors in Bombay, had
made an excursion to the East.”
Therefore, if we allow the tribes of Israel to have had a hand in the
building of Nagkon-Wat, it cannot be as the tribes numbered and sent,
from the wilderness of Paran in search of the land of Canaan, but as
their earlier ancestors, which amounts to the rejection of such tribes,
as the casting of a reflection of the _Mosaic_ revelation. And where is
the outside _historical_ evidence that such tribes were ever heard of
at all, before the compilation of the _Old Testament_ by Ezra? There
are archæologists who strongly regard the twelve tribes as utterly
mythical,[849] for there never was a tribe of Simeon, and that of Levi
was a _caste_. There still remains the same problem to solve—whether
the Judæans had ever been in Palestine before Cyrus. From the sons of
Jacob, who had all married Canaanites, except Joseph, whose wife was
the daughter of an Egyptian Priest of the Sun, down to the legendary
_Book of Judges_ there was an acknowledged general intermarrying
between the said tribes and the idolatrous races: “And the children
of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and
Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites; and they took their daughters
to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served
their gods,” says the third chapter of _Judges_, “ ... and the children
of Israel forgat their God and served Baalim, and the groves.” This
Baal was Moloch, M’lch Karta, or Hercules. He was worshipped wherever
the Phœnicians went. How could the Israelites possibly keep together
as tribes, while, on the authority of the _Bible_ itself, whole
populations were from year to year uprooted violently by Assyrian and
other conquerors? “So was Israel carried away out of their own land
to Assyria unto this day. And the king of Assyria brought men from
Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from
Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria _instead_ of the
children of Israel” (_2 Kings_, xvii. 23, 24).
If the language of Palestine became in time Semitic, it is because of
Assyrian influence; for Phœnicia had become a dependency as early as
the days of Hiram, and the Phœnicians evidently changed their language
from Hamitic to Semitic. Assyria was “the land of Nimrod” (from _Nimr_,
spotted), and Nimrod was Bacchus, with his spotted leopard-skin.
This leopard-skin is a sacred appendage of the “Mysteries;” it was
used in the Eleusinian as well as in the Egyptian Mysteries; it is
found sculptured on the _basso-relievos_ of Central American ruins,
covering the backs of the sacrificers; it is mentioned in the earliest
speculations of the Brahmans on the meaning of their sacrificial
prayers, the _Aytareya Brahmanam_.[850] It is used in the _Agnishtoma_,
the _initiation rites_ of the Soma Mystery. When the neophyte is “to be
born again,” he is covered with a leopard-skin, out of which he emerges
as from his mother’s womb. The Kabeiri were also Assyrian gods. They
had different names; in the common language they were known as Jupiter
and Bacchus, and sometimes as Achiochersus, Aschieros, Achiochersa, and
Cadmillus; and even the true number of these deities was uncertain with
the people. They had other names in the “sacred language,” known but to
the hierophants and priests; and “it was not lawful to mention them.”
How is it then that we find them reproduced in their Samothracian
“postures” on the walls of Nagkon-Wat? How is it again that we find
them pronounced—albeit slightly disfigured—as known in that same sacred
language, by the populations of Siam, Thibet, and India?
The name Kabeiri may be a derivation from אבר, _Abir_, great; הבר,
_Ebir_, an astrologer, or חבר, _Chabir_, an associate; and they were
worshipped at Hebron, the city of the _Anakes_—the giants. The name
Abraham, according to Dr. Wilder, has “a very Kabeirian look.” The
word _Heber_, or _Gheber_ may be the etymological root of the Hebrews,
as applied to Nimrod and the Bible-giants of the sixth chapter of
_Genesis_, but we must seek for their origin far earlier than the days
of Moses. The name _Phœnician_ affords its own proof. They are called
Φοινικες by Manetho, or _Ph’ Anakes_, which shows that the Anakes or
_Anakim_ of Canaan, with whom the people of Israel, if not identical
in race, had, by intermarriage, become entirely absorbed, were the
Phœnicians, or the problematical Hyk-sos, as Manetho has it, and whom
Josephus once declared were the direct ancestors of the Israelites.
Therefore, it is in this jumble of contradictory opinions, authorities,
and historical _olla podrida_ that we must look for a solution of the
mystery. So long as the origin of the Hyk-sos is not positively settled
we can know nothing certain of the Israelitish people who, either
wittingly or otherwise, have mixed up their chronology and origin
in such an inextricable tangle. But if the Hyk-sos can be proved to
have been the Pali-Shepherds of the Indus, who partially removed to
the East, and came over from the nomadic Aryan tribes of India, then,
perhaps, it would account for the biblical myths being so mixed up with
the Aryan and Asiatic Mystery-gods. As Dunlap says: “The Hebrews came
out of Egypt among the Canaanites; they need not be traced beyond
the _Exodus_. _That is their historical beginning._ It was very easy
to cover up this remote event by the recital of mythical traditions,
and to prefix to it an account of their origin in which the gods
(patriarchs) should figure as their ancestors.” But it is not _their
historical beginning_ which is the most vital question for the world
of science and theology. It is their _religious_ beginning. And if we
can trace it through the Hyk-sos—Phœnicians, the Æthiopian builders and
the Chaldeans—whether it is to the Hindus that the latter owe their
learning, or the Brahmans who owe it to the Chaldeans, we have the
means in hand to trace every so-called _revealed_ dogmatical assertion
in the _Bible_ to its origin, which we have to search for in the
twilight of history, and before the separation of the Aryan and Semitic
families. And how can we do it better or more surely than through means
afforded us by archæology? Picture-writing can be destroyed, but if
it survives it cannot lie; and, if we find the same myths, ideas, and
secret symbols on monuments all over the world; and if, moreover, these
monuments can be shown to antedate the twelve “chosen” tribes, then we
can unerringly show that instead of being a direct divine _revelation_,
it was but an incomplete recollection or tradition among a tribe which
had been identified and mixed up for centuries before the apparition of
Abraham, with all the three great world-families; namely, the Aryan,
Semitic, and Turanian nations, if so they must be called.
The _Teraphim_ of Abram’s father, _Terah_, the “maker of images,”
were the Kabeiri gods, and we see them worshipped by Micah, by the
Danites, and others.[851] Teraphim were identical with the seraphim,
and these were serpent-images, the origin of which is in the Sanscrit
_sarpâ_ (the serpent), a symbol sacred to all the deities as a symbol
of immortality. _Kiyun_, or the god Kivan, worshipped by the Hebrews in
the wilderness, is Siva, the Hindu,[852] as well as Saturn.[853] The
Greek story shows that Dardanus, the Arcadian, having received them as
a dowry, carried them to Samothrace, and from thence to Troy; and they
were worshipped far before the days of glory of Tyre or Sidon, though
the former had been built 2760 B.C. From where did Dardanus derive them?
It is an easy matter to assign an age to ruins on merely the external
evidence of probabilities; it is more difficult to prove it. Meanwhile
the rock-works of Ruad, Perytus, Marathos, resemble those of Petra,
Baalbek, and other Æthiopian works, even externally. On the other hand
the assertions of certain archæologists who find no resemblance between
the temples of Central America and those of Egypt and Siam, leave the
symbologist, acquainted with the secret language of picture-writing,
perfectly unconcerned. He sees the landmarks of one and the same
doctrine on all of these monuments, and reads their history and
affiliation in signs imperceptible to the uninitiated scientist.
There are traditions also; and one of these speaks of the last of the
king-initiates—(who were but rarely admitted to the higher orders of
the Eastern Brotherhoods), who reigned in 1670. This king of Siam was
the one so ridiculed by the French ambassador, de la Loubère, as a
lunatic who had been searching all his life for the philosopher’s stone.
One of such mysterious landmarks is found in the peculiar structure
of certain arches in the temples. The author of the _Land of the
White Elephant_ remarks as curious, “the absence of the keystone in
the arches of the building, and the undecipherable inscriptions.” In
the ruins of Santa Cruz del Quiché an arched corridor was found by
Stephens, equally without a keystone. Describing the desolate ruins of
Palenque, and remarking that the arches of the corridors were all built
on this model, and the ceilings in this form, he supposes that “the
builders were evidently ignorant of the principles of the arch, and the
support was made by stones lapping over as they rose; as at Ocosingo,
and among Cyclopean remains in Greece and Italy.”[854] In other
buildings, though they belong to the same group, the traveller found
the missing keystone, which is a sufficient proof that its omission
elsewhere was _premeditated_.
May we not look for the solution of the mystery in the Masonic manual?
The keystone has an esoteric meaning which ought to be, if it is not,
well appreciated by high Masons. The most important subterranean
building mentioned in the description of the origin of Freemasonry,
is the one built by Enoch. The patriarch is led by the Deity, whom
he sees in a vision, into the _nine_ vaults. After that, with the
assistance of his son, Methuselah, he constructs in the land of Canaan,
“in the bowels of the mountain,” nine apartments on the models that
were shown to him in the vision. Each was roofed with an arch, and
the apex of each _formed a keystone_, having inscribed on it the
mirific characters. Each of the latter, furthermore, represented one
of the nine names, traced in characters emblematical of the attributes
by which the Deity was, according to ancient Freemasonry, known to
the antediluvian brethren. Then Enoch constructed two deltas of the
purest gold, and tracing two of the mysterious characters on each, he
placed one of them in the deepest arch, and the other entrusted to
Methuselah, communicating to him, at the same time, other important
secrets _now lost to Freemasonry_.
And so, among these arcane secrets, now lost to their modern
successors, may be found also the fact that the keystones were used in
the arches only in certain portions of the temples devoted to special
purposes. Another similarity presented by the architectural remains of
the religious monuments of every country can be found in the identity
of parts, courses, and measurements. All these buildings belong to
the age of Hermes Trismegistus, and however comparatively modern or
ancient the temple may seem, their mathematical proportions are found
to correspond with the Egyptian religious edifices. There is a similar
disposition of court-yards, adyta, passages, and steps; hence, despite
any dissimilarity in architectural style, it is a warrantable inference
that like religious rites were celebrated in all. Says Dr. Stukely,
concerning Stonehenge: “This structure was not erected upon any Roman
measure, and this is demonstrated by the great number of fractions
which the measurement of each part, according to European scales,
gives. On the contrary the figures become even, as soon as we apply to
it the measurement of the ancient cubic, which was common to the Hebrew
children of Shem, as well as to the Phœnicians and Egyptians, children
of Ham (?), and imitators of the monuments of unhewn and oracular
stones.”
The presence of the artificial lakes, and their peculiar disposition
on the consecrated grounds, is also a fact of great importance. The
lakes inside the precincts of Karnak, and those enclosed in the grounds
of Nagkon-Wat, and around the temples in the Mexican Copan and Santa
Cruz del Quichè, will be found to present the same peculiarities.
Besides possessing other significances the whole area was laid out
with reference to cyclic calculations. In the Druidical structures
the same sacred and mysterious numbers will be found. The circle
of stones generally consists of either twelve, or twenty-one, or
thirty-six. In these circles the centre place belongs to Assar, Azon,
or the god in the circle, by whatever other name he might have been
known. The thirteen Mexican serpent-gods bear a distant relationship
to the thirteen stones of the Druidical ruins. The ~T~ (Tau), and
the astronomical cross of Egypt [A circle with a horizontal diameter
and a vertical radius above] are conspicuous in several apertures of
the remains of Palenque. In one of the _basso-relievos_ of the Palace
of Palenque, on the west side, sculptured on a hieroglyphic, right
under the seated figure, is a _Tau_. The standing figure, which leans
over the first one, is in the act of covering its head with the left
hand with the veil of initiation; while it extends its right with the
index and middle finger pointing to heaven. The position is precisely
that of a Christian bishop giving his blessing, or the one in which
Jesus is often represented while at the Last Supper. Even the Hindu
elephant-headed god of wisdom (or magic learning), Ganesha, may be
found among the stucco figures of the Mexican ruins.
What explanation can the archæologists, philologists—in short, the
chosen host of Academicians—give us? None whatever. At best they have
but hypotheses, every one of which is likely to be pulled down by its
successor—a pseudo-truth, perhaps, like the first. The keys to the
biblical miracles of old, and to the phenomena of modern days; the
problems of psychology, physiology, and the many “missing links” which
have so perplexed scientists of late, are all in the hands of secret
fraternities. This mystery _must be_ unveiled some day. But till then
dark skepticism will constantly interpose its threatening, ugly shadow
between God’s truths and the spiritual vision of mankind; and many are
those who, infected by the mortal epidemic of our century—hopeless
materialism—will remain in doubt and mortal agony as to whether, when
man dies, he will live again, although the question has been solved
by long bygone generations of sages. The answers are there. They may
be found on the time-worn granite pages of cave-temples, on sphinxes,
propylons, and obelisks. They have stood there for untold ages, and
neither the rude assault of time, nor the still ruder assault of
Christian hands, have succeeded in obliterating their records. All
covered with the problems which were solved—who can tell? perhaps by
the archaic forefathers of their builders—the solution follows each
question; and this the Christian could not appropriate, for, except the
initiates, no one has understood the mystic writing. The key was in the
keeping of those who knew how to commune with the invisible Presence,
and who had received, from the lips of mother Nature herself, her grand
truths. And so stand these monuments like mute forgotten sentinels on
the threshold of that _unseen_ world, whose gates are thrown open but
to a few elect.
Defying the hand of Time, the vain inquiry of profane science, the
insults of the _revealed_ religions, they will disclose their riddles
to none but the legatees of those by whom they were entrusted with the
MYSTERY. The cold, stony lips of the once vocal Memnon, and of these
hardy sphinxes, keep their secrets well. Who will unseal them? Who of
our modern, materialistic dwarfs and unbelieving Sadducees will dare to
lift the VEIL OF ISIS?
CHAPTER XV.
“STE.—Have we devils here? Do you put tricks upon us with
savages, and men of Inde?”
_The Tempest_, Act ii., Sc. 2.
“We have now, so far forth as it is requisite for our design,
considered the _Nature and Functions of the Soule_; and have
plainly demonstrated that she is a substance distinct from the
body.”
—DR. HENRY MORE: _Immortality of the Soule_. 1659.
“KNOWLEDGE IS POWER; IGNORANCE IS IMBECILITY.”—AUTHOR OF
“Art-Magic:” _Ghost-Land_.
The “secret doctrine” has for many centuries been like the symbolical
“man of sorrows” of the prophet Isaiah. “Who hath believed our report?”
its martyrs have repeated from one generation to another. The doctrine
has grown up before its persecutors “as a tender plant and as a root
out of a dry ground; it hath no form, nor comeliness ... it is despised
and rejected of men; and they hid their faces from it.... They esteemed
him not.”
There need be no controversy as to whether this doctrine agrees or not
with the iconoclastic tendency of the skeptics of our times. It agrees
with _truth_ and that is enough. It would be idle to expect that it
would be believed by its detractors and slanderers. But the tenacious
vitality it exhibits all over the globe, wherever there are a group
of men to quarrel over it, is the best proof that the seed planted by
our fathers on “the other side of the flood” was that of a mighty oak,
not the spore of a mushroom theology. No lightning of human ridicule
can fell to the ground, and no thunderbolts ever forged by the Vulcans
of science are powerful enough to blast the trunk, or even scar the
branches of this world-tree of KNOWLEDGE.
We have but to leave unnoticed their letter that killeth, and catch the
subtile spirit of their hidden wisdom, to find concealed in the _Books
of Hermes_—be they the model or the copy of all others—the evidences
of a truth and philosophy which we feel _must_ be based on the eternal
laws. We instinctively comprehend that, however finite the powers of
man, while he is yet embodied, they must be in close kinship with
the attributes of an infinite Deity; and we become capable of better
appreciating the hidden sense of the gift lavished by the _Elohim_ on
_H’Adam_: “Behold, I have given you everything which is upon the face
of all the earth ... _subdue it_,” and “_have dominion_” over ALL.
Had the allegories contained in the first chapters of _Genesis_
been better understood, even in their geographical and historical
sense, which involve nothing at all esoteric, the claims of its true
interpreters, the kabalists, could hardly have been rejected for so
long a time. Every student of the _Bible_ must be aware that the first
and second chapters of _Genesis_ could not have proceeded from the
same pen. They are evidently allegories and parables;[855] for the two
narratives of the creation and peopling of our earth diametrically
contradict each other in nearly every particular of order, time,
place, and methods employed in the so-called creation. In accepting
the narratives literally, and as a whole, we lower the dignity of the
unknown Deity. We drag him down to the level of humanity, and endow him
with the peculiar personality of man, who needs the “cool of the day”
to refresh him; who rests from his labors; and is capable of anger,
revenge, and even of using precautions against man, “lest he put forth
his hand, and take also of the tree of life.” (A tacit admission, by
the way, on the part of the Deity, that man _could do it_, if not
prevented by sheer force.) But, in recognizing the allegorical coloring
of the description of what may be termed historical facts, we find our
feet instantly on firm ground.
To begin with—the garden of Eden as a locality is no myth at all; it
belongs to those landmarks of history which occasionally disclose to
the student that the _Bible_ is not all mere allegory. “Eden, or the
Hebrew גן־עדן GAN-EDEN, meaning the park or the garden of Eden, is
an archaic name of the country watered by the Euphrates and its many
branches, from Asia and Armenia to the Erythraian Sea.”[856] In the
Chaldean _Book of Numbers_, its location is designated in numerals,
and in the cipher Rosicrucian manuscript, left by Count St. Germain,
it is fully described. In the Assyrian _Tablets_, it is rendered
_gan-dunyas_. “Behold,” say the אלהים _Eloim_ of Genesis, “the man is
become as one of us.” The _Eloim_ may be accepted in one sense for
_gods_ or powers, and taken in another one for the _Aleim_, or priests;
the hierophants initiated into the good and the evil of this world;
for there was a college of priests called the _Aleim_, while the head
of their caste, or the chief of the hierophants, was known as _Java
Aleim_. Instead of becoming a neophyte, and gradually obtaining his
esoteric knowledge through a regular initiation, an _Adam_, or man,
uses his intuitional faculties, and, prompted by the Serpent—_Woman_
and matter—tastes of the Tree of Knowledge—the esoteric or secret
doctrine—unlawfully. The priests of Hercules, or Mel-Karth, the “Lord”
of the Eden, all wore “coats of skin.” The text says: “And _Java
Aleim_, made for Adam and his wife כתנות עור, CHITONUTH OUR.” The
first Hebrew word, _chitun_, is the Greek χιτων, _chiton_. It became
a Slavonic word by adoption from the _Bible_, and means a _coat_, an
upper garment.
Though containing the same substratum of esoteric truth as every
early cosmogony, the Hebrew Scripture wears on its face the marks
of its double origin. Its _Genesis_ is purely a reminiscence of the
Babylonian captivity. The names of places, men, and even objects, can
be traced from the original text to the Chaldeans and the Akkadians,
the progenitors and Aryan instructors of the former. It is strongly
contested that the Akkad tribes of Chaldea, Babylonia, and Assyria
were in any way cognate with the Brahmans, of Hindustan; but there are
more proofs in favor of this opinion than otherwise. The Shemite, or
Assyrian, ought, perchance, to have been called the Turanian, and the
Mongolians have been denominated Scyths. But if the Akkadians ever
existed otherwise than in the imagination of some philologists and
ethnologists, they certainly would never have been a Turanian tribe,
as some Assyriologists have striven to make us believe. They were
simply emigrants on their way to Asia Minor from India, the cradle of
humanity, and their sacerdotal adepts tarried to civilize and initiate
a barbarian people. Halevy proved the fallacy of the Turanian mania in
regard to the Akkadian people, whose very name has been changed a dozen
times already; and other scientists have proved that the Babylonian
civilization was neither born nor developed in that country. It was
imported from India, and the importers were Brahmanical Hindus.
It is the opinion of Professor A. Wilder, that if the Assyrians had
been called Turanians and the Mongolians Scyths, then, in such a case
the wars of Iran and Turan, Zohak and Jemshid, or Yima, would have
been fairly comprehended as the struggle of the old Persians against
the endeavors of the Assyrian satraps to conquer them, which ended in
the overthrow of Nineveh; “the spider weaving her web in the palace of
Afrasiab.”[857]
“The Turanian of Prof. Müller and his school,” adds our correspondent,
“was evidently the savage and nomadic Caucasian, out of whom the
Hamite or Æthiopian builders come; then the Shemites—perhaps a hybrid
of Hamite and Aryan; and lastly the Aryan—Median, Persian, Hindu; and
later, the Gothic and Slavic peoples of Europe. He supposes the Celt
to have been a hybrid, analogous to the Assyrians—between the Aryan
invaders of Europe and the Iberic (probably Æthiopic) population of
Europe.” In such a case he must admit the possibility of our assertion
that the Akkadians were a tribe of the earliest Hindus. Now, whether
they were Brahmans, from the Brahmanic planisphere proper (40° north
latitude), or from India (Hindustan), or, again, from the India of
Central Asia, we will leave to philologists of future ages to decide.
An opinion which with us amounts to certitude, demonstrated by an
inductive method of our own, which we are afraid will be but little
appreciated by the orthodox methods of modern science, is based on what
will appear to the latter merely circumstantial evidence. For years we
have repeatedly noticed that the same esoteric truths were expressed in
identical symbols and allegories in countries between which there had
never been traced any historical affiliation. We have found the Jewish
_Kabala_ and the _Bible_ repeating the Babylonian “myths,”[858] and the
Oriental and Chaldean allegories, given in form and substance in the
oldest manuscripts of the Siamese Talapoin (monks), and in the popular
but oldest traditions of Ceylon.
In the latter place we have an old and valued acquaintance whom we have
also met in other parts of the globe, a Pali scholar, and a native
Cingalese, who has in his possession a curious palm leaf, to which,
by chemical processes, a timeproof durability has been given, and an
enormous conch, or rather one-half of a conch—for it has been split
in two. On the leaf we saw the representation of a giant of Ceylonian
antiquity and fame, blind, and pulling down—with his outstretched
arms, which are embracing the four central pillars of a pagoda—the
whole temple on a crowd of armed enemies. His hair is long and reaches
nearly to the ground. We were informed by the possessor of this curious
relic, that the blind giant was “Somona, the Little;” so called in
contradistinction with Somona-Kadom, the Siamese saviour. Moreover, the
Pali legend, in its important particulars, corresponds with that of the
biblical Samson.
The shell bore upon its pearly surface a pictorial engraving, divided
in two compartments, and the workmanship was far more artistic, as
to conception and execution, than the crucifixes and other religious
trinkets carved out of the same material in our days, at Jaffa and
Jerusalem. In the first panel is represented Siva, with all his Hindu
attributes, sacrificing his son—whether the “only-begotten,” or one
of many, we never stopped to inquire. The victim is laid on a funeral
pile, and the father is hovering in the air over him, with an uplifted
weapon ready to strike; but the god’s face is turned toward a jungle
in which a rhinoceros has deeply buried its horn in a huge tree and is
unable to extricate it. The adjoining panel, or division, represents
the same rhinoceros on the pile with the weapon plunged in its side,
and the intended victim—Siva’s son—free, and helping the god to kindle
the fire upon the sacrificial altar.
Now, we have but to remember that Siva and the Palentinian Baal, or
Moloch, and Saturn are identical; that Abraham is held until the
present day by the Mahometan Arabs as Saturn in the Kaaba;[859] that
Abraham and Israel were names of Saturn;[860] and that Sanchoniathon
tells us that Saturn offered his only-begotten son as a sacrifice to
his father Ouranos, and even circumcised himself and forced all his
household and allies to do the same,[861] to trace unerringly the
biblical myth to its source. But this source is neither Phœnician, nor
Chaldean; it is purely Indian, and the original of it may be found in
the _Maha-Bharata_. But, whether Brahmanical or Buddhistical, it must
certainly be much older than the Jewish _Pentateuch_, as compiled by
Ezra after the Babylonian captivity, and revised by the Rabbis of the
Great Synagogue.
Therefore, we are bold enough to maintain our assertion against the
opinion of many men of learning, whom, nevertheless, we consider far
more learned than ourselves. Scientific induction is one thing, and
_knowledge of facts_, however unscientific they may seem at first, is
another. But science has discovered enough to inform us that Sanscrit
originals, of Nepaul, were translated by Buddhistic missionaries
into nearly every Asiatic language. Likewise Pali manuscripts were
translated into Siamese, and carried to Burmah and Siam; it is easy,
therefore, to account for the same religious legends and myths
circulating in all these countries. But Manetho tells us also of Pali
shepherds who emigrated westward; and when we find some of the oldest
Ceylonic traditions in the Chaldean _Kabala_ and Jewish _Bible_, we
must think that either Chaldeans or Babylonians had been in Ceylon or
India, or the ancient Pali had the same traditions as the Akkadians,
whose origin is so uncertain. Suppose even Rawlinson to be right, and
that the Akkadians did come from Armenia, he did not trace them farther
back. As the field is now opened for any kind of hypothesis, we submit
that this tribe might as well have come to Armenia from beyond the
Indus, following their way in the direction of the Caspian Sea—a part
which was also India, once upon a time—and from thence to the Euxine.
Or they might have come originally from Ceylon by the same way. It has
been found impossible to follow, with any degree of certitude, the
wanderings of these nomadic Aryan tribes; hence we are left to judge
from inference, and by comparing their esoteric myths. Abraham himself,
for all our scientists can know, might have been one of these Pali
shepherds who emigrated _West_. He is shown to have gone with his
father, Terah, from “_Ur_ of the Chaldees;” and Sir H. Rawlinson found
the Phœnician city of Martu or Marathos mentioned in an inscription at
_Ur_, and shows it to signify THE WEST.
If their language seems in one sense to oppose their identity with the
Brahmans of Hindustan, yet there are other reasons which make good our
claims that the biblical allegories of _Genesis_ are entirely due to
these nomadic tribes. Their name Ak-ad, is of the same class as Ad-Am,
Ha-va,[862] or Ed-En—“perhaps,” says Dr. Wilder, “meaning son of _Ad_,
like the sons of Ad in ancient Arabia. In Assyrian, _Ak_ is creator and
Ad-ad is AD, the father.” In Aramean Ad also means _one_, and Ad-ad the
_only-one_; and in the _Kabala Ad-am_ is the only-begotten, the first
emanation of the unseen Creator. _Adon_ was the “Lord” god of Syria
and the consort of Adar-gat, or Aster-‘t,’ the Syrian goddess, who was
Venus, Isis, Istar, or Mylitta, etc.; and each of these was “mother _of
all living_” the _Magna Mater_.
Thus, while the first, second, and third chapters of _Genesis_ are
but disfigured imitations of other cosmogonies, the fourth chapter,
beginning at the sixteenth verse, and the fifth chapter to the end—give
purely historical facts; though the latter were never correctly
interpreted. They are taken, word for word, from the secret _Book of
Numbers_, of the Great Oriental _Kabala_. From the birth of Enoch, the
appropriated first parent of modern Freemasonry, begins the genealogy
of the so-called Turanian, Aryan, and Semitic families, if such they
be correctly. Every woman is an euhemerized land or city; every man
and patriarch a race, a branch, or a subdivision of a race. The wives
of Lamech give the key to the riddle which some good scholar might
easily master, even without studying the esoteric sciences. “And Ad-ah
bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and _of
such as have cattle_,” nomadic Aryan race; “ ... and his brother was
Jubal; he was the father of all such as _handle the harp and organ_;
... and Zillah bare Tubal-Cain, an instructor _of every artificer in
brass and iron_,” etc. Every word has a significance; but it is no
_revelation_. It is simply a compilation of the most _historical_
facts, although history is too perplexed upon this point to know how
to claim them. It is from the Euxine to Kashmere, and beyond that we
must search for the cradle of mankind and the sons of Ad-ah; and leave
the particular garden of Ed-en on the Euphrates to the college of the
weird astrologers and magi, the Aleim.[863] No wonder that the Northern
seer, Swedenborg, advises people to search for the LOST WORD among the
hierophants of Tartary, China, and Thibet; for it is there, and only
there now, although we find it inscribed on the monuments of the oldest
Egyptian dynasties.
The grandiose poetry of the four _Vedas_; the _Books of Hermes_; the
Chaldean _Book of Numbers_; the _Nazarene Codex_; the _Kabala_ of
the Tanaïm; the _Sepher Jezira_; the _Book of Wisdom_, of Schlomah
(Solomon); the secret treatise on _Muhta and Badha_,[864] attributed by
the Buddhist kabalists to Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya system;
the _Brahmanas_;[865] the _Stan-gyour_,[866] of the Thibetans; all
these volumes have the same groundwork. Varying but in allegories they
teach the same secret doctrine which, when once thoroughly eliminated,
will prove to be the Ultima Thulè of true philosophy, and disclose what
is this LOST WORD.
It is useless to expect scientists to find in these works anything of
interest except that which is in direct relation to either philology
or comparative mythology. Even Max Müller, as soon as he refers to
the mysticism and metaphysical philosophy scattered through the old
Sanscrit literature, sees in it naught but “theological absurdities”
and “fantastic nonsense.”
Speaking of the _Brahmanas_, all full of _mysterious_, therefore, as a
matter of course, absurd, meanings, we find him saying: “The greater
portion of them is simply twaddle, and what is worse, _theological
twaddle_. No person who is not acquainted beforehand with “the place
which the _Brahmanas_ fill in the history of the Indian mind, could
read more than ten pages _without being disgusted_.”[867]
We do not wonder at the severe criticism of this erudite scientist.
Without a clew to the real meaning of this “twaddle” of religious
conceptions, how can they judge of the esoteric by the exoteric? We
find an answer in another of the highly-interesting lectures of the
German savant: “No Jew, no Roman, no Brahman ever thought of converting
people to his own national form of worship. Religion was looked upon as
private or national property. It was to be guarded against strangers.
The most sacred names of the gods, the prayers by which their favor
could be gained, were kept secret. No religion was more exclusive than
that of the Brahmans.”[868]
Therefore, when we find scholars who imagine, because they have learned
the meaning of a few exoteric rites from a srotriya, a Brahman priest
initiated in the sacrificial mysteries, that they are capable of
interpreting all the symbols, and have sifted the Hindu religions, we
cannot help admiring the completeness of their scientific delusions.
The more so, since we find Max Müller himself asserting that since “a
Brahman was born—nay, _twice-born_, and could not be made, not even the
lowest caste, that of the Sudras, would open its ranks to a stranger.”
How much less likely that he would allow that stranger to unveil to the
world his most sacred religious Mysteries, the secret of which has been
guarded so jealousy from profanation throughout untold ages.
No; our scientists do not—nay, cannot understand correctly the old
Hindu literature, any more than an atheist or materialist is able to
appreciate at their just value the feelings of a seer, a mystic, whose
whole life is given to contemplation. They have a perfect right to
soothe themselves with the sweet lullaby of their self-admiration,
and the just consciousness of their great learning, but none at all
to lead the world into their own error, by making it believe that
they have solved the last problem of ancient thought in literature,
whether Sanscrit or any other; that there lies not behind the external
“twaddle” far more than was ever dreamed of by our modern exact
philosophy; or that above and beyond the correct rendering of Sanscrit
words and sentences there is no deeper thought, intelligible to some of
the descendants of those who veiled it in the morning hours of earth’s
day, if they are not to the profane reader.
We do not feel in the least astonished that a materialist, and even
an orthodox Christian, is unable to read either the old Brahmanical
works or their progeny, the _Kabala_, the _Codex_ of Bardesanes, or
the Jewish _Scripture_ without disgust at their immodesty and apparent
lack of what the uninitiated reader is pleased to call “common sense.”
But if we can hardly blame them for such a feeling, especially in the
case of the Hebrew, and even the Greek and Latin literature, and are
quite ready to agree with Professor Fiske that “it is a mark of wisdom
to be dissatisfied with imperfect evidence;” on the other hand we have
a right to expect that they should recognize that it is no less a mark
of honesty to confess one’s ignorance in cases where there are two
sides to the question, and in the solution of which the scientist may
as easily blunder as any ignoramus. When we find Professor Draper, in
his definition of periods in the _Intellectual Development of Europe_,
classifying the time from the days of Socrates, the precursor and
teacher _of Plato_, to Karneades, as “the age of faith;” and that from
Philo to the destruction of the Neo-platonic schools by Justinian—the
“age of decrepitude,” we may be allowed to infer that the learned
professor knows as little about the real tendency of Greek philosophy
and the Attic schools as he understood the true character of Giordano
Bruno. So when we see one of the best of Sanscrit scholars stating
on his own unsupported authority that the “greater portion of the
_Brahmanas_ is simply theological twaddle,” we deeply regret to think
that Professor Müller must be far better acquainted with the old
Sanscrit verbs and nouns than with Sanscrit thought; and that a scholar
so uniformly disposed to do justice to the religions and the men of old
should so effectually play into the hands of Christian theologians.
“What is the use of Sanscrit?” exclaims Jacquemont, who alone has
made more false statements about the East than all the Orientalists
put together. At such a rate there would be none indeed. If we are to
exchange one corpse for another, then we may as well dissect the dead
letter of the Jewish _Bible_ as that of the _Vedas_. He who is not
intuitionally vivified by the religious spirit of old, will never see
beyond the exoteric “twaddle.”
When first we read that “in the cavity of the cranium of
Macroposopos—the Long-Face—lies hidden the aërial Wisdom which nowhere
is opened; and it is not discovered, and not opened;” or again, that
“the _nose_ of the ‘ancient of days’ is _Life_ in every part;” we are
inclined to regard it as the incoherent ravings of a lunatic. And
when, moreover, we are apprized by the _Codex Nazaræus_ that “she, the
_Spiritus_,” invites her son Karabtanos, “who is frantic and without
judgment,” to an unnatural crime with his own mother, we are pretty
well disposed to throw the book aside in disgust. But is this only
meaningless trash, expressed in rude and even obscene language? No
more can it be judged by external appearance than the sexual symbols
of the Egyptian and Hindu religions, or the coarse frankness of
expression of the “holy” _Bible_ itself. No more than the allegory of
Eve and the tempting serpent of Eden. The ever-insinuating, restless
spirit, when once it “falls into matter,” tempts Eve, or Hava, which
bodily represents chaotic matter “frantic and without judgment.” For
_matter_, Karabtanos, is the son of _Spirit_, or the _Spiritus_ of the
Nazarenes, the _Sophia-Achamoth_, and the latter is the daughter of
the pure, intellectual spirit, the divine breath. When science shall
have effectually demonstrated to us the origin of matter, and proved
the fallacy of the occultists’ and old philosophers who held (as their
descendants now hold) that matter is but one of the correlations of
spirit, then will the world of skeptics have a right to reject the
old Wisdom, or throw the charge of obscenity in the teeth of the old
religions.
“From time immemorial,”[869] says Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, “an emblem
has been worshipped in Hindustan as the type of creation, or the origin
of life. It is the most common symbol of Siva [Bala, or Maha-Deva], and
is universally connected with his worship.... Siva was not merely the
reproducer of human forms; he represented the fructifying principle,
the generative power that pervades the universe.... Small images of
this emblem carved in ivory, gold, or crystal, are worn as ornaments
about the neck.... The maternal emblem is likewise a religious
type; and worshippers of Vishnu represent it on their forehead by a
horizontal mark.... Is it strange that they regarded with reverence the
great mystery of human birth? Were _they_ impure thus to regard it? Or
are we impure that we do _not_ so regard it? We have travelled far, and
unclean have been the paths, since those old Anchorites first spoke of
God and the soul in the solemn depths of their first sanctuaries. Let
us not smile at their mode of tracing the infinite and incomprehensible
Cause throughout all the mysteries of nature, lest by so doing we cast
the shadow of our own grossness on their patriarchal simplicity.”
Many are the scholars who have tried, to the best of their ability, to
do justice to old India. Colebrooke, Sir William Jones, Barthelemy St.
Hilaire, Lassen, Weber, Strange, Burnouf, Hardy, and finally Jacolliot,
have all brought forward their testimony to her achievements in
legislation, ethics, philosophy, and religion. No people in the world
have ever attained to such a grandeur of thought in ideal conceptions
of the Deity and its offspring, MAN, as the Sanscrit metaphysicians and
theologians. “My complaint against many translators and Orientalists,”
says Jacolliot, “while admiring their profound knowledge is, that _not
having lived in India_, they fail in exactness of expression and in
comprehension of the _symbolical_ sense of poetic chants, prayers, and
ceremonies, and thus too often fall into material errors, whether of
translation or appreciation.”[870] Further, this author who, from a
long residence in India, and the study of its literature, is better
qualified to testify than those who have never been there, tells us
that “the life of several generations would scarce suffice merely
to read the works that ancient India has left us on history, ethics
(_morale_), poetry, philosophy, religion, different sciences, and
medicine.” And yet Louis Jacolliot is able to judge but by the few
fragments, access to which had ever depended on the complaisance
and friendship of a few Brahmans with whom he succeeded in becoming
intimate. Did they show him _all_ their treasures? Did they explain
to him _all_ he desired to learn? We doubt it, otherwise he would not
himself have judged their religious ceremonies so hastily as he has
upon several occasions merely upon circumstantial evidence.
Still, no traveller has shown himself fairer in the main or more
impartial to India than Jacolliot. If he is severe as to her present
degradation, he is still severer to those who were the cause of
it—the sacerdotal caste of the last few centuries—and his rebuke
is proportionate to the intensity of his appreciation of her past
grandeur. He shows the sources whence proceeded the revelations of
all the ancient creeds, including the inspired _Books of Moses_, and
points at India directly as the cradle of humanity, the parent of
all other nations, and the hot-bed of all the lost arts and sciences
of antiquity, for which old India, herself, was lost already in the
Cimmerian darkness of the archaic ages. “To study India,” he says, “is
to trace humanity to its sources.”
“In the same way as modern society jostles antiquity at each step,”
he adds, “as our poets have copied Homer and Virgil, Sophocles and
Euripides, Plautus and Terence; as our philosophers have drawn
inspiration from Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle; as our
historians take Titus Livius, Sallust, or Tacitus, as models; our
orators, Demosthenes or Cicero; our physicians study Hippocrates,
and our codes transcribe Justinian—so had antiquity’s self also an
antiquity to study, to imitate, and to copy. What more simple and
more logical? Do not peoples precede and succeed each other? Does
the knowledge, painfully acquired by one nation, confine itself to
its own territory, and die with the generation that produced it? Can
there be any absurdity in the suggestion that the India of 6,000 years
ago, brilliant, civilized, overflowing with population, impressed
upon Egypt, Persia, Judea, Greece, and Rome, a stamp as ineffaceable,
impressions as profound, as these last have impressed upon us?
“It is time to disabuse ourselves of those prejudices which represent
the ancients as having almost spontaneously-elaborated ideas,
philosophic, religious, and moral, the most lofty—those prejudices that
in their naïve admiration explain all in the domain of science, arts,
and letters, by the intuition of some few great men, and in the realm
of religion by revelation.”[871]
We believe that the day is not far off when the opponents of this
fine and erudite writer will be silenced by the force of irrefutable
evidence. And when _facts_ shall once have corroborated his theories
and assertions, what will the world find? That it is to India, the
country less explored, and less known than any other, that all the
other great nations of the world are indebted for their languages,
arts, legislature, and civilization. Its progress, impeded for a few
centuries before our era—for, as this writer shows, at the epoch of
the great Macedonian conqueror, “India had already passed the period
of her splendor” was completely stifled in the subsequent ages. But
the evidence of her past glories lies in her literature. What people
in all the world can boast of such a literature, which, were the
Sanscrit less difficult, would be more studied than now? Hitherto
the general public has had to rely for information on a few scholars
who, notwithstanding their great learning and trustworthiness, are
unequal to the task of translating and commenting upon more than a
few books out of the almost countless number that, notwithstanding
the vandalism of the missionaries, are still left to swell the mighty
volume of Sanscrit literature. And to do even so much is the labor of
a European’s lifetime. Hence, people judge hastily, and often make the
most ridiculous blunders.
Quite recently a certain Reverend Dunlop Moore, of New Brighton,
Pa., determined to show his cleverness and piety at a single stroke,
attacked the statement made by a Theosophist in a discourse delivered
at the cremation of Baron de Palm, that the _Code of Manu_ existed
a thousand years before Moses. “All Orientalists of any note,” he
says, “are now agreed that the _Institutes of Manu_ were written at
different times. _The oldest part of the collection probably dates
from the sixth century before the Christian era._”[872] Whatever other
Orientalists, encountered by this Pennsylvania pundit, may think, Sir
William Jones is of a different opinion. “It is clear,” he says, “that
the _Laws of Manu_, such as we possess them, and which comprise but 680
slokas, cannot be the work attributed to Soumati, which is probably
that described under the name of _Vriddha Manava_, or _Ancient Code of
Manu_, which has not yet been entirely reconstructed, although many
passages of the book have been preserved by tradition, and are often
cited by commentators.”
“We read in the preface to a treatise on legislation by Narada,” says
Jacolliot, “written by one of his adepts, a client of Brahmanical
power: ‘Manu having written the laws of Brahma, in 100,000 slokas,
or distichs, which formed twenty-four books and a thousand chapters,
gave the work to Narada, the sage of sages, who abridged it for the
use of mankind to 12,000 verses, which he gave to a son of Brighou,
named Soumati, who, for the greater convenience of man, reduced them to
4,000.’”
Here we have the opinion of Sir William Jones, who, in 1794, affirmed
that the fragments in possession of the Europeans could not be _The
Ancient Code of Manu_, and that of Louis Jacolliot, who, in 1868, after
consulting all the authorities, and adding to them the result of his
own long and patient research, writes the following: “The Hindu laws
were codified by Manu _more than 3,000 years before the Christian era_,
copied by the whole of antiquity, and notably by Rome, which alone has
left us a written law—the _Code of Justinian_; which has been adopted
as the basis of all modern legislations.”[873]
In another volume, entitled _Christna et le Christ_, in a scientific
arraignment of a pious, albeit very learned Catholic antagonist, M.
Textor de Ravisi, who seeks to prove that the orthography of the name
Christna is not warranted by its Sanscrit spelling—and has the worst
of it—Jacolliot remarks: “We know that the legislator Manu is lost in
the night of the ante-historical period of India; and that no Indianist
has dared to refuse him the title of the most ancient law-giver in the
world” (p. 350).
But Jacolliot had not heard of the Rev. Dunlop Moore. This is why,
perhaps, he and several other Indiologists are preparing to prove that
many of the Vedic texts, as well as those of Manu, sent to Europe
by the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, _are not genuine texts at all_,
but mostly due to the cunning tentative efforts of certain Jesuit
missionaries to mislead science, by the help of apocryphal works
calculated at once to throw upon the history of ancient India a cloud
of uncertainty and darkness, and on the modern Brahmans and pundits a
suspicion of systematical interpolation. “These facts,” he adds, “which
are so well established in India that they are not even brought in
question, _must be revealed to Europe_” (_Christna et le Christ_, p.
347).
Moreover, the _Code of Manu_, known to European Orientalists as that
one which is commented upon by Brighou, does not even form a part
of the ancient Manu called the _Vriddha-Manava_. Although but small
fragments of it have been discovered by our scientists, it does exist
as a whole in certain temples; and Jacolliot proves that the texts
sent to Europe disagree entirely with the same texts as found in the
pagodas of Southern India. We can also cite for our purpose Sir William
Jones, who, complaining of Callouca, remarks that the latter seems
in his commentaries to have never considered that “the laws of Manu
are _restricted to the first three ages_” (_Translation of Manu and
Commentaries_).
According to computation we are now in the age of Kali-Yug, the
_third_, reckoning from that of Satya or Kritayug, first age in which
Hindu tradition establishes the laws of Manu, and the authenticity of
which Sir William Jones implicitly accepted. Admitting all that may be
said as to the enormous exaggerations of Hindu chronology—which, by the
bye, dovetails far better with modern geology and anthropology than
the 6,000 years’ caricature chronology of the Jewish _Scripture_—still
as about 4,500 years have elapsed since the fourth age of the world,
or Kali-Yug, began, we have here a proof that one of the greatest
Orientalists that ever lived—and a Christian in the bargain, not a
Theosophist—believed that Manu is many thousand years older than Moses.
Clearly one of two things should happen: Either Indian history should
be remodelled for the _Presbyterian Banner_, or the writers for that
sheet should study Hindu literature before trying their hand again at
criticism of Theosophists.
But apart from the private opinions of these reverend gentlemen whose
views very little concern us, we find even in the _New American
Cyclopædia_ a decided tendency to dispute the antiquity and importance
of the Hindu literature. The _Laws of Manu_, says one of the writers,
“do not date earlier than the third century B.C.” This term is a very
elastic one. If by the _Laws of Manu_ the writer means the _abridgment_
of these laws, compiled and arranged by later Brahmans to serve as an
authority for their ambitious projects, and with an idea of creating
for themselves a rule of domination, then, in such a sense, they may
be right, though we are prepared to dispute even that. At all events
it is as little proper to pass off this abridgment for the genuine
old laws codified by Manu, as to assert that the Hebrew _Bible_ does
not date earlier than the tenth century of our era, because we have
no Hebrew manuscript older than that, or that the poems of Homer’s
_Iliad_ were neither known nor written before its first authenticated
manuscript was found. There is no Sanscrit manuscript in the possession
of European scholars much older than four or five centuries,[874] a
fact which did not in the least restrain them from assigning to the
_Vedas_ an antiquity of between four or five thousand years. There
are the strongest possible arguments in favor of the great antiquity
of the _Books of Manu_, and without going to the trouble of quoting
the opinions of various scholars, no two of whom agree, we will bring
forward our own, at least as regards this most unwarranted assertion of
the _Cyclopædia_.
If, as Jacolliot proves, text in hand, the _Code of Justinian_ was
copied from the _Laws of Manu_, we have first of all to ascertain the
age of the former; not as a written and perfect code, but its origin.
To answer, is not difficult we believe.
According to Varro, Rome was built in 3961 of the Julian period (754
B.C.). The Roman Law, as embodied by order of Justinian, and known as
the _Corpus Juris Civilis_, was not a code, we are told, but a digest
of the customs of legislation of many centuries. Though nothing is
actually known of the original authorities, the chief source from
which the _jus scriptum_, or written law, was derived, was the _jus
non scriptum_, or the law of custom. Now it is just on this law _of
custom_ that we are prepared to base our arguments. The law of the
twelve tables, moreover, was compiled about A.U.C. 300, and even this
as respects private law was compiled _from still earlier sources_.
Therefore, if these earlier sources are found to agree so well with
the _Laws of Manu_, which the Brahmans claim to have been codified in
the _Kritayug_, an age anterior to the actual _Kali-yug_, then we must
suppose that this source of the “Twelve Tables,” as laws of _custom_
and tradition, are at least, by several hundred years, older than their
copyists. This, alone, carries us right back to more than 1,000 years
B.C.
The _Manava Dharma Sastra_, embodying the Hindu system of cosmogony,
is recognized as next to the _Vedas_ in antiquity; and even Colebrooke
assigns the latter to the fifteenth century B.C. And, now, what is
the etymology of the name of _Manava Dharma Sastra_? It is a word
compounded of _Manu_; _d’harma_, institute; and _sastra_, command or
law. How then can Manu’s laws date only since the third century before
our Christian era?
The Hindu _Code_ had never laid any claims to be divinely revealed.
The distinction made by the Brahmans themselves between the _Vedas_
and every other sacred book of however respectable an antiquity, is
a proof of it. While every sect holds the _Vedas_ as the direct word
of God—_sruti_ (revelation)—the _Code of Manu_ is designated by them
simply as the _smriti_, a collection of oral traditions. Still these
traditions, or “recollections,” are among the oldest as well as the
most revered in the land. But, perhaps, the strongest argument in favor
of its antiquity, and the general esteem in which it is held, lies
in the following fact. The Brahmans have undeniably remodelled these
traditions at some distant period, and made many of the actual laws,
as they now stand in the _Code of Manu_, to answer their ambitious
views. Therefore, they _must have done it at a time when the burning
of widows (suttee) was neither practiced nor intended to be_, which it
has been for nearly 2,500 years. No more than in the _Vedas_ is there
any such atrocious law mentioned in the _Code of Manu_! Who, unless he
is completely unacquainted with the history of India, but knows that
this country was once on the verge of a religious rebellion occasioned
by the prohibition of _suttee_ by the English government? The Brahmans
appealed to a verse from the _Rig-Veda_ which commanded it. But this
verse has been recently proved to have been falsified.[875] Had the
Brahmans been the sole authors of the _Code of Manu_, or had they
codified it entirely instead of simply filling it with interpolations
to answer their object not earlier than the time of Alexander, how is
it possible that they would have neglected this most important point,
and so imperilled its authority? This fact alone proves that the _Code_
must be counted one of their most ancient books.
It is on the strength of such circumstantial evidence—that of reason
and logic—that we affirm that, if Egypt furnished Greece with her
civilization, and the latter bequeathed hers to Rome, Egypt herself
had, in those unknown ages when Menes reigned,[876] received her laws,
her social institutions, her arts and her sciences, from pre-Vedic
India;[877] and that therefore, it is in that old initiatrix of the
priests—adepts of all the other countries—we must seek for the key to
the great mysteries of humanity.
And when we say, indiscriminately, “India,” we do not mean the India of
our modern days, but that of the archaic period. In those ancient times
countries which are now known to us by other names were all called
India. There was an Upper, a Lower, and a Western India, the latter of
which is now Persia-Iran. The countries now named Thibet, Mongolia, and
Great Tartary, were also considered by the ancient writers as India. We
will now give a legend in relation to those places which science now
fully concedes to have been the cradle of humanity.
Tradition says, and the records of the _Great Book_ explain, that
long before the days of Ad-am, and his inquisitive wife, He-va, where
now are found but salt lakes and desolate barren deserts, there was a
vast inland sea, which extended over Middle Asia, north of the proud
Himalayan range, and its western prolongation. An island, which for
its unparalleled beauty had no rival in the world, was inhabited by
the last remnant of the race which preceded ours. This race could live
with equal ease in water, air, or fire, for it had an unlimited control
over the elements. These were the “Sons of God;” not those who saw
the daughters of men, but the real _Elohim_, though in the Oriental
_Kabala_ they have another name. It was they who imparted Nature’s
most weird secrets to men, and revealed to them the ineffable, and now
_lost_ “word.” This word, which is no word, has travelled once around
the globe, and still lingers as a far-off dying echo in the hearts of
some privileged men. The hierophants of all the Sacerdotal Colleges
were aware of the existence of this island, but the “word” was known
only to the _Java Aleim_, or chief lord of every college, and was
passed to his successor only at the moment of death. There were many
such colleges, and the old classic authors speak of them.
We have already seen that it is one of the universal traditions
accepted by all the ancient peoples that there were many races of men
anterior to our present races. Each of these was distinct from the one
which preceded it; and each disappeared as the following appeared. In
_Manu_, six such races are plainly mentioned as having succeeded each
other.
“From this Manu Swayambhouva (the minor, and answering to Adam Kadmon)
issued from Swayambhouva, or the Being existing through himself,
descended six other Manus (men typifying progenitors), each of whom
gave birth _to a race_ of men.... These Manus, all powerful, of whom
Swayambhouva is the first, have each, _in his period—autara_—produced
and directed this world composed of movable and unmovable beings”
(_Manu_, book i.).
In the _Siva-Purana_,[878] it runs thus:
“O Siva, thou god of fire, mayest thou destroy my sins, as the
bleaching-grass of the jungle is destroyed by fire. It is through thy
mighty Breath that Adhima (the first man) and Heva (completion of life,
in Sanscrit), _the ancestors of this race of men_ have received life
and covered the world with their descendants.”
There was no communication with the fair island by sea, but
subterranean passages known only to the chiefs, communicated with it
in all directions. Tradition points to many of the majestic ruins of
India, Ellora, Elephanta, and the caverns of Ajunta (Chandor range),
which belonged once to those colleges, and with which were connected
such subterranean ways.[879] Who can tell but the lost Atlantis—which
is also mentioned in the _Secret Book_, but, again, under another
name, pronounced in the sacred language—did not exist yet in those
days? The great lost continent might have, perhaps, been situated south
of Asia, extending from India to Tasmania?[880] If the hypothesis
now so much doubted, and positively denied by some learned authors
who regard it as a joke of Plato’s, is ever verified, then, perhaps,
will the scientists believe that the description of the god-inhabited
continent was not altogether fable. And they may then perceive that
Plato’s guarded hints and the fact of his attributing the narrative to
Solon and the Egyptian priests, were but a prudent way of imparting
the fact to the world and by cleverly combining truth and fiction,
to disconnect himself from a story which the obligations imposed at
initiation forbade him to divulge.
And how could the name of Atlanta itself originate with Plato at all?
Atlante is _not_ a Greek name, and its construction has nothing of
the Grecian element in it. Brasseur de Bourbourg tried to demonstrate
it years ago, and Baldwin, in his _Prehistoric Nations and Ancient
America_, cites the former, who declares that “the word _Atlas_ and
_Atlantic_ have no satisfactory etymology in any language known in
Europe. They are not Greek, and cannot be referred to any known
language of the Old World. But in the Nahuatl (or Toltec) language we
find immediately the radical _a_, _atl_, which signifies water, war,
and the top of the head. From this comes a series of words, such as
_atlan_, or the border of or amid the water; from which we have the
adjective _Atlantic_. We have also _atlaca_, to combat.... A city named
_Atlan_ existed when the continent was discovered by Columbus, at the
entrance of the Gulf of Uraha, in Darien, with a good harbor. It is now
reduced to an unimportant _pueblo_ (village) named Aclo.”[881]
Is it not, to say the least, very extraordinary to find in America a
city called by a name which contains a purely local element, foreign
moreover to every other country, in the alleged _fiction_ of a
philosopher of 400 years B.C.? The same may be said of the name of
_America_, which may one day be found more closely related to Meru, the
sacred mount in the centre of the _seven_ continents, according to the
Hindu tradition, then to Americus Vespucius, whose name by the bye,
was never Americus at all, but _Albericus_, a trifling difference not
deemed worth mentioning till very lately by _exact_ history.[882] We
adduce the following reasons in favor of our argument:
1st. Americ, Amerrique, or Amerique is the name in Nicaragua for the
high land or mountain range that lies between Juigalpa and Libertad, in
the province of Chontales, and which reaches on the one side into the
country of the Carcas Indians, and on the other side into the country
of the Ramas Indians.
_Ic_ or _ique_, as a terminal, means great, as _cazique_, etc.
Columbus mentions, in his fourth voyage, the village _Cariai_, probably
_Caîcai_. The people abounded with sorcerers, or medicine men; and this
was the region of the Americ range, 3,000 feet high.
Yet he omits to mention this word.
The name _America Provincia_, first appeared on a map published at
Bâsle, in 1522. Till that time, the region was believed to be part of
India. That year Nicaragua was conquered by Gil Gonzales de Avida.[883]
2d. “The Northmen who visited the continent in the tenth century,[884]
a low level coast thickly covered with wood,” called it _Markland_,
from _mark_, a wood. The _r_ had a rolling sound as in _marrick_. A
similar word is found in the country of the Himalayas, and the name of
the World-Mountain, Meru, is pronounced in some dialects as MeruAH, the
letter _h_ being strongly aspirated. The main idea is, however, to show
how two peoples could possibly accept a word of similar sound, each
having used it in their own sense, and finding it applied to the same
territory.
“It is most plausible,” says Professor Wilder, “that the State of
Central America, where we find the name _Americ_ signifying (like the
Hindu Meru we may add) great mountain, gave the continent its name.
Vespucius would have used his surname if he had designed to give a
title to a continent. If the Abbé de Bourbourg’s theory of _Atlan_
as the source of Atlas and Atlantic is verified, the two hypotheses
could agree most charmingly. As Plato was not the only writer that
treated of a world beyond the pillars of Hercules, and as the ocean is
still shallow and grows sea-weed all through the tropical part of the
Atlantic, it is not wild to imagine that this continent projected, or
that there was an island-world on that coast. The Pacific also shows
signs of having been a populous island-empire of Malays or Javanese—if
not a continent amid the North and South. We know that Lemuria in the
Indian Ocean is a dream of scientists; and that the Sahara and the
middle belt of Asia were perhaps once sea-beds.”
To continue the tradition, we have to add that the class of
hierophants was divided into two distinct categories: those who were
instructed by the “Sons of God,” of the island, and who were initiated
in the divine doctrine of pure revelation, and others who inhabited
the lost Atlantis—if such must be its name—and who, being of another
race, were born with a sight which embraced all hidden things, and was
independent of both distance and material obstacle. In short, they were
the _fourth_ race of men mentioned in the _Popol-Vuh_, whose sight
was unlimited and who knew all things at once. They were, perhaps,
what we would now term “natural-born mediums,” who neither struggled
nor suffered to obtain their knowledge, nor did they acquire it at
the price of any sacrifice. Therefore, while the former walked in the
path of their divine instructors, and acquiring their knowledge by
degrees, learned at the same time to discern the evil from the good,
the born _adepts_ of the Atlantis blindly followed the insinuations
of the great and invisible “Dragon,” the King _Thevetat_ (the Serpent
of _Genesis_?). Thevetat had neither learned nor acquired knowledge,
but, to borrow an expression of Dr. Wilder in relation to the
tempting Serpent, he was “a sort of Socrates who _knew_ without being
initiated.” Thus, under the evil insinuations of their demon, Thevetat,
the Atlantis-race became a nation of wicked _magicians_. In consequence
of this, war was declared, the story of which would be too long to
narrate; its substance may be found in the disfigured allegories of the
race of Cain, the giants, and that of Noah and his righteous family.
The conflict came to an end by the submersion of the Atlantis; which
finds its imitation in the stories of the Babylonian and Mosaic flood:
The giants and magicians “ ... and all flesh died ... and every man.”
All except Xisuthrus and Noah, who are substantially identical with the
great Father of the Thlinkithians in the _Popol-Vuh_, or the sacred
book of the Guatemaleans, which also tells of his escaping in a large
boat, like the Hindu Noah—Vaiswasvata.
If we believe the tradition at all, we have to credit the further
story that from the intermarrying of the progeny of the hierophants
of the island and the descendants of the Atlantian Noah, sprang up a
mixed race of righteous and wicked. On the one side the world had its
Enochs, Moseses, Gautama-Buddhas, its numerous “Saviours,” and great
hierophants; on the other hand, its “_natural_ magicians” who, through
lack of the restraining power of proper spiritual enlightenment,
and because of weakness of physical and mental organizations,
unintentionally perverted their gifts to evil purposes. Moses had no
word of rebuke for those adepts in prophecy and other powers who had
been instructed in the colleges of esoteric wisdom[885] mentioned
in the _Bible_. His denunciations were reserved for such as either
wittingly or otherwise debased the powers inherited from their
Atlantian ancestors to the service of evil spirits, to the injury of
humanity. His wrath was kindled against the spirit of _Ob_, not that of
OD.[886]
The ruins which cover both Americas, and are found on many West Indian
islands, are all attributed to the submerged Atlantians. As well as
the hierophants of the old world, which in the days of Atlantis was
almost connected with the new one by land, the magicians of the now
submerged country had a net-work of subterranean passages running in
all directions. In connection with those mysterious catacombs we will
now give a curious story told to us by a Peruvian, long since dead,
as we were travelling together in the interior of his country. There
must be truth in it; as it was afterward confirmed to us by an Italian
gentleman who had seen the place and who, but for lack of means and
time, would have verified the tale himself, at least partially. The
informant of the Italian was an old priest, who had had the secret
divulged to him, at confession, by a Peruvian Indian. We may add,
moreover, that the priest was compelled to make the revelation, being
at the time completely under the mesmeric influence of the traveller.
The story concerns the famous treasures of the last of the Incas. The
Peruvian asserted that since the well-known and miserable murder of the
latter by Pizarro, the secret had been known to all the Indians, except
the _Mestitzos_ who could not be trusted. It runs thus: The Inca was
made prisoner, and his wife offered for his liberation a room full of
gold, “from the floor up to the ceiling, as high up as his conqueror
could reach” before the sun would set on the third day. She kept her
promise, but Pizarro broke his word, according to Spanish practice.
Marvelling at the exhibition of such treasures, the conqueror declared
that he would not release the prisoner, but would murder him, unless
the queen revealed the place whence the treasure came. He had heard
that the Incas had somewhere an inexhaustible mine; a subterranean
road or tunnel running many miles under ground, where were kept the
accumulated riches of the country. The unfortunate queen begged for
delay, and went to consult the oracles. During the sacrifice, the
chief-priest showed her in the consecrated “black mirror”[887] the
unavoidable murder of her husband, whether she delivered the treasures
of the crown to Pizarro or not. Then the queen gave the order to close
the entrance, which was a door cut in the rocky wall of a chasm. Under
the direction of the priest and magicians, the chasm was accordingly
filled to the top with huge masses of rock, and the surface covered
over so as to conceal the work. The Inca was murdered by the Spaniards
and his unhappy queen committed suicide. Spanish greed overreached
itself and the secret of the buried treasures was locked in the breasts
of a few faithful Peruvians.
Our Peruvian informant added that in consequence of certain
indiscretions at various times, persons had been sent by different
governments to search for the treasure under the pretext of scientific
exploration. They had rummaged the country through, but without
realizing their object. So far this tradition is corroborated by the
reports of Dr. Tschuddi and other historians of Peru. But there are
certain additional details which we are not aware have been made public
before now.
Several years after hearing the story, and its corroboration by the
Italian gentleman, we again visited Peru. Going southward from Lima, by
water, we reached a point near Arica at sunset, and were struck by the
appearance of an enormous rock, nearly perpendicular, which stood in
mournful solitude on the shore, apart from the range of the Andes. It
was the tomb of the Incas. As the last rays of the setting sun strike
the face of the rock, one can make out, with an ordinary opera-glass,
some curious hieroglyphics inscribed on the volcanic surface.
When Cusco was the capital of Peru, it contained a temple of the sun,
famed far and near for its magnificence. It was roofed with thick
plates of gold, and the walls were covered with the same precious
metal; the eave-troughs were also of solid gold. In the west wall
the architects had contrived an aperture in such a way that when the
sunbeams reached it, it focused them inside the building. Stretching
like a golden chain from one sparkling point to another, they encircled
the walls, illuminating the grim idols, and disclosing certain mystic
signs at other times invisible. It was only by understanding these
hieroglyphics—identical with those which may be seen to this day on
the tomb of the Incas—that one could learn the secret of the tunnel
and its approaches. Among the latter was one in the neighborhood of
Cusco, now masked beyond discovery. This leads directly into an immense
tunnel which runs from Cusco to Lima, and then, turning southward,
extends into Bolivia. At a certain point it is intersected by a royal
tomb. Inside this sepulchral chamber are cunningly arranged two doors;
or, rather, two enormous slabs which turn upon pivots, and close so
tightly as to be only distinguishable from the other portions of the
sculptured walls by the secret signs, whose key is in the possession of
the faithful custodians. One of these turning slabs covers the southern
mouth of the Liman tunnel—the other, the northern one of the Bolivian
corridor. The latter, running southward, passes through Trapaca
and Cobijo, for Arica is not far away from the little river called
Pay’quina,[888] which is the boundary between Peru and Bolivia.
Not far from this spot stand three separate peaks which form a curious
triangle; they are included in the chain of the Andes. According
to tradition the only practicable entrance to the corridor leading
northward is in one of these peaks; but without the secret of its
landmarks, a regiment of Titans might rend the rocks in vain in the
attempt to find it. But even were some one to gain an entrance and
find his way as far as the turning slab in the wall of the sepulchre,
and attempt to blast it out, the superincumbent rocks are so disposed
as to bury the tomb, its treasures, and—as the mysterious Peruvian
expressed it to us—“a thousand warriors” in one common ruin. There
is no other access to the Arica chamber but through the door in the
mountain near Pay’quina. Along the entire length of the corridor,
from Bolivia to Lima and Cusco, are smaller hiding places filled
with treasures of gold and precious stone, the accumulations of many
generations of Incas, the aggregate value of which is incalculable.
We have in our possession an accurate plan of the tunnel, the
sepulchre, and the doors, given to us at the time by the old Peruvian.
If we had ever thought of profiting by the secret, it would have
required the coöperation of the Peruvian and Bolivian governments
on an extensive scale. To say nothing of physical obstacles, no one
individual or small party could undertake such an exploration without
encountering the army of smugglers and brigands with which the coast
is infested; and which, in fact, includes nearly the whole population.
The mere task of purifying the mephitic air of the tunnel, which had
not been entered for centuries, would also be a serious one. There,
however, the treasure lies, and there the tradition says it will lie
till the last vestige of Spanish rule disappears from the whole of
North and South America.
The treasures exhumed by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenæ, have awakened
popular cupidity, and the eyes of adventurous speculators are being
turned toward the localities where the wealth of ancient peoples is
supposed to be buried, in crypt or cave, or beneath sand or alluvial
deposit. Around no other locality, not even Peru, hangs so many
traditions as around the Gobi Desert. In Independent Tartary this
howling waste of shifting sand was once, if report speaks correctly,
the seat of one of the richest empires the world ever saw. Beneath the
surface are said to lie such wealth in gold, jewels, statuary, arms,
utensils, and all that indicates civilization, luxury, and fine arts,
as no existing capital of Christendom can show to-day. The Gobi sand
moves regularly from east to west before terrific gales that blow
continually. Occasionally some of the hidden treasures are uncovered,
but not a native dare touch them, for the whole district is under the
ban of a mighty spell. Death would be the penalty. Bahti—hideous, but
faithful gnomes—guard the hidden treasures of this prehistoric people,
awaiting the day when the revolution of cyclic periods shall again
cause their story to be known for the instruction of mankind.
According to local tradition, the tomb of Ghengiz Khan still exists
near Lake Tabasun Nor. Within lies the Mongolian Alexander, as though
asleep. After three more centuries he will awake and lead his people
to new victories and another harvest of glory. Though this prophetic
tradition be received with ever so many grains of salt, we can affirm
as a fact that the tomb itself is no fiction, nor has its amazing
richness been exaggerated.
The district of the Gobi wilderness and, in fact, the whole area of
Independent Tartary and Thibet is jealously guarded against foreign
intrusion. Those who are permitted to traverse it are under the
particular care and pilotage of certain agents of the chief authority,
and are in duty bound to convey no intelligence respecting places
and persons to the outside world. But for this restriction, even we
might contribute to these pages accounts of exploration, adventure,
and discovery that would be read with interest. The time will come,
sooner or later, when the dreadful sand of the desert will yield up
its long-buried secrets, and then there will indeed be unlooked-for
mortifications for our modern vanity.
“The people of Pashai,”[889] says Marco Polo, the daring traveller
of the thirteenth century, “are great adepts in sorceries and the
_diabolic_ arts.” And his learned editor adds: “This Pashai, or Udyana,
was the native country of Padma Sambhava, one of the chief apostles
of lamaism, _i. e._, of Thibetan Buddhism, and a great master of
enchantments. The doctrines of Sakya, as they prevailed in Udâyna _in
old times_, were probably strongly tinged with Sivaïtic magic, and the
Thibetans still regard the locality as the classic ground of sorcery
and witchcraft.”
The “old times” are just like the “modern times;” nothing is changed as
to magical practices except that they have become still more esoteric
and arcane, and that the caution of the adepts increases in proportion
to the traveller’s curiosity. Hiouen-Thsang says of the inhabitants:
“The men ... are fond of study, but pursue it with no ardor. _The
science of magical formulæ has become a regular professional business
with them._”[890] We will not contradict the venerable Chinese
pilgrim on this point, and are willing to admit that in the seventh
century _some_ people made “a professional business” of magic; so,
also, do _some_ people now, but certainly not the true adepts. It is
not Hiouen-Thsang, the pious, courageous man, who risked his life a
hundred times to have the bliss of perceiving Buddha’s shadow in the
cave of Peshawer, who would have accused the holy lamas and monkish
thaumaturgists of “making a professional business” of showing it to
travellers. The injunction of Gautama, contained in his answer to King
Prasenagit, his protector, who called on him to perform miracles, must
have been ever present to the mind of Hiouen-Thsang. “Great king,”
said Gautama, “I do not teach the law to my pupils, telling them
‘go, ye saints, and before the eyes of the Brahmans and householders
perform, by means of your supernatural powers, miracles greater than
any man can perform.’ I tell them, when I teach them the law, ‘Live, ye
saints, _hiding your good works, and showing your sins_.’”
Struck with the accounts of magical exhibitions witnessed and recorded
by travellers of every age who had visited Tartary and Thibet,
Colonel Yule comes to the conclusion that the natives must have had
“at their command the whole encyclopædia of modern ‘Spiritualists.’
Duhalde mentions among their sorceries the art of producing by their
invocations the figures of Laotsen[891] and their divinities _in the
air_, and _of making a pencil write answers to questions without
anybody touching it_.”[892]
The former invocations pertain to religious mysteries of their
sanctuaries; if done otherwise, or for the sake _of gain_, they are
considered _sorcery_, necromancy, and strictly forbidden. The latter
art, that of making a pencil write _without contact_, was known and
practiced in China and other countries centuries before the Christian
era. It is the A B C of magic in those countries.
When Hiouen-Thsang desired to adore the shadow of Buddha, it was not
to “professional magicians” that he resorted, but to the power of his
own soul-invocation; the power of prayer, faith, and contemplation. All
was dark and dreary near the cavern in which the miracle was alleged to
take place sometimes. Hiouen-Thsang entered and began his devotions.
He made 100 salutations, but neither saw nor heard anything. Then,
thinking himself too sinful, he cried bitterly, and despaired. But as
he was going to give up all hope, he perceived on the eastern wall a
feeble light, but it disappeared. He renewed his prayers, full of hope
this time, and again he saw the light, which flashed and disappeared
again. After this he made a solemn vow: he would not leave the cave
till he had the rapture to see at last the shadow of the “Venerable of
the Age.” He had to wait longer after this, for only after 200 prayers
was the dark cave suddenly “bathed in light, and the shadow of Buddha,
of a brilliant white color, rose majestically on the wall, as when the
clouds suddenly open, and, all at once, display the marvellous image of
the ‘Mountain of Light.’ A dazzling splendor lighted up the features
of the divine countenance. Hiouen-Thsang was lost in contemplation
and wonder, and would not turn his eyes away from the sublime and
incomparable object.” Hiouen-Thsang adds in his own diary, _See-yu
kee_, that it is only when man prays with sincere faith, and if he
has received from above a hidden impression, that he sees the shadow
clearly, but he cannot enjoy the sight for any length of time.[893]
Those who are so ready to accuse the Chinese of irreligion will do well
to read Schott’s _Essays on Buddhism in China and Upper Asia_.[894]
“In the years _Yuan-yeu_ of the Sung (A.D. 1086-1093) a pious matron
with her two servants lived entirely to the Land of Enlightenment. One
of the maids said one day to her companion: ‘To-night I shall pass
over to the Realm of Amita’ (Buddha). The same night a balsamic odor
filled the house, and the maid died without any preceding illness.
On the following day the surviving maid said to her lady: ‘Yesterday
my deceased companion appeared to me in a dream, and said: “Thanks
to the persevering supplications of our dear mistress, I am become
an inhabitant of Paradise, and my blessedness is past all expression
in words.”’ The matron replied: ‘If she will appear to me also, then
will I believe all you say.’ The next night the deceased really
appeared to her. The lady asked: ‘May I, for once, visit the Land
of Enlightenment?’ ‘Yea,’ answered the blessed soul; ‘thou hast but
to follow thine handmaiden.’ The lady followed her (in her dream),
and soon perceived a lake of immeasurable expanse, overspread with
innumerable red and white lotus flowers, of various sizes, some
blooming, some fading. She asked what those flowers might signify? The
maiden replied: ‘These are all human beings on the Earth whose thoughts
are turned to the Land of Enlightenment. The very first longing after
the Paradise of Amita produces a flower in the Celestial Lake, and this
becomes daily larger and more glorious as the self-improvement of the
person whom it represents advances; in the contrary case, it loses in
glory and fades away.’[895] The matron desired to know the name of an
enlightened one who reposed on one of the flowers, clad in a waving
and wondrously glistening raiment. Her whilom maiden answered: ‘That
is Yang-kie.’ Then asked she the name of another, and was answered:
‘That is Mahu.’ The lady then said: ‘At what place shall I hereafter
come into existence?’ Then the Blessed Soul led her a space further,
and showed her a hill that gleamed with gold and azure. ‘Here,’ said
she, ‘is your future abode. You will belong to the first order of the
blessed.’ When the matron awoke, she sent to inquire for Yang-kie
and Mahu. The first was already departed; the other still alive and
well. And thus the lady learned that the soul of one who advances in
holiness and never turns back, may be already a dweller in the Land of
Enlightenment, even though the body still sojourn in this transitory
world.”
In the same essay, another Chinese story is translated, and to the
same effect: “I knew a man,” says the author, “who during his life had
killed many living beings, and was at last struck with an apoplexy.
The sorrows in store for his sin-laden soul pained me to the heart; I
visited him, and exhorted him to call on the Amita; but he obstinately
refused. His illness clouded his understanding; in consequence of his
misdeeds he had become hardened. What was before such a man when once
his eyes were closed? In this life the night followeth the day, and
the winter followeth the summer; that, all men are aware of. But that
life is followed by death, no man will consider. Oh, what blindness and
obduracy is this!” (p. 93).
These two instances of Chinese literature hardly strengthen the
usual charge of irreligion and total materialism brought against the
nation. The first little mystical story is full of spiritual charm,
and would grace any Christian religious book. The second is as worthy
of praise, and we have but to replace “Amita” with “Jesus” to have
a highly orthodox tale, as regards religious sentiments and code of
philosophical morality. The following instance is still more striking,
and we quote it for the benefit of Christian revivalists:
“Hoang-ta-tie, of T’anchen, who lived under the Sung, followed the
craft of a blacksmith. Whenever he was at his work he used to call,
without intermission, on the name of Amita Buddha. One day he handed to
his neighbors the following verses of his own composition to be spread
about:—
‘Ding dong! The hammer-strokes fall long and fast,
Until the iron turns to steel at last!
Now shall the long, long day of rest begin,
The _Land of Bliss Eternal_ calls me in!’
“Thereupon he died. But his verses spread all over Honan, and many
learned to call upon Buddha.”[896]
To deny to the Chinese or any people of Asia, whether Central, Upper,
or Lower, the possession of any knowledge, or even perception of
spiritual things, is perfectly ridiculous. From one end to the other
the country is full of mystics, religious philosophers, Buddhist
saints, and _magicians_. Belief in a spiritual world, full of invisible
beings who, on certain occasions, appear to mortals objectively, is
universal. “According to the belief of the nations of Central Asia,”
remarks I. J. Schmidt, “the earth and its interior, as well as the
encompassing atmosphere, are filled with spiritual beings, which
exercise an influence, partly beneficent, partly malignant, on the
whole of organic and inorganic nature.... Especially are deserts and
other wild or uninhabited tracts, or regions in which the influences
of nature are displayed on a gigantic and terrible scale, regarded as
the chief abode or rendezvous of evil spirits. And hence the steppes
of Turan, and in particular the great sandy Desert of Gobi have been
looked on as the dwelling-place of malignant beings, from days of hoary
antiquity.”
Marco Polo—as a matter of course—mentions more than once in his curious
book of _Travels_, these tricky nature-spirits of the deserts. For
centuries, and especially in the last one, had his strange stories
been completely rejected. No one would believe him when he said he
had witnessed, time and again, with his own eyes, the most wonderful
feats of magic performed by the subjects of Kublai-Khan and adepts
of other countries. On his death-bed Marco was strongly urged to
retract his alleged “falsehoods;” but he solemnly swore to the truth
of what he said, adding that “he had not told _one-half_ of what he
had really seen!” There is now no doubt that he spoke the truth, since
Marsden’s edition, and that of Colonel Yule have appeared. The public
is especially beholden to the latter for bringing forward so many
authorities corroborative of Marco’s testimony, and explaining some of
the phenomena in the usual way, for he makes it plain beyond question
that the great traveller was not only a veracious but an exceedingly
observant writer. Warmly defending his author, the conscientious
editor, after enumerating more than one hitherto controverted and even
rejected point in the Venetian’s _Travels_, concludes by saying: “Nay,
the last two years have thrown a promise of light even on what seemed
_the wildest_ of Marco’s stories, and the bones of a veritable Ruc from
New Zealand lie on the table of Professor Owen’s cabinet!”[897]
The monstrous bird of the _Arabian Nights_, or “Arabian Mythology,”
as Webster calls the _Ruc_ (or Roc), having been identified, the next
thing in order is to _discover_ and recognize that _Aladdin’s_ magical
lamp has also certain claims to reality.
Describing his passage through the great desert of Lop, Marco Polo
speaks of a marvellous thing, “which is that, when travellers are on
the move by night ... they will hear spirits talking. Sometimes the
spirits will call him by name ... even in the daytime one hears these
spirits talking. And sometimes you shall hear the sound of a variety of
musical instruments, and still more commonly the sound of drums.”[898]
In his notes, the translator quotes the Chinese historian, Matwanlin,
who corroborates the same. “During the passage of this wilderness you
hear sounds,” says Matwanlin, “sometimes of singing, sometimes of
wailing; and it has often happened that travellers going aside to see
what those sounds might be, have strayed from their course and been
entirely lost; for they were voices of spirits and goblins.”[899]
“These goblins are not peculiar to the Gobi,” adds the editor, “though
that appears to have been their most favored haunt. _The awe of the
vast and solitary desert raises them in all similar localities._”
Colonel Yule would have done well to consider the possibility of
serious consequences arising from the acceptance of his theory. If we
admit that the weird cries of the Gobi are due to the _awe_ inspired
“by the vast and solitary desert,” why should the goblins of the
Gadarenes (_Luke_ viii. 29) be entitled to any better consideration?
and why may not Jesus have been self-deceived as to his objective
tempter during the forty days’ trial in the “wilderness?” We are
quite ready to receive or reject the theory enunciated by Colonel
Yule, but shall insist upon its impartial application to all cases.
Pliny speaks of the phantoms that appear and vanish in the deserts
of Africa;[900] Æthicus, the early Christian cosmographer, mentions,
though incredulous, the stories that were told of the voices of singers
and revellers in the desert; and “Mas’udi tells of the _ghûls_, which
in the deserts appear to travellers by night and in lonely hours;” and
also of “Apollonius of Tyana and his companions, who, in a desert near
the Indus by moonlight, saw an _empusa_ or ghûl taking many forms....
They revile it, and it goes off uttering shrill cries.”[901] And Ibn
Batuta relates a like legend of the Western Sahara: “If the messenger
be solitary, the demons sport with him and fascinate him, so that he
strays from his course and perishes.”[902] Now if all these matters are
capable of a “rational explanation;” and we do not doubt it as regards
most of these cases, then, the _Bible_-devils of the wilderness deserve
no more consideration, but should have the same rule applied to them.
They, too, are creatures of terror, imagination, and _superstition_;
hence, the narratives of the _Bible_ must be false; and if one single
verse is false, then a cloud is thrown upon the title of all the
rest, to be considered _divine_ revelation. Once admit this, and this
collection of canonical documents is at least as amenable to criticism
as any other book of stories.[903]
There are many spots in the world where the strangest phenomena have
resulted from what was later ascertained to be natural physical causes.
In Southern California there are certain places on the sea-shore where
the sand when disturbed produces a loud musical ring. It is known
as the “musical sand,” and the phenomenon is supposed to be of an
electrical nature. “The sound of musical instruments, chiefly of drums,
is a phenomenon of another class, and is really produced in certain
situations among sandhills when the sand is disturbed,” says the editor
of _Marco Polo_. “A very striking account of a phenomenon of this kind,
_regarded as supernatural_, is given by Friar Odoric, whose experience
I have traced to the Reg Ruwán or flowing sand north of Kabul. Besides
this celebrated example ... I have noted that equally well-known one
of the _Jibal Nakics_, or ‘Hill of the Bell’ in the Sinai desert;
... Gibal-ul-Thabúl, or hill of the drums.... A Chinese narrative of
the tenth century mentions the phenomenon as known near Kwachau, on
the eastern border of the Lop desert, under the name of “the singing
sands.”[904]
That all these are natural phenomena, no one can doubt. But what of the
questions and answers, plainly and audibly given and received? What
of conversations held between certain travellers and the _invisible_
spirits, or unknown beings, that sometimes appear to whole caravans
in tangible form? If so many millions believe in the possibility
that spirits may clothe themselves with material bodies, behind the
curtain of a “medium,” and appear to the _circle_, why should they
reject the same possibility for the elemental spirits of the deserts?
This is the “to be, or not to be” of Hamlet. If “spirits” can do all
that Spiritualists claim for them, why can they not appear equally to
the traveller in the wildernesses and solitudes? A recent scientific
article in a Russian journal attributes such “spirit-voices,” in the
great Gobi desert, _to the echo_. A very reasonable explanation, if it
can only be demonstrated that these voices simply repeat what has been
previously uttered by a living person. But when the “superstitious”
traveller gets intelligent _answers_ to his questions, this Gobi _echo_
at once shows a very near relationship with the famous echo of the
Théâtre Porte St. Martin at Paris. “How do you do, sir?” shouts one of
the actors in the play. “Very poorly, my son; thank you. I am getting
old, very ... very old!” politely answers the echo!
What incredulous merriment must the _superstitious_ and _absurd_
narratives of Marco Polo, concerning the “supernatural” gifts of
certain shark and wild-beast charmers of India, whom he terms
_Abraiaman_, have excited for long centuries. Describing the
pearl-fishery of Ceylon, as it was in his time, he says that the
merchants are “obliged also to pay those men who _charm_ the great
fishes—to prevent them from injuring the divers whilst engaged in
seeking pearls under water—one-twentieth part of all that they take.
These fish-charmers are termed Abraiaman (Brahman?), and their charm
holds good for that day only, for at night they dissolve the charm, so
that the fishes can work mischief at their will. These Abraiaman know
also how to charm beasts and birds, and every living thing.”
And this is what we find in the explanatory notes of Colonel Yule, in
relation to this _degrading_ Asiatic “superstition:” “Marco’s account
of the pearl-fishery is still substantially correct.... At the diamond
mines of the northern Circars, Brahmans are employed in the analogous
office of propitiating the tutelary genii. The shark-charmers are
called in Tamil, _Kadal-Katti_, “sea-binders,” and in Hindustani,
_Hai-banda_, or “shark-binders.” At Aripo they belong to one family,
supposed to have the monopoly of the charm.[905] The chief operator
is (or was, not many years ago) _paid by the government_, and he also
received ten oysters from each boat daily during the fishery. Tennent,
on his visit, found the incumbent of the office to be a _Roman Catholic
Christian_ (?), but that did not seem to affect the exercise of the
validity of his functions. _It is remarkable that not more than one
authenticated accident from sharks had taken place during the whole
period of the British occupation._”[906]
Two items of fact in the above paragraph are worthy of being placed
in juxtaposition. 1. The British authorities pay professional
shark-charmers a stipend to exercise their art; and, 2, only _one
life_ has been lost since the execution of the contract. (We have yet
to learn whether the loss of this _one_ life did not occur under the
Roman Catholic _sorcerer_.) Is it pretended that the salary is paid
as a concession to a _degrading_ native superstition? Very well; but
how about the sharks? Are they receiving salaries, also, from the
British authorities out of the Secret Service Fund? Every person who
has visited Ceylon must know that the waters of the pearl coast swarm
with sharks of the most voracious kind, and that it is even dangerous
to bathe, let alone to dive for oysters. We might go further, if we
chose, and give the names of British officials of the highest rank
in the Indian service, who, after resorting to native “magicians”
and “sorcerers,” to assist them in recovering things lost, or in
unravelling vexatious mysteries of one kind or another, and being
successful, and at the time _secretly_ expressing their gratitude,
have gone away, and shown their innate cowardice before the world’s
Areopagus, by publicly denying the truth of magic, and leading the jest
against Hindu “superstition.”
Not many years ago, one of the worst of _superstitions_ scientists held
to be that of believing that the murderer’s portrait remained impressed
on the eye of the murdered person, and that the former could be easily
recognized by examining carefully the retina. The “superstition”
asserted that the likeness could be made still more striking by
subjecting the murdered man to certain old women’s fumigations, and the
like gossip. And now an American newspaper, of March 26, 1877, says: “A
number of years ago attention was attracted to a theory which insisted
that the last effort of vision materialized itself and remained as an
object imprinted on the retina of the eye after death. This has been
proved a fact by an experiment tried in the presence of Dr. Gamgee,
F.R.S., of Birmingham, England, and Prof. Bunsen, the subject being a
living rabbit. The means taken to prove the merits of the question were
most simple, the eyes being placed near an opening in a shutter, and
retaining the shape of the same after the animal had been deprived of
life.”
If, from the regions of idolatry, ignorance, and superstition, as India
is termed by some missionaries, we turn to the so-called centre of
civilization—Paris, we find the same principles of magic exemplified
there under the name of _occult_ Spiritualism. The Honorable John
L. O’Sullivan, Ex-Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to
Portugal, has kindly furnished us with the strange particulars of a
semi-magical séance which he recently attended with several other
eminent men, at Paris. Having his permission to that effect, we print
his letter in full.
“NEW YORK, Feb. 7, 1877.
“I cheerfully obey your request for a written statement of
what I related to you orally, as having been witnessed by me
in Paris, last summer, at the house of a highly respectable
physician, whose name I have no authority to use, but whom,
after the usual French fashion of anonymizing, I will call Dr.
X.
“I was introduced there by an English friend, well-known in the
Spiritualist circles in London—Mr. Gledstanes. Some eight or
ten other visitors were present, of both sexes. We were seated
in _fauteuils_, occupying half of a long drawing-room, flush
with a spacious garden. In the other half of the room was a
grand piano, a considerable open space between it and us, and a
couple of _fauteuils_ in that space, evidently placed there to
be occupied by other sitters. A door near them opened into the
private apartments.
“Dr. X. came in, and discoursed to us for about twenty minutes
with rapid and vehement French eloquence, which I could not
undertake to report. He had, for over twenty-five years,
investigated occult mysteries, of which he was about to exhibit
some phenomena. His object was to attract his brethren of the
scientific world, but few or none of them came to see for
themselves. He intended before long to publish a book. He
presently led in two ladies, the younger one his wife, the
other (whom I will call Madame Y.) a medium or sensitive, with
whom he had worked through all that period in the prosecution
of these studies, and who had devoted and sacrificed her whole
life to this work with him. Both these ladies had their eyes
closed, apparently in trance.
“He stood them at the opposite ends of the long grand piano
(which was shut), and directed them to put their hands upon
it. Sounds soon began to issue from its chords, marching,
galloping, drums, trumpets, rolling musketry, cannon, cries,
and groans—in one word, a _battle_. This lasted, I should say,
some five to ten minutes.
“I should have mentioned that before the two mediums were
brought in I had written in pencil, on a small bit of paper (by
direction of Mr. Gledstanes, who had been there before), the
names of three objects, to be known to myself alone, viz., some
_musical composer_, deceased, a _flower_, and a _cake_. I chose
_Beethoven_, a _marguerite_ (daisy), and a kind of French cake
called _plombières_, and rolled the paper into a pellet, which
I kept in my hand, without letting even my friend know its
contents.
“When the battle was over, he placed Mme. Y. in one of the
two _fauteuils_, Mme. X. being seated apart at one side of
the room, and I was asked to hand my folded, or rolled, paper
to Mme. Y. She held it (unopened) between her fingers, on
her lap. She was dressed in white merino, flowing from her
neck and gathered in at the waist, under a blaze of light
from chandeliers on the right and left. After a while she
dropped the little roll of paper to the floor, and I picked it
up. Dr. X. then raised her to her feet and told her to make
“the evocation of the dead.” He withdrew the _fauteuils_ and
placed in her hand a steel rod of about four and half or five
feet in length, the top of which was surmounted with a short
cross-piece—the Egyptian _Tau_. With this she traced a circle
round herself, as she stood, of about six feet in diameter. She
did not hold the cross-piece as a handle, but, on the contrary,
she held the rod at the opposite end. She presently handed it
back to Dr. X. There she stood for some time, her hands hanging
down and folded together in front of her, motionless, and with
her eyes directed slightly upward toward one of the opposite
corners of the long _salon_. Her lips presently began to move,
with muttered sounds, which after a while became distinct in
articulation, in short broken sentences or phrases, very much
like the recitation of a litany. Certain words, seeming to be
names, would recur from time to time. It sounded to me somewhat
as I have heard Oriental languages sound. Her face was very
earnest and mobile with expression, with sometimes a slight
frown on the brow. I suppose it lasted about fifteen or twenty
minutes, amidst the motionless silence of all the company,
as we gazed on the weird scene. Her utterance finally seemed
to increase in vehemence and rapidity. At last she stretched
forth one arm toward the space on which her eyes had been
fixed, and, with a loud cry, almost a scream, she exclaimed:
‘BEETHOVEN!’—and fell backward, prostrate on the floor.
“Dr. X. hastened to her, made eager magnetic passes about
her face and neck, and propped up her head and shoulders on
cushions. And there she lay like a person sick and suffering,
occasionally moaning, turning restlessly, etc. I suppose a
full half-hour then elapsed, during which she seemed to pass
through all the phases of gradual _death_ (this I was told was
a re-enacting of the death of Beethoven). It would be long to
describe in detail, even if I could recall all. We watched as
though assisting at a scene of real death. I will only say that
her pulse ceased; no beating of the heart could be perceived;
her hands first, then her arms became cold, while warmth was
still to be felt under her arm-pits; even they at last became
entirely cold; her feet and legs became cold in the same
manner, and they swelled astonishingly. The doctor invited us
all to come and recognize these phenomena. The gasping breaths
came at longer and longer intervals, and feebler and feebler.
At last came the end; her head fell sidewise, her hands, which
had been picking with the fingers about her dress, collapsed
also. The doctor said, ‘she is now dead;’ and so it indeed
seemed. In vehement haste he produced (I did not see from
where) two small _snakes_, which he seemed to huddle about her
neck and down into her bosom, making also eager transverse
passes about her head and neck. After a while she appeared
to revive slowly, and finally the doctor and a couple of men
servants lifted her up and carried her off into the private
apartments, from which he soon returned. He told us that this
was all very critical, but perfectly safe, but that no time was
to be lost, for otherwise the death, which he said was real,
would be permanent.
“I need not say how ghastly the effect of this whole scene had
been on all the spectators. Nor need I remind you that this was
no trickery of a performer paid to astonish. The scene passed
in the elegant drawing-room of a respectable physician, to
which access without introduction is impossible, while (outside
of the phenomenal facts) a thousand indescribable details of
language, manner, expression, and action presented those minute
guarantees of sincerity and earnestness which carry conviction
to those who witness, though it may be transmitted to those who
only hear or read of them.
“After a time Mme. Y. returned and was seated in one of the
two _fauteuils_ before mentioned, and I was invited to the
other by her side. I had still in my hand the unopened pellet
of paper containing the three words privately written by me,
of which (Beethoven) had been the first. She sat for a few
minutes with her open hands resting on her lap. They presently
began to move restlessly about. “Ah, it burns, it burns,” she
said, and her features contracted with an expression of pain.
In a few moments she raised one of them, and it contained a
_marguerite_, the flower I had written as my second word. I
received it from her, and after it had been examined by the
rest of the company, I preserved it. Dr. X. said it was of a
species not known in that part of the country; an opinion in
which he was certainly mistaken, as a few days afterwards I
saw the same in the flower-market of the Madeleine. Whether
this flower was _produced_ under her hands, or was simply an
_apport_, as in the phenomenon we are familiar with in the
experiences of Spiritualism, I do not know. It was the one
or the other, for she certainly did not have it as she sat
there by my side, under a strong light, before it made its
appearance. The flower was perfectly fresh in every one of its
delicate petals.
“The third word I had written on my bit of paper was the name
of a cake—_plombières_. She presently began to go through the
motions of eating, though no cake was visible, and asked me if
I would not go with her to _Plombières_—the name of the cake I
had written. This might have been simply a case of mind-reading.
“After this followed a scene in which Madame X., the doctor’s
wife, was said, and seemed to be, possessed by the spirit of
Beethoven. The doctor addressed her as “Monsieur Beethoven.”
She took no notice until he called the name aloud in her ear.
She then responded with polite bows, etc. (You may remember
that Beethoven was extremely deaf.) After some conversation he
begged her to play, and she seated herself at the piano and
performed magnificently both some of his known music and some
improvisations which were generally recognized by the company
as in his style. I was told afterwards, by a lady friend of
Madame X., that in her normal state she was a very ordinary
amateur performer. After about half an hour spent in music and
in dialogue in the character of Beethoven, to whom her face in
expression, and her tumbled hair, seemed to acquire a strange
resemblance, the doctor placed in her hands a sheet of paper
and a crayon, and asked her to sketch the face of the person
she saw before her. She produced very rapidly a profile sketch
of a head and face resembling Beethoven’s busts, though as
a younger man; and she dashed off a rapid name under it, as
though a signature, ‘Beethoven.’ I have preserved the sketch,
though how the handwriting may correspond with Beethoven’s
signature I cannot say.
“The hour was now late, and the company broke up; nor had I any
time to interrogate Dr. X. upon what we had thus witnessed. But
I called on him with Mr. Gledstanes a few evenings afterwards.
I found that he admitted the action of spirits, and was a
Spiritualist, but also a great deal more, having studied long
and deeply into the occult mysteries of the Orient. So I
understood him to convey, while he seemed to prefer to refer
me to his book, which he would probably publish in the course
of the present year. I observed a number of loose sheets on a
table all covered with Oriental characters unknown to me—the
work of Madame Y. in trance, as he said, in answer to an
inquiry. He told us that in the scene I had witnessed, she
became (_i. e._, as I presumed, was possessed by) _a priestess
of one of the ancient Egyptian temples_, and that the origin of
it was this: A scientific friend of his had acquired in Egypt
possession of the mummy of a priestess, and had given him some
of the linen swathings with which the body was enveloped, and
from the contact with this cloth of 2,000 or 3,000 years old,
the devotion of her whole existence to this occult relation,
and twenty years seclusion from the world, his medium, as
sensitive Madame Y., had become what I had seen. The language
I had heard her speak was the sacred language of the temples
in which she had been instructed, not so much by inspiration
but very much as we now study languages, by dictation, written
exercises, etc., being even chided and punished when she was
dull or slow. He said that Jacolliot had heard her in a similar
scene, and recognized sounds and words of the very oldest
sacred language as preserved in the temples of India, anterior,
if I remember right, to the epoch of the Sanscrit.
“Respecting the _snakes_ he had employed in the hasty operation
of restoring her to life, or rather perhaps arresting the last
consummation of the process of death, he said there was a
strange mystery in their relation to the phenomena of life and
death. I understood that they were indispensable. Silence and
inaction on our part were also insisted upon throughout, and
any attempt at questioning him at the time was peremptorily,
almost angrily, suppressed. We might come and talk afterward,
or wait for the appearance of his book, but he alone seemed
entitled to exercise the faculty of speech throughout
all these performances—which he certainly did with great
volubility, the while, with all the eloquence and precision
of diction of a Frenchman, combining scientific culture with
vividness of imagination.
“I intended to return on some subsequent evening, but learned
from Mr. Gledstanes that he had given them up for the present,
disgusted with his ill-success in getting his professional
colleagues and men of science to come and witness what it was
his object to show them.
“This is about as much as I can recall of this strange, weird
evening, excepting some uninteresting details. I have given
you the name and address of Dr. X. confidentially, because he
would seem to have gone more or less far on the same path as
you pursue in the studies of your Theosophical Society. Beyond
that I feel bound to keep it private, not having his authority
to use it in any way which might lead to publicity.
“Very respectfully,
“Your friend and obedient servant,
“J. L. O’SULLIVAN.”
In this interesting case simple Spiritualism has transcended its
routine and encroached upon the limits of magic. The features of
mediumship are there, in the double life led by the sensitive Madame
Y., in which she passes an existence totally distinct from the normal
one, and by reason of the subordination of her individuality to a
foreign will, becomes the permutation of a priestess of Egypt; and in
the personation of the spirit of Beethoven, and in the unconscious
and cataleptic state into which she falls. On the other hand, the
will-power exercised by Dr. X. upon his sensitive, the tracing of the
mystic circle, the evocations, the materialization of the desired
flower, the seclusion and education of Madame Y., the employment of
the wand and its form, the creation and use of the serpents, the
evident control of the astral forces—all these pertain to magic. Such
experiments are of interest and value to science, but liable to abuse
in the hands of a less conscientious practitioner than the eminent
gentleman designated as Dr. X. A true Oriental kabalist would not
recommend their duplication.
Spheres unknown below our feet; spheres still more unknown and still
more unexplored above us; between the two a handful of moles, blind to
God’s great light, and deaf to the whispers of the invisible world,
boasting that they lead mankind. Where? Onward, they claim; but we have
a right to doubt it. The greatest of our physiologists, when placed
side by side with a Hindu fakir, who knows neither how to read nor
write, will very soon find himself feeling as foolish as a school-boy
who has neglected to learn his lesson. It is not by vivisecting living
animals that a physiologist will assure himself of the existence of
man’s soul, nor on the blade of the knife can he extract it from a
human body. “What sane man,” inquires Sergeant Cox, the President of
the London Psychological Society, “what sane man who knows nothing of
magnetism or physiology, who had never witnessed an experiment nor
learned its principles, would proclaim himself _a fool_ by denying
its facts and denouncing its theory?” The truthful answer to this
would be, “two-thirds of our modern-day scientists.” The impertinence,
if truth can ever be impertinent, must be laid at the door of him
who uttered it—a scientist of the number of those few who are brave
and honest enough to utter wholesome truths, however disagreeable.
And there is no mistaking the real meaning of the imputation, for
immediately after the irreverent inquiry, the learned lecturer remarks
as pointedly: “The chemist takes his electricity from the electrician,
the physiologist looks to the geologist for his geology—each would deem
it an impertinence in the other if he were to pronounce judgment in the
branch of knowledge not his own. Strange it is, but true as strange,
that this rational rule is wholly set at naught in the treatment of
psychology. _Physical scientists deem themselves competent to pronounce
a dogmatic judgment upon psychology and all that appertains to it,
without having witnessed any of its phenomena, and in entire ignorance
of its principles and practice._”[907]
We sincerely hope that the two eminent biologists, Mr. Mendeleyeff,
of St. Petersburg, and Mr. Ray Lankester, of London fame, will bear
themselves under the above as unflinchingly as their living victims do
when palpitating under their dissecting knives.
For a belief to have become universal, it must have been founded on
an immense accumulation of facts, tending to strengthen it, from one
generation to another. At the head of all such beliefs stands magic,
or, if one would prefer—occult psychology. Who, of those who appreciate
its tremendous powers even from its feeble, half-paralyzed effects
in our civilized countries, would dare disbelieve in our days the
assertions of Porphyry and Proclus, that even inanimate objects, such
as statues of gods, could be made to move and exhibit a factitious life
for a few moments? Who can deny the allegation? Is it those who testify
daily over their own signatures that they have seen tables and chairs
move and walk, and pencils write, without contact? Diogenes Laërtius
tells us of a certain philosopher, Stilpo, who was exiled from Athens
by the Areopagus, for having dared to deny publicly that the Minerva
of Pheidias was anything else than a block of marble. But our own age,
after having mimicked the ancients in everything possible, even to
their very names, such as “senates,” “prefects,” and “consuls,” etc.;
and after admitting that Napoleon the Great conquered three-fourths of
Europe by applying the principles of war taught by the Cæsars and the
Alexanders, knows so much better than its preceptors about psychology,
that it would vote every believer in “animated tables” into Bedlam.
Be this as it may, _the religion of the ancients is the religion of
the future_. A few centuries more, and there will linger no sectarian
beliefs in either of the great religions of humanity. Brahmanism and
Buddhism, Christianity and Mahometanism will all disappear before the
mighty rush of _facts_. “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh,”
writes the prophet Joel. “Verily I say unto you ... greater works
than these shall you do,” promises Jesus. But this can only come
to pass when the world returns to the grand religion of the past;
the _knowledge_ of those majestic systems which preceded, by far,
Brahmanism, and even the primitive monotheism of the ancient Chaldeans.
Meanwhile, we must remember the direct effects of the revealed mystery.
The only means by which the wise priests of old could impress upon the
grosser senses of the multitudes the idea of the Omnipotency of the
Creative _will_ or FIRST CAUSE; namely, the divine animation of inert
matter, the soul infused into it by the potential will of man, the
microcosmic image of the great Architect, and the transportation of
ponderous objects through space and material obstacles.
Why should the pious Roman Catholic turn away in disgust at the
“heathen” practices of the Hindu Tamil, for instance? We have witnessed
the miracle of San Gennaro in good old Naples, and we have seen the
same in Nârgercoil, in India. Where is the difference? The coagulated
blood of the Catholic saint is made to boil and fume in its crystal
bottle, to the gratification of the lazzaroni; and from its jewelled
shrine the martyr’s idol beams radiant smiles and blessings at the
Christian congregation. On the other hand, a ball of clay filled with
water, is stuffed into the open breast of the god Sûran; and while
the padre shakes _his_ bottle and produces his “miracle” of blood,
the Hindu priest plunges an arrow into the god’s breast, and produces
_his_ “miracle,” for the blood gushes forth in streams, and the water
is changed into blood. Both Christians and Hindus fall in raptures
at the sight of such a miracle. So far, we do not see the slightest
difference. But can it be that the Pagan learned the trick from San
Gennaro.
“Know, O, Asclepius,” says Hermes, “that as the HIGHEST ONE is the
father of the celestial gods, so is man _the artisan of the gods who
reside in the temples_, and who delight in the society of mortals.
Faithful to its origin and nature, humanity perseveres in this
imitation of the divine powers; and, if the Father Creator has made in
His image the _eternal gods_, mankind in its turn makes its gods in its
own image.” “And, dost thou speak of statues of gods; O, Trismegistus?”
“Verily, I do, Asclepius, and however great thy defiance, perceivest
thou not that these statues are endowed _with reason_, that they are
animated with a soul, and that they can operate the greatest prodigies.
How can we reject the evidence, when we find these gods possessing
the gift of predicting the future, which they are compelled to tell,
when forced to it by magic spells, as through the lips of the divines
and their visions?... It is the marvel of marvels that man could
have invented and created gods.... True, the faith of our ancestors
has erred, and in their pride they fell into error as to the precise
essence of these gods ... but they have still found out that art
themselves. Powerless to create soul and spirit, they evoke the souls
of angels and demons in order to introduce them into the consecrated
statues; and so make them preside at their Mysteries, by communicating
to idols their own faculty to _do good as well as evil_.”
It is not antiquity alone which is full of evidence that the statues
and idols of the gods at times exhibited intelligence and locomotive
powers. Full in the nineteenth century, we see the papers recording the
capers played by the statue of the Madonna of Lourdes. This gracious
lady, the French Notre Dame, runs away several times to the woods
adjoining her usual residence, the parish church. The sexton is obliged
to hunt after the runaway, and bring her home more than once.[908]
After this begins a series of “miracles,” healing, prophesying,
letter-dropping from on high, and what not. These “miracles” are
implicitly accepted by millions and millions of Roman Catholics;
numbers of these belonging to the most intelligent and educated
classes. Why, then, should we disbelieve in testimony of precisely the
same character, given as to contemporary phenomena of the same kind,
by the most accredited and esteemed historians—by Titus Livy, for
instance? “Juno, would you please abandon the walls of Veii, and change
this abode for that of Rome?” inquires of the goddess a Roman soldier,
after the conquest of that city. Juno consents, and nodding her head in
token of acquiescence, her statue answers: “Yes, I will.” Furthermore,
upon their carrying off the figure, it seems to instantly “_lose its
immense weight_,” adds the historian, and the statue seems rather to
follow them than otherwise.[909]
With _naïveté_, and a faith bordering on the sublime, des Mousseaux,
bravely rushes into the dangerous parallels, and gives a number of
instances of Christian as well as “heathen” _miracles_ of that kind.
He prints a list of such walking statues of saints and Madonnas, who
lose their weight, and move about as so many living men and women;
and presents unimpeachable evidence of the same, from classical
authors, who described their _miracles_.[910] He has but one thought,
one anxious and all-overpowering desire—to prove to his readers that
magic does exist, and that Christianity beats it flat. Not that the
miracles of the latter are either more numerous, or more extraordinary,
or suggestive than those of the Pagans. Not at all; and he is a fair
historian as to facts and evidence. But, it is his arguments and
reflections that are priceless: one kind of miracle is produced by
God, the other by the Devil; he drags down the Deity and placing Him
face to face with Satan, allows the arch-enemy to beat the Creator by
long odds. Not a word of solid, evident proof to show the substantial
difference between the two kinds of wonders.
Would we inquire the reason why he traces in one the hand of God and
in the other the horn and hoof of the Devil? Listen to the answer:
“The Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolical Church declares the miracles
wrought by her faithful sons produced by the will of God; and all
others the work of the spirits of Hell.” Very well, but on what ground?
We are shown an endless list of holy writers; of saints who fought
during their whole lives with the fiends; and of fathers whose word
and authority are accepted as “word of God” by the same Church. “Your
idols, your consecrated statues are the abode of _demons_,” exclaims
St. Cyprian. “Yes, it is these _spirits_ who inspire your divines, who
animate the bowels of your victims, who govern the flight of birds, and
who, mixing incessantly falsehood with truth, render oracles, and ...
operate prodigies, their object being to bring you invincibly to their
worship.”[911]
Fanaticism in religion, fanaticism in science, or fanaticism in any
other question becomes a hobby, and cannot but blind our senses. It
will ever be useless to argue with a fanatic. And here we cannot
help admiring once more the profound knowledge of human nature which
dictated to Mr. Sergeant Cox the following words, delivered in the same
address as before alluded to: “There is no more fatal fallacy than that
the truth will prevail by its own force, that it has only to be seen
to be embraced. In fact the desire for the actual truth exists in very
few minds, and the capacity to discern it in fewer still. When men say
that they are seeking the truth, they mean that they are looking for
evidence to support some prejudice or prepossession. Their beliefs are
moulded to their wishes. They see all, and more than all, that seems
to tell for that which they desire; they are blind as bats to whatever
tells against them. The scientists are no more exempt from this common
failing than are others.”
We know that from the remotest ages there has existed a mysterious,
awful science, under the name of _theopœa_. This science taught the
art of endowing the various symbols of gods with temporary life and
intelligence. Statues and blocks of inert matter became animated under
the potential will of the hierophant. The fire stolen by Prometheus had
fallen down in the struggle to earth; it embraced the lower regions
of the sky, and settled in the waves of the universal ether as the
potential _Akâsa_ of the Hindu rites. We breathe and imbibe it into
our organic system with every mouthful of fresh air. Our organism is
full of it from the instant of our birth. But it becomes potential only
under the influx of WILL and SPIRIT.
Left to itself, this life-principle will blindly follow the laws of
nature; and, according to conditions, will produce health and an
exuberance of _life_, or cause _death_ and dissolution. But, guided
by the will of the adept, it becomes obedient; its currents restore
the equilibrium in organic bodies, they fill the waste, and produce
physical and psychological miracles, well-known to mesmerizers. Infused
in inorganic and inert matter, they create an appearance of life, hence
motion. If to that life an individual intelligence, a personality,
is wanting, then the operator must either send his _scin-lecca_, his
own astral spirit, to animate it; or use his power over the region of
nature-spirits to force one of them to _infuse_ his entity into the
marble, wood, or metal; or, again, be helped by human spirits. But the
latter—except the vicious, earth-bound class[912]—will _not_ infuse
their essence into these inanimate objects. They leave the lower kinds
to produce the similitude of life and animation, and only send their
influence through the intervening spheres like a ray of divine light,
when the so-called “miracle” is required for a good purpose. The
condition—and this is a law in spiritual nature—is purity of motive,
purity of the surrounding magnetic atmosphere, personal purity of the
operator. Thus is it, that a Pagan “miracle” may be by far holier than
a Christian one.
Who that has seen the performance of the fakirs of Southern India,
can doubt the existence of _theopœa_ in ancient times? An inveterate
skeptic, though more than anxious to attribute every phenomenon to
jugglery, still finds himself compelled to testify to facts; and facts
that are to be witnessed daily if one chooses. “I dare not,” he says,
speaking of Chibh-Chondor, a fakir of Jaffna-patnam, “describe all
the exercises which he performed. There are things one _dares_ not
say even after having witnessed them, for fear of being charged with
having been under an inexplicable hallucination! And yet, ten, nay,
twenty times, I saw and saw again the fakir obtain similar results
over inert matter.... It was but child’s play for our ‘charmer’ to
make the flame of candles which had, by his directions, been placed in
the remotest corners of the apartment, pale and become extinguished at
will; to cause the furniture to move, even the sofas on which we sat,
the doors to open and shut repeatedly: and all this without quitting
the mat upon which he sat on the floor.
“Perhaps I will be told that I saw imperfectly. Possibly; but I will
say that hundreds and thousands of persons have seen and do see what I
have, and things more wonderful; has one of all these discovered the
secret, or been able to duplicate these phenomena? And I can never
repeat too often that all this does not occur on a stage, supplied with
mechanical contrivances for the use of the operator. No, it is a beggar
crouched, naked, on the floor, who thus sports with your intelligence,
your senses, and all that which we have agreed among ourselves to style
the immutable laws of nature, but which he appears to alter at will!
“Does he change its course? ‘No, but he makes it act by using forces
which are yet unknown to us,’ say the believers. However that may be, I
have found myself twenty times at similar performances in company with
the most distinguished men of British India—professors, physicians,
officers. Not one of them but thus summarized his impressions upon
quitting the drawing-room. ‘This is something terrifying to human
intelligence!’ Every time that I saw repeated by a fakir the experiment
of reducing serpents to a cataleptic state, a condition in which these
animals have all the rigidity of the dry branch of a tree, my thoughts
have reverted to the biblical fable (?) which endows Moses and the
priests of Pharaoh with the like power.”[913]
Assuredly, the flesh of man, beast, and bird should be as easily
endowed with magnetic life-principle as the inert table of a modern
medium. Either both wonders are possible and true, or both must fall
to the ground, together with the miracles of Apostolic days, and those
of the more modern Popish Church. As for vital proofs furnished to us
in favor of such possibilities, we might name books enough to fill
a whole library. If Sixtus V. cited a formidable array of spirits
attached to various talismans, was not his threat of excommunication
for all those who practiced the art, uttered merely because he would
have the knowledge of this secret confined within the precincts of the
Church? How would it do for his “divine” miracles to be studied and
successfully reproduced by every man endowed with perseverance, a
strong positive magnetic power, and an unflinching will? Recent events
at Lourdes (of course, supposing them to have been truthfully reported)
prove that the secret is not wholly lost; and if there is no strong
magician-mesmerizer concealed under frock and surplice, then the statue
of Notre-Dame is moved by the same forces which move every magnetized
table at a spiritual seance; and the nature of these “intelligences,”
whether they belong to the classes of human, human elementary, or
elemental spirits depends on a variety of conditions. With one who
knows anything of mesmerism, and at the same time of the charitable
spirit of the Roman Catholic Church, it ought not to be difficult to
comprehend that the incessant curses of the priests and monks; and the
bitter anathemas so freely pronounced by Pius IX.—himself a strong
mesmerizer, and believed to be a _jetattore_ (evil eye)—have drawn
together legions of elementaries and elementals under the leadership
of the disembodied Torquemadas. These are the “angels” who play pranks
with the statue of the Queen of Heaven. Any one who accepts the
“miracle” and thinks otherwise blasphemes.
Although it would seem as if we had already furnished sufficient proofs
that modern science has little or no reason to boast of originality,
yet before closing this volume we will adduce a few more to place
the matter beyond doubt. We have but to recapitulate, as briefly as
possible, the several claims to new philosophies and discoveries, the
announcement of which has made the world open its eyes so wide within
these last two centuries. We have pointed to the achievements in arts,
sciences, and philosophy of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Chaldeans,
and Assyrians; we will now quote from an author who has passed long
years in India studying their philosophy. In the famous and recent work
of _Christna et le Christ_, we find the following tabulation:
“_Philosophy._—The ancient Hindus have created from the foundation the
two systems of spiritualism and materialism, of metaphysical philosophy
and of positive philosophy. The first taught in the Vedantic school,
whose founder was Vyasa; the second taught in the Sankya school, whose
founder was Kapila.
“_Astronomical Science._—They fixed the calendar, invented the zodiac,
calculated the precession of the equinoxes, discovered the general laws
of the movements, observed and predicted the eclipses.
“_Mathematics._—They invented the decimal system, algebra, the
differential, integral, and infinitesimal calculi. They also discovered
geometry and trigonometry, and in these two sciences they constructed
and proved theorems _which were only discovered in Europe as late as
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries_. It was the Brahmans in
fact who first deduced the superficial measure of a triangle from
the calculation of its three sides, and calculated the relations of
the circumference to the diameter. Furthermore, we must restore to
them the square of the hypotenuse and the table so improperly called
Pythagorean, which we find engraved on the _gôparama_ of the majority
of great pagodas.
“_Physics._—They established the principle which is still our own
to-day, that the universe is a harmonious whole, subject to laws which
may be determined by observation and experiment. They discovered
hydrostatics; and the famous proposition that every body plunged in
water loses of its own weight a weight equal to the volume which it
displaces, is only a loan made by the Brahmans to the famous Greek
architect, Archimedes. The physicists of the pagodas calculated the
velocity of light, fixed in a positive manner the laws which it
follows in its reflection. And finally, it is beyond doubt, from the
calculations of Surya-Sidhenta, that they knew and calculated the force
of steam.
“_Chemistry._—They knew the composition of water, and formulated
for gases the famous law, _which we know only from yesterday, that
the volumes of gas are in inverse ratio to the pressures that they
support_. They knew how to prepare sulphuric, nitric, and muriatic
acids; the oxides of copper, iron, lead, tin, and zinc; the sulphurets
of iron, copper, mercury, antimony, and arsenic; the sulphates of zinc
and iron; the carbonates of iron, lead, and soda; nitrate of silver;
and powder.
“_Medicine._—Their knowledge was truly astonishing. In Tcharaka and
Sousruta, the two princes of Hindu medicine, is laid down the system
which Hippocrates appropriated later. Sousruta notably enunciates the
principles of preventive medicine or hygiene, which he places much
above curative medicine—too often, according to him, empyrical. Are
we more advanced to-day? It is not without interest to remark that
the Arab physicians, who enjoyed a merited celebrity in the middle
ages—Averroès among others—constantly spoke of the Hindu physicians,
and regarded them as the initiators of the Greeks and themselves.
“_Pharmacology._—They knew all the simples, their properties, their
use, and upon this point have not yet ceased to give lessons to Europe.
Quite recently we have received from them the treatment of asthma, with
the datura.
“_Surgery._—In this they are not less remarkable. They made the
operation for the stone, succeeded admirably in the operation for
cataract, and the extraction of the fœtus, of which all the unusual
or dangerous cases are described by Tcharaka with an extraordinary
scientific accuracy.
“_Grammar._—They formed the most marvellous language in the world—the
Sanscrit—which gave birth to the greater part of the idioms of the
Orient, and of Indo-European countries.
“_Poetry._—They have treated all the styles, and shown themselves
supreme masters in all. Sakuntala, Avrita, the Hindu Phædra, Saranga,
and a thousand other dramas have their superiors neither in Sophocles
nor Euripides, in Corneille nor Shakspere. Their descriptive poetry has
never been equalled. One must read, in the _Megadata_, “The Plaint of
an Exile,” who implores a passing cloud to carry his remembrances to
his cottage, his relatives and friends, whom he will never see more, to
form an idea of the splendor to which this style has been carried in
India. Their fables have been copied by all modern and ancient peoples,
who have not even given themselves the trouble to color differently the
subject of these little dramas.
“_Music._—They invented the gamut with its differences of tones and
half-tones much before Gui d’ Arezzo. Here is the Hindu scale:
Sa—Ri—Ga—Ma—Pa—Da—Ni—Sa.
“_Architecture._—They seem to have exhausted all that the genius of man
is capable of conceiving. Domes, inexpressibly bold; tapering cupolas;
minarets, with marble lace; Gothic towers; Greek hemicycles; polychrome
style—all kinds and all epochs are there, betokening the origin and
date of the different colonies, which, in emigrating, carried with them
their souvenirs of their native art.”
Such were the results attained by this ancient and imposing Brahmanical
civilization. What have we to offer for comparison? Beside such
majestic achievements of the past, what can we place that will seem so
grandiose and sublime as to warrant our boast of superiority over an
ignorant ancestry? Beside the discoverers of geometry and algebra, the
constructors of human speech, the parents of philosophy, the primal
expounders of religion, the adepts in psychological and physical
science, how even the greatest of our biologists and theologians seem
dwarfed! Name to us any modern discovery, and we venture to say, that
Indian history need not long be searched before the prototype will
be found of record. Here we are with the transit of science half
accomplished, and all our ideas in process of readjustment to the
theories of force-correlation, natural selection, atomic polarity, and
evolution. And here, to mock our conceit, our apprehensions, and our
despair, we may read what Manu said, perhaps 10,000 years before the
birth of Christ:
“The first germ of life was developed by water and heat” (_Manu_, book
i., sloka 8).
“Water ascends toward the sky in vapors; from the sun it descends in
rain, from the rain are born the plants, and from the plants, animals”
(book iii., sloka 76).
“Each being acquires the qualities of the one which immediately
precedes it, in such a manner that the farther a being gets away from
the primal atom of its series, the more he is possessed of qualities
and perfections” (book i., sloka 20).
“Man will traverse the universe, gradually ascending, and passing
through the rocks, the plants, the worms, insects, fish, serpents,
tortoises, wild animals, cattle, and higher animals.... Such is the
_inferior degree_” (Ibid.).
“These are the transformations declared, from the plant up to Brahma,
which have to take place in his world” (Ibid.).
“The Greek,” says Jacolliot, “is but the Sanscrit. Pheidias and
Praxiteles have studied in Asia the chefs-d’œuvre of Daonthia, Ramana,
and Aryavosta. Plato disappears before Dgeminy and Veda-Vyasa, whom
he literally copies. Aristotle is thrown into the shade by the
_Pourva-Mimansa_ and the _Outtara-Mimansa_, in which one finds all the
systems of philosophy which we are now occupied in re-editing, from
the Spiritualism of Socrates and his school, the skepticism of Pyrrho,
Montaigne, and Kant, _down to the positivism of Littré_.”
Let those who doubt the exactness of the latter assertion read this
phrase, extracted textually from the _Outtara-Mimansa_, or _Vedanta_,
of Vyasa, who lived at an epoch which the Brahmanical chronology fixes
at 10,400 years before our era:
“We can only study phenomena, verify them, and hold them to be
relatively true, but nothing in the universe, neither by perception
nor by induction, nor by the senses, nor by reasoning, being able to
demonstrate the existence of a Supreme Cause, which could, at a fixed
point of time, have given birth to the universe, Science has to discuss
neither the possibility nor impossibility of this Supreme Cause.”
Thus, gradually but surely, will the whole of antiquity be vindicated.
Truth will be carefully sifted from exaggeration; much that is now
considered fiction may yet be proved fact, and the “facts and laws”
of modern science found to belong to the limbo of exploded myths.
When, centuries before our era, the Hindu Bramaheupto affirmed that
the starry sphere was immovable, and that the daily rising and
setting of stars confirms the motion of the earth upon its axis; and
when Aristarchus of Samos, born 267 years B.C., and the Pythagorean
philosopher Nicetè, the Syracusan, maintained the same, what was
the credit given to their theories until the days of Copernicus and
Galileo? And the system of these two princes of science—a system which
has revolutionized the whole world—how long will it be allowed to
remain as a complete and undisturbed whole? Have we not, at the present
moment, in Germany, a learned savant, a Professor Shoëpfer, who, in his
public lectures at Berlin, tries to demonstrate, 1, that the earth is
immovable; 2, the sun is but a little bigger than it seems; and 3, that
Tycho-Brahe was perfectly right and Galileo perfectly wrong?[914] And
what was Tycho-Brahe’s theory? Why, that the earth stands immovable in
the centre of the universe, and that around it, as around its centre,
the whole of the celestial vault gravitates every twenty-four hours;
and finally, that the sun and moon, apart from this motion, proceed on
curved lines peculiar to themselves, while Mercury, with the rest of
the planets, describes an epicycloid.
We certainly have no intention to lose time nor devote space to either
combating or supporting this _new_ theory, which suspiciously resembles
the _old_ ones of Aristotle and even the Venerable Bede. We will leave
the learned army of modern Academicians to “wash their family linen
among themselves,” to use an expression of the great Napoleon. But we
will, nevertheless, avail ourselves of such a good opportunity as this
defection affords to demand once more of science her diploma or patents
of infallibility. Alas! are these, then, the results of her boasted
progress?
It was hardly more than yesterday when, upon the strength of facts
within our own observation, and corroborated by the testimony of
a multitude of witnesses, we timidly ventured the assertion that
tables, mediums, and Hindu fakirs were occasionally levitated. And
when we added that, if such a phenomenon should happen but once in
a century, “without a visible mechanical cause, then that rising is
a manifestation of a natural law of which our scientists are yet
ignorant,” we were called “iconoclastic,” and charged, in our turn, by
the newspapers, with ignorance of the law of gravitation. Iconoclastic
or not, we never thought of charging science with denying the rotation
of the earth on its axis, or its revolution around the sun. Those two
lamps, at least, in the beacon of the Academy, we thought would be
kept trimmed and burning to the end of time. But, lo! here comes a
Berlin professor and crushes our last hopes that Science should prove
herself exact in some one particular. The cycle is truly at its lowest
point, and a new era is begun. The earth stands still, and Joshua is
vindicated!
In days of old—in 1876—the world believed in centrifugal force, and
the Newtonian theory, which explained the flattening of the poles by
the rotatory motion of the earth around its axis, was orthodox. Upon
this hypothesis, the greater portion of the globular mass was believed
to gravitate toward the equator; and in its turn the centrifugal
force, acting on the mass with its mightiest power, forced this mass
to concentrate itself on the equator. Thus is it that the credulous
scientists believed the earth to rotate around its axis; for, were it
otherwise, there would exist no centrifugal force, and without this
force there could be no gravitation toward the equatorial latitudes. It
has been one of the accepted proofs of the rotation of the earth, and
it is this deduction, with several others, that the Berlin professor
declares that, “in common with many other scientists,” he “rejects.”
“Is this not ridiculous, gentlemen,” he concludes, “that we, confiding
in what we were taught at school, have accepted the rotation of the
earth around its axis as a fact fully demonstrated, while there is
nothing at all to prove it, and it _cannot_ be demonstrated? Is it not
cause of astonishment that the scientists of the whole educated world,
commencing with Copernicus and Kepler, should have begun by accepting
such a movement of our planet, and then three and a half centuries
later be searching for such proofs? But, alas! though we search, we
find none, as was to be expected. All, all is vain!”
And thus it is that at one stroke the world loses its rotation, and the
universe is bereaved of its guardians and protectors, the centrifugal
and centripetal forces! Nay, ether itself, blown out of space, is but
a “fallacy,” a myth born of a bad habit of using empty words; the sun
is a pretender to dimensions to which it was never entitled; the stars
are twinkling dots, and “were so expressly disposed at considerable
distances from one another by the Creator of the universe, probably
with the intention that they should simultaneously illumine the vast
spaces on the face of our globe” says Dr. Shoëpfer.
And is it so that even three centuries and a half have not sufficed
the men of exact science to construct one theory that not a single
university professor would dare challenge? If astronomy, the one
science built on the adamantine foundation of mathematics, the one of
all others deemed as infallible and unassailable as truth itself, can
be thus irreverently indicted for false pretences, what have we gained
by cheapening Plato to the profit of the Babinets? How, then, do they
venture to flout at the humblest observer who, being both honest and
intelligent, may say he has seen a mediumistic, or magical phenomenon?
And how dare they prescribe the “limits of philosophical inquiry,” to
pass beyond which is not lawful? And these quarrelling hypothesists
still arraign as ignorant and superstitious those giant intellects of
the past, who handled natural forces like world-building Titans, and
raised mortality to an eminence where it allied itself with the gods!
Strange fate of a century boasting to have elevated exact science to
its _apex of fame_, and now invited to go back and begin its A B C of
learning again!
Recapitulating the evidence contained in this work, if we begin with
the archaic and unknown ages of the Hermetic Pimander, and come down
to 1876, we find that one universal belief in magic has run through
all these centuries. We have presented the ideas of Trismegistus in
his dialogue with Asclepius; and without mentioning the thousand and
one proofs of the prevalence of this belief in the first centuries
of Christianity, to achieve our purpose we have but to quote from an
ancient and a modern author. The first will be the great philosopher
Porphyry, who several thousand years after the days of Hermes, remarks
in relation to the prevailing skepticism of his century, the following:
“We need not be amazed in seeing the vulgar masses (οἱ πολλοι) perceive
in statues merely stone and wood. Thus it is generally with those who,
ignorant in letters, find naught in _stylæ_ covered with inscriptions
but stone, and in written books naught but the tissue of the papyrus.”
And 1,500 years later, we see Mr. Sergeant Cox, in stating the case of
the shameful prosecution of a medium by just such a blind materialist,
thus expressing his ideas: “Whether the medium is guilty or guiltless
... certain it is that the trial has had the unlooked-for effect of
directing the attention of the whole public to the fact that the
phenomena _are asserted to_ exist, and by a great number of competent
investigators are _declared to be true_, and of the reality of which
every person may, if he pleases, satisfy himself by actual inspection,
thus sweeping away, thus and for ever, _the dark and debasing doctrines
of the materialists_.”
Still, in harmony with Porphyry and other theurgists, who affirmed the
different natures of the manifesting “spirits” and the personal spirit
or will of man, Mr. Sergeant Cox adds, without committing himself
any further to a personal decision: “True, there are differences of
opinions ... and perhaps ever will be, as to the sources of the power
that is exhibited in these phenomena; but whether they are the product
of the psychic force of the circle ... or, if spirits of the dead be
the agents, as others say, or elemental spirits (whatever it may be)
as asserted by a third party, this fact at least is established—that
man is not wholly material, that the mechanism of man is moved and
directed by some non-material—that is, some non-molecular structure,
which possesses not merely intelligence, but _can exercise also a force
upon matter_, that something to which, for lack of a better title, we
have given the name of soul. These glad tidings have by this trial been
borne to thousands and tens of thousands, whose happiness here, and
hopes of a hereafter, have been blighted by the materialists, who have
preached so persistently that soul was but a superstition, man but an
automaton, mind but a secretion, present existence purely animal, and
the future—a blank.”
“Truth alone,” says Pimander, “is eternal and immutable; _truth_ is
the first of blessings; but truth is not and cannot be on earth: it is
possible that God sometimes gifts a few men together with the faculty
of comprehending divine things with that of rightly understanding
truth; but nothing is true on earth, for everything has matter on it,
clothed with a corporeal form subject to change, to alteration, to
corruption, and to new combinations. Man is not _the_ truth, for only
that which has drawn its essence from itself, and remains itself,
and unchangeable, is true. How can that which changes so as not to
finally be recognized, be ever true? Truth, then, is that only which
is immaterial and not enclosed within a corporeal envelope, that
which is colorless and formless, exempt from change and alteration;
that which is ETERNAL. All of that which perishes is a lie; earth
is but dissolution and generation; every generation proceeds from a
dissolution; the things of earth are but _appearances_ and imitations
of truth; they are what the picture is to reality. The things of
earth are not the TRUTH!... Death, for some persons, is an evil which
strikes them with profound terror. This is ignorance.... Death is the
destruction of the body; the being in it _dies not_.... The material
body loses its form, which is disintegrated in course of time; the
senses which animated it return to their source and resume their
functions; but they gradually lose their passions and their desires,
and _the spirit_ ascends to heaven to become a HARMONY. In the first
zone, it leaves behind itself the faculty of increasing and decreasing;
in the second, the power of doing evil and the frauds of idleness; in
the third, deceptions and concupiscence; in the fourth, insatiable
ambition; in the fifth, arrogance, audacity, and temerity; in the
sixth, all yearning after dishonest acquisitions; and in the seventh,
_untruthfulness_. The spirit thus purified by the effect on him of the
celestial harmonies, returns once more to its primitive state, strong
of a merit and power self-acquired, and which belongs to it properly;
and only then he begins to dwell with those that sing eternally their
praises of the FATHER. Hitherto, he is placed among the powers, and as
such has attained to the supreme blessing of knowledge. He is become a
GOD!... No, the things of earth are not the truth.”
After having devoted their whole lives to the study of the records
of the old Egyptian wisdom, both Champollion-Figeac and Champollion,
Junior, publicly declared, notwithstanding many biassed judgments
hazarded by certain hasty and unwise critics, that the _Books of
Hermes_ “truly contain a mass of Egyptian traditions which are
constantly corroborated by the most authentic records and monuments of
Egypt of the hoariest antiquity.”[915]
Closing up his voluminous summary of the psychological doctrines of the
Egyptians, the sublime teachings of the sacred Hermetic books, and
the attainments of the initiated priests in metaphysical and practical
philosophy, Champollion-Figeac inquires—as he well may, in view of the
then attainable evidence—“whether there ever was in the world another
association or caste of men which could equal them in credit, power,
learning, and capability, in the same degree of good or evil? No,
_never_! And this caste was subsequently _cursed_ and stigmatized only
by those who, under I know not what kind of modern influences, have
considered it as the enemy of men and—science.”[916]
At the time when Champollion wrote these words, Sanscrit was, we may
say, almost an unknown tongue for science. But little in the way of
a parallel could have been drawn between the respective merits of
the Brahmans and the Egyptian philosophers. Since then, however, it
has been discovered that the very same ideas, expressed in almost
identical language, may be read in the Buddhistic and Brahmanical
literature. This very philosophy of the unreality of mundane things and
the illusion of the senses—whose whole substance has been plagiarized
in our own times by the German metaphysicians—forms the groundwork of
Kapila’s and Vyasa’s philosophies, and may be found in Gautama Buddha’s
enunciation of the “four truths,” the cardinal dogmas of his doctrine.
Pimander’s expression “he is become a god” is epitomized in the one
word, _Nirvana_, which our learned Orientalists most incorrectly
consider as the synonym of _annihilation_!
This opinion of the two eminent Egyptologists is of the greatest value
to us if it were only as an answer to our opponents. The Champollions
were the first in Europe to take the student of archæology by the
hand, and, leading him on into the silent crypts of the past, prove
that civilization did not begin with our generations; for “though the
origins of ancient Egypt are unknown, she is found to have been at the
most distant periods within the reach of historical research, with her
great laws, her established customs, her cities, her kings, and gods;”
and behind, far behind, these same epochs we find ruins belonging
to other still more distant and higher periods of civilization. “At
Thebes, portions of ruined buildings allow us to recognize remnants of
still anterior structures, the materials of which had served for the
erection of the very edifices which have now existed for thirty-six
centuries!”[917] “Everything told us by Herodotus and the Egyptian
priests is found to be exact, and has been corroborated by modern
scientists,” adds Champollion.[918]
Whence the civilization of the Egyptians came, will be shown in volume
II., and in this respect it will be made to appear that our deductions,
though based upon the traditions of the Secret Doctrine, run parallel
with those of a number of most respected authorities. There is a
passage in a well-known Hindu work which may well be recalled in this
connection.
“Under the reign of Viswamitra, first king of the Dynasty of
Soma-Vanga. in consequence of a battle which lasted five days,
Manu-Vina, heir of the ancient kings, being abandoned by the Brahmans,
emigrated with all his companions, passing through Arya, and the
countries of Barria, till he came to the shores of Masra” (_History of
India_, by Collouca-Batta). Unquestionably this Manu-Vina and Menes,
the first Egyptian King, are identical.
Arya, is Eran (Persia); Barria, is Arabia, and Masra, was the name of
Cairo, which to this day is called, _Masr_, Musr, and Misro. Phœnician
history names Maser as one of the ancestors of Hermes.
And now we will bid farewell to thaumatophobia and its advocates, and
consider thaumatomania under its multifarious aspects. In vol. II.,
we intend to review the “miracles” of Paganism and weigh the evidence
in their favor in the same scales with Christian theology. There is a
conflict not merely impending but already begun between science and
theology, on the one hand, and spirit and its hoary science, magic, on
the other. Something of the possibilities of the latter have already
been displayed, but more is to come. The petty, mean world, for whose
approving nod scientists and magistrates, priests and Christians
compete, have begun their latter-day crusade by sentencing in the same
year two innocent men, one in France, the other in London, in defiance
of law and justice. Like the apostle of circumcision, they are ever
ready to thrice deny an unpopular connection for fear of ostracism
by their own fellows. The Psychomantics and the Psychophobists must
soon meet in fierce conflict. The anxiety to have their phenomena
investigated and supported by scientific authorities has given place
with the former to a frigid indifference. As a natural result of so
much prejudice and unfairness as have been exhibited, their respect
for scientists is waning fast, and the reciprocal epithets bandied
between the two parties are becoming far from complimentary to either.
Which of them is right and which wrong, time will soon show and future
generations understand. It is at least safe to prophesy that the
Ultima Thulè of God’s mysteries, and the key to them are to be sought
elsewhere than in the whirl of Avogadro’s molecules.
People who either judge superficially, or, by reason of their natural
impatience would gaze at the blazing sun before their eyes are well
fitted to bear lamp-light, are apt to complain of the exasperating
obscurity of language which characterizes the works of the ancient
Hermetists and their successors. They declare their philosophical
treatises on magic incomprehensible. Over the first class we can afford
to waste no time; the second, we would beg to moderate their anxiety,
remembering those sayings of Espagnet—“Truth lies hid in obscurity,”
and “Philosophers never write more deceitfully than when plainly, nor
ever more truly than when obscurely.” Furthermore, there is a third
class, whom it would compliment too much to say that they judge the
subject at all. They simply denounce _ex-cathedra_. The ancients they
treat as dreamy fools, and though but physicists and thaumatophobic
positivists, they commonly claim a monopoly of spiritual wisdom!
We will select Irenæus Philaletha to answer this latter class. “In
the world our writings shall prove a curious-edged knife; to some
they shall carve out dainties, but to others they shall only serve to
cut their fingers; yet we are not to be blamed, for we do seriously
admonish all who shall attempt this work that they undertaketh the
highest piece of philosophy in nature; and though we write in English,
yet our matter will be as hard as Greek to some, who will think,
nevertheless, that they understand as well, when they misconstrue our
meaning most perversely; for is it imaginable that they who are fools
in nature should be wise in books, which are testimonies unto nature?”
The few elevated minds who interrogate nature instead of prescribing
laws for her guidance; who do not limit her possibilities by the
imperfections of their own powers; and who only disbelieve because they
do not know, we would remind of that apothegm of Narada, the ancient
Hindu philosopher:
“Never utter these words: ‘I do not know this—therefore it is false.’”
“One must study to know, know to understand, understand to judge.”
END OF VOLUME I.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Lightfoot assures us that this voice, which had been used in times
past for a testimony from heaven, “was indeed performed by magic
art” (vol. ii., p. 128). This latter term is used as a supercilious
expression, just because it was and is still misunderstood. It is the
object of this work to correct the erroneous opinions concerning “magic
art.”
[2] Encyclical of 1864.
[3] “Fragments of Science.”
[4] See the last chapter of this volume, p. 622.
[5] “Recollections of a Busy Life,” p. 147.
[6] Henry Ward Beecher.
[7] Cocker: “Christianity and Greek Philosophy,” xi., p. 377.
[8] Gospel according to Matthew, xiii. 11, 13.
[9] “The accusations of atheism, the introducing of foreign deities,
and corrupting of the Athenian youth, which were made against Socrates,
afforded ample justification for Plato to conceal the arcane preaching
of his doctrines. Doubtless the peculiar diction or ‘jargon’ of the
alchemists was employed for a like purpose. The dungeon, the rack,
and the fagot were employed without scruple by Christians of every
shade, the Roman Catholics especially, against all who taught even
natural science contrary to the theories entertained by the Church.
Pope Gregory the Great even inhibited the grammatical use of Latin
as heathenish. The offense of Socrates consisted in unfolding to his
disciples the arcane doctrine concerning the gods, which was taught
in the Mysteries and was a capital crime. He also was charged by
Aristophanes with introducing the new god Dinos into the republic as
the demiurgos or artificer, and the lord of the solar universe. The
Heliocentric system was also a doctrine of the Mysteries; and hence,
when Aristarchus the Pythagorean taught it openly, Cleanthes declared
that the Greeks ought to have called him to account and condemned him
for blasphemy against the gods,”—(“Plutarch”). But Socrates had never
been initiated, and hence divulged nothing which had ever been imparted
to him.
[10] See Thomas Taylor: “Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries,” p. 47. New
York: J. W Bouton, 1875.
[11] Cousin, “History of Philosophy,” I., ix.
[12] “Theol. Arithme.,” p. 62: “On Pythag. Numbers.”
[13] Plato: “Parmenid.,” 141 E.
[14] See Stobœus’ “Ecl.,” i., 862.
[15] Sextus: “Math.,” vii. 145.
[16] “Metaph.,” 407, a. 3.
[17] Appendix to “Timæus.”
[18] Stob.: “Ecl.,” i., 62.
[19] Krische: “Forsch.,” p. 322, etc.
[20] Clem.: “Alex. Stro.,” v., 590.
[21] Plutarch: “De Isid,” chap. 25, p. 360.
[22] “Plato und die Alt. Akademie.”
[23] “Tusc.,” v., 18, 51.
[24] Ibid. Cf. p. 559.
[25] “Plato und die Alt. Akademie.”
[26] Ed. Zeller: “Philos. der Griech.”
[27] “Plato und die Alt. Akademie.”
[28] One of the five solid figures in Geometry.
[29] “The Sun and the Earth.”
[30] “De Ente Spirituali,” lib. iv.; “de Ente Astrorum,” book i.; and
_opera omnia_, vol. i., pp. 634 and 699.
[31] Or more commonly chārkh pūjā.
[32] Persons who believe in the clairvoyant power, but are disposed to
discredit the existence of any other spirits in nature than disembodied
human spirits, will be interested in an account of certain clairvoyant
observations which appeared in the _London Spiritualist_ of June 29,
1877. A thunder-storm approaching, the seeress saw “a bright spirit
emerge from a dark cloud and pass with lightning speed across the
sky, and, a few minutes after, a diagonal line of dark spirits in
the clouds.” These are the _Maruts_ of the “Vedas” (See Max Müller’s
“Rig-Veda Sanhita”).
The well-known and respected lecturer, author, and clairvoyant,
Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, has published accounts of her frequent
experiences with these elemental spirits.
[33] Translated by Max Müller, Professor of Comparative Philology at
the Oxford University, England.
[34] “Dyaríh vah pitâ, prithivi mâtâ sômah bhrâtâ âditih svásâ.”
[35] As the perfect identity of the philosophical and religious
doctrines of antiquity will be fully treated upon in subsequent
chapters, we limit our explanations for the present.
[36] “Rig-Veda-Anhita,” p. 234.
[37] Philostratus assures us that the Brahmins were able, in his time,
to perform the most wonderful cures by merely pronouncing certain
magical words. “The Indian Brahmans carry a staff and a ring, by means
of which they are able to do almost anything.” Origenes states the same
(“Contra Celsum”). But if a strong mesmeric fluid—say projected from
the eye, and without any other contact—is not added, no magical words
would be efficacious.
[38] Akiba was a friend of Aher, said to have been the Apostle Paul of
Christian story. Both are depicted as having visited Paradise. Aher
took branches from the Tree of Knowledge, and so fell from the true
(Jewish) religion. Akiba came away in peace. See 2d Epistle to the
Corinthians, chapter xii.
[39] Taley means ocean or sea.
[40] See “Aytareya Brahmanan,” 3, 1.
[41] See Pantheon: “Myths,” p. 31; also Aristophanes in “Vœstas,” i.,
reg. 28.
[42] The oracle of Apollo was at Delphos, the city of the δελφυς, womb
or abdomen; the place of the temple was denominated the _omphalos_
or navel. The symbols are female and lunary; reminding us that the
Arcadians were called Proseleni, pre-Hellenic or more ancient than the
period when Ionian and Olympian lunar worship was introduced.
[43] From the accounts of Strabo and Megasthenes, who visited
Palibothras, it would seem that the persons termed by him Samanean,
or Brachmane priests, were simply Buddhists. “The singularly subtile
replies of the Samanean or Brahman philosophers, in their interview
with the conqueror, will be found to contain the spirit of the Buddhist
doctrine,” remarks Upham. (See the “History and Doctrine of Buddhism;”
and Hale’s “Chronology,” vol. iii., p. 238.)
[44] In their turn, the heathen may well ask the missionaries what sort
of a spirit lurks at the bottom of the sacrificial beer-bottle. That
evangelical New York journal, the “Independent,” says: “A late English
traveller found a simple-minded Baptist mission church, in far-off
Burmah, using for the communion service, and we doubt not with God’s
blessing, Bass’s pale ale instead of wine.” Circumstances alter cases,
it seems!
[45] “Book of Brahmanical Evocations,” part iii.
[46] Bulwer-Lytton: “Last Days of Pompeii,” p. 147.
[47] “Select Works,” p. 159.
[48] Ibid., p. 92.
[49] “Aitareya Brahmanan,” Introduction.
[50] The name is used in the sense of the Greek word ανθροπος.
[51] The traditions of the Oriental Kabalists claim their science to be
older than that. Modern scientists may doubt and reject the assertion.
They _cannot_ prove it false.
[52] Clement of Alexandria asserted that in his day the Egyptian
priests possessed forty-two Canonical Books.
[53] “Chips from a German Work-shop,” vol. ii., p. 7. “Comparative
Mythology.”
[54] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” ch. i.
[55] In another place, we explain with some minuteness the Hermetic
philosophy of the evolution of the spheres and their several races.
[56] J. Burges: “The Works of Plato,” p. 207, note.
[57] From the Sanskrit text of the Aitareya Brahmanam. Rig-Veda, v.,
ch. ii., verse 23.
[58] Aitareya Brahmanam, book iii., c. v., 44.
[59] Ait. Brahm., vol. ii., p. 242.
[60] Ait. Brahm., book iv.
[61] Septenary Institutions; “Stone him to Death,” p. 20.
[62] See Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”
[63] See Turner; also G. Higgins’s “Anacalypsis.”
[64] Genesis, i., 30.
[65] Sir William Drummond: “Œdipus Judicus,” p. 250.
[66] The absolute necessity for the perpetration of such pious frauds
by the early fathers and later theologians becomes apparent, if we
consider that if they had allowed the word _Al_ to remain as in
the original, it would have become but too evident—except for the
initiated—that the _Jehovah_ of Moses and the sun were identical. The
multitudes, which ignore that the ancient hierophant considered our
_visible_ sun but as an emblem of the central, invisible, and spiritual
Sun, would have accused Moses—as many of our modern commentators have
already done—of worshipping the planetary bodies; in short, of actual
Zabaism.
[67] Exodus, xxv., 40.
[68] “The Physical Basis of Life.” A Lecture by T. H. Huxley.
[69] Huxley: “Physical Basis of Life.”
[70] Prof. J. W. Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science.”
[71] Bulwer’s “Zanoni.”
[72] See the Code published by Sir William Jones, chap. ix., p. 11.
[73] Pliny: “Hist. Nat.,” xxx. 1; Ib., xvi., 14; xxv., 9, etc.
[74] Pomponius ascribes to them the knowledge of the highest sciences.
[75] Cæsar, iii., 14.
[76] Pliny, xxx.
[77] Munter, on the most ancient religion of the North before the time
of Odin. Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de France. Tome ii., p.
230.
[78] Ammianus Marcellinus, xxvi., 6.
[79] In some respects our modern philosophers, who think they make new
discoveries, can be compared to “the very clever, learned, and civil
gentleman” whom Hippocrates having met at Samos one day, describes
very good-naturedly. “He informed me,” the Father of Medicine proceeds
to say, “that he had lately discovered an herb never before known in
Europe or Asia, and that no disease, however malignant or chronic,
could resist its marvellous properties. Wishing to be civil in turn, I
permitted myself to be persuaded to accompany him to the conservatory
in which he had transplanted the wonderful specific. What I found
was one of the commonest plants in Greece, namely, garlic—the plant
which above all others has least pretensions to healing virtues.”
Hippocrates: “De optima prædicandi ratione item judicii operum magni.”
I.
[80] Schweigger: “Introduction to Mythology through Natural History.”
[81] Ennemoser: “History of Magic,” i., 3.
[82] “Hist. of Magic,” vol. i., p. 9.
[83] Philo Jud.: “De Specialibus Legibus.”
[84] Zend-Avesta, vol. ii., p. 506.
[85] Cassian: “Conference,” i., 21.
[86] “De Vita et Morte Mosis,” p. 199.
[87] Acts of the Apostles, vii., 22.
[88] Justin, xxxvi., 2.
[89] Molitor: “Philosophy of History and Traditions,” Howitt’s
Translation, p. 285.
[90] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 329.
[91] See “Gazette du Midi,” and “Le Monde,” of 3 May, 1864.
[92] Shakspere: “Richard III.”
[93] Literally, the _screaming_ or the howling ones.
[94] The half-demented, the _idiots_.
[95] But such is not always the case, for some among these beggars make
a regular and profitable trade of it.
[96] Webster declares very erroneously that the Chaldeans called
_saros_, the cycle of eclipses, a period of about 6,586 years, “the
time of revolution of the moon’s node.” Berosus, himself a Chaldean
astrologer, at the Temple of Belus, at Babylon, gives the duration of
the sar, or sarus, 3,600 years; a neros 600; and a sossus 60. (See,
Berosus from Abydenus, “Of the Chaldæan Kings and the Deluge.” See also
Eusebius, and Cary’s _MS._ Ex. Cod. reg. gall. gr. No. 2360, fol. 154.)
[97] Before scientists reject such a theory—traditional as it is—it
would be in order for them to demonstrate why, at the end of the
tertiary period, the Northern Hemisphere had undergone such a reduction
of temperature as to utterly change the torrid zone to a Siberian
climate? Let us bear in mind that the _helicocentric system came to us
from upper India_; and that the germs of all great astronomical truths
were brought thence by Pythagoras. So long as we lack a mathematically
correct demonstration, one hypothesis is as good as another.
[98] Censorinus: “De Natal Die.” Seneca: “Nat. Quæst.,” iii., 29.
[99] Euseb.: “Præp. Evan.” Of the Tower of Babel and Abraham.
[100] This is in flat contradiction of the Bible narrative, which
tells us that the deluge was sent for the special destruction of these
_giants_. The Babylon priests had _no_ object to invent lies.
[101] Coleman, who makes this calculation, allowed a serious error
to escape the proof-reader; the length of the manwantara is given at
368,448,000, which is just sixty million years too much.
[102] S. Davis: “Essay in the Asiatic Researches;” and Higgins’s
“Anacalypsis;” also see Coleman’s “Mythology of the Hindus.” Preface,
p. xiii.
[103] Bunsen: “Egypte,” vol. i.
[104] The forty-two Sacred Books of the Egyptians mentioned by Clement
of Alexandria as having existed in his time, were but a portion of the
Books of Hermes. Iamblichus, on the authority of the Egyptian priest
Abammon, attributes 1200 of such books to Hermes, and Manetho 36,000.
But the testimony of Iamblichus as a neo-Platonist and theurgist is of
course rejected by modern critics. Manetho, who is held by Bunsen in
the highest consideration as a “purely historical personage” ... with
whom “none of the later native historians can be compared ...” (see
“Egypte,” i., p. 97), suddenly becomes a Pseudo-Manetho, as soon as the
ideas propounded by him clash with the scientific prejudices against
magic and the occult knowledge claimed by the ancient priests. However,
none of the archæologists doubt for a moment the almost incredible
antiquity of the Hermetic books. Champollion shows the greatest regard
for their authenticity and great truthfulness, corroborated as it is
by many of the oldest monuments. And Bunsen brings irrefutable proofs
of their age. From his researches, for instance, we learn that there
was a line of sixty-one kings before the days of Moses, who preceded
the Mosaic period by a clearly-traceable civilization of several
thousand years. Thus we are warranted in believing that the works of
Hermes Trismegistus were extant many ages before the birth of the
Jewish law-giver. “Styli and inkstands were found on monuments of the
fourth Dynasty, the oldest in the world,” says Bunsen. If the eminent
Egyptologist rejects the period of 48,863 years before Alexander, to
which Diogenes Laertius carries back the records of the priests, he
is evidently more embarrassed with the ten thousand of astronomical
observations, and remarks that “if they were actual observations, they
_must have_ extended over 10,000 years” (p. 14). “We learn, however,”
he adds, “from one of their own old chronological works ... that the
genuine Egyptian traditions concerning the mythological period, treated
of _myriads_ of years.” (“Egypte,” i, p. 15).
[105] Higgins: “Anacalypsis.”
[106] “De Vite Pythag.”
[107] “The Rosicrucians,” etc., by Hargrave Jennings.
[108] W. Crookes, F.R.S.: “Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism.”
[109] W. Crookes: “Experiments on Psychic Force,” page 25.
[110] W. Crookes: “Spiritualism Viewed by the Light of Modern Science.”
See “Quarterly Journal of Science.”
[111] A. Aksakof: “Phenomena of Mediumism.”
[112] A. N. Aksakof: “Phenomena of Mediumism.”
[113] “The Last of Katie King,” pamphlet iii., p. 119.
[114] Ibid., pamp. i., p. 7.
[115] “The Last of Katie King,” pamp. iii., p. 112.
[116] Ibid., p. 112.
[117] “Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism,” p. 45.
[118] Pfaff’s “Astrology.” Berl.
[119] “Medico-Surgical Essays.”
[120] “The Philosophy of Hist.”
[121] On Theoph. Paracelsus.—Magic.
[122] Kemshead says in his “Inorganic Chemistry” that “the element
_hydrogen_ was first mentioned in the sixteenth century by Paracelsus,
but very little was known of it in any way.” (P. 66.) And why not be
fair and confess at once that Paracelsus was the _re_-discoverer of
hydrogen as he was the _re_-discoverer of the hidden properties of
the magnet and animal magnetism? It is easy to show that according
to the strict vows of secrecy taken and faithfully observed by every
Rosicrucian (and especially by the alchemist) he kept his knowledge
secret. Perhaps it would not prove a very difficult task for any
chemist well versed in the works of Paracelsus to demonstrate that
_oxygen_, the discovery of which is credited to Priestley, was known to
the Rosicrucian alchemists as well as hydrogen.
[123] “Letter to J. Glanvil, chaplain to the king and a fellow of
the Royal Society.” Glanvil was the author of the celebrated work on
Apparitions and Demonology entitled “Sadducismus Triumphatus, or a
full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions,” in two
parts, “proving partly by Scripture, and partly by a choice collection
of modern relations, the real existence of apparitions, spirits and
witches.“1700.
[124] Plato: “Timæus Soerius,” 97.
[125] See Movers’ “Explanations,” 268.
[126] Cory: “Chaldean Oracles,” 243.
[127] Philo Judæus: “On the Creation,” x.
[128] Movers: “Phoinizer,” 282.
[129] K. O. Müller, 236.
[130] Weber: “Akad. Vorles,” 213, 214, etc.
[131] Plutarch, “Isis and Osiris,” i., vi.
[132] “Spirit History of Man,” p. 88.
[133] Movers: “Phoinizer,” 268.
[134] Cory: “Fragments,” 240.
[135] “Parerga,” ii., pp. 111, 112.
[136] See Huxley: “Physical Basis of Life.”
[137] Schopenhauer: “Parerga.” Art. on “Will in Nature.”
[138] “Revue des Deux Mondes,” Jan. 15, 1855, p. 108.
[139] Comte de Mirville: “Question des Esprits.”
[140] Bulwer-Lytton: “Zanoni.”
[141] T. Wright: “Narratives of Sorcery and Magic.”
[142] See Des Mousseaux’s “Dodone,” and “Dieu et les dieux,” p. 326.
[143] “Apparitions,” translated by C. Crowe, pp. 388, 391, 399.
[144] “De Abstinentia,” etc.
[145] C. Crowe: “On Apparitions,” p. 398.
[146] Upham: “Salem Witchcraft.”
[147] Brierre de Boismont: “On Hallucinations,” p. 60.
[148] See de Mirville’s “Question des Esprits,” and the works on the
“Phénomènes Spirites,” by de Gasparin.
[149] Honorary Secretary to the National Association of Spiritualists
of London.
[150] Job.
[151] See Dr. F. R. Marvin’s “Lectures on Mediomania and Insanity.”
[152] Vapereau: “Biographie Contemporaine,” art. Littré; and Des
Mousseaux: “Les Hauts Phénomènes de la Magie,” ch. 6.
[153] A. Comte: “Système de Politique Positive,” vol. i. p. 203, etc.
[154] Ibid.
[155] Ibid.
[156] See des Mousseaux: “Hauts Phénomènes de la Magie,” chap. 6.
[157] Littré: “Paroles de Philosophie Positive.”
[158] Littré: “Paroles de Philosophie Positive,” vii., 57.
[159] “Spiritualism and Charlatanism.”
[160] Prof. Hare: “On Positivism,” p. 29.
[161] “Journal des Débats,” 1864. See also des Mousseaux’s “Hauts Phén.
de la Magie.”
[162] “Philosophic Positive,” vol. iv., p. 279.
[163] Dr. F. R. Marvin: “Lecture on Insanity.”
[164] See Howitt: “History of the Supernatural,” vol. ii.
[165] Prof. Huxley: “Physical Basis of Life.”
[166] Reference is made to a card which appeared some time since in a
New York paper, signed by three persons styling themselves as above,
and assuming to be a scientific committee appointed two years before to
investigate spiritual phenomena. The criticism on the triad appeared in
the “New Era” magazine.
[167] Dr. Marvin: “Lecture on Insanity,” N. Y., 1875.
[168] Tyndall: “Fragments of Science.”
[169] Tyndall: Preface to “Fragments of Science.”
[170] Deuteronomy, chap. xvii., 6.
[171] Montesquieu: Esprit des Lois I., xii., chap. 3.
[172] C. B. Warring.
[173] Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii., 6.
[174] The Rishis were seven in number, and lived in days anteceding
the Vedic period. They were known as sages, and held in reverence like
demi-gods. Haug shows that they occupy in the Brahmanical religion a
position answering to that of the twelve sons of Jacob in the Jewish
Bible. The Brahmans claim to descend directly from these Rishis.
[175] The fourth Veda.
[176] Orthography of the “Archaic Dictionary.”
[177] We do not mean the current or accepted Bible, but the _real_
Jewish one explained kabalistically.
[178] “Dissertations Relating to Asia.”
[179] Dr. Gross, p. 195.
[180] Brahma does _not_ create the earth, _Mirtlok_, any more than
the rest of the universe. Having evolved himself from the soul of the
world, once separated from the First Cause, he emanates in his turn
all nature out of himself. He does not stand above it, but is mixed up
with it; and Brahma and the universe form one Being, each particle of
which is in its essence Brahma himself, who proceeded out of himself.
[Burnouf: “Introduction,” p. 118.]
[181] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” 180.
[182] “Des Tables,” vol. i., p. 213.
[183] Ibid., 216.
[184] “Des Tables,” vol. i., p. 48.
[185] Ibid., p. 24.
[186] Ibid., p. 35.
[187] De Mirville: “Des Esprits,” p. 26.
[188] “Avant propos,” pp. 12 and 16.
[189] Vol. i., p. 244.
[190] Vol. ii., p. 524.
[191] “Medico-Psychological Annals,” Jan. 1, 1854.
[192] De Mirville: “Des Esprits,” “Constitutionnel,” June 16, 1854.
[193] Chevalier des Mousseaux: “Mœurs et Pratiques des Démons,” p. x.
[194] De Mirville: “Des Esprits,” p. 4.
[195] Ibid. “Revue des Deux Mondes,” January 15, 1854, p. 108.
[196] This is a repetition and variation of Faraday’s theory.
[197] “Revue des Deux Mondes,” p. 410.
[198] “Revue des Deux Mondes,” January, 1854, p. 414.
[199] “Revue des Deux Mondes,” May 1, 1854, p. 531.
[200] We translate _verbatim_. We doubt whether Mr. Weekman was the
first investigator.
[201] Babinet: “Revue des Deux Mondes,” May 1, 1854, p. 511.
[202] De Mirville: “Des Esprits,” p. 33.
[203] Notes, “Des Esprits,” p. 38.
[204] De Mirville: “Faits et Théories Physiques,” p. 46.
[205] See Monograph: “Of the Lightning considered from the point of
view of the history of Legal Medicine and Public Hygiene,” by M.
Boudin, Chief Surgeon of the Military Hospital of Boule.
[206] De Gasparin: vol. i, page 288.
[207] Crookes: “Physical Force,” page 26.
[208] De Gasparin: “Science _versus_ Spirit,” vol i, p. 313.
[209] Ibid, vol. 1, p. 313.
[210] De Mirville pleads here the devil-theory, of course.
[211] “Des Tables,” vol. i., p. 213.
[212] Vol. i, p. 217.
[213] Crookes: “Psychic Force,” part i., pp. 26-27.
[214] Plato: “Phædo,” § 44.
[215] Ibid., § 128.
[216] “Philosophy of Magic,” English translation, p. 47.
[217] De Mirville: “Des Esprits,” p. 159.
[218] See F. Gerry Fairfield’s “Ten Years with Spiritual Mediums,” New
York, 1875.
[219] Marvin: “Lecture on Mediomania.”
[220] “Scientific American,” N. Y., 1875.
[221]
“De par le Roi, defense à Dieu, De faire miracle, en ces lieux.”
A satire that was found written upon the walls of the cemetery at the
time of the Jansenist miracles and their prohibition by the police of
France.
[222] Polier: “Mythologie des Indous.”
[223] Genesis vi. 4.
[224] Mallett: “Northern Antiquities,” Bohn’s edition, pp. 401-405.
[225] In the “Quarterly Review” of 1859, Graham gives a strange account
of many now deserted Oriental cities, in which the stone doors are
of enormous dimensions, often seemingly out of proportion with the
buildings themselves, and remarks that dwellings and doors bear all of
them the impress of an ancient race of giants.
[226] Dr. More: “Letter to Glanvil, author of ‘Saducismus Triumphatus.’”
[227] J. S. Y.: “Demonologia, or Natural Knowledge Revealed,” 1827, p.
219.
[228] Pausanias: “Eliæ,” lib. i., cap. xiv.
[229] We apprehend that the noble author coined his curious names by
contracting words in classical languages. _Gy_ would come from _gune_;
_vril_ from _virile_.
[230] P. B. Randolph: “Pre-Adamite Man,” p. 48.
[231] On this point at least we are on firm ground. Mr. Crookes’s
testimony corroborates our assertions. On page 84 of his pamphlet
on “Phenomenal Spiritualism” he says: “The many hundreds of facts I
am prepared to attest—facts which to imitate by known mechanics or
physical means would baffle the skill of a Houdin, a Bosco, or an
Anderson, backed with all the resources of elaborate machinery and
the practice of years—have all taken place in my own house; at times
appointed by myself and under circumstances which absolutely precluded
the employment of the very simplest instrumental aids.”
[232] In this appellation, we may discover the meaning of the puzzling
sentence to be found in the Zend-Avesta that “fire gives knowledge
of the future, science, and amiable speech,” as it develops an
extraordinary eloquence in some sensitives.
[233] Dunlap: “Musah, His Mysteries,” p. iii.
[234] “Hercules was known as the king of the Musians,” says Schwab,
ii., 44; and Musien was the feast of “Spirit and Matter,” Adonis and
Venus, Bacchus and Ceres. (See Dunlap: “Mystery of Adonis,” p. 95.)
Dunlap shows, on the authority of Julian and Anthon (67), Æsculapius,
“the Savior of all,” identical with Phtha (the creative Intellect, the
Divine Wisdom), and with Apollo, Baal, Adonis, and Hercules (ibid., p.
93), and Phtha is the “Anima mundi,” the Universal Soul, of Plato, the
Holy Ghost of the Egyptians, and the Astral Light of the Kabalists.
M. Michelet, however, regards the Grecian Herakles as a different
character, the adversary of the Bacchic revellings and their attendant
human sacrifices.
[235] Plato: “Ion” (Burgess), vol. iv., p. 294.
[236] “Attic.” i., xiv.
[237] Plato: “Theages.” Cicero renders this word δαιμονιον, quiddam
divinum, a divine something, not anything personal.
[238] “Cratylus,” p. 79.
[239] “Arnobius,” vi., xii.
[240] As we will show in subsequent chapters, the sun was not
considered by the ancients as the direct cause of the light and heat,
but only as an agent of the former, through which the light passes
on its way to our sphere. Thus it was always called by the Egyptians
“the eye of Osiris,” who was himself the _Logos_, the First-begotten,
or light made manifest to the world, “which is the mind and divine
intellect of the Concealed.” It is only that light of which we are
cognizant that is the Demiurge, the _creator_ of our planet and
everything pertaining to it; with the invisible and unknown universes
disseminated through space, none of the sun-gods had anything to do.
The idea is expressed very clearly in the “Books of Hermes.”
[241] “Orphic Hymn,” xii.; Hermann; Dunlap: “Musah, His Mysteries,” p.
91.
[242] Movers, 525. Dunlap: “Mysteries of Adonis,” 94.
[243] Preller: ii., 153. This is evidently the origin of the Christian
dogma of Christ descending into hell and overcoming Satan.
[244] This important fact accounts admirably for the gross polytheism
of the masses, and the refined, highly-philosophical conception of
_one_ God, which was taught only in sanctuaries of the “pagan” temples.
[245] Anthon: “Cabeiria.”
[246] Plato: “Phædrus,” Cary’s translation.
[247] John xx. 22.
[248] “Heathen Religion,” 104.
[249] Alkahest, a word first used by Paracelsus, to denote the
menstruum or universal solvent, that is capable of reducing all things.
[250] Josephus: “Antiquities,” vol. viii., c. 2, 5.
[251] “The Land of Charity,” p. 210.
[252] The claims of certain “adepts,” which do not agree with those of
the students of the purely Jewish _Kabala_, and show that the “secret
doctrine” has originated in India, from whence it was brought to
Chaldea, passing subsequently into the hands of the Hebrew “Tanaïm,”
are singularly corroborated by the researches of the Christian
missionaries. These pious and learned travellers have inadvertently
come to our help. Dr. Caldwell, in his “Comparative Grammar of the
Dravidian Languages,” p. 66, and Dr. Mateer, in the “Land of Charity,”
p. 83, fully support our assertions that the “wise” King Solomon got
all his kabalistic lore from India, as the above-given magical figure
well shows. The former missionary is desirous to prove that very old
and huge specimens of the baobab-tree, which is not, as it appears,
indigenous to India, but belongs to the African soil, and “found only
at several ancient sites of foreign commerce (at Travancore), may,
for aught we know,” he adds, “have been introduced into India, and
planted by the servants of King Solomon.” The other proof is still more
conclusive. Says Dr. Mateer, in his chapter on the Natural History of
Travancore: “There is a curious fact connected with the name of this
bird (the peacock) which throws some light upon Scripture history. King
Solomon sent his navy to Tarshish (1 Kings, x. 22), which returned
once in three years, bringing ‘gold and silver, ivory and apes, and
peacocks.’ Now the word used in the Hebrew Bible for peacock is
‘_tukki_,’ and as the Jews had, of course, no word for these fine birds
till they were first imported into Judea by King Solomon, there is no
doubt that ‘tukki’ is simply the old Tamil word ‘_toki_,’ the name of
the peacock. The ape or monkey also is, in Hebrew, called ‘_koph_,’
the Indian word for which is ‘_kaphi_.’ Ivory, we have seen, is
abundant in South India, and gold is widely distributed in the rivers
of the western coast. Hence the ‘Tarshish’ referred to was doubtless
the western coast of India, and Solomon’s ships were ancient ‘East
Indiamen.’” And hence also we may add, besides “the gold and silver,
and apes and peacocks,” King Solomon and his friend Hiram, of masonic
renown, got their “magic” and “wisdom” from India.
[253] Cooke: “New Chemistry,” p. 22.
[254] Eliphas Levi: “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.”
[255] Plato hints at a ceremony used in the Mysteries, during the
performance of which the neophyte was taught that men are _in
this life_ in a kind of prison, and taught _how to escape from it
temporarily_. As usual, the too-learned translators disfigured this
passage, partially because they _could not_ understand it, and
partially because they _would not_. See _Phædo_ § 16, and commentaries
on it by Henry More, the well-known Mystic philosopher and Platonist.
[256] The _akasa_ is a Sanscrit word which means sky, but it also
designates the imponderable and intangible life-principle—the astral
and celestial lights combined together, and which two form the _anima
mundi_, and constitute the soul and spirit of man; the celestial light
forming his νοὺς, πνευμα, or divine spirit, and the other his ψυχη soul
or _astral_ spirit. The grosser particles of the latter enter into the
fabrication of his outward form—the body. _Akasa_ is the mysterious
fluid termed by scholastic science, “the all-pervading ether;” it
enters into all the magical operations of nature, and produces
mesmeric, magnetic, and spiritual phenomena. _As_, in Syria, Palestine,
and India, meant the sky, _life_, and the _sun_ at the same time;
the sun being considered by the ancient sages as the great magnetic
well of our universe. The softened pronunciation of this word was
_Ah_—says Dunlap, for “the _s_ continually softens to _h_ from Greece
to Calcutta.” _Ah_ is Iah, Ao, and Iao. God tells Moses that his name
is “I am” (_Ahiah_), a reduplication of Ah or Iah. The word “As” Ah, or
Iah means _life_, _existence_, and is evidently the root of the word
_akasa_, which in Hindustan is pronounced a_h_asa, the life-principle,
or Divine life-giving fluid or medium. It is the Hebrew _ruah_, and
means the “wind,” the breath, _the air in motion_, or “moving spirit,”
according to Parkhurst’s _Lexicon_; and is identical with the spirit of
God _moving_ on the face of the waters.
[257] Bear in mind that Kavindasami made Jacolliot swear that he would
neither approach nor _touch_ him during the time he was entranced. The
least contact with _matter_ would have paralyzed the action of the
freed spirit, which, if we are permitted to use such an unpoetical
comparison, would re-enter its dwelling like a frightened snail,
drawing in its horns at the approach of any foreign substance. In some
cases such a _brusque_ interruption and oozing back of the spirit
(sometimes it may suddenly and altogether break the delicate thread
connecting it with the body) kills the entranced _subject_. See the
several works of Baron du Potet and Puysegur on this question.
[258] “La Magie Devoilée,” p. 147.
[259] “Magie au XIXme Siècle,” p. 268.
[260] Ibid.
[261] Brierre de Boismont: “Des Hallucinations, ou Histoire raisonnée
des apparitions, des songes, des visions, de l’extase du Magnetisme,”
1845, p. 301 (French edition). See also Fairfield: “Ten Years Among the
Mediums.”
[262] Cabanis, seventh memoir: “De l’Influence des Maladies sur la
Formation des Idées,” etc. A respected N. Y. legislator has this
faculty.
[263] Irenæus: Book iii., chap. ii., sec. 8.
[264] The cow is the symbol of prolific generation and of intellectual
nature. She was sacred to Isis in Egypt; to Christna, in India, and
to an infinity of other gods and goddesses personifying the various
productive powers of nature. The cow was held, in short, as the
impersonation of the Great Mother of all beings, both of the mortals
and of the gods, of physical and spiritual generation of things.
[265] In Genesis the river of Eden was parted, “and became into _four_
heads” (Gen. ii. 5).
[266] Genesis iii. 21.
[267] This is claimed to be one of the missing books of the sacred
Canon of the Jews, and is referred to in Joshua and II. Samuel. It
was discovered by Sidras, an officer of Titus, during the sack of
Jerusalem, and published in Venice in the seventeenth century, as
alleged in its preface by the Consistory of Rabbins, but the American
edition, as well as the English, is reputed by the modern Rabbis, to be
a forgery of the twelfth century.
[268] See Godfrey Higgins: “Anacalypsis,” quoting Faber.
[269] See Cory’s “Ancient Fragments.” BEROSUS.
[270] We refer the reader for further particulars to the “Prose Edda”
in Mallett’s “Northern Antiquities.”
[271] It is worthy of attention that in the Mexican “Popol-Vuh” the
human race is created out of a reed, and in Hesiod out of the ash-tree,
as in the Scandinavian narrative.
[272] See Kanne’s “Pantheum der Æltesten Philosophie.”
[273] “Origin of Species,” p. 484.
[274] Ibid. Which latter word we cannot accept unless that “primordial
form” is conceded to be the primal concrete form that spirit assumed as
the _revealed_ Deity.
[275] Ibid., p. 488.
[276] Lecture by T. H. Huxley, F. R. S.: “Darwin and Haeckel.”
[277] “Migration of Abraham,” § 32.
[278] Cory: “Ancient Fragments.”
[279] “Origin of Species,” pp. 448, 489, first edition.
[280] Huxley: “Darwin and Haeckel.”
[281] Mithras was regarded among the Persians as the _Theos ek
petros_—god of the rock.
[282] Bordj is called a fire-mountain—a volcano; therefore it contains
fire, rock, earth, and water—the male and active, and the female or
passive elements. The myth is suggestive.
[283] Virgil: “Georgica,” book ii.
[284] Porphyry and other philosophers explain the nature of the
_dwellers_. They are mischievous and deceitful, though some of them
are perfectly gentle and harmless, but so weak as to have the greatest
difficulty in communicating with mortals whose company they seek
incessantly. The former are not wicked through intelligent malice. The
law of spiritual evolution not having yet developed their instinct into
intelligence, whose highest light belongs but to immortal spirits,
their powers of reasoning are in a latent state and, therefore, they
themselves, irresponsible.
But the Latin Church contradicts the Kabalists. St. Augustine has even
a discussion on that account with Porphyry, the Neo-platonist. “These
spirits,” he says, “are deceitful, _not by their nature_, as Porphyry,
the theurgist, will have it, but through malice. They pass themselves
off for _gods_ and _for the souls of the defunct_” (“Civit. Dei,” book
x., ch. 2). So far Porphyry agrees with him; “but they do not claim
to be _demons_ [read devils], for they are such in reality!” adds the
bishop of Hippo. But then, under what class should we place the men
_without heads_, whom Augustine wishes us to believe he saw himself?
or the satyrs of St. Jerome, which he asserts were exhibited for a
considerable length of time at Alexandria? They were, he tells us, “men
with the legs and tails of goats;” and, if we may believe him, one of
these Satyrs was actually _pickled_ and sent in a cask to the Emperor
Constantine!
[285] “Tria capita exsculpta sunt, una intra alterum, et alterum supra
alterum” (Sohar; “Idra Suta,” sectio vii.)
[286] Gentle gale (lit.)
[287] Higgins: “Anacalypsis;” also “Dupruis.”
[288] Mallett: “Northern Antiquities,” pp. 401-406, and “The Songs of a
Völuspa” Edda.
[289] From a London Spiritualist Journal.
[290] Hemmann: “Medico-Surgical Essays,” Berl., 1778.
[291] Robert Fludd: “Treatise III.”
[292] Prof. J. P. Cooke: “New Chemistry.”
[293] In the “Bulletin de l’Academie de Medecine,” Paris, 1837, vol.
i., p. 343 et seq., may be found the report of Dr. Oudet, who, to
ascertain the state of insensibility of a lady in a magnetic sleep,
pricked her with pins, introducing a long pin in the flesh up to its
head, and held one of her fingers for some seconds in the flame of
a candle. A cancer was extracted from the right breast of a Madame
Plaintain. The operation lasted twelve minutes; during the whole time
the patient talked very quietly with her mesmerizer, and never felt the
slightest sensation (“Bul. de l’Acad. de Med.,” Tom. ii., p. 370).
[294] Prophecy, Ancient and Modern, by A. Wilder: “Phrenological
Journal.”
[295] The theory that the sun is an incandescent globe is—as one of the
magazines recently expressed it—“going out of fashion.” It has been
computed that if the sun—whose mass and diameter is known to us—“were
a solid block of coal, and sufficient amount of oxygen could be
supplied to burn at the rate necessary to produce the effects we see,
it would be completely consumed in less than 5,000 years.” And yet,
till comparatively a few weeks ago, it was maintained—nay, is still
maintained, that the sun is a reservoir of vaporized metals!
[296] See Youmans: “Chemistry on the Basis of the New System—Spectrum
Analysis.”
[297] Professor of Physics in the Stevens Institute of Technology. See
his “The Earth a Great Magnet,“a lecture delivered before the Yale
Scientific Club, 1872. See, also, Prof. Balfour Stewart’s lecture on
“The Sun and the Earth.”
[298] “De Magnetica Vulner Curatione,” p. 722, l. c.
[299] See “On the Influence of the Blue Ray.”
[300] Ennemoser: “History of Magic.”
[301] “Du Magnetisme Animal, en France.” Paris, 1826.
[302] “The Conservation of Energy.” N. Y., 1875.
[303] “Fundamental Principles of Natural Philosophy.”
[304] “Simpl. in Phys.,” 143; “The Chaldean Oracles,” Cory.
[305] Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science.”
[306] J. R. Buchanan, M.D.: “Outlines of Lectures on the Neurological
System of Anthropology.”
[307] W. and Elizabeth M. F. Denton: “The Soul of Things; or
Psychometric Researches and Discoveries.” Boston, 1873.
[308] “Religion of Geology.”
[309] “Principles of Science,” vol. ii., p. 455.
[310] J. W. Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science,” pp. 132,
133.
[311] “Unseen Universe,” p. 159.
[312] F. R. Marvin: “Lecture on Mediomania.”
[313] “Unseen Universe,” p. 84, et seq.
[314] Ibid., p. 89.
[315] Behold! great scientists of the nineteenth century, corroborating
the wisdom of the Scandinavian fable, cited in the preceding chapter.
Several thousand years ago, the idea of a bridge between the visible
and the invisible universes was allegorized by ignorant “heathen,” in
the “Edda-Song of Völuspa,” “The Vision of Vala, the Seeress.” For what
is this bridge of Bifrost, the radiant rainbow, which leads the gods
to their rendezvous, near the Urdar-fountain, but the same idea as
that which is offered to the thoughtful student by the authors of the
“Unseen Universe?”
[316] “L’Ami des Sciences,” March 2, 1856, p. 67.
[317] Cooke: “New Chemistry,” p. 113.
[318] Ibid., pp. 110-111.
[319] Ibid., p. 106.
[320] “De Secretis Adeptorum.” Werdenfelt; Philalethes; Van Helmont;
Paracelsus.
[321] Youmans: “Chemistry,” p. 169; and W. B. Kemshead, F. R. A. S.:
“Inorganic Chemistry.”
[322] “Origin of Metalliferous Deposits.”
[323] John Bumpus: “Alchemy and the Alkahest,” 85, J. S. F., edition of
1820.
[324] See Boyle’s works.
[325] Deleuze: “De l’Opinion de Van Helmont sur la Cause, la Nature et
les Effets du Magnetisme.” Anim. Vol. i., p. 45, and vol. ii., p. 198.
[326] A. R. Wallace: “An Answer to the Arguments of Hume, Lecky, etc.,
against Miracles.”
[327] CROOKES: “Researches, etc.,” p. 96.
[328] Lucian: “Pharsalia,” Book v.
[329] “De Divinatio,” Book i., chap. 3.
[330] “De Occulta Philosoph.,” p. 355.
[331] Plato: “Timæus,” vol. ii., p. 563.
[332] Crookes: “Researches, etc.,” p. 101.
[333] Ibid., p. 101.
[334] Crookes: “Researches, etc.,” p. 83.
[335] In 1854, M. Foucault, an eminent physician and a member of the
French Institute, one of the opponents of de Gasparin, rejecting the
mere possibility of any such manifestations, wrote the following
memorable words: “That day, when I should succeed in moving a straw
under the action of my will only, I would feel terrified!” The word
is ominous. About the same year, Babinet, the astronomer, repeated in
his article in the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” the following sentence
to exhaustion: “The levitation of a body _without contact_ is as
_impossible_ as the perpetual motion, because on the day it would be
done, _the world would crumble down_.” Luckily, we see no sign as yet
of such a cataclysm; yet bodies _are_ levitated.
[336] “Researches, etc.,” p. 91.
[337] Ibid., pp. 86-97.
[338] Ibid., p. 94.
[339] Ibid., p. 95.
[340] Ibid., p. 94.
[341] “Antidote,” lib. i., cap. 4.
[342] “Letter to Glanvil, the author of ‘Sadducismus Triumphatus,’ May
25, 1678.”
[343] “History of Magic,” vol. ii., p. 272.
[344] “Apologie pour tous les grands personnages faussement accusés de
magie.”
[345] Berlin, 1817.
[346] “Nova Medicina Spirituum,” 1675.
[347] “History of Magic.”
[348] It would be a useless and too long labor to enter here upon the
defence of Kepler’s theory of relation between the five regular solids
of geometry and the magnitudes of the orbits of five principal planets,
rather derided by Prof. Draper in his “Conflict.” Many are the theories
of the ancients that have been avenged by modern discovery. For the
rest, we must bide our time.
[349] “Magia Naturalis,” Lugduni, 1569.
[350] Athanasis Kircher: “Magnes sive de arte magnetici, opus
tripartitum.” Coloniæ, 1654.
[351] Lib. iii., p. 643.
[352] “Notes from a New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam,” by
de la Loubère, French Ambassador to Siam in the years 1687-8. Edition
of 1692.
[353] Baptist Van Helmont: “Opera Omnia,” 1682, p. 720, and others.
[354] De la Loubère: “Notes,” etc. (see _ante_), p. 115.
[355] Ibid., p. 120.
[356] Ibid., p. 63.
[357] See his “Conf.,” xiii., l. c. in præfatione.
[358] 1 Samuel, xvi. 14-23.
[359] “Aphorisms,” 22.
[360] Ibid., p. 69.
[361] Ibid., p. 70.
[362] “Philosophie des Sciences Occultes.”
[363] 1 Kings, i. 1-4, 15.
[364] Josephus: “Antiquities,” viii. 2.
[365] “The Diakka and their Victims; an Explanation of the False and
Repulsive in Spiritualism.”
[366] See Chapter on the human spirits becoming the denizens of the
_eighth_ sphere, whose end is generally the _annihilation_ of personal
individuality.
[367] Porphyry: “On the Good and Bad Demons.”
[368] “De Mysteriis Egyptorum,” lib. iii., c. 5.
[369] Epes Sargent: “Proof Palpable of Immortality,” p. 45.
[370] See Matthew xxiv. 26.
[371] See Wallace, “Miracles and Modern Spiritualism,” and W. Howitt,
“History of the Supernatural,” vol. ii.
[372] See Wallace’s paper read before the Dialectical Society, in 1871:
“Answer to Hume, etc.”
[373] “Φιλολογος” (Bailey’s), second edition.
[374] See Art. on “Æthrobacy.”
[375] Psalm cv. 23. “The Land of Ham,” or _chem_, Greek χημι, whence
the terms _alchemy_ and _chemistry_.
[376] “Œdipi Ægyptiaci Theatrum Hieroglyphicum,” p. 544.
[377] “Lib. de Defectu Oraculorum.“
[378] Lib. i., Class 3, _Cap. ult._
[379] The details of this story may be found in the work of Erasmus
Franciscus, who quotes from Pflaumerus, Pancirollus, and many others.
[380] ”_Sulphur. Alum_ ust. a ℥ iv.; sublime them into flowers to
℥ ij., of which add of crystalline Venetian borax (powdered) ℥ j.;
upon these affuse high rectified spirit of wine and digest it, then
abstract it and pour on fresh; repeat this so often till the sulphur
melts like wax without any smoke, upon a hot plate of brass: this is
for the _pabulum_, but the wick is to be prepared after this manner:
gather the threads or thrums of the _Lapis asbestos_, to the thickness
of your middle and the length of your little finger, then put them into
a Venetian glass, and covering them over with the aforesaid depurated
sulphur or aliment, set the glass in sand for the space of twenty-four
hours, so hot that the sulphur may bubble all the while. The wick
being thus besmeared and anointed, is to be put into a glass like a
scallop-shell, in such manner that some part of it may lie above the
mass of prepared sulphur; then setting this glass upon hot sand, you
must melt the sulphur, so that it may lay hold of the wick, and when it
is lighted, it will burn with a perpetual flame and you may set this
lamp in any place where you please.”
The other is as follows:
“℞ _Salis tosti_, lb. j.; affuse over it strong wine vinegar, and
abstract it to the consistency of oil; then put on fresh vinegar and
macerate and distill it as before. Repeat this four times successively,
then put into this vinegar _vitr. antimonii subtilis lœvigat_, lb.
j.; set it on ashes in a close vessel for the space of six hours, to
extract its tincture, decant the liquor, and put on fresh, and then
extract it again; this repeat so often till you have got out all the
redness. Coagulate your extractions to the consistency of oil, and then
rectify them in Balneo Mariæ (bain Marie). Then take the antimony,
from which the tincture was extracted, and reduce it to a very fine
meal, and so put it into a glass bolthead; pour upon it the rectified
oil, which abstract and cohobate seven times, till such time as the
powder has imbibed all the oil, and is quite dry. This extract again
with spirit of wine, so often, till all the essence be got out of it,
which put into a Venice matrass, well luted with paper five-fold, and
then distill it so that the spirit being drawn off, there may remain at
the bottom an inconsumable oil, to be used with a wick after the same
manner with the sulphur we have described before.”
“These are the eternal lights of Tritenheimus,” says Libavius, his
commentator, “which indeed, though they do not agree with the pertinacy
of naphtha, yet these things can illustrate one another. Naphtha is not
so durable as not to be burned, for it exhales and deflagrates, but if
it be fixed by adding the juice of the _Lapis asbestinos_ it can afford
perpetual fuel,” says this learned person.
We may add that we have ourselves seen a lamp so prepared, and we are
told that since it was first lighted on May 2, 1871, it has not gone
out. As we know the person who is making the experiment incapable to
deceive any one, being himself an ardent experimenter in hermetic
secrets, we have no reason to doubt his assertion.
[381] “Commentary upon St. Augustine’s ‘Treatise de Civitate Dei.’”
[382] The author of “De Rebus Cypriis,” 1566 A.D.
[383] “Book of Ancient Funerals.”
[384] “Comment. on the 77th Epigram of the IXth Book of Martial.”
[385] “De Defectu Oraculorum.”
[386] “Vulgar Errors,” p. 124.
[387] “London Dialectical Society’s Report on Spiritualism,” p. 229.
[388] Ibid., p. 230.
[389] Ibid., p. 265.
[390] Ibid., p. 266.
[391] Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 121.
[392] Milton: “Paradise Lost.”
[393] See Ennemoser: “History of Magic,” vol. ii., and Schweigger:
“Introduction to Mythology through Natural History.”
[394] “History of Magic,” vol. ii.
[395] B. Jowett, M. A.: “The Dialogues of Plato,” vol. ii., p. 508.
[396] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 240.
[397] “Plutarch,” translated by Langhorne.
[398] Some kabalistic scholars assert that the Greek original
Pythagoric sentences of Sextus, which are now said to be lost, existed
still, in a convent at Florence, at that time, and that Galileo was
acquainted with these writings. They add, moreover, that a treatise on
astronomy, a manuscript by Archytas, a direct disciple of Pythagoras,
in which were noted all the most important doctrines of their school,
was in the possession of Galileo. Had some _Ruffinas_ got hold of
it, he would no doubt have perverted it, as Presbyter Ruffinas has
perverted the above-mentioned sentences of Sextus, replacing them with
a fraudulent version, the authorship of which he sought to ascribe to a
certain Bishop Sextus. See Taylor’s Introduction to Iamblichus’ “Life
of Pythagoras,” p. xvii.
[399] Jowett: Introduction to the “Timæus,” vol. ii., p. 508.
[400] Ibid.
[401] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 14.
[402] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 311.
[403] “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” vol. v., p. 88.
[404] W. R. Grove: “Preface to the Correlation of Physical Forces.”
[405] “Timæus,” p. 22.
[406] Beginning with Godfrey Higgins and ending with Max Müller, every
archæologist and philologist who has fairly and seriously studied the
old religions, has perceived that taken literally they could only lead
them on a false track. Dr. Lardner disfigured and misrepresented the
old doctrines—whether unwittingly or otherwise—in the grossest manner.
The _pravritti_, or the existence of nature when alive, in activity,
and the _nirvritti_, or the rest, the state of non-living, is the
Buddhistic esoteric doctrine. The “pure nothing,” or non-existence,
if translated according to the esoteric sense, would mean the “pure
spirit,” the NAMELESS or something our intellect is unable to grasp,
hence nothing. But we will speak of it further.
[407] This is the exact opposite of the modern theory of evolution.
[408] Ficinus: See “Excerpta” and “Dissertation on Magic;” Taylor:
“Plato,” vol. i., p. 63.
[409] “Modern American Spiritualism,” p. 119.
[410] The full and correct name of this learned Society is—“The
American Association for the _Advancement_ of Science.” It is, however,
often called for brevity’s sake, “The American Scientific Association.”
[411] See Taylor’s translation of “Select Works of Plotinus,” p. 553,
etc.
[412] Iamblichus: “De Vita Pythag.,” additional notes (Taylor).
[413] “The National Quarterly Review,” Dec., 1875.
[414] Ibid., p. 94.
[415] “Force and Matter,” p. 151.
[416] Burnouf: “Introduction,” p. 118.
[417] “The National Quarterly Review,” Dec., 1875, p. 96.
[418] “De Anima,” lib. i., cap. 3.
[419] De Maistre: “Soirées de St. Petersburg.”
[420] We need not go so far back as that to assure ourselves that many
great men believed the same. Kepler, the eminent astronomer, fully
credited the idea that the stars and all heavenly bodies, even our
earth, are endowed with living and thinking souls.
[421] We are not aware that a copy of this ancient work is embraced in
the catalogue of any European library; but it is one of the “Books of
Hermes,” and it is referred to and quotations are made from it in the
works of a number of ancient and mediæval philosophical authors. Among
these authorities are Arnoldo di Villanova’s “Rosarium philosoph.;”
Francesco Arnolphim’s “Lucensis opus de lapide,” Hermes Trismegistus’
“Tractatus de transmutatione metallorum,” “Tabula smaragdina,” and
above all in the treatise of Raymond Lulli, “Ab angelis opus divinum de
quinta essentia.”
[422] Quicksilver.
[423] “Hermes,” iv. 6. Spirit here denotes the Deity—Pneuma, ὁ θέος.
[424] “Magia Adamica,” p. 11.
[425] _The ignorance of the ancients of the earth’s sphericity is
assumed without warrant._ What proof have we of the fact? It was only
the literati who exhibited such an ignorance. Even so early as the
time of Pythagoras, the Pagans taught it, Plutarch testifies to it,
and Socrates died for it. Besides, as we have stated repeatedly, all
knowledge was concentrated in the sanctuaries of the temples from
whence it very rarely spread itself among the uninitiated. If the
sages and priests of the remotest antiquity were not aware of this
astronomical truth, how is it that they represented Kneph, the spirit
of the _first hour_, with an egg placed on his lips, the egg signifying
our globe, to which he imparts life by his breath. Moreover, if, owing
to the difficulty of consulting the Chaldean “Book of Numbers,” our
critics should demand the citation of other authorities, we can refer
them to Diogenes Laertius, who credits Manetho with having taught that
the earth was in the shape of a ball. Besides, the same author, quoting
most probably from the “Compendium of Natural Philosophy,” gives the
following statements of the Egyptian doctrine: “The beginning is matter
Αρχῆν μὲν εῖναι ὕλην ἴλλεσθα, and from it the four elements separated....
The true form of God is unknown; but the world had a beginning and
is therefore perishable.... The moon is eclipsed when it crosses
the shadow of the earth” (Diogenes Laertius: “Proœin,” §§ 10, 11).
Besides, Pythagoras is credited with having taught that the earth was
round, that it rotated, and was but a planet like any other of these
celestial bodies. (See Fenelon’s “Lives of the Philosophers.”) In the
latest of Plato’s translations (“The Dialogues of Plato,” by Professor
Jowett), the author, in his introduction to “Timæus,” notwithstanding
“an unfortunate doubt” which arises in consequence of the word ἵλλεσθαι
capable of being translated either “circling” or “compacted,” feels
inclined to credit Plato with having been familiar with the rotation
of the earth. Plato’s doctrine is expressed in the following words:
“The earth which is our nurse (compacted or) _circling_ around the
pole which is extended through the universe.” But if we are to believe
Proclus and Simplicius, Aristotle understood this word in “Timæus”
“to mean circling or revolving” (De Cœlo), and Mr. Jowett himself
further admits that “Aristotle attributed to Plato the doctrine of the
rotation of the earth.” (See vol. ii. of “Dial. of Plato.” Introduction
to “Timæus,” pp. 501-2.) It would have been extraordinary, to say
the least, that Plato, who was such an admirer of Pythagoras and who
certainly must have had, as an initiate, access to the most secret
doctrines of the great Samian, should be ignorant of such an elementary
astronomical truth.
[426] “Wisdom of Solomon,” xi. 17.
[427] Eugenius Philalethes: “Magia Adamica.”
[428] Hargrave Jennings: “The Rosicrucians.”
[429] “Timæus.”
[430] “Our Place among Infinities,” p. 313.
[431] Ibid.
[432] Ibid., p. 314.
[433] The library of a relative of the writer contains a copy of a
French edition of this unique work. The prophecies are given in the
old French language, and are very difficult for the student of modern
French to decipher. We give, therefore, an English version, which
is said to be taken from a book in the possession of a gentleman in
Somersetshire, England.
[434] See Rawlinson, vol. xvii., pp. 30-32, Revised edition.
[435] Jowett: Introduction to “Timæus,” “Dial. of Plato,” vol. i., p.
509.
[436] N. B.—He lived in the first century B. C.
[437] Stobæus: “Eclogues.”
[438] Kieser: “Archiv.,” vol. iv., p. 62. In fact, many of the old
symbols were mere puns on names.
[439] See “Rig-Vedas,” the Aitareya-Brahmanan.
[440] Brahma is also called by the Hindu Brahmans Hiranyagarbha or the
_unit_ soul, while _Amrita_ is the supreme soul, the first cause which
emanated from itself the creative Brahma.
[441] Marbod: “Liber lapid. ed Beekmann.”
[442] “The Sun and the Earth,” Lecture by Prof. Balfour Stewart.
[443] “La Loi Naturelle,” par Volney.
[444] “Diction. Philosophique,” Art. “Philosophie.”
[445] “Boston Lecture,” December, 1875.
[446] Weber: “Ind. Stud.,” i. 290.
[447] Wilson: “Rig-Veda Sanhita,” ii. 143.
[448] “Duncker,” vol. ii., p. 162.
[449] “Wultke,” ii. 262.
[450] Daniel vii. 9, 10.
[451] Book of Enoch, xiv. 7, ff.
[452] This proposition, which will be branded as _preposterous_, but
which we are ready to show, on the authority of Plato (see Jowett’s
Introd. to “the Timæus;” last page), as a Pythagorean doctrine,
together with that other of the sun being but the lens through which
the light passes, is strangely corroborated at the present day,
by the observations of General Pleasonton of Philadelphia. This
experimentalist boldly comes out as a revolutionist of modern science,
and calls Newton’s centripetal and centrifugal forces, and the law of
gravitation, “fallacies.” He fearlessly maintains his ground against
the Tyndalls and Huxleys of the day. We are glad to find such a learned
defender of one of the oldest (and hitherto treated as the _most
absurd_) of hermetic _hallucinations_ (?) (See General Pleasonton’s
book, “The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight, and of the Blue
Color of the Sky, in developing Animal and Vegetable Life,” addressed
to the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture.)
[453] In no country were the true esoteric doctrines trusted to
writing. The Hindu Brahma Maia, was passed from one generation to
another by _oral_ tradition. The Kabala was never written; and Moses
intrusted it orally but to his elect. The primitive pure Oriental
gnosticism was completely corrupted and degraded by the different
subsequent sects. Philo, in the “de Sacrificiis Abeli et Caini,” states
that there is a mystery _not to be revealed_ to the uninitiated.
Plato is silent on many things, and his disciples refer to this
fact constantly. Any one who has studied, even superficially, these
philosophers, on reading the institutes of Manu, will clearly perceive
that they all drew from the same source. “This universe,” says Manu,
“existed only _in the first divine idea, yet unexpanded, as if involved
in darkness_, imperceptible, indefinable, undiscoverable by reason, and
undiscovered _by revelation_, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep;
then the sole self-existing Power himself undiscerned, appeared with
undiminished glory, _expanding his idea_, or dispelling _the gloom_.”
Thus speaks the first code of Buddhism. Plato’s idea is the _Will_, or
Logos, the deity which manifests itself. It is the Eternal Light from
which proceeds, as an _emanation_, the visible and _material_ light.
[454] It appears that in descending from Mont Blanc, Tyndall suffered
severely from the heat, though he was knee-deep in the snow at the
time. The Professor attributed this to the burning rays of the sun, but
Pleasonton maintains that if the rays of the sun had been so intense
as described, they would have melted the snow, which they did not; he
concludes that the heat from which the Professor suffered came from his
own body, and was due to the electrical action of sunlight upon his
dark woolen clothes, which had become electrified positively by the
heat of his body. The cold, dry ether of planetary space and the upper
atmosphere of the earth became negatively electrified, and falling upon
his warm body and clothes, positively electrified, evolved an increased
heat (see “The Influence of the Blue Ray,” etc., pp. 39, 40, 41, etc.).
[455] The most curious of all “curious coincidences,” to our mind is,
that our men of science should put aside facts, striking enough to
cause them to use such an expression when speaking of them, instead of
setting to work to give us a philosophical explanation of the same.
[456] See Charles Elam, M.D.: “A Physician’s Problems,” London, 1869,
p. 159.
[457] Jowett: “Timæus.”
[458] Ibid.
[459] According to General Pleasonton’s theory of positive and negative
electricity underlying every psychological, physiological, and cosmic
phenomena, the abuse of alcoholic stimulants transforms a man into
a woman and _vice versa_, by changing their _electricities_. “When
this change in the condition of his electricity has occurred,” says
the author, “his attributes (those of a drunkard) become _feminine_;
he is irritable, irrational, excitable ... becomes violent, and if
he meets his wife, whose normal condition of electricity is like his
present condition, positive, they repel each other, become mutually
abusive, engage in conflict and deadly strife, and the newspapers of
the next day announce the verdict of the coroner’s jury on the case....
Who would expect to find the discovery of the moving cause of all
these terrible crimes in the perspiration of the criminal? and yet
science has shown that the metamorphoses of _a man into a woman_, by
changing the negative condition of his electricity into the _positive_
electricity of the woman, with all its attributes, is disclosed by the
character of his perspiration, superinduced by the use of alcoholic
stimulants” (“The Influence of the Blue Ray,” p 119).
[460] Plato: “Timæus.”
[461] Littré: “Revue des Deux Mondes.”
[462] See des Mousseaux’s “Œuvres des Demons.”
[463] Du Potet: “Magie Devoilée,” pp. 51-147.
[464] Ibid., p. 201.
[465] Baron Du Potet: “Cours de Magnetisme,” pp. 17-108.
[466] “De Occulto Philosophiâ,” pp. 332-358.
[467] Cicero: “De Natura Deorum,” lib. i., cap. xviii.
[468] Eliphas Levi.
[469] “Timæus.” Such like expressions made Professor Jowett state in
his Introduction that Plato taught the attraction of similar bodies
to similar. But such an assertion would amount to denying the great
philosopher even a rudimentary knowledge of the laws of magnetic poles.
[470] Alfred Marshall Mayer, Ph.D.: “The Earth a Great Magnet,” a
lecture delivered before the Yale Scientific Club, Feb. 14, 1872.
[471] “Strange Story.”
[472] See Taylor’s “Pausanias;” MS. “Treatise on Dæmons,” by Psellus,
and the “Treatise on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries.”
[473] Iamblichus: “De Vita Pythag.”
[474] “Anacalypsis,” vol. i., p. 807.
[475] Iamblichus: “Life of Pythagoras,” p. 297.
[476] Bulwer-Lytton: “Zanoni.”
[477] Cory: “Phædrus,” i. 328.
[478] This assertion is clearly corroborated by Plato himself, who
says: “You say that, in my former discourse, I have not sufficiently
explained to you the nature of the _First, I purposely spoke
enigmatically_, that in case the tablet should have happened with any
accident, either by land or sea, a person, _without some previous
knowledge of the subject, might not be able to understand its
contents_” (“Plato,” Ep. ii., p. 312; Cory: “Ancient Fragments”).
[479] “Josephus against Apion,” ii., p. 1079.
[480] See chapter ix., p.
[481] “Illusion; matter in its triple manifestation in the earthly, and
the astral or fontal soul, or the body, and the Platonian dual soul,
the rational and the irrational one,” see next chapter.
[482] “Perfection of Wisdom.”
[483] Porphyry gives the credit to Plotinus his master, of having been
united with “God” six times during his life, and complains of having
attained to it but twice, himself.
[484] Orpheus is said to have ascribed to the grand cycle 120,000 years
of duration, and Cassandrus 136,000. See Censorinus: “de Natal. Die;”
“Chronological and Astronomical Fragments.”
[485] W. and E. Denton; “The Soul of Things,” vol. i.
[486] See the “Cosmogony of Pherecydes.”
[487] See a few pages further on the quotation from the “Codex of the
Nazarenes.”
[488] See Plato’s “Timæus.”
[489] On the authority of Irenæus, Justin Martyr, and the “Codex”
itself, Dunlap shows that the Nazarenes treated their “spirit,” or
rather soul, as a female and _Evil Power_. Irenæus, accusing the
Gnostics of heresy, calls Christ and the Holy Ghost “the _gnostic pair_
that produce the Æons” (Dunlap: “Sod, the Son of the Man,” p. 52,
foot-note).
[490] Fetahil was with the Nazarenes the king of light, and the
_Creator_; but in this instance he is the unlucky Prometheus, who fails
to get hold of the _Living Fire_, necessary for the formation of the
divine soul, as he is ignorant of the _secret_ name (the ineffable or
incommunicable name of the kabalists).
[491] The spirit of matter and concupiscence.
[492] See Franck’s “Codex Nazaræus” and Dunlap’s “Sod, the Son of the
Man.”
[493] “Codex Nazaræus,” ii. 233.
[494] This Mano of the Nazarenes strangely resembles the Hindu Manu,
the heavenly man of the “Rig-Vedas.”
[495] “I am the _true vine_ and my Father is the husbandman” (John xv.
1).
[496] With the Gnostics, Christ, as well as Michael, who is identical
in some respects with him, was the “Chief of the Æons.”
[497] “Codex Nazaræus,” i. 135.
[498] Ibid.
[499] “Codex Nazaræus,” iii. 61.
[500] The Astral Light, or _anima mundi_, is dual and bi-sexual. The
male part of it is purely divine and spiritual; it is the _Wisdom_;
while the female portion (the spiritus of the Nazarenes) is tainted,
in one sense, with matter, and therefore is evil already. It is the
life-principle of every living creature, and furnishes the astral
soul, the fluidic _perisprit_ to men, animals, fowls of the air, and
everything living. Animals have only the germ of the highest immortal
soul as a third principle. It will develop but through a series of
countless evolutions; the doctrine of which evolution is contained in
the kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant a beast; a
beast a _man_; a man a _spirit_; and the spirit a god.”
[501] See Commentary on “Idra Suta,” by Rabbi Eleashar.
[502] _Sod_ means a religious Mystery. Cicero mentions the _sod_, as
constituting a portion of the _Idean_ Mysteries. “The members of the
_Priest-Colleges_ were called _Sodales_,” says Dunlap, quoting Freund’s
“Latin Lexicon,” iv. 448.
[503] The author of the “Sohar,” the great kabalistic work of the first
century B.C.
[504] See Abbé Huc’s works.
[505] “The Sohar,” iii. 288; “Idra Suta.”
[506] Everard: “Mystères Physiologiques,” p. 132.
[507] See Plato’s “Timæus.”
[508] “Supernatural Religion; an Inquiry into the Reality of Divine
Revelation,” vol. ii. London, 1875.
[509] See “Heavenly Arcana.”
[510] Burges: Preface.
[511] “Seventh Letter.”
[512] “The True Christian Religion.”
[513] E. A. Hitchcock: “Swedenborg, a Hermetic Philosopher.”
[514] “Ripley Revived,” 1678.
[515] “Mosaicall Philosophy,” p. 173. 1659.
[516] “Correlation of Vital with Chemical and Physical Forces,” by J.
Le Conte.
[517] “Archives des Sciences,” vol. xlv., p. 345. December, 1872.
[518] Aristotle: “De Generat. et Corrupt.,” lib. ii.
[519] “De Part.,” an. lib. i., c. 1.
[520] A Pythagorean oath. The Pythagoreans swore by their master.
[521] See Lemprière: “Classical Dictionary.”
[522] Psel. in Alieb: “Chaldean Oracles.”
[523] Proc. in 1 “Alieb.”
[524] From the Latin word _mensa_—table. This curious letter is copied
in full in “La Science des Esprits,” by Eliphas Levi.
[525] The Sulanuth is described in chap. lxxx., vers. 19, 20, of
“Jasher.”
[526] “And when the Egyptians hid themselves on account of the swarm”
(one of the plagues alleged to have been brought on by Moses) “ ...
they locked their doors after them, and God ordered the _Sulanuth_ ...”
(a _sea-monster_, naively explains the translator, in a foot-note)
“which was then in the sea, to come up and go into Egypt ... and she
had long arms, ten cubits in length ... and she went upon the roofs
and uncovered the rafting and cut them ... and stretched forth her arm
into the house and removed the lock and the bolt and opened the houses
of Egypt ... and the swarm of animals destroyed the Egyptians, and it
grieved them exceedingly.”
[527] “Strom,” vi., 17, § 159.
[528] Ibid., vi., 3, § 30.
[529] “Gorgias.”
[530] “Timæus.”
[531] Cory: “Phædro,” i. 69.
[532] Ibid., i. 123.
[533] Cory: “Phædras;” Cory’s “Plato,” 325.
[534] See “The Unseen Universe,” pp. 205, 206.
[535] See Bulwer-Lytton: “Strange Story,” p. 76. We do not know where
in literature can be found a more vivid and beautiful description of
this difference between the life-principle of man and that of animals,
than in the passages herein briefly alluded to.
[536] A. R. Wallace: “The Action of Natural Selection on Man.”
[537] W. Denton: “The Soul of Things,” p. 273.
[538] “Herodotus,” b. i., c. 181.
[539] “Anthropology,” p. 125.
[540] “Of Sacrifices to Gods and Dæmons,” chap. ii.
[541] “Odyssey,” book vii.
[542] Porphyry: “Of Sacrifices to Gods and Dæmons,” chap. ii.
[543] Ibid.
[544] Iamblichus: “De Mysteriis Egyptorum.”
[545] Ibid.: “On the Difference between the Dæmons, the Souls, etc.”
[546] Du Potet: “La Magie Devoilée.”
[547] We wonder if Father Felix is prepared to include St. Augustine,
Lactantius, and Bede in this category?
[548] For instance, Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo? For further
particulars see the “Index Expurgatorius.” Verily, wise are such
popular sayings, as that, “Boldness carries off cities at one shout.”
[549] This statement, neither Herbert Spencer nor Huxley will be likely
to traverse. But Father Felix seems insensible of his own debt to
science; if he had said this in February, 1600, he might have shared
the fate of poor Bruno.
[550] “Le Mystère et la Science,” conferences, P. Felix de Notre Dame;
des Mousseaux: “Hauts Phen. Magie.”
[551] Damascius, in the “Theogony,” calls it _Dis_, “the disposer of
all things.” Cory: “Ancient Fragments,” p. 314.
[552] Plato: “Timæus.”
[553] “Suidas: v. Tyrrhenia.”
[554] The reader will understand that by “years” is meant “ages,” not
mere periods of twelve lunar months each.
[555] See the Greek translation by Philo Byblius.
[556] Cory: “Ancient Fragments.”
[557] We give the spelling and words of this Kabalist who lived and
published his works in the seventeenth century. Generally he is
considered as one of the most famous alchemists among the Hermetic
philosophers.
[558] The most positive of materialistic philosophers agree that all
that exists was evolved from ether; hence, air, water, earth, and fire,
the four primordial elements must also proceed from ether and chaos
the first _Duad_; all the imponderables, whether now known or unknown,
proceed from the same source. Now, if there is a spiritual essence in
matter, and that essence forces it to shape itself into millions of
individual forms, why is it illogical to assert that each of these
spiritual kingdoms in nature is peopled with beings evolved out of its
own material? Chemistry teaches us that in man’s body there are air,
water, earth, and heat, or fire—_air_ is present in its components;
_water_ in the secretions; _earth_ in the inorganic constituents;
and _fire_ in the animal heat. The Kabalist knows by experience that
an elemental spirit contains only one, and that each one of the four
kingdoms has its own peculiar elemental spirits; man being higher than
they, the law of evolution finds its illustration in the combination of
all four in him.
[559] Görres: “Mystique,” lib. iii., p. 63.
[560] The ancients called “the soul” the spirits of bad people; the
soul was the _larva_ and _lemure_. Good human spirits became gods.
[561] Porphyry: “De Sacrificiis.” Chapter on the true Cultus.
[562] “Mysteries of the Egyptians.”
[563] Second century, A.D. “Du Dieu de Socrate,” Apul. class., pp.
143-145.
[564] “Eastern Monachism,” p. 9.
[565] “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” iv. 385.
[566] Hardy: “Manual of Buddhism;” Dunlap: “The World’s Religions.”
[567] Lemprière (“Classical Dictionary,” art. “Pythagoras”) says that
“there is great reason to suspect the truth of the whole narrative of
Pythagoras’ journey into India,” and concludes by saying that this
philosopher had never seen either Gymnosophists or their country. If
this be so, how account for the doctrine of the metempsychosis of
Pythagoras, which is far more that of the Hindu in its details than
the Egyptian? But, above all, how account for the fact that the name
MONAS, applied by him to the First Cause, is the identical appellation
given to that Being in the Sanscrit tongue? In 1792-7, when Lemprière’s
“Dictionary” appeared, the Sanscrit was, we may say, utterly unknown;
Dr. Haug’s translation of the “Aitareya Brahmana” (“Rig-Vedas”), in
which this word occurs, was published only about _twenty_ years ago,
and until that valuable addition to the literature of archaic ages was
completed, and the precise age of the “Aitareya” now fixed by Haug at
2000-2400 B.C.—was a mystery, it might be suggested, as in the case
of Christian symbols, that the Hindus _borrowed_ it from Pythagoras.
But now, unless philology can show it to be a “coincidence,” and that
the word _Monas_ is not the same in its minutest definitions, we have
a right to assert that Pythagoras was in India, and that it was the
Gymnosophists who instructed him in his metaphysical theology. The
fact alone that “Sanscrit, as compared with Greek and Latin, is an
elder sister,” as Max Müller shows, is not sufficient to account for
the perfect identity of the Sanscrit and Greek words MONAS, in their
most metaphysical, abstruse sense. The Sanscrit word Deva (god) has
become the Latin _deus_, and points to a common source; but we see in
the Zoroastrian “Zend-Avesta” the same word, meaning diametrically the
opposite, and becoming _daêva_, or evil spirit, from which comes the
word _devil_.
[568] Haug: “Aitareya Brahmanam.”
[569] Ibid.
[570] Berosus: fragment preserved by Alex. Polyhostor; Cory: “Of the
Cosmogony and the Deluge.”
[571] Some writer has employed a most felicitous expression in
describing the majesty of the Hindu archaic monuments, and the
exquisite finish of their sculpture. “They built,” says he, “like
giants, and finished like jewelers.”
[572] “Anatomie Cerebrale,” Malacorne, Milan.
[573] Psellus, 6, Plet. 2; Cory: “Chaldean Oracles.”
[574] See “Lecture on the Vedas.”
[575] In order to avoid being contradicted by some spiritualists
we give verbatim the language in question, as a specimen of the
unreliability of the oracular utterances of certain “spirits.” Let them
be human or elemental, but spirits capable of such effrontery may well
be regarded by occultists as anything but safe guides in philosophy,
exact science, or ethics. “It will be remembered,” says Mrs. Cora V.
Tappan, in a public discourse upon the “History of Occultism and its
Relations to Spiritualism” (see “Banner of Light,” Aug. 26, 1876),
“that the ancient word witchcraft, or the exercise of it, was forbidden
among the Hebrews. The translation is that no witch should be allowed
to live. That has been supposed to be the literal interpretation; and
acting upon that, your very pious and devout ancestors put to death,
without adequate testimony, numbers of very intelligent, wise, and
sincere persons, under the condemnation of witchcraft. It has now
turned out that the interpretation or translation should be, that no
witches should be allowed to obtain a living by the practice of their
art. That is, it should not be made a profession.” May we be so bold
as to inquire of the celebrated speaker, through _whom or according to
what_ authority such a thing has ever _turned out_?
[576] Mr. Cromwell F. Varley, the well-known electrician of the
Atlantic Cable Company, communicates the result of his observations, in
the course of a debate at the Psychological Society of Great Britain,
which is reported in the “Spiritualist” (London, April 14, 1876, pp.
174, 175). He thought that the effect of free nitric acid in the
atmosphere was able to drive away what he calls “unpleasant spirits.”
He thought that those who were troubled by unpleasant spirits at home,
would find relief by pouring one ounce of vitriol upon two ounces of
finely-powdered nitre in a saucer and putting the mixture under the
bed. Here is a scientist, whose reputation extends over two continents,
who gives a recipe to drive away bad spirits. And yet the general
public mocks as a “_superstition_” the herbs and incenses employed by
Hindus, Chinese, Africans, and other races to accomplish the self-same
purpose.
[577] “Art-Magic,” p. 97.
[578] This phantom is called _Scin Lecca_. See Bulwer-Lytton’s “Strange
Story.”
[579] In the Strasbourg edition of his works (1603), Paracelsus writes
of the wonderful _magical_ power of man’s spirit. “It is possible,”
he says, “that my spirit, without the help of the body, and through
a fiery will alone, and without a sword, can stab and wound others.
It is also possible that I can bring the spirit of my adversary into
an image, and then double him up and lame him ... the exertion of
will is a great point in medicine.... Every imagination of man comes
through the heart, for this is the sun of the microcosm, and out of
the microcosm proceeds the imagination into the great world (universal
ether) ... the imagination of man is a seed which is _material_.” (Our
atomical modern scientists have proved it; see Babbage and Professor
Jevons.) “Fixed thought is also a means to an end. The magical is a
great _concealed wisdom_, and reason is a great public foolishness. No
armor protects against magic, for it injures the _inward_ spirit of
life.”
[580] “Salem Witchcraft; With an Account of Salem Village,” by C. W.
Upham.
[581] “Odyssey,” A. 82.
[582] “Æneid,” book vi., 260.
[583] “De Dæmon,” cap. “Quomodo dæm occupent.”
[584] Numquid dæmonum corpora pulsari possunt? Possunt sane, atque
dolere solido quodam _percussa_ corpore.
[585] Ubi secatur, mox in se iterum recreatur et coalescit ... dictu
velocius dæmoni cus spiritus in se revertitor.
[586] A magistrate of the district.
[587] This appalling circumstance was authenticated by the Prefect of
the city, and the Proconsul of the Province laid the report before the
Emperor. The story is modestly related by Mrs. Catherine Crowe (see
“Night-Side of Nature,” p. 335).
[588] Pliny, xxx., 1.
[589] T. Wright, M.A., F.S.A., etc.: “Sorcery and Magic,” vol. iii.
[590] “Art-Magic,” pp. 159, 160.
[591] “Art-Magic,” p. 28.
[592] Fakir, beggar.
[593] A juggler so called.
[594] “Mœurs et Pratiques des Demons.”
[595] “Histoire du Merveilleux dans les Temps Modernes,” vol. ii., p.
262.
[596] Ibid.
[597] Ibid., p. 265.
[598] Ibid., pp. 267, 401, 402.
[599] Ibid., pp. 266, etc., 400.
[600] Ibid., p. 403.
[601] “Histoire du Merveilleux,” vol. i., p. 397.
[602] Ibid., pp. 26-27.
[603] Ibid., p. 238.
[604] Des Mousseaux: “Magie au XIXme Siècle,” p. 452.
[605] Hume: “Philosophical Essays,” p. 195.
[606] “Histoire du Merveilleux,” p. 401.
[607] Ibid.
[608] Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 410, 411.
[609] Ibid., p. 407.
[610] Villecroze: “Le Docteur H. d’Alger,” 19 Mars, 1861. Pierrart:
vol. iv., pp. 254-257.
[611] Bruce: “Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile,” vol. x.,
pp. 402-447; Hasselquist: “Voyage in the Levant,” vol. i., pp. 92-100;
Lemprière: “Voyage dans l’Empire de Maroc, etc., en 1790,” pp. 42-43.
[612] Salverte: “La Philosophie de la Magie. De l’Influence sur les
Animaux,” vol. i.
[613] Thibaut de Chanvallon: “Voyage à la Martinique.”
[614] Salverte: “Philosophy of Magic.”
[615] Forbes: “Oriental Memoirs,” vol. i., p. 44; vol. ii., p. 387.
[616] Stedmann: “Voyage in Surinam,” vol. iii., pp. 64, 65.
[617] See “Edinburgh Review,” vol. lxxx., p. 428, etc.
[618] Elam: “A Physician’s Problems,” p. 25.
[619] The “Immortality of the Soul,” by Henry More. Fellow of Christ’s
College, Cambridge.
[620] D^r H. More: “Immortality of the Soul,” p. 393.
[621] “Transactions of the Medical Society of N. Y.,” 1865-6-7.
[622] “Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science,” vol. xv., p. 263,
1853.
[623] “Recherches d’Anatomie transcendante et Pathologique, etc.,”
Paris, 1832.
[624] “Silliman’s Journal of Science and Art,” vol. x., p. 48.
[625] “Precis Elementaire de Physiologie,” p. 520.
[626] Ibid., p. 521.
[627] “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie,” p. 175.
[628] “Transactions of Medical Society, etc.,” p. 246.
[629] Fournié: “Physiologie du Système Nerveux, Cerebro-spinal,” Paris,
1872.
[630] Ibid.
[631] “Night-Side of Nature,” by Catherine Crowe, p. 434, _et seq._
[632] Henry More: “Immortality of the Soul,” p. 399.
[633] By the word _soul_, neither Demokritus nor the other philosophers
understood the _nous_ or _pneuma_, the divine _immaterial_ soul, but
the _psychè_, or astral body; that which Plato always terms the second
_mortal_ soul.
[634] Balfour Stewart, LL.D., F.R.S.: “The Conservation of Energy,” p.
133.
[635] Fournié: “Physiologie du Système Nerveux,” p. 16.
[636] “A System of Logic.” Eighth ed., 1872, vol. ii., p. 165.
[637] Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 22.
[638] Edward L. Youmans, M.D.; “A Class-book of Chemistry,” p. 4.
[639] Sprengel, in his “History of Medicine,” makes Van Helmont
appear as if disgusted with the charlatanry and ignorant presumption
of Paracelsus. “The works of this latter,” says Sprengel, “which he
(Van Helmont) had attentively read, aroused in him the spirit of
reformation; but they alone did not suffice for him, because his
erudition and judgment were infinitely superior to those of that
author, and he _despised_ this _made egoist_, this ignorant and
ridiculous vagabond, who often seemed to have fallen into insanity.”
This assertion is perfectly false. We have the writings of Helmont
himself to refute it. In the well-known dispute between two writers,
Goclenius, a professor in Marburg, who supported the great efficacy of
the sympathetic salve discovered by Paracelsus, for the cure of every
wound, and Father Robert, a Jesuit, who condemned all these cures, as
he attributed them to the Devil. Van Helmont undertook to settle the
dispute. The reason he gave for interfering was that all such disputes
“affected Paracelsus as their discoverer and _himself as his disciple_”
(see “De Magnetica Vulner.,” and l. c., p. 705).
[640] Demokritus said that, as from nothing, nothing could be produced,
so there was not anything that could ever be reduced _to nothing_.
[641] J. Le Conte: “Correlation of Vital with Chemical and Physical
Forces,” appendix.
[642] The date is incorrect; it should be 1784.
[643] Ecclesiastes i. 10.
[644] Ibid., i. 6.
[645] Ibid., i. 7.
[646] Siljeström: “Minnesfest öfver Berzelius,” p. 79.
[647] “Séance de l’Academie de Paris,” 13 Août, 1807.
[648] Mollien: “Voyage dans l’interieur de l’Afrique,” tome ii., p. 210.
[649] “The Popular Science Monthly,” May, 1876, p. 110.
[650] Malte-Brun, pp. 372, 373; Herodotus.
[651] “The Popular Science Monthly,” Dec., 1874, p. 252, New York.
[652] The “Periplus of Hanno.”
[653] The original was suspended in the temple of Saturn, at Carthage.
Falconer gave two dissertations on it, and agrees with Bougainville in
referring it to the sixth century before the Christian era. See Cory’s
“Ancient Fragments.”
[654] Professor Jowett.
[655] “On the Atlantic Island (from Marcellus) Ethiopic History.”
[656] “Alchemy, or the Hermetic Philosophy.”
[657] See “Revue Encyclopédique,” vol. xxxiii., p. 676.
[658] “Bulletin de la Soc. Geograph,” vol. vi., pp. 209-220.
[659] See “Revue Encyclopédique,” vols. xxxiii. and xxxiv., pp. 676-395.
[660] Porphyry: “Epistola ad Anebo., ap. Euseb. Præp. Evangel,” v. 10;
Iamblichus: “De Mysteriis Ægypt.; “Porphyrii: “Epistola ad Anebonem
Ægyptium.”
[661] “Porphyry,” says the “Classical Dictionary” of Lemprière, “was a
man of universal information, and, according to the testimony of the
ancients, he excelled his contemporaries in the knowledge of history,
mathematics, music, and _philosophy_.”
[662] “On the Scientific Use of the Imagination.”
[663] Epes Sargent. See his pamphlet, “Does Matter do it All?”
[664] In his “Essay on Classification” (sect. xvii., pp. 97-99),
Louis Agassiz, the great zoölogist, remarks: “Most of the arguments
in favor of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency
of this principle in other living beings. May I not add that a
future life in which man would be deprived of that great source of
enjoyment and intellectual and moral improvement, which results from
the contemplation of the harmonies of an organic world would involve
a lamentable loss? And may we not look to a spiritual concert of the
combined worlds and _all_ their inhabitants in the presence of their
creator as the highest conception of paradise?”
[665] “Diog. in Vita.”
[666] See the works of Robertus de Fluctibus; and the “Rosicrucians,”
by Hargrave Jennings.
[667] Professor B. Stewart: “Conservation of Energy.”
[668] Cabanis: “Histoire de la Medecine.”
[669] “De Vatibus in Problemate,” sect. 21.
[670] See Max Müller: “The Meaning of Nirvana.”
[671] “The Lankâvatâra,” transl. by Burnouf, p. 514.
[672] “Classical Dictionary.”
[673] See Cabanis, “Histoire de la Medecine.”
[674] “Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,” by E. Burnouf, translated from the
Sanscrit.
[675] “Cosmos,” vol. iii., part i., p. 168.
[676] “Lecture on the Vedas.”
[677] “The Classical Journal,” vol. iv., pp. 107, 348.
[678] See “Mosheim.”
[679] “New Platonism and Alchemy.”
[680] Origen: “Contra Celsum.”
[681] “Fatti relativi al Mesmerismo,” pp. 88, 93, 1842.
[682] “Leonard de Vair,” l. ii., ch. ii.; “La Magie au 19me Siècle,” p.
332.
[683] “The Tinnevelly Shanars,” p. 43.
[684] Pierart: “Revue Spiritualiste,” chapter on “Vampirism.”
[685] Maimonides: “Abodah Sarab,” 12 Absh, 11 Abth.
[686] Pierart: “Revue Spiritualiste.”
[687] Dr. Pierart: “Revue Spiritualiste,” vol. iv., p. 104.
[688] See “Hauts Phen.,” p. 199.
[689] “Huetiana,” p. 81.
[690] Dom Calmet: “Apparitions,” etc. Paris, 1751, vol. ii., p. 47;
“Hauts Phen. de la Magie,” 195.
[691] “Hauts Phen.,” p. 196.
[692] Ibid.
[693] See the same sworn testimony in official documents: “De l’Inspir.
des Camis,” H. Blanc, 1859. Plon, Paris.
[694] Dom Calmet: “Apparit.,” vol. ii., chap, xliv., p. 212.
[695] Pierart: “Revue Spiritualiste,” vol. iv., p. 104.
[696] “Sadducismus Triumphatus,” vol. ii., p. 70.
[697] Görres: “Complete Works,” vol. iii., ch. vii., p. 132.
[698] “Ashes to Ashes,” London: Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1875.
[699] The author refers all those who may doubt such statements to G.
A. Walker’s “Gatherings from Graveyards,” pp. 84-193, 194, etc.
[700] Horst: “Zauber Bibliothek,” vol. v., p. 52.
[701] See Eliphas Levi: “La Science des Esprits.”
[702] Henry Maudsley: “Body and Mind.”
[703] Josiah Cooke, Jr.: “The New Chemistry.”
[704] Henry Maudsley: “The Limits of Philosophical Inquiry,” p. 266.
[705] “Scientific American,” August 12, 1868.
[706] Le Conte: “Correlation of Vital with Chemical and Physical
Forces.”
[707] The wood-apple.
[708] Incorrect; the Hindustani word for monkey is _rūkh-charhä_.
Probably _chokra_, a little native servant is meant.
[709] “Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., pp. 306, 307.
[710] Delrio: “Disquis. Magic,” pp. 34, 100.
[711] Col. H. Yule: “The Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 308.
[712] Edward Melton: “Engelsh Edelmans, Zeldzaame en Geden Kwaardige
Zee en Land Reizen, etc.,” p. 468. Amsterdam, 1702.
[713] “Memoirs of the Emperor Jahangire,” pp. 99, 102.
[714] J. Hughes Bennett: “Text Book of Physiology,” Lippincott’s
American Edition, pp. 37-50.
[715] “Curiosités Inouïes.”
[716] “Thoughts on the Birth and Generation of Things.”
[717] C. Crowe: “Night-Side of Nature,” p. 111.
[718] Pliny: “Hist. Nat.,” vii., c. 52; and Plutarch: “Discourse
concerning Socrates’ Dæmon,” 22.
[719] “De Res. Var.,” v. iii., i., viii., c. 43. Plutarch: “Discourse
concerning Socrates’ Dæmon,” 22.
[720] Nasse: “Zeitschrift fur Psychische Aerzte,” 1820.
[721] Osborne: “Camp and Court of Rundjit Singh;” Braid: “On France.”
[722] Mrs. Catherine Crowe, in her “Night-Side of Nature,” p. 118,
gives us the particulars of a similar burial of a fakir, in the
presence of General Ventura, together with the Maharajah, and many of
his Sirdars. The political agent at Loodhiana was “present when he was
disinterred, ten months after he had been buried.” The coffin, or box,
containing the fakir “being buried in a vault, the earth was thrown
over it and trod down, after which a crop of barley was sown on the
spot, and sentries placed to watch it. The Maharajah, however, was so
skeptical that in spite of all these precautions, he had him, twice in
the ten months, dug up and examined, and each time he was found to be
_exactly in the same state_ as when they had shut him up.”
[723] Todd: Appendix to “Occult Science,” vol. i.
[724] “A Cornel. Cels.,” lib. ii., cap. vi.
[725] “Hist. Nat.,” lib. vii., cap. lii.
[726] “Morning Herald,” July 21, 1836.
[727] “La Science des Esprits.”
[728] “Vit. Apollon. Tyan.,” lib. iv., ch. xvi.
[729] Salverte: “Sciences Occultes,” vol. ii.
[730] “La Science des Esprits.”
[731] It would be beneficial to humanity were our modern physicians
possessed of the same inestimable faculty; for then we would have on
record less horrid deaths _after_ inhumation. Mrs. Catherine Crowe,
in the “Night-Side of Nature,” records in the chapter on “Cases
of Trances” _five_ such cases, in England alone, and during the
present century. Among them is Dr. Walker of Dublin and a Mr. S——,
whose stepmother was accused of poisoning him, and who, upon being
disinterred, was found lying on his face.
[732] A. Wilder: “Neo-platonism and Alchemy.”
[733] Iamblichus was the founder of the Neo-platonic theurgy.
[734] See the “Sketch of the Eclectic Philosophy of the Alexandrian
School.”
[735] See “Medium and Daybreak,” July 7, 1876, p. 428.
[736] In Volume II., we will distinctly prove that the _Old Testament_
mentions the worship of more than one god by the Israelites. The
El-Shadi of Abraham and Jacob was not the Jehovah of Moses, or the
Lord God worshipped by them for forty years in the wilderness. And the
God of Hosts of Amos is not, if we are to believe his own words, the
Mosaic God, the Sinaïtic deity, for this is what we read: “I hate, I
despise your feast-days ... your meat-offerings, I will not accept
them.... Have ye offered unto _me_ sacrifices and offerings in the
wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?... No, but _ye have borne
the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun_ (Saturn), your images, the
star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.... Therefore, will I
cause you to go into captivity ... saith the _Lord, whose name is The
God of hosts_” (Amos v. 21-27).
[737] Chapter xviii.
[738] This word “_up_” from the spirit of a prophet whose abode ought
certainly to be in heaven and who therefore ought to have said “to
bring me down,” is very suggestive in itself to a Christian, who
locates paradise and hell at two opposite points.
[739] Ezekiel iii. 12-14.
[740] William Howitt: “History of the Supernatural,” vol. ii., ch. i.
[741] Lib. i., Sat. 8.
[742] Porphyry: “Of Sacrifices.”
[743] Genesis xviii. i.
[744] Daniel x. 8.
[745] 1 Samuel, x. 6.
[746] Gospel according to John vii. 20.
[747] Our informant, who was an eye-witness, is Mr. N—— ff of St.
Petersburg, who was attached to the flag-ship _Almaz_, if we are not
mistaken.
[748] “What forces were in operation to cause this oscillation of the
newspaper?” asks J. W. Phelps, who quotes the case—“These were the
rapid upward motion of heated air, the downward motion of cold air,
the translatory motion of the surface breeze, and the circular motion
of the whirlwind. But how could these combine so as to produce the
oscillation?” (Lecture on “Force Electrically Explained.”)
[749] “Revue des Deux Mondes,” p. 414, 1858.
[750] “Conservation of Energy,” p. 140.
[751] Eugenius Philalethes.
[752] “Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 215.
[753] See “Sage’s Dictionnaire des Tissus,” vol. ii., pp. 1-12.
[754] “Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 230.
[755] “Alchemy, or the Hermetic Philosophy,” p. 25.
[756] See Plutarch: “Symposiacs,” viii. 2. “Diogenianas began and said:
‘Let us admit Plato to the conference and inquire upon what account
he says—supposing it to be his sentence—that _God always plays the
geometer_.‘ I said: ‘This sentence was not plainly set down in any of
his books; yet there are good arguments that it is his, and it is very
much like his expression.’ Tyndares presently subjoined: ‘He praises
geometry as a science that takes off men from sensible objects, and
makes them apply themselves to the intelligible and Eternal Nature—the
contemplation of which is the end of philosophy, as a view of the
mysteries of initiation into holy rites.’”
[757] Prof. Ed. L. Youmans: “Descriptive Chemistry.”
[758] In ancient nations the Deity was a trine supplemented by a
goddess—the _arba-Ih_, or fourfold God.
[759] Josiah Cooke: “The New Chemistry.”
[760] Prof. Sterry Hunt’s theory of metalliferous deposits contradicts
this; but is it right?
[761] Peisse: “La Médecine et les Médecins,” vol. i., pp. 59, 283.
[762] “The Conservation of Energy.”
[763] Ibid., p. 136.
[764] Extracts from Robertus di Fluctibus in “The Rosicrucians.”
[765] “Philopseud.”
[766] Diog. Laert. in “Demokrit. Vitæ.”
[767] “Satyric. Vitrus D. Architect,” lib. ix., cap. iii.
[768] Pliny: “Hist. Nat.”
[769] “Conflict between Religion and Science.”
[770] “Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., pp. 133-135.
[771] “Dionysius of Halicarnassus.”
[772] See vol. ii., chap. 8.
[773] J. M. Peebles: “Around the World.“
[774] John Fiske: ” The North American Review,” art. The Laws of
History, July 1869.
[775] J. M. Peebles: “Around the World.”
[776] Savary: “Letters on Egypt,” vol. ii., p. 67. London, 1786.
[777] John Fiske: “North American Review,” art. The Laws of History,
July, 1869.
[778] Sir G. C. Lewis: “Astronomy of the Ancients.”
[779] J. Fiske: “North American Review,” art. The Laws of History.
[780] We shall attempt to demonstrate in Vol. II., chapter viii., that
the ancient Æthiopians were never a Hamitic race.
[781] Servius: “Virgil,” Eclog. vi., v. 42.
[782] Ovid: “Fast.,” lib. iii., v. 285-346.
[783] “Titus Livius,” lib. i., cap. xxxi.
[784] Pliny: “Hist. Nat.,” lib. ii., cap. liii.
[785] Lucius: “Piso;” Pliny: “Hist. Nat.,” lib. xxviii., c. ii.
[786] “Columella,” lib. x., vers. 346, etc.
[787] See “Notice sur les Travaux de l’Academie du Gard,” part i., pp.
304-314, by la Boissière.
[788] “Bell. Jud. adv. Roman,” lib. v., cap. xiv.
[789] “Magasin Scientifique de Goëthingen,” 3me. année, 5me. cahier.
[790] “Ammian. Marcel.,” lib. xxiii., cap. vi.
[791] “Oupnek-hat,” Brahman xi.
[792] “Ktesias, in India ap. Photum.,” Bibl. Cod. lxxii.
[793] Buffon: “Histoire Naturelle des Mineraux,” 6me Mem., art. ii.
[794] “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” vol. iv., p. 462.
[795] “Archæologia,” vol. xv., p. 320.
[796] Lib. ii., c. 50.
[797] Galen: “De Composit. Medec.,” lib. v.
[798] “Ancient Fragments:” see chapter on the Early Kings of Egypt.
[799] “Pliny,” lib. vii., c. 56.
[800] Jablonski: “Pantheon Ægypti.,” ii., Proleg. 10.
[801] Cicero: “De Divinatione.”
[802] “Telegraphic Journal,” art. Scientific Prophecy.
[803] Professor Albrecht Müller: “The First Traces of Man in Europe.”
Says the author: “And this bronze age reaches to _and overlaps_ the
beginning of the historic period in some countries, and so includes the
great epochs of the Assyrian and Egyptian Empires, _B.C. circa_ 1500,
and the earlier eras of the next succeeding age of iron.”
[804] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” chap. i.
[805] Psellus: “Chaldean Oracles,” 4, cxliv.
[806] Psellus: “Zoroast. Oracles,” 4.
[807] Proctor: “Saturn and the Sabbath of the Jews,” p. 309.
[808] Dioscorides: “Περι Ὑλης Ιατρικῆς,” lib. v., cap. clviii.
[809] Pliny: “Histoire Naturelle,” lib. xxxviii., cap. vii.
[810] Le P. Paulin de St. Barthelemi: “Voyage aux Indes Orientales,”
vol. i., p. 358.
[811] Max Müller, Professor Wilson, and H. J. Bushby, with several
other Sanscrit students, prove that “Oriental scholars, both native
and European, have shown that the rite of widow-burning was not
only unsanctionable but imperatively forbidden by the earliest and
most authoritative Hindu Scriptures” (“Widow-burning,” p. 21). See
Max Müller’s “Comparative Mythology.” “Professor Wilson,” says Max
Müller, “was the first to point out the falsification of the text and
the change of ‘_yonim agre_’ into ‘_yonim agne_’ (womb of fire)....
According to the hymns of the ‘Rig-Veda,’ and the Vaidic ceremonial
contained in the ‘Grihya-Sûtras,’ the wife accompanies the corpse of
the husband to the funeral pile, but she is there addressed with a
verse taken from the ‘Rig-Veda,’ and ordered to leave her husband, and
to return to the world of the living” (“Comparative Mythology,” p. 35).
[812] Hence the story that Moses fabricated there the serpent or seraph
of brass which the Israelites worshipped till the reign of Hezekiah.
[813] A. Gell: “Noet. Attic.,” lib. x., cap. xiii.
[814] Such is _not_ our opinion. They were probably built by the
Atlantians.
[815] “Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan,”
vol. ii., p. 457.
[816] Max Müller: “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. ii., p. 269.
[817] Max Müller: “Popol-Vuh,” p. 327.
[818] Why not to the sacrifices of men in ancient worship?
[819] “Odyssey,” xii. 71.
[820] “Chips from a German Workshop,” p. 268.
[821] Villemarque, Member of the Institute. Vol. lx.; “Collect et
Nouvelle Serie,” 24, p. 570, 1863; “Poesie des Cloitres Celtiques.”
[822] “Archæol.,” vol. xxv., p. 220. London.
[823] “Archæol.,” vol. xxv., p. 292. London.
[824] Brasseur de Bourbourg: “Cartas,” p. 52.
[825] See Stephens: “Travels in Central America,” etc.
[826] “Cartas,” 53, 7-62.
[827] “Die Phönizier,” 70.
[828] See Sanchoniaton in “Eusebius,” Pr. Ev. 36; Genesis xiv.
[829] “Archæological Society of the Antiquaries of London,” vol. xxv.,
p. 220.
[830] “Cartas,” 51.
[831] “Hauts Phénomenes de la Magie,” 50.
[832] Genesis xlix.
[833] Dunlap, in his introduction to “SOD, the Mysteries of Adonis,”
explains the word “Sod,” as _Arcanum_; religious mystery on the
authority of Shindler’s “Penteglott” (1201). “The SECRET of the Lord is
with them that fear Him,” says Psalm xxv. 14. This is a mistranslation
of the Christians, for it ought to read “_Sod_ Ihoh (the mysteries of
Iohoh) are for _those who fear Him_” (Dunlap: “Mysteries of Adonis,”
xi.). “Al (El) is terrible in the great Sod of the _Kedeshim_ (the
priests, the holy, the _Initiated_), Psalm lxxxix. 7” (_Ibid._).
[834] “The members of the _priest-colleges_ were called _Sodales_,”
says Freund’s “Latin Lexicon” (iv. 448). “SODALITIES were constituted
in the Idæan Mysteries of the MIGHTY MOTHER,” writes Cicero (“De
Senectute,” 13); Dunlap: “Mysteries of Adonis.”
[835] See Wilkinson: “Ancient Egyptians,” vol. v., p. 65.
[836] Brasseur de Bourbourg: “Mexique,” pp. 135-574.
[837] “Catholic World,” N. Y., January, 1877: Article Nagualism,
Voodooism, etc.
[838] In “Hesiod,” Zeus creates his _third_ race of men out of
ash-trees. In “Popol-Vuh,” we are told the _third_ race of men is
created out of the tree “tzite,” and women are made from the marrow of
a reed which was called “sibac.” This also is a strange coincidence.
[839] “Popol-Vuh,” reviewed by Max Müller.
[840] Frank Vincent, Jun.: “The Land of the White Elephant,” p. 209.
[841] The Hanoumā is over three feet tall, and black as a coal. The
_Ramayana_, giving the biography of this sacred monkey, relates that
Hanoumā was formerly a powerful chieftain, who being the greatest
friend of Rama, helped him to find his wife, Sithâ, who had been
carried off to Ceylon by Râvana, the mighty king of the giants. After
numerous adventures Hanoumā was caught by the latter, while visiting
the city of the giant as Rama’s spy. For this crime Râvana had the poor
Hanoumā’s tail oiled and set on fire, and it was in extinguishing
it that the monkey-god became so black in the face that neither
himself nor his posterity could ever get rid of the color. If we have
to believe Hindu legends this same Hanoumā was the _progenitor_ of
the Europeans; a tradition which, though strictly Darwinian, hence,
scientific, is by no means flattering to us. The legend states that for
services rendered, Rama, the hero and demi-god, gave in marriage to the
monkey-warriors of his army the daughters of the giants of Ceylon—the
Bâkshasas—and granted them, moreover, as a dowry, all western parts of
the world. Repairing thence, the monkeys and their giant-wives lived
happily and had a number of descendants. The latter are the present
Europeans. Dravidian words are found in Western Europe, indicating
that there was an original unity of race and language between the
populations. May it not be a hint that the traditions are akin, of
elfin and kobold races in Europe, and monkeys, actually cognate with
them in Hindustan?
[842] “Incidents of Travels in Central America, etc.,” vol. i., p. 105.
[843] They stand no more, for the obelisk alone was removed to Paris.
[844] See “The Land of the White Elephant,” p. 221.
[845] The President of the Royal Geographical Society of Berlin.
[846] “The Land of the White Elephant,” p. 215.
[847] The Phœnician Dido is the feminine of David דוד , דידו. Under
the name of Astartè, she led the Phœnician colonies, and her image was
on the prow of their ships. But David and Saul are names belonging to
Afghanistan also.
[848] (Prof. A. Wilder.) This archæologist says: “I regard the
Æthiopian, Cushite and Hamitic races as the building and artistic race
who worshipped Baal (Siva), or Bel—made temples, grottos, pyramids, and
used a language of peculiar type. Rawlinson derives that language from
the _Turanians_ in Hindustan.”
[849] Prof. A. Wilder among others.
[850] See Martin Haug’s translation: “The Aytareya Brahmanam.“
[851] Judges xvii.-xviii., etc.
[852] The Zendic _H_ is _S_ in India. Thus Hapta is Sapta; _Hindu_ is
_Sindhaya_. (A. Wilder.) ” ... the _S_ continually softens to _H_ from
Greece to Calcutta, from the Caucasus to Egypt,” says Dunlap. Therefore
the letters _K_, _H_, and _S_ are interchangeable.
[853] Guignant: “Op. cit.,” vol. i., p. 167.
[854] “Incidents of Travel in Central America, etc.”
[855] See Paul to the Galatians, iv. 24, and Gospel according to
Matthew, xiii. 10-15.
[856] A. Wilder says that “Gan-duniyas,” is a name of Babylonia.
[857] The appropriate definition of the name “Turanian” is, any ethnic
family that ethnologists know nothing about.
[858] See Berosus and Sanchoniathon: Cory’s “Ancient Fragments:” Movers
and others.
[859] Movers, 86.
[860] Ibid.
[861] Sanchon.: in Cory’s “Fragments,” p. 14.
[862] In an old Brahmanical book called the “Prophecies,” by
Ramatsariar, as well as in the Southern MSS. in the legend of Christna,
the latter gives nearly word for word the first two chapters of
Genesis. He recounts the creation of man—whom he calls _Adima_, in
Sanscrit, the ‘first man’—and the first woman is called _Heva_, that
which completes life. According to Louis Jacolliot (“La Bible dans
l’Inde”), Christna existed, and his legend was written, over 3,000
years B. C.
[863] _Adah_ in Hebrew is גן־עדן, and Eden, אלהים. The first is a
woman’s name; the second the designation of a country. They are closely
related to each other; but hardly to Adam and Akkad—כתנות צור, which
are spelled with aleph.
[864] The two words answer to the terms, _Macroprosopos_, or
macrocosm—the absolute and boundless, and the _Microprosopos_ of
the “Kabala,” the “short face,” or the microcosm—the finite and
conditioned. It is not translated; nor is it likely to be. The
Thibetean monks say that it is the real “Sutrâs.” Some Buddhists
believe that Buddha was, in a previous existence, Kapila himself. We
do not see how several Sanscrit scholars can entertain the idea that
Kapila was an atheist, while every legend shows him the most ascetic
mystic, the founder of the sect of the Yogis.
[865] The “Brahmanas” were translated by Dr. Haug; see his “Aitareya
Brâhmanam.”
[866] The “Stan-gyour” is full of rules of magic, the study of occult
powers, and their acquisition, charms, incantations, etc.; and is as
little understood by its lay-interpreters as the Jewish “Bible” is by
our clergy, or the “Kabala” by the European Rabbis.
[867] “Aitareya Brahmana,” Lecture by Max Müller.
[868] Ibid., “Buddhist Pilgrims.”
[869] “Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages,” vol. i.,
p. 17.
[870] “La Bible dans l’Inde.”
[871] “La Bible dans l’Inde.”
[872] “Presbyterian Banner,” December 20, 1876.
[873] “La Bible dans l’Inde.”
[874] See Max Müller’s “Lecture on the Vedas.”
[875] See Roth’s “The Burial in India;” Max Müller’s “Comparative
Mythology” (Lecture); Wilson’s article, “The Supposed Vaidic Authority
for the Burning of Hindu Widows,” etc.
[876] Bunsen gives as the first year of Menes, 3645; Manetho as 3892
B.C. “Eqypt’s Place,” etc., vol. v., 34; Key.
[877] Louis Jacolliot, in “The Bible in India,” affirms the same.
[878] _Purana_ means ancient and sacred history or tradition. See
Loiseleur Des-longchamp’s translations of “Manu;” also L. Jacolliot’s
“La Genèse dans l’Humanité.”
[879] There are archæologists, who, like Mr. James Fergusson, deny
the great antiquity of even one single monument in India. In his
work, “Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples of India,” the author
ventures to express the very extraordinary opinion that “Egypt had
ceased to be a nation before the earliest of the cave-temples of India
was excavated.” In short, he does not admit the existence of any
cave anterior to the reign of Asoka, and seems willing to prove that
most of these rock-cut temples were executed from the time of that
pious Buddhist king, till the destruction of the Andhra dynasty of
Maghada, in the beginning of the fifth century. We believe such a claim
perfectly arbitrary. Further discoveries are sure to show how erroneous
and unwarranted it was.
[880] It is a strange coincidence that when first discovered, America
was found to bear among some native tribes the name of Atlanta.
[881] Baldwin: “Prehistoric Nations,” p. 179.
[882] Alberico Vespuzio, the son of Anastasio Vespuzio or Vespuchy, is
now gravely doubted in regard to the naming of the New World. Indeed
the name is said to have occurred in a work written several centuries
before. A. Wilder (Notes).
[883] See Thomas Belt: “The Naturalists in Nicaragua.” London, 1873.
[884] Torfæus: “Historia Vinlandiæ Antiquæ.”
[885] 2 Kings, xxii. 14; 2 Chronicles, xxxiv. 22.
[886] As we are going to press with this chapter, we have received
from Paris, through the kindness of the Honorable John L. O’Sullivan,
the complete works of Louis Jacolliot in twenty-one volumes. They are
chiefly upon India and its old traditions, philosophy, and religion.
This indefatigable writer has collected a world of information from
various sources, mostly authentic. While we do not accept his personal
views on many points, still we freely acknowledge the extreme value of
his copious translations from the Indian sacred books. The more so,
since we find them corroborating in every respect the assertions we
have made. Among other instances is this matter of the submergence of
continents in prehistoric days.
In his “Histoire des Vierges: Les Peuples et les Continents Disparus,”
he says: “One of the most ancient legends of India, preserved in the
temples by oral and written tradition, relates that several hundred
thousand years ago there existed in the Pacific Ocean, an immense
continent which was destroyed by geological upheaval, and the fragments
of which must be sought in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, Borneo,
and the principal isles of Polynesia.
“The high plateaux of Hindustan and Asia, according to this hypothesis,
would only have been represented in those distant epochs by great
islands contiguous to the central continent.... According to the
Brahmans this country had attained a high civilization, and the
peninsula of Hindustan, enlarged by the displacement of the waters, at
the time of the grand cataclysm, has but continued the chain of the
primitive traditions born in this place. These traditions give the name
of _Rutas_ to the peoples which inhabited this immense equinoctial
continent, and from their speech _was derived the Sanscrit_.” (We will
have something to say of this language in our second volume.)
“The Indo-Hellenic tradition, preserved by the most intelligent
population which emigrated from the plains of India, equally relates
the existence of a continent and a people to which it gives the name of
Atlantis and Atlantides, and which it locates in the Atlantic in the
northern portion of the Tropics.
“Apart from the fact that the supposition of an ancient continent in
those latitudes, the vestiges of which may be found in the volcanic
islands and mountainous surface of the Azores, the Canaries and Cape
Verd, is not devoid of geographical probability, the Greeks, who,
moreover, never dared to pass beyond the pillars of Hercules, on
account of their dread of the mysterious ocean, appeared too late
in antiquity for the stories preserved by Plato to be anything else
than an echo of the Indian legend. Moreover, when we cast a look on a
planisphere, at the sight of the islands and islets strewn from the
Malayan Archipelago to Polynesia, from the straits of Sund to Easter
Island, it is impossible, upon the hypothesis of continents preceding
those which we inhabit, not to place there the most important of all.
“A religious belief, common to Malacca and Polynesia, that is to say
to the two opposite extremes of the Oceanic world, affirms ‘that all
these islands once formed two immense countries, inhabited by yellow
men and black men, always at war; and that the gods, wearied with their
quarrels, having charged Ocean to pacify them, the latter swallowed up
the two continents, and since, it had been impossible to make him give
up his captives. Alone, the mountain-peaks and high plateaux escaped
the flood, by the power of the gods, who perceived too late the mistake
they had committed.’
“Whatever there may be in these traditions, and whatever may have been
the place where a civilization more ancient than that of Rome, of
Greece, of Egypt, and of India was developed, it is certain that this
civilization did exist, and that it is highly important for science
to recover its traces, however feeble and fugitive they may be” (pp.
13-15).
This last tradition, translated by Louis Jacolliot from the Sanscrit
manuscripts, corroborates the one we have given from the “Records of
the Secret Doctrine.” The war mentioned between the yellow and the
black men, relates to a struggle between the “sons of God” and the
“sons of giants,” or the inhabitants and magicians of the Atlantis.
The final conclusion of M. Jacolliot, who visited personally all the
islands of Polynesia, and devoted years to the study of the religion,
language, and traditions of nearly all the peoples, is as follows:
“As to the Polynesian continent which disappeared at the time of the
final geological cataclysms, its existence rests on such proofs that to
be logical we can doubt no longer.
“The three summits of this continent, Sandwich Islands, New Zealand,
Easter Island, are distant from each other from fifteen to eighteen
hundred leagues, and the groups of intermediate islands, Viti, Samoa,
Tonga, Foutouna, Ouvea, Marquesas, Tahiti, Poumouton, Gambiers, are
themselves distant from these extreme points from seven or eight
hundred to one thousand leagues.
“All navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the central groups
could never have communicated in view of their actual geographical
position, and with the insufficient means they had at hand. It is
physically impossible to cross such distances in a pirogue ... without
a compass, and travel months without provisions.
“On the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands, of Viti,
of New Zealand, of the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti, etc., _had
never known each other, had never heard of each other_ before the
arrival of the Europeans. _And yet, each of these people maintained
that their island had at one time formed a part of an immense stretch
of land which extended toward the West, on the side of Asia._ And all,
brought together, were found to speak the same language, to have the
same usages, the same customs, the same religious belief. And all to
the question, ‘Where is the cradle of your race?’ for sole response,
_extended their hand toward the setting sun_” (Ibid., p. 308).
[887] These “magic mirrors,” generally black, are another proof of
the universality of an identical belief. In India these mirrors are
prepared in the province of Agra and are also fabricated in Thibet and
China. And we find them in Ancient Egypt, from whence, according to the
native historian quoted by Brasseur de Bourbourg, the ancestors of the
Quichès brought them to Mexico; the Peruvian sun-worshippers also used
it. When the Spaniards had landed, says the historian, the King of the
Quichès, ordered his priests to consult the mirror, in order to learn
the fate of his kingdom. “The _demon_ reflected the present and the
future as in a mirror,” he adds (De Bourbourg: “Mexique,” p. 184).
[888] Pay’quina, or _Payaquina_, so called because its waves used to
drift particles of gold from the Brazil. We found a few specks of
genuine metal in a handful of sand that we brought back to Europe.
[889] The regions somewhere about _Udyana_ and _Kashmere_, as the
translator and editor of Marco Polo (Colonel Yule), believes. Vol. i.,
p. 173.
[890] “Voyage des Pèlerins Bouddhistes,” vol. 1.; “Histoire de la Vie
de Hiouen-Thsang,” etc., traduit du Chinois en français, par Stanislas
Julien.
[891] Lao-tsi, the Chinese philosopher.
[892] “The Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 318. See also, in this
connection, the experiments of Mr. Crookes, described in chapter vi. of
this work.
[893] Max Müller: “Buddhist Pilgrims.”
[894] Berlin Academy of Sciences, 1846.
[895] Colonel Yule makes a remark in relation to the above Chinese
mysticism which for its noble fairness we quote most willingly. “In
1871,” he says, “I saw in Bond street an exhibition of the (so-called)
‘spirit’ drawings, _i.e._, drawings executed by a ‘medium’ under
extraneous and invisible guidance. A number of these extraordinary
productions (for extraordinary they were undoubtedly) professed to
represent the ‘Spiritual Flowers’ of such and such persons; and the
explanation of these as presented in the catalogue was in substance
exactly that given in the text. It is highly improbable that the
artist had any cognizance of Schott’s Essays, and the coincidence was
certainly very striking” (“The Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p.
444).
[896] Schott: “Essay on Buddhism,” p. 103.
[897] “The Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., Preface to the second
edition, p. viii.
[898] Ibid., vol. i., p. 203.
[899] “Visdelon,” p. 130.
[900] “Pliny,” vii., 2.
[901] “Philostratus,” book ii., chap. iv.
[902] Ibid., book iv., p. 382; “Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p.
206.
[903] There are pious critics who deny the world the same right to
judge the “Bible” on the testimony of deductive logic as “any other
book.” Even exact science must bow to this decree. In the concluding
paragraph of an article devoted to a terrible onslaught on Baron
Bunsen’s “Chronology,” which _does not quite agree_ with the “Bible,”
a writer exclaims, “the subject we have proposed to ourselves is
completed.... We have endeavored to meet Chevalier Bunsen’s charges
against the inspiration of the “Bible” on its own ground.... An
inspired book ... never can, as an expression of its own teaching, or
as a part of its own record, bear witness to any untrue or ignorant
statement of fact, whether in history or doctrine. _If it be untrue
in its witness of one, who shall trust its truth in the witness of
the other_?” (“The Journal of Sacred Literature and Biblical Record,”
edited by the Rev. H. Burgess, Oct., 1859, p. 70.)
[904] Remusat: “Histoire du Khotan,” p. 74; “Marco Polo,” vol. i., p.
206.
[905] Like the _Psylli_, or serpent-charmers of Libya, whose gift is
hereditary.
[906] “Ser Marco Polo,” vol. ii., p. 321.
[907] “The Spiritualist.” London, Nov. 10, 1876.
[908] Read any of the papers, of the summer and autumn of 1876.
[909] Tite-Livy, v. déc. i.,—Val. Max., 1, cap. vii.
[910] See “Les Hauts Phénomenes de la Magie;” “La Magie au XIXme
Siècle;” “Dieu et les Dieux,” etc.
[911] “De Idol. Vanit.,” lib. i., p. 452.
[912] These, after their bodily death, unable to soar higher,
attached to terrestrial regions, delight in the society of the kind
of elementals which by their affinity with vice attract them the
most. They identify themselves with these to such a degree that they
very soon lose sight of their own identity, and become a part of the
elementals, the help of which they need to communicate with mortals.
But as the nature-spirits are _not_ immortal, so the human elementary
who have lost their divine guide—spirit—can last no longer than the
essence of the elements which compose their astral bodies holds
together.
[913] L. Jacolliot: “Voyage au Pays des Perles.”
[914] “Ultimate Deductions of Science; The Earth Motionless.” A lecture
demonstrating that our globe does neither turn about its own axis nor
around the sun; delivered in Berlin by Doctor Shoëpfer. Seventh Edition.
[915] Champ.-Figeac: “Egypte,” p. 143.
[916] Ibid., p. 119.
[917] Ibid., p. 2.
[918] Ibid., p. 11.
List of Main Corrections Implemented
Greek
Page 56
φυχη replaced by ψυχη
Page 242
Τό Ὁν replaced by Τὸ Ὀν
Page 257
Πολυμήχὰνος replaced by Πολυμήχανος
μα̈τηρ replaced by μάτηρ
Page 317
μὰγος replaced by μάγος
μὰγνης replaced by μάγνης
Page 355
πὺθωνος replaced by πύθωνος
Footnote 425
Αρχῆν [ρεῦ replaced by μὲν] εῖναι [ῦλην possibly replaced by ὕλην] ἴλλεσθα
πὰντα replaced by πάντα
Hebrew
Page xxxvi
כבדים replaced by גברים
Page 181
ווח replaced by רוח
Footnote 847
Unclear, but thought to be דוד , דידו .
Page 575
כתנות צור replaced by כתנות עור
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